Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade

I am glad that my hon. Friend has brought that to our attention. Every Member of the House who witnesses the work of the British Council cannot but admire the efforts that it has made. I am sure that we would all like to record how much we appreciate its efforts in the twinning of schools and classrooms, such as those that I saw in Ghana and Sierra Leone. Also, it is prepared to organise the youth debates that take place here in Parliament so that we can involve young people from twinned schools in the United Kingdom, the Caribbean and Africa. We look forward to those events, which take place thanks to the abilities and the organisation of the British Council. When I first began to explore how we could commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, I immediately recognised the importance of ensuring that our young people have the chance to get involved and have their say. I went to the St. Paul’s area of Bristol, and to Liverpool, and asked young black people how they wanted to mark the anniversary. They stressed to me the importance of looking forward as well as looking into the past. They felt that their school history lessons did not teach a proper black history or give enough attention to black achievements. ““Yes””, they said, ““we should reflect on the past, but we should also look to the future.”” This year, we are considering important changes to the school curriculum. It will incorporate the study of the slave trade as a compulsory element of our history curriculum, with all slavery’s brutality and inhumanity, and not just as an element of our colonial past. The bicentenary commemoration is about looking forward as well as back. Slavery did not end when the Act of Parliament was passed in 1807: it continued in the colonies and elsewhere. The abolition of slavery across the world remains unfinished business. In 1998, the United Nations set up its working group on contemporary forms of slavery, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported:"““Slavery continues to be reported in a wide range of forms: traditional chattel slavery, bonded labour, serfdom, child labour, migrant labour, domestic labour, forced labour and slavery for ritual or religious purposes””." All of that is happening in the 21st century. The nations of the world must unite and campaign to end the unspeakable cruelty that persists in the form of modern-day slavery. I urge the House to support the Government’s commitment to work with all countries to end the scandal of slavery in all its modern forms. A few months ago, in New York, I discussed modern slavery and human trafficking with Kofi Annan, then Secretary-General of the United Nations. All nations must honour article IV of the UN declaration of human rights, which requires that slavery be prohibited in all its forms. As Kofi Annan said in a lecture in January,"““In the 21st century, Africa differs in very fundamental ways from the Africa of old.””"