Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade

I absolutely agree, and as I was on the committee that asked the school to take part, I duly congratulate myself on that. It was indeed a splendid choice, and I hope that every Member will come along to the exhibition. Many congratulations are due to Baroness Lola Young of Hornsey, who has chaired the committee and put a huge amount of effort into ensuring that the exhibition is a success. One of the exhibits, loaned from the museum in Wisbech, is Thomas Clarkson’s box. This was the famous box that he used to take around the country, in which he carried the instruments of torture—the manacles and all the other horrible things—that were used in slavery, and the descriptions of the slave ships and the ways in which people died as a result of the trade. We owe a debt of gratitude to the Wisbech museum for loaning us that equipment and for its help and support. Baroness Howells brought along to the committee meeting earlier today one of the neck irons that had been put around the necks of African slaves when they were captured and taken to the ports. They were tight pieces of iron that were effectively welded around the necks of human beings in order to chain them together to take them off to a destination unknown to them. That is what slavery was about; it illustrates the brutality involved in the slave trade. We would do well to ensure that, this year of all years, all the children in schools in this country and around the world begin to understand what the slave trade meant—the brutality and the horror of it, as well as the bravery of those who campaigned against it, and the even greater bravery of those who took part in the slave rebellions in Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean. As the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks pointed out, their names were not recorded in most cases. They led apparently useless rebellions, but word got through and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington said, evil was eventually outed and defeated. However, it took a very long time to do so. Slavery was not a neutral occupation. As my hon. Friend pointed out, Members of Parliament were deeply involved in the slave trade. It was a central core of British life. We have only to look at the names of the buildings and roads in Bristol, Liverpool and London. In Bristol, we find Colston hall, named after a great slave owner, and Whiteladies road, where white ladies went to buy black boys as their slaves. That was all part of British life, and defeating it was a great achievement. The profits from the slave trade were astronomical. One of the most formative books that I have ever read is the wonderful work by the late Dr. Eric Williams, ““Capitalism and Slavery””, which I think was his PhD thesis when he was at the London School of Economics. In it, he describes the riches that the City of London and other places made from the slave trade.