Cover Story Black History Month
Another October is here, which means another New African Black History Month issue – which
this year has something special for the activists of African descent fighting for reparations for the Transatlantic Slave Trade. They now have a shot in the arm. New African has in its possession an
old and rare official record of British parliamentary debates in June 1806 in which both Houses of Parliament accepted that the UK, as a nation, had sanctioned and encouraged the “African Slave
Trade” via various Acts of Parliament, and therefore it had responsibility to not only abolish the “great evil” (as some members of parliament put it at the time), but also “atone” for it. In other words, Britain said way back in 1806: “We are guilty”. It is another collector’s item, put together by Osei Boateng.
W Britain
COMPARING THE INTEGRITY AND forthrightness of European politicians of old and their descendants of today, at least judg- ing from the descendants’ recent escapades in Côte d’Ivoire, Libya and other such places, where a “no-fly zone” and the “protection of civilians” become a licence for regime change, is like comparing chalk and cheese – if a recently discovered treasure trove of British official records on the Transatlantic Slave Trade, dating back to 1806, is any guide. In those halcyon days when politicians respected integrity and
a good name better than deceit and spin-doctoring, British mem- bers of parliament stood up in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and proclaimed the guilt of their small great island in the Transatlantic Slave Trade and asked their motherland to “atone for the African Slave Trade”. Tat must be the elusive legal peg that the African-descended slavery reparation activists, scattered to the four winds of the world,
28 | October 2011 | New African
History Month
have it! Two volumes of British parliamentary records published by the
now defunct publishing house, Phillips and Fardon of George Yard, Lombard Street, London, and also sold at the time by John Hatch- ard of 190 Piccadilly, London, have been discovered gathering dust in Ghana’s National Library in Accra (the roots of which go back to the pre-independence Gold Coast Library Board). Ghana gained independence from Britain in 1957, and the two
volumes of parliamentary records were certainly brought into the country by the then British colonial government as they are stamped with the Gold Coast Library Board rubber stamp. And what a treasure trove this is!
Black
e are guilty!
... Newly discovered evidence shows that the UK accepted liability for slavery way back in 1806, and now it must pay up
can use to make their case against Britain, Europe and America for the parts they played in the “African Slave Trade”. It is a legal peg they have been
looking for for years without success – but now they
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