Historians agree UK is loathe to address own role in transatlantic slave trade
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London — The images went everywhere: angry demonstrators in the 1,000-year-old British city of Bristol toppled the statue of an 18th century slave trader and heaved it into the Avon.
As curator at Britain’s only museum dedicated to slavery, Jean-Francois Manicom wasn’t surprised the 125-year-old monument was caught up in today’s movement against racism. At Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum, he’d dealt with the fallout of sweeping such legacies under the rug.
“At first, people were very suspicious — ‘wow, we are going to put on the table a story that was very painful, not very glorious for the people of Liverpool,’” says Manicom, who moved to the city after curating a similar museum in Guadeloupe. “Little by little, it became something that Liverpool is proud of.”
With the Black Lives Matter movement forcing the UK to confront historical demons, the contrasting approaches of its two slave-trading hubs offer lessons for societies grappling with a legacy of racism. Even Winston Churchill’s place in the pantheon required a renewed defence from the prime minister.
In Bristol, the fight was over Edward Colston, who was remembered until now for the numerous schools and hospitals he funded. Today’s tumult focused attention on the source of his fortune, and that’s where Liverpool’s experience comes in.
“Liverpool anticipated and to a certain extent pre-empted the kind of pressures that have blown up in Bristol because in Bristol they simply weren’t addressed,” said Nick Draper, former director of the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership at University College London.
Liverpool apologised for its role in the slave trade in 1999 and the museum was established in 2007 in the warehouses at the Albert Docks that were rejuvenated after local riots and a collapse in manufacturing. About 1.5-million enslaved Africans were taken to the Americas, many on ships fitted out at these docks. Sir Thomas Street, Gladstone Road and Parr Street are among local streets named after merchants or defenders of slavery.
“The reason Liverpool has done more to acknowledge its role is because we can’t escape from it,” said Laurence Westgaph, a local historian and activist. “It would be ridiculous to even attempt to.”
Discrimination, far-right threats and fraught relations with the police fostered a range of local black organisations that offered informal education of the city’s ties to slavery long before the formal one came about.
With the longest continuous black presence ...
As curator at Britain’s only museum dedicated to slavery, Jean-Francois Manicom wasn’t surprised the 125-year-old monument was caught up in today’s movement against racism. At Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum, he’d dealt with the fallout of sweeping such legacies under the rug.
“At first, people were very suspicious — ‘wow, we are going to put on the table a story that was very painful, not very glorious for the people of Liverpool,’” says Manicom, who moved to the city after curating a similar museum in Guadeloupe. “Little by little, it became something that Liverpool is proud of.”
With the Black Lives Matter movement forcing the UK to confront historical demons, the contrasting approaches of its two slave-trading hubs offer lessons for societies grappling with a legacy of racism. Even Winston Churchill’s place in the pantheon required a renewed defence from the prime minister.
In Bristol, the fight was over Edward Colston, who was remembered until now for the numerous schools and hospitals he funded. Today’s tumult focused attention on the source of his fortune, and that’s where Liverpool’s experience comes in.
“Liverpool anticipated and to a certain extent pre-empted the kind of pressures that have blown up in Bristol because in Bristol they simply weren’t addressed,” said Nick Draper, former director of the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership at University College London.
Liverpool apologised for its role in the slave trade in 1999 and the museum was established in 2007 in the warehouses at the Albert Docks that were rejuvenated after local riots and a collapse in manufacturing. About 1.5-million enslaved Africans were taken to the Americas, many on ships fitted out at these docks. Sir Thomas Street, Gladstone Road and Parr Street are among local streets named after merchants or defenders of slavery.
“The reason Liverpool has done more to acknowledge its role is because we can’t escape from it,” said Laurence Westgaph, a local historian and activist. “It would be ridiculous to even attempt to.”
Discrimination, far-right threats and fraught relations with the police fostered a range of local black organisations that offered informal education of the city’s ties to slavery long before the formal one came about.
With the longest continuous black presence ...
