There may be some artefacts (pottery, ornaments, metalwork) connected to the slave trade that are less problematic than Beckford’s statue, and that can be explained in situ. But a plaque is not sufficient to recontextualise the acts of a West Indian mass murderer. I would prefer that this statue be removed and placed in a London museum. My suggestion for the museum description is that it read:
“William Beckford inherited 3,000 enslaved Africans in Jamaica, whom he mercilessly exploited to accumulate great wealth in Britain. His enslaved Africans were victims of routine sexual violence, torture, bodily mutilation and mass murder. Today, we recognise slavery as a crime against humanity and an unresolved stain on the national consciousness. We display this statue not because we wish to honour Beckford, but as a reminder of how we as a nation have sanitised, obscured and neglected racial capitalism and racial terror as foundational narratives of our modern history.”
We get to put equally blunt notes on the Benin Bronzes? Noting that they were made from the manillas gained from selling their own countrymen into that slavery?
Today, we recognise slavery as a crime against humanity and an unresolved stain on the national consciousness.
No we don’t.
Fuck you.
Steve. Perhaps it should go like this?
Today, we recognise slavery as a crime against humanity and an unresolved stain on the consciousness of those Africans who sold their fellow blacks to the slave traders.
All blacks owe reparations to all whites for using them as something on which to dump their thieves and bludgers. Instead of just continuing to dump them on those poor gaslighted Europeans.
I’ll need to check the statute book but the article is bordering on the libellous, and it’s highly inflammatory messaging to me constitutes incitement to racial hatred of Whites.
Where’s the likes of our own Benjamin Netanyahu to start getting people like this guy removed and transported to the West Indies (or West Africa) where I’m sure he (and we) would be a lot happier?
One presumes the William Beckford under discussion is the author etc?
Perusing his Wiki entry, there’s nothing to indicate he ever went anywhere near Jamaica, although he managed the Grand Tour as far as half way down Italy. So it’s hard to see he’s personally responsible for any of what he’s being accused of. May not even known if it was happening, if it did. I doubt he was receiving daily lists of slaves tortured, mutilated or sexually exploited.
But a plaque is not sufficient to recontextualise the acts
What a wonderful word is “recontextualise”.
The OED doesn’t have an entry for it yet but the sense is that one thoroughly expunges every aspect of the historical context of some past event or behaviour and replaces it with another “context” reflecting the preferences and prejudices of present-day campaigners.
Even the recent past is not immune as the current recontextualisation of (frankly odious, but still) Russell Brand demonstrates.
@VP I think there’ may be a good case for compiling a Compedium of
N****rMelanin Enhanced Grifters. Probably come in a five volume leather bound set with yearly addendums. Maybe something on disc or downloadable for the technophiles amongst us. See a market for it? Universities I imagine. Keep up with who’s who in the field.I have posted this before, but…..
So let me get this straight –
For thousands of years:
Black people capturing black people to use as slaves is OK.
Arab people capturing black people to use as slaves is OK
Arab people capturing white people to use as slaves is OK.
Black people selling black slaves to black people is OK.
Arab people selling black slaves to black people is OK.
Black people selling black slaves to arab people is OK.
Arab people selling black slaves to arab people is OK.
Black people selling arab slaves to arab people is OK.
Arab people selling arab slaves to arab people is OK.
Black people selling white slaves to black people is OK.
Arab people selling white slaves to arab people is OK.
Black people selling white slaves to arab people is OK.
Black people and arab people selling slaves to white people is OK.
White people BUYING slaves over a period of around 230 years is definitely NOT OK and is totally the fault and responsibility of the white people who must now pay reparations.
Pops of, I think.
we as a nation have sanitised, obscured and neglected racial capitalism and racial terror as foundational narratives of our modern history
Have we? I must have missed that.
WTF is racial capitalism meant to be? Is that when one race fails to take advantage of capitalism and free markets and resorts to robbing those races which have? And then having a right old hissy fit when caught or censured?
Bboy – from a historical perspective, there was nothing particularly cruel or unusual about slavery.
Worse things happened every day, and still do.
Luckily, nobody’s really interested in slavery. Unluckily, they are interested in creating and disseminating racial hatred against the white global minority, with the full support of the British authorities.
That pretty half-Pakistani half-white ten year old who was murdered recently: the photo in the papers gives the appearance of her having been sexualised rather early in life.
Was she being lined up for transport to Pakistan for an arranged marriage, where her light skin colour and British passport would make her a valuable item on the marriage market?
Was she murdered because she refused to take part in such a plan? God alone knows. Maybe these speculations are wide of the mark.
But my point: how different is this tradition from the slave trade? Different, of course: but for a ten year old, how different?
Why aren’t we tearing down all evidence of Spanish culture and firebombing the Spanish embassy for their 400+ years of slave trading before we got in on the act, and within a century recoiled in horror and spent another 100 years stamping it out – not just in territory we controlled but spilled blood and money stamping it out wherever our navy could get.
Good point Boganboy. I bet those bastard African warlords didn’t sell us the best slaves. They’d have kept them for themselves. We probably got all the scrawny sick ones.
Must have been like a used car salesman spotting a sucker and looking to dump the clapped out banger that had been stuck in the corner of the lot for the last 6 months. “What? He died before you got him on the ship? Sorry mate, no refunds once he’s left the compound. Read the small print”
Sod reparations, we ought to get a refund.
Off topic but I’m intrigued by this football result on the BBC’s website
Colchester United 0 Tottenham Hotspur U21 5
FT
Tottenham Hotspur U21 win 0-0 on penalties
I don’t really follow football. Can anyone shed light on this?
jgh. As far as I can tell, the Spanish attitude to slavery was directly derived from their Moorish colonisers.
Perhaps we should be fire bombing the local mosques and Mossies, and burning the Koran?
Boganboy, oh yes please…… It would only be fair wouldn’t it, as that is what they are doing to non-moslems across the globe?
It does royally piss me off that they are allowed to build mosques and extend the ones they already have here, yet no churches are allowed to be built in moslem lands (or repair or extend existing ones).
‘Unresolved stain…’ Fuck off already. We abolished the trade. We policed the high seas in order to kill it off. It is resolved and we resolved it.