WHY SLAVERY STILL MATTERS

24-03-2007

On the 200th anniversary of Britain's (official) abolition of slavery, Stirrer editor Adrian Goldberg offers a personal view on why, all these years on, the issue still can't be dismissed as ancient history.

It was my mate Dennis who brought it home to me.

A black man of African-Caribbean descent, he grew up in Handsworth but has done well for himself and long ago moved out to one of Birmingham's leafier suburbs.

He still maintains a keen interest in what's happening on his home turf, though, and in fact I first met him in the run up to the Lozells riots when he was attempting to be a calming, soothing voice on the streets.

After the murderous explosion of violence which claimed the life of Isiah Youngsam, we talked long and hard about what caused it, and specifically about the outspoken hatred voiced by some black people towards their Asian neighbours.

This is how he explained it to me.

Black people in Britain are mostly the descendants of slaves who were taken to the Carribbean and put into the service of the British Empire. Even after independence, it was thecolonialists who made the money in the West Indies.

Those with African ancestry, on the other hand, couldn't even get adecent education in their home islands- there was no university -and so mostly arrived here in the post-war years with no money, low self-esteem, and few skills. In other words, they were factory fodder, or destined for low grade jobs.

India, in contrast, already had an entrenched middle class by the time of colonisation, and though British rule was in many instances harsh, certain groups were favoured and used as alliesin the service of Empire.

This was true not only on the sub-continent, but in Africa too - hence the presence of Kenyan and Ugandan Asians, who had served as useful buffer between the British and the localsin colonial times.

As a result, when migrants from India and Pakistan started arriving in large numbers, they may have started with the same menial tasks as African-Carribeans, they found it much easier to rise up the social scale - they had better skills, greater confidence and, crucially, the wherewithal to improve their lot.

This meant that a small amount of capital could be invested in a corner shop, whichthen generated the profits to buy the next corner shop and so on.

In inner city areas,the relative prosperity ofsome Asian groups has meant that they arenow seen as the new colonials - they own the shops,drive the local economy, and ensure the black population remain on the bottom rungof thesocial ladder.

Even the sense of community African-Caribbeans traditionally enjoyedin places like Handsworth and Lozells was, he said, being diluted as Asians moved in - house by house, street by street.

Now there's a lot that's questionable about this theory. For one thing it relies on stereotypes about corner shops and Asians “all looking out for each other” (Sikhs and Muslims? I don't think so).

It also ignores the huge unemployment rate among men of Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent, and fails to acknowledge the huge achievements that many people of African-Caribbean heritage have made in terms of educational achievement and social mobility.

And yet, there's a nagging sense that somewhere in this argument, there's at least an unpalatablegrain of truth.

Dennis is no loser, looking to blame society for his failures. He's a well-respected and successful member of the community.

But still somewhere within him there burns a lingering sense of injustice; an anger ata wrong that hasn't been righted; and a belief that this history is still being played out on the streets of the West Midlands.

Whether he's right or not is almost beside the point. What matters is that his view is not unique, but is shared by many people of a similar background, giving a kind of intellectual justification for the terrible events we witnessed all too recently on the streets of Birmingham.

Slavery is still in his head, and until those chains are removed none of us will ever be truly free.