In an article published in The Guardian, writer Stephen McLaren made the claim that due to their part in the slave trade and its connection to the British Empire, Scots now needed to pay back the blood soaked debt that they owed to the Caribbean.
McLaren’s claims come almost two years after the Jamaican government issued a statement-alongside fellow Caribbean nations- that they felt that the British government owed them reparations to the tune of £7 million. Their charges against the government of the day were that because colonial governments had put their ancestors into bondage and had essentially reduced them to nothing more than tools for the furthering of the Empire’s interests in the Caribbean, they, the current Jamaican people were entitled to compensation. The David Cameron led government refused to pay the amount demanded, and the issue slowly subsided into nothingness, what with bigger issues such as Brexit and the US election dominating public attention. However, McLaren’s post has for me, highlighted an issue that most definitely needs addressing.
McLaren’s article makes some good points, the conditions that the slaves were kept in during their time in the Caribbean were horrible, and they were often treated appallingly However, I do not see why he insists that every Scot must contribute to the reparations that he calls for. To my mind, not every Scot’s ancestor even had a role to play in the slave trade. Like other Brits during the Empire’s golden day, many Scots would have been living on a meagre wage themselves, and would most likely have been barely able to scrape together enough to buy food to put on the table for their families. Why then does McLaren insist on lumping every Scot together? The answer continues to baffle me; it seems that McLaren is acting on a sense of guilt that he himself felt whilst in the Caribbean photographing the very images he speaks of in his article. Consequently, this guilt appears to have manifested in a demand for Scotland to pay reparations, and for the taxpayer to contribute more than they already do, for this sum. Reading the article, it seems that McLaren does not truly care about the history of what he is speaking of. He does not speak of what Britain has done since it abolished the slave trade in 1807 and slavery in the Empire in 1833, to prevent others from continuing the horrible practice.
Nowhere in his article does McLaren acknowledge that it was British ships during the 19th century that would intercept other countries ships from Africa, to prevent them from selling slaves and placing slaves in their colonies. Nowhere does McLaren acknowledge that these slaves were often sold by their fellow Africans in the western part of Africa. Instead he continues to pile the guilt on his fellow Scots, by claiming that because Glasgow became a brimming and thriving metropolis during the height of the Empire, all Scots are guilty by association of this crime, and thus must pay up. McLaren as with some others such as online news site MIC continue to insist that if you are white and do not feel some measure of guilt and responsibility for the slave trade, then you are a terrible person. This to me seems counter intuitive.
No one denies that slavery was a horrible thing. Yet, writers such as McLaren, to me at least, seem to in their desire to get their self-inflicted guilt off their conscience, broad brush everyone who has some connection to countries such as Britain, Spain and Portugal- whose Empires had dealings with the slave trade- as guilty and needing to work off that guilt. This does nothing more than breed resentment and anger. After all, a common argument used to defend other people who are part of a group that does wrong, is that they cannot be held accountable for the actions of others like them. Therefore, why is it that in this case that the reverse happens? I do not see what this achieves other than making people angry, resentful and unwilling to talk and discuss.
This is to my mind, further compounded by the fact that writers such as McLaren, and those at MIC often tend to ignore the fact that, yes whilst there was a horrible slave trade in the USA and that entire continent, that the slave trade has existed for far longer than the seventeenth century. African Kings and Warlords are known to have sold defeated soldiers into slavery, they are known to have sold their own people into slavery to make a profit. Many of the slaves that went across the seas to the Americas became slaves because of this. Yet, as far as I am aware, there has never been an effort by any group anywhere to demand reparations from these African nations at all. After all, if those from Europe must pay reparations for using the slaves, surely those from Africa must pay reparations for selling them off in the first place?! Then there is the issue of the Arabian slave trade which as this article states has been going on for at least fourteen hundred years. Once again, there is no outcry about this, there is no demand that Arabian countries pay reparations for using slaves bought from Africa. Indeed, it took Conservative Governments-those who are often derided amongst the left and liberals- to force countries such as Saudi Arabia and Yemen to not use slaves in their day to day lives. Yet the demands for reparations from these countries remains non-existent.
To conclude this piece, I feel that whilst Mr McLaren might be coming toward his issue with good intentions, he has not, in my opinion truly done much, other than continue beating a dead horse. Yes, the American Slave Trade was a horrible thing and yes we are still feeling the consequences of it today, but to demand that the descendants of those Europeans who were alive during its heyday pay reparations for it, and then to blatantly ignore the situation with Africa and the Arabian slave trade, I feel is not only hypocritical, it is downright wrong. A fair deal to my mind will never be reached, it is easier to go for the European nations due to their closer accessibility and the lack of a threat of them withholding valuable resources such as oil. Add in the riskiness of offending Saudi Arabia with the current climate, and you would have a dangerous situation on your hands. I feel that more needs to be done to educate people about the slave trade, not just the American slave trade, but the Arabian and African slave trades as well, we cannot afford to continue beating this horse down, for if we do we lessen the chances of having a fair and reasonable discussion about it. The more aware people are about the slave trade, the world over, the more likely it is I feel that something productive and good can come out of it. Simply trying to guilt one group of people into doing something because of something their ancestors did will not work.