Runmed March 2001 Bulletin

Transcription

No. 349
Bulletin
MARCH
2007
RUNNYMEDE’S QUARTERLY
We’re here because you were there:
understanding the legacy of slavery
Amidst the burgeoning list of events organised to commemorate the bicentenary of
the parliamentary abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, Runnymede organised a
workshop to reflect on what it is all for. Rob Berkeley reports on the workshop and
the challenge of getting this tricky but crucial commemoration right.
As we enter the month that has
been chosen to commemorate
the passing of the parliamentary
abolition of the transatlantic slave
trade act, the attention on slavery
has been unrelenting. During the
course of the month we can
expect the Archbishop of
Canterbury and the Prime
Minister to make statements, and
for our great national and local
institutions to host a variety of
commemoration activities. From
Westminster Abbey to
Birmingham City Hall, from
Penrhyn to Norfolk, there will be
events looking back to that
moment in British and world
history when the legislature
recognised that slavery had to be
brought to an end.
Yet as with all history, it is not
as simple as all that. As Omar
Khan reports in the following
pages, the end of slavery was not
brought about by the
parliamentary abolition of the
slave trade. Further Acts were
passed in 1833 and 1838 to
eradicate slavery, and an earlier
act in 1806 had brought about a
major reduction in slave trading.
ISSN: 1476-363X
Acts of abolition are one thing,
ending the practice another.
Indeed slavery persists today.
In the last 100 years of the
British-sanctioned slave trade,
British ships were responsible for
transporting in excess of three
million Africans (about the
population of modern Wales).The
suffering of Africans, their
dehumanisation, transportation
and genocide have helped to
shape our modern world.The
transatlantic slave trade helped to
establish the American
superpower, fuelled the Industrial
Revolution, gave impetus to
colonialism, and impoverished the
RUNNYMEDE’S QUARTERLY BULLETIN MARCH 2007
Looking into the
bay of Freetown,
Sierra Leone,
from the
‘Portuguese’
Steps, built on
the site of the
last port many
enslaved Africans
saw at the start
of the Middle
Passage. The
port was also the
return point of
Sengbe Piah and
his shipmates on
The Amistad.
Photo: Rob
Berkeley
1
(l–r) Professor
Hakim, Rob
Berkeley and
Joseph Harker at
the Runnymede/
CDF workshop,
March 2007
2
continent of Africa.The
reverberations of the transatlantic
slave trade are felt today right
across the planet. Many of the
rationales given for modern-day
racisms were born in the
justifications of slave trading and,
as our current work
demonstrates, were not swept
away simply by a parliamentary
edict – however ‘amazing’ William
Wilberforce may have been.
As a British-born African
Caribbean, my identity is bound
up in the ‘golden triangle’ created
by transatlantic slavery. I am here
because the British were there.
For me the legacy of the slave
trade is everywhere. It is not
merely linked to a
commemoration, however lavish.
For someone who works to
promote race equality in
contemporary Britain, the
opportunity for reflection and
action that the commemoration
on the impact of racisms affords
is not one to be wasted. How
then do we ensure that the
commemoration of abolition this
year works to change our current
realities? What is the legacy of
abolition that we want to
capitalise on this year so that
Britain becomes a society more
at ease with itself and with its
diversity?
In order to consider these
questions, Runnymede convened a
workshop as part of the
Community Development
Foundation-led conference
‘Integration: If not now, then when’.
The workshop took the format of
a conversation chaired by me with
contributions from an audience of
community development experts.
Professor Hakim Adi, Reader in
African and Black British History at
Middlesex University, expressed
some ambivalence about this
year’s commemorations asking, ‘If I
was to stab you in the back right
up to the hilt of my nine-inch knife
and then withdraw it by three
inches, would you want to
commemorate the event?’ Similarly
Joseph Harker, Guardian columnist,
questioned what there was to
commemorate, pointing to the
disconnection that slavery created
between Africa and Africans, the
loss of identity this had caused and
the potential social problems that
arose as a result.
Yet, the commemoration is
happening, so the conversation
turned to what the desired
outcomes of this sustained look
at the transatlantic slave trade
might be for contemporary
communities. In the report of the
Commission on the Future of
Multi-Ethnic Britain we had
argued that one of the key tasks
in creating a successful multiethnic Britain was to rethink the
national story in such a way that
our ‘imagined community’
becomes capacious enough to
include a more diverse range of
people, and that it recognises our
heterogeneity. One outcome of
the year might be to advance the
recognition that there is a long
relationship between African
peoples and Britain and that they
have made a significant
contribution to the way in which
Britain has developed – well
before Windrush and across
many generations.
Both speakers pointed to the
importance of the
commemoration in terms of
helping African heritage
communities learn more about
their own histories and share this
learning with others. Professor
Adi warned against the
commemoration activities
becoming a ‘Wilberfest’ with an
over-emphasis on the exploits of
William Wilberforce at the
expense of recognising the
ordinary men and women, African
and British, who contributed to
the abolitionist movement.
For him a key part of the
commemoration is the legacy of
the abolitionist movement itself.
The impact of the mobilisation of
an unprecedented number of
people, many of whom were
denied suffrage at the time, in
effecting change of this magnitude
through a popular political
movement should not be
underestimated. By looking at this
movement we can learn about
the ways in which our democracy
works and inspire action in the
present.The abolitionists
challenged the existing power
structures due to their
abhorrence of the slave trade.
Modern popular movements
could learn from them about
how to influence power, and also
how adept power structures are
at maintaining their advantage as
racisms persist two hundred years
later.
Joseph highlighted the impact
that racisms retain in today’s
society and argued that reflection
on the transatlantic slave trade
might help communities
understand how powerful racisms
can be as a rationale for action.
The group discussed the
‘emotional legacy’ of slavery and
its potential impact on selfesteem even two hundred years
after parliamentary abolition.
The discussion highlighted the
challenges of getting
commemoration activities in this
area right.There appeared to be a
real lack of clarity for some
people about what exactly was
being commemorated this year,
and what impact it would have on
our current debate about race
relations.The approach thus far
has been to ‘let a thousand
flowers bloom’, but this has
thrown up some division in terms
of what commemoration of the
parliamentary abolition of the
slave trade really means. For many
there is a real ambivalence about
commemoration; for others it is a
real opportunity to further our
mutual understanding. For some,
commemoration will lead to
greater understanding of the
dynamics of racialisation; others
argue that it is likely only to lead
to the ‘beatification’ of William
Wilberforce.
The importance of
understanding the messages that
commemoration may send, and
being clear about what is being
commemorated, arose clearly
from our discussions. Runnymede
is developing a project with
Manifesta to consider the legacy
of the parliamentary abolition of
the slave trade (see Marion
Vargaftig on page x).The
challenge at the forefront of our
thinking is to ensure that the
project leads to better race
relations, reduces inequalities, and
engenders a sense of belonging
for all. In our opinion, a fitting
commemoration of the abolition
of the slave trade would be to
fight injustices in our society
today. ❑
SLAVERY
Dr Rob
Berkeley is
Deputy
Director at
Runnymede
Resources and Events on the
Bicentenary of the Abolition of Slavery Bill
Government Information and Calendar of Events
The most comprehensive list of events is available on the
government’s own homepage, which also contains general
information on the issue:
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/slavery/DG_065915
The Department of Culture, Media and Sport has a
summary of Museum events in the country:
http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/Museums_galle
ries/bicentenary_abolition_slave_trade.htm.
The Parliament website explains the legislative
background of the Slave Trade Abolition Bill at:
http://www.parliament.uk/what_s_on/exhibitions.cfm
General Information
One of the best sites for general information is the BBC,
at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/abolition/
Other useful generalist sites are at Open University:
http://www.open2.net/slavery/index.htmlm and
Runnymede’s Real Histories Directory:
http://www.realhistories.org.uk/index.php/archive/transl
antic-slave-trade.html Finally, there are the national
archives, with a good bibliography and other links at:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistor
y/rights/abolition.htm.
See also: http://www.revealinghistories.org.uk/home/
For modern slavery:
http://www.antislaveryinternational.org/
Museums
Museums and galleries, particularly in port cities
connected with the slave trade, are focusing on the trade
in their exhibitions this year. On the 23rd of August the
International Slavery Museum opens:
http://www.internationalslaverymuseum.org.uk/. See also
the site at UNESCO (funder of the Museum):
http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.phpURL_ID=25659&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECT
ION=201.html
British Empire and Commonwealth Museum (Bristol):
http://www.empiremuseum.co.uk/
Merseyside Maritime Museum:
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/
Scottish Archive Network:
http://www.scan.org.uk/exhibitions/blackhistory/blackhist
ory_1.htm
In collaboration with the Equiano Society, the Birmingham
Museum & Art Gallery is running an exhibit on Equiano
from the 29th of September. See:
http://www.bmag.org.uk/
The African Contribution
For good information on Equiano, Cuguano and Sancho,
see the website run by Brycchan Carey of Kingston
University (Surrey):
http://www.brycchancarey.com/index.htm
Another resource is:
http://www.100greatblackbritons.com/
On Africa more generally, see
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyof
africa/
Teaching Resources
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAslavery.htm
http://www.diduknow.info/slavery/
http://www.blackhistory4schools.com/slavetrade/
http://www.dur.ac.uk/4schools/ks34resources.htm
3
The Slave Trade in British History
SLAVERY
1 Because we go to
press before 25 March,
we will delay
discussion of these
celebrations until our
June Bulletin. Readers
can consult the
resource list on p.3 if
they want to attend an
event later in the year.
2 The date 23 August
was chosen because it
marks the beginning of
the important Haitian
revolution. As
UNESCO emphasises,
this is because Africans
were agents and not
mere observers of
their liberation, a point
elaborated in this
article.
3 See also the
information box on
p.3. All 18th -century
publications referenced
there and in this article
are in the public
domain and their full
texts are available on
various websites.
4 This raises a further
point: the slave trade
was already illegal in
Britain from 1102 with
the freeing of the serfs
and Ireland, Scotland
and Wales also appear
to have outlawed it
long before the 1700s.
This raises one of the
understudied
phenomena of the
slave trade, namely
that it allowed for a
differential legal
structure for the
‘home’ and ‘abroad’
territories, a distinction
that was vital for
European colonialism.
5 For more discussion
and links see our Real
Histories Website:
www.realhistories.
org.uk
6 See John Wesley’s
Thoughts Upon Slavery
(1774).
7 Data from the Real
Histories Topic of the
Month webpage:
http://www.realhistorie
s.org.uk/index.php/
archive/translanticslave-trade.html.
4
Throughout the country the bicentenary of the passage of the Parliamentary Bill to abolish
the slave trade in the then British Empire is being celebrated this year. Sunday 25 March
2007,1 the anniversary of the passage of the Bill, will feature the most prominent of the
events to be held throughout the year. Many cities and organisations are planning their
events for 23 August, the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its
Abolition,2 particularly the opening of the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, funded
by UNESCO. Here Omar Khan tracks the history of the abolition of the slave trade and its
role in British history more broadly.
While the abolition of the slave trade was indeed an
important event for human progress, there are
problems with straightforward celebrations of it as a
moment of moral strength in British history. If the
focus of the moral argument has been on Christians
of an evangelical sort, pre-eminently William
Wilberforce, we should remember that he was
predated by the Quakers (in the late 1600s), who
pioneered the cause of anti-slavery more
consistently. Furthermore, people like Ignatius
Sancho, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano and Olaudah
Equiano had an enormous impact on the moral
argument, as did women including Dido Elizabeth
Lindsay, Mary Prince and Elizabeth Heyrick.3
Three points deserve elaboration. First, the 1807
bicentenary marks the abolition of the slave trade,
and not slavery itself. Slavery was not abolished in
British4 territories till 1833, and there were slaves
under British administration as late as 1838. In the
US slavery persisted until the end of the Civil War
in 1865, and until 1888 in Brazil.
Second, modern forms of slavery remain a social
evil in many parts of the world, and the
consequences of the slave trade undoubtedly
contribute to Africa’s underdevelopment. We
address modern-day slavery in other articles in this
issue, but do not pursue these important points
here.5
Most importantly, the story of slavery and the
slave trade in particular are an important aspect of,
and should be integrated with, the mainstream
economic and political history of Britain. It is
important to celebrate Black History Month, but this
is partly because the contributions of black and
minority ethnic individuals are not adequately
understood or addressed in ‘mainstream’ stories of
the nation’s history. Instead, the stories of black and
minority individuals – where they are told at all –
are viewed as peripheral to the main events of the
making of Britain. But slavery and the slave trade are
central to those most important economic and
political developments in the 18th and 19th
centuries that turned Britain (and indeed Europe)
into modern nations. Understanding this point
explains why values such as tolerance and social
justice are at the heart of British identity and why
black and minority ethnic individuals are central –
and not marginal – to our national story.
History of slavery
Slavery has a long, unhappy history in human society.
As we know from texts as diverse as the Bible and
Aristotle’s Politics (where he justifies slavery), the
practice is an ancient one. Arab traders engaged in
slavery and there is increasing focus on the history of
that trade from East Africa to other parts of Asia
and Africa. But the case that we most readily identify
with slavery is the transatlantic transportation of
African slaves, mainly from West Africa, to the
Americas. And that, of course, was the trade
targeted by the Abolition of Slave Trade Act in 1807.
The transatlantic slave trade commenced very
soon after Columbus’s landing on the island of
Hispaniola in 1492. Probably as early as 15086 slaves
were being transported to the ‘New World’;
although African slaves were already being brought
to Europe by the Portuguese from the 1450s.There
were small but significant populations of Africans in
Europe by the late 1500s, but the slave trade to the
Americas reached its peak in the 1700s. By around
1730, British slave ships had overtaken the
Portuguese and Dutch in terms of the volume of
slaves shipped across the Atlantic, and between 1690
and 1807 they carried over 2.8 million enslaved
Africans (about the population of modern Wales).7
The growth of the slave trade coincided with
expansion of the mercantile economy and indeed
with the origins of the Industrial Revolution. As the
economy grew in the 1700s, increasing numbers of
slaves were required to labour on plantations to
harvest the raw materials that enabled the
production of manufactured goods and capital
investment.The total number of slaves transported is
subject to some disagreement, but the figure of 12
million is generally accepted as a reasonable
estimate. One of the worst features of this shameful
trade were the conditions in which slaves were kept;
as is well known, slave ships were insured for loss of
‘cargo’ and on some ships as many as one in three
slaves died because of the cramped conditions, poor
sanitation and minimal ventilation in the holds of
ships.
A (moral) movement towards abolition
In the late 1700s movements to ban slavery or at
least the slave trade gained momentum.There were
two driving forces: moral and politico-economic.The
moral argument was often connected with various
Christian movements, at first the Quakers and then
perhaps most famously the ‘Clapham Set’.The
Quakers, particularly Anthony Benezet, were the first
to publish anti-slavery writings. Born in France but
settled in Philadelphia, Benezet wrote a number of
volumes from around 1760,8 with Some Historical
Account of Guinea (1771) probably being the most
influential. Quakers, though small in numbers,
dominated the early anti-slavery societies and
furnishing nine of the twelve members of the
Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade,
founded in London in 1787.
Prominent among those influenced by Benezet
were John Wesley,9 the founder of Methodism, and
Granville Sharp. Sharp successfully brought forward
the important case declaring that no man in England
could be considered a slave in England in 1772
(discussed below) and had earlier successfully
challenged a slaveowner who had beaten his slave,
Jonathan Strong, nearly to death. In Britain today,
however, William Wilberforce typically gets most of
the credit for the passage of the slavery abolition bill,
and there is little doubt that his consistent discussion
of the topic in the House of Commons from 1789
contributed greatly to the cause, especially his regular
introduction of a slave trade abolition bill from 1791.
Wilberforce’s name is the most recognised among
the proponents of the slave trade abolition in Britain
and the March 2007 release of the film Amazing
Grace further underlines his prominence.
However, on both the moral question and
regarding legislative tactics others, including Thomas
Clarkson, Charles Fox and (Lord) William Grenville,
were important to the abolitionist cause. Clarkson’s
role has been underplayed partly because
Wilberforce’s children purposely wrote him out of
their biography of their father, even going so far as to
burn much of their correspondence. But Clarkson
was an indefatigable campaigner throughout the
country and it was his book, An essay on the slavery
and commerce of the human species (1786), that was
singularly important in convincing Wilberforce and
others of slavery’s (or, rather, the slave trade’s) evils.
Furthermore, Clarkson went further than
Wilberforce in insisting that slavery itself ought to be
banned, a proposition on which Wilberforce was at
best ambivalent. Fox and Grenville were the leaders
of the Government in 1807, and the latter had the
more difficult task of convincing the House of Lords
to ban the slave trade.
It was not, however, simply the ‘great and the
good’ or white Christian leaders who contributed to
the moral argument against the slave trade: many
ordinary Britons throughout the country contributed
to the abolition movement. For example, up to
400,000 Britons participated in boycotts of imported
goods such as slave-produced sugar, and throughout
the country anti-slavery debates were well attended.
Slavery had indeed become unpopular among the
public by the late 1700s, as can be seen from Josiah
Wedgwood’s medallions, that prominently feature an
African slave in chains, and the words ‘Am I not a
man and a brother’. While Wedgwood’s 1787 design
SLAVERY
8 For example
Observations on the
inslaving, importing and
purchasing of Negroes.
With some advice
thereon, extracted from
the Epistle of the
yearly-meeting of the
people called Quakers
held at London in the
year 1748 (1760, 2nd
edn); A short account of
that part of Africa
inhabited by the
negroes (1762); A
Caution and Warning to
Great Britain and her
Colonies, in a short
representation of the
calamitous state of the
enslaved negroes in the
British Dominions
(1767).
9 Wesley had been
apparently opposed to
slavery since the late
1730s when he had
occasion to
experience it in
Georgia (then a British
colony). But it wasn’t
until 1774 that Wesley
published his Thoughts
Upon Slavery, which
was so widely read
that it went into four
editions in two years.
Although Wesley’s
work is in many ways
derivative of Benezet’s,
he was a clearly
committed abolitionist
whose forceful
argument shocked
many English readers.
Next to
Freetown’s
‘Portuguese’
Steps, viewed
here from the
seaward side,
stands the King’s
or Slave Gate.
Erected on the
foundation of
Freetown it bears
the inscription
‘any slave who
passes through
this gate is
declared a free
man’, thereby
marking
Freetown’s
unique position
as a settlement
founded by
abolitionists in
America and
England who
raised money
and solicited
missionaries and
teachers to bring
back freed slaves
from North
America to West
Africa. Photo:
Rob Berkeley
5
became a fashionable as well as a moral statement,
the medallions were merely the most prominent of
many abolitionist acts and sentiments.
SLAVERY
10 In his last letter
before he died, written
to Wilberforce, Wesley
mentions Equiano’s
book as being
persuasive, thus
demonstrating its
influence by 1791.
11 The ‘Somersett
Case’, Mansfield’s
opinion: ‘The state of
slavery is of such a
nature, that it is
incapable of being
introduced on any
reasons, moral or
political; but only
positive law, which
preserves its force
long after the reasons,
occasion, and time
itself from whence it
was created, is erased
from memory: it’s so
odious, that nothing
can be suffered to
support it, but positive
law. Whatever
inconveniences,
therefore, may follow
from a decision, I
cannot say this case is
allowed or approved
by the law of England;
and therefore the
black must be
discharged.’
The importance of
black participants in the debate
The slave trade, and indeed the 18th-century
economy of which it was a vital part, resulted in a
number of Africans, ex-slaves and indeed British-born
Africans living in England.These individuals,
particularly Ignatius Sancho, Quobna Ottobah
Cugoano and Olaudah Equiano, had an incalculable
impact on the force of the moral argument for
abolition. While Sancho’s letters, published
posthumously in 1782, were widely read, and
Cugoano’s Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and
Wicked Traffic of the Commerce of the Human Species
was the first explicitly abolitionist tract published by
an African (in 1787), Equiano’s influence was the
greatest.10 Born probably in modern-day Benin, he
described the horrific nature of the conditions on
slave ships, conditions that spurred many others to
act. As Equiano described it in his 1789 publication,
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah
Equiano:
The stench of the hold while we were on the
coast was so intolerably loathsome, that it was
dangerous to remain there for any time, and
some of us had been permitted to stay on the
deck for the fresh air; but now that the whole
ship’s cargo were confined together, it became
absolutely pestilential. The closeness of the place,
and the heat of the climate, added to the number
in the ship, which was so crowded that each had
scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated
us. This produced copious perspirations, so that
the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a
variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a
sickness among the slaves, of which many died,
thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I
may call it, of their purchasers. This wretched
situation was again aggravated by the galling of
the chains, now become insupportable; and the
filth of the necessary tubs, into which the children
often fell, and were almost suffocated. The shrieks
of the women, and the groans of the dying,
rendered the whole a scene of horror almost
inconceivable.
Equiano’s influence is now more widely
acknowledged, as part of the government’s
celebrations and in a society dedicated to his
memory. Among more ‘mainstream’ histories,
however, his name is still under-emphasised in
relation to the movement for the abolition of slavery.
If the bicentenary celebrations are to be successful,
they must raise the profile of British-Africans such as
Equiano, Cugoano and Sancho in an effort to ensure
that black and minority ethnic people are considered
6
not just the most significant inheritors of this
important history, but also as powerful proponents
of those rights of equality and humanity that are now
considered to be the cornerstone of British
democratic life.
Further evidence of the influence of Africans, or
those of African descent, is the interesting case of
Dido Elizabeth Lindsay, born around 1763. Raised in
Kenwood House, Hampstead, she was reputedly the
daughter of a captain in the Royal Navy and a slave
woman. Significantly, Kenwood was the home of her
great uncle, Lord Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice. In
that capacity he passed the historic decision in 1772
that slaves could not be forcibly removed from
England.11 This action has led to speculation that it
was his own family’s experience of the evils of
slavery that influenced Mansfield’s decision,
particularly as in all other aspects he was known to
be a conservative.
Without the dignity and argument of men such as
Equiano and women like Dido Lindsay, it might have
taken even longer for white Europeans to see the
wrongfulness of slavery.
Politico-economic reasons
for abolition of the slave trade
The moral case was not the only or necessarily the
most influential argument to undermine the slave
trade. Political and economic considerations were
also prominent, and here again black people were
not simply observers of white benevolence but
agents of change in their own right. First was the fear
of slave rebellions. Although these had always been a
concern, the rebellion in Jamaica in 1760 (sometimes
called ‘Tacky’s War’) brought increased attention to
the difficulty of maintaining a system of slavery.
More significant still was the case of Haiti, where a
slave rebellion against French rule commenced in
1791 following the introduction of revolutionary
ideals.The British and then the Spanish first helped
Toussaint Louverture as part of their campaign
against revolutionary France. But in 1794 the French
freed all slaves and Louverture switched sides
because he objected to British and Spanish support
for slavery. With the rise of Napoleon, the French
turned against Haiti’s then-governor Louverture in
1802 but they were unable to retake the colony,
which gained its independence by 1804 (three years
before Britain’s abolition of the slave trade).The war
itself was much complicated by the vicissitudes of
French politics in the 1790s, the more general AngloFrench conflict and shifting alliances between various
parties. Because many troops were lost in the fight
against Louverture, including a large slave-based
element, the British secretly negotiated with
Louverture, notwithstanding the generalised war with
France. Although the role of Louverture in the
abolition of the slave trade is still underestimated,
there is a growing recognition of the importance of
Haiti’s revolution.
This leads to the second political consideration,
namely the French Revolution and a more
generalised fear of radicalism. With the beheading of
King Louis XVI and the declaration of human
equality, elites in Britain and throughout Europe were
concerned to put a brake on democratising ideals
that could undermine their authority. Abolishing the
slave trade could thus be seen as an effective
counter to French or indeed radical politics, as were
measures to enhance the voting pool that stopped
far short of universal suffrage.The case of the French
Revolution also reminds us that Christian arguments
were supplemented by secular Enlightenment views
on human equality as captured in the Declaration on
the Rights of Man.12
Thirdly, the 1807 Act banned the slave trade and
not slavery itself.The moral case was clearly not
wholly accepted by Parliament. However, the
economic rationale and profitability of the slave trade
were both being fast superseded by an economy in
which goods were traded to consumers throughout
the world, and for Britain in particular slave labour
was far less central to the economy. If the slave trade
was no longer as highly profitable, slave labour
continued to play a major part in the mid-19thcentury global economy.13 While the horrors of the
‘middle passage’ lessened dramatically, the well-being
of black slaves throughout the Americas, including
Britain’s colonies, saw no immediate improvement,
and slaves continued to suffer the indignity of seeing
their children enslaved and often sold on to other
slaveowners.
Even in the United States, by the middle of the
19th century the economy was dominated by the
industrial heartlands of the North; in the South
where slavery was practised the economy was
labour intensive but capital-poor, being mainly based
on raw goods including tobacco and cotton. But it
would not be until 1833 that slavery itself was
banned in British territories, with humans still legally
enslaved till 1838 in British possessions, 1865 in the
United States, and 1888 in Brazil. And the abolition
of the trade but not slavery itself resulted in illegal
slaving, during which slaves were thrown overboard
and often drowned when a British enforcement
vessel approached.
Slavery as part of
mainstream British history and identity
Abolition of the slave trade was indeed a great
achievement. However, it is too often studied as a
single event, unconnected with the broader history
of modern Britain. While we can be proud of the
abolition of the slave trade, we must equally be
cognisant of how it was more central to British (and
indeed European) political and economic expansion
than is usually admitted.
First and perhaps foremost is the contribution of
slavery to the expanding European economies from
the 1500s to the 1800s. From their experience with
the early gold and silver mines in South America,
European powers understood how the value of
natural goods from the New World could contribute
to their strength and indeed their capacity to
dominate other countries in Europe (Spain used – or
wasted – much of its bullion on paying mercenaries
to fight throughout Europe).The slave trade grew as
the Industrial Revolution picked up pace, with
increasing demand for vital raw materials but also
cheap human labour to harvest it. Without
widespread slavery, the Industrial Revolution might
have occurred later or elsewhere, as the profit levels
it provided were probably unobtainable otherwise.
Alternatively, the revolution might not have
happened at all, or it might have been accompanied
by far less inequality in the benefits it conferred on
different nations.That is to say, an Industrial
Revolution without slavery might not have left Africa
in such a severely disadvantaged position vis-a-vis
Europe, and these benefits could then have been
distributed more equitably.
A second way in which slavery needs to be
integrated into mainstream British history is in
relation to its role in the Anglo-French conflict. While
stories of Trafalgar and Waterloo are the staple of
British identity, the British intervention in Haiti and a
general worry that the French would take over the
slave trade if Britain abolished it demonstrate
slavery’s centrality to that conflict. Given that the
struggle was as much for economic as military
hegemony, the slave trade should be more generally
told as part of that story. So too should the fact that
Britain and France fought a more generalised global
campaign in the 1750s and 1760s that included the
battle of Plassey for supremacy in India.
Related to this is the third point, namely the
development of democratising pressures and
egalitarian ideals in Europe.Turning again to the case
of French colonial Haiti, slavery’s existence was an
obvious challenge to revolutionary ideals regarding
the rights of man. In Britain democratic pressures
were building at least from the 17th century, reaching
a high point in the Chartist movement of the early
19th century. Indeed, the Reform Act of 1832 and
the Corn Laws are often interpreted as legislation
that aimed to reduce radical and democratic
pressures in Britain. One unexplored reason that
such sentiments became more widespread is the
very popularity of the anti-slavery movement and
the obvious commitment to human equality that it
entailed. If philosophical arguments for equality were
slow to percolate into establishment thinking and to
modify institutional practices, the relative popularity
of abolition allowed ordinary Britons to consider
how their state and society failed to live up to norms
of human dignity in a more practical way.
British intervention in Haiti on the side of the
slave-owners shows how economic interests
trumped moral commitment to human freedom and
equality. Haiti was the most productive Caribbean
SLAVERY
12 Indeed, the
Christian viewpoint
was more ambivalent.
When slavery was
finally abolished in
1833, slaveowners
were paid
compensation. Among
the largest was the
Bishop of Exeter who
received nearly
£13,000 for the 665
slaves he then owned.
See ‘Church
Apologises for Slave
Trade’ (8 February
2006) [available at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
1/hi/uk/4694896.stm].
13 Of course Britain
traded with major
slave-based
economies, the
southern region of the
United States in
particular. A good
summary of the
centrality of the slave
trade in the British
economy can be found
on the BBC site:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
history/british/abolition
/slavery_business_
gallery.shtml
7
SLAVERY
Omar Khan is
a Research &
Policy Analyst
at Runnymede
14 See the Real
Histories Website:
www.realhistories.
org.uk
15 From the Cabinet
Office press release,
‘Baroness Amos
commemorates British
abolition of the slave
trade’, 2 March 2007
[www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk].
8
island, producing 30% of the world’s sugar and half
its coffee in the late 18th century.14 Wresting the
island, then called St Domingue, from France would
have shifted the economic balance of the region in
favour of Britain, and to do this Britain raised an
army of 13,000 enslaved Africans. Ensuring the
victory of the slaveowners was also a way of
weakening those democratising and egalitarian
considerations then developing in France.
Social revolution was a general fear in
18th- and 19th-century Europe, and the
case of Haiti undoubtedly influenced the
reform measures that were supposed to
take the sting out of democratic
radicalism. If the slave trade is a central
part of the economic history of Britain,
the egalitarian considerations that
ultimately led to its abolition were also
fundamental to the extension of
democracy in Britain.
A fourth point is perhaps more
controversial: that the abolition of the
slave trade has indirect links to colonialism.
As Europeans required new markets for their goods,
as the complexity of the economy made slavery less
profitable, and as slavery finally became morally
unacceptable, the continent turned to colonialism as
a way of alleviating these pressures and expanding its
growing economies. In places of indigenous industrial
development, such as India, that development was
dismantled so that Lancashire could find willing
buyers for the mass production of its famous cotton
mills. By this time colonialism was obviously more
profitable than slavery: slaves could never be
consumers and could not provide the returns on
capital that by the 19th century were so central to
European economies.
Even if this final point about the link between
slavery and colonialism is resisted, the slave trade
should be more central in ‘mainstream’ histories of
Britain and indeed Europe. Whether it is the
development and expansion of capitalism, AngloFrench competition, the growth of egalitarian ideals,
the Industrial Revolution or indeed democratising
reforms in Britain and elsewhere, the slave trade and
slavery more generally are central to European
history from the 15th to the 19th century. And as
Baroness Valerie Amos and the Cabinet Office have
conceded,15 we cannot assume that the moral evils
and economic strangulation of the slave trade have
had no impact on African poverty today:
‘Of course contemporary issues remain which is
why we will continue to take action on aid, debt
relief, trade and people trafficking as well as
promoting equality and social justice in the UK.’
Conclusion
This article first summarised the history of slavery
before suggesting that it should be more central in
the story of modern Britain. Economically, first the
mercantile and then the industrial revolutions were
based in part on the profits gained by the slave
trade. Such profits buttressed the early banking and
insurance systems of Europe, including Britain. No
less crucial, the slave trade was a central part of the
‘triangular’ trade between Africa, the Americas and
Europe that provided the raw materials, cheap
labour and capital investment necessary for the early
Industrial Revolution.
Although the economic importance of the slave
trade is not typically part of mainstream British
history, the ‘triangular’ trade is well documented and
indeed taught at some level. But the slave trade’s role
in the Anglo-French conflict and in advancing
egalitarian ideals and democratic change is less
recognised. Indeed, there is a need for greater study
of these connections, particularly since the impact of
the French Revolution is one of the most popular
research projects in fields as diverse as history,
politics, philosophy, sociology, literature, art history
and music. Another area that deserves further study
is how European attitudes towards slavery relate to
the 19th-century rush to gain colonial possessions,
particularly when the abolition of the former
immediately preceded the onset of the latter.
Of course a national history of exploitation of
Africa and Asia from the 15th to the 20th century is
hardly celebratory and may be dismissed as
‘politically correct’.This, indeed, was the unconsidered
response of too many journalists and politicians
when the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic
Britain called for a rethinking of the national story
more than five years ago. Rethinking does not mean
remaking or denying the importance of existing
historical stories, but rather learning and accepting
the centrality of minority ethnic individuals to the
story of Britain and indeed to the values that are
currently identified with ‘Britishness’.
Here Valerie Amos’s words give the right
guidance: social justice and human rights are the
legacy of the Enlightenment and the moral engine of
democracy. However, such values can seem abstract.
Increasing awareness of the evil of slavery has helped
translate the more philosophical arguments about
the rights and equality of all humans into real political
action. If the story of Britishness needs to put slavery
and minority ethnic individuals more centrally at its
core rather than the periphery, this is part of the
general commitment to social justice.That is to say,
placing slavery and the slave trade more centrally in
British history helps explain why social justice is a
valuable and central part of the national story.The
current story is not so much wrong as incomplete:
Trafalgar, Waterloo and the Battle of Britain are
indeed important, but the values that they sought to
defend were the basic rights of all humans, values
that came to the fore as widely held ideals of British
political life in the movement for the abolition of
slavery. ❑
Shooting the past – new skills for
challenging slavery’s racist remnants
To mark the 2007 bicentenary of the abolition of the
slave trade, Manifesta and the Runnymede Trust have
joined forces to launch a youth and digital media
initiative, Video ART (Anti-Racist Trails) Postcards.
Marion Vargaftig introduces the project.
Video ART (Anti-Racist Trails)
Postcards is a learning and
creative digital media programme
for young people, aged 14 to 19.
With schools, principally, but also
community and cultural/media
centres and anti-racist
organisations, it will explore
connections between slavery,
colonialism, historical imperialism
and contemporary issues of
racism in Europe.
Understanding the dynamics
of a multi-ethnic society has
become a key concern for
policymakers, civil society and
citizens. Key debates include the
limits of multiculturalism, the
struggle against inequality, and
how our differences can be used
creatively to construct a
successful society. All of these
debates have a history. This
programme aims to enable
young people to increase their
understanding of these histories
in order to help them better
engage in contemporary
discussion about life in a multiethnic society and action to
challenge racisms.
The bicentenary of the
abolition of slavery in 2007
provides an opportunity for
young people to be engaged in
work to challenge racisms in
their locality as well as
internationally. This programme
has been designed to inspire
young people about
contemporary struggles against
racisms and injustice – looking at
the legacy of slavery and the
abolitionist movement, and
reflecting on the colonialism/anticolonialism of a later era.
Subject to funding, the
programme is to take place in
England (phase 1), although the
partners intend to develop it
further in 2008/09 as a panEuropean project, to include
France, Germany and Holland.
Phase 2 will focus on
intercultural dialogue between
young people and their wider
communities, as part of the
‘European Year (2008) of
Intercultural Dialogue’ in the
European Union.
During Phase 1 (2007) the
programme will take place in
four cities in England, making for
four distinct but linked local
‘projects’. Groups of up to 20
young people in each location
will attend creative workshops in
London, Liverpool, Bristol and
Hull. With the assistance of
trained (and trainee) facilitators,
they will engage with two
learning activities: (a) researching
Anti-Racist Trails, exploring traces
and sites related to historical
racism as well as anti-racism in
their city; and (b) learning to
express themselves, creatively,
using digital video. The Anti-Racist
Trails that we will use already
exist, deriving from the work of
local historians and activists.
The programme provides an
innovative framework for young
people, associating local and
global history with creative
video-making, and sets up a
process through which they can
develop their creative expression
along with their discourse on key
contemporary issues.
It starts from the belief that,
for new generations of young
people, knowing more about the
socio-historical dimensions and
impacts of racism as it relates to
slavery, colonialism and
imperialism will help them
contribute to eradicating the
racist remnants of that past.
Providing creative means for
them to uncover and discover
elements of anti-racist heritage in
their cities will better equip them
to combat resurgences of racism,
while teaching them new skills
and alternative means for
expressing themselves creatively.
Using video for selfexpression will add to their
repertoire beyond the use of
linear verbal techniques. Rather
than taking a didactic approach,
the young people will be
encouraged to reflect on the
issues raised and to react, report
and imaginatively express
themselves using video. They will
find and develop an idea and a
narrative; prepare a detailed
shooting script; shoot, edit and
deliver a completed short film.
They will gain new skills and
engage with new subjects –
social research, local and global
history, media education,
campaigning, team working,
artistic expression,
promotion/marketing.
The Programme will devise
and organise a variety of
showcase events to exhibit the
Video ART Postcards they
produce – from community
centre exhibitions to TV, festivals
and online platforms, and via a
dedicated website. In addition,
selections of the postcards will
be incorporated in teacher
toolkits and other educational
materials, for use in both formal
and informal learning contexts
Support for this project is
being provided by the Museums,
Libraries and Archives Council
and the Department for
Communities and Local
Government, who are
sponsoring its development
phase. ❑
SLAVERY
Manifesta is a
not-for-profit
company
established
jointly by Colin
Prescod and
Marion
Vargaftig. For
more
information
about the
Video ART
Postcards
project,
contact
Marion via
marion@manif
esta.org.uk or
write to the
Runnymede
Trust at the
address given
on the outside
back cover of
this Bulletin.
9
Bolivians in London:
Challenges and Achievements
of a London Community
COMMUNITY
STUDIES
Kjartan Páll
Sveinsson is a
Research &
Policy Analyst
at Runnymede.
To download
the full report
of this or any
other
Runnymede
community
study, go to:
http://www.run
nymedetrust.
org/projects/
community
Studies.html
10
Despite the evident impact Latin Americans have made on the cultural life of Londoners, their
presence has to date gone fairly unnoticed by both local authorities and national government;
nor has it generated much academic interest. Little is actually empirically known about
Latin Americans, and their interests are often overlooked by the authorities as a result
of being consigned to the category of ‘Other’. Kjartan Páll Sveinsson has been
undertaking a study of one Latin American group: Bolivians in London.
We don’t know for certain how many
Bolivians are living in London, but
estimates range between 10,000 and
20,000. Bolivians have been arriving in
London since the late 1960s. Initially there
were not so many, but more recent years
have seen a substantial increase in
Bolivian migrants finding their way to
London.This has led to a divide within
the Bolivian community: long-term residents
who largely came to London as spouses or
under a work permit system; and those who
have migrated here within the last few years.
In spite of many common motivations and
experiences, the two groups have little
contact with each other. For example, when
asked why they decided to leave Bolivia, most
interviewees stated that the economic
situation was so dismal that leaving the
country was the only way they could improve
their life-chances. In other words, London was
seen as a place harbouring opportunities not
available in Bolivia.
Documentation was a topic of great importance
to the interviewees, in practical as well as ideological
terms. It was generally felt that documents and legal
status illustrate with great clarity the social and
economic topography of Bolivians in London.
However, there was a distinct disparity in the
experiences of long-term residents and the recent
arrivals.The long-term residents interviewed for this
study all came to the UK via official channels, and
mostly complained about the stigma attached to
their nationality. As Gabriel put it: ‘It’s a stigma.
Colombia, Bolivia, you’re definitely carrying drugs. For
sure, you get victimised for being Bolivian.’
The experiences of recently arrived Bolivian
migrants are different. Interviewees said that irregular
immigration status is common amongst recent
arrivals, irrespective of their original motives for
migrating or their social status back home.This
creates a financial uncertainty exacerbated by the
fact that the only work available to them is poorly
paid, often below the national minimum wage, and
certainly well below the recommended living wage
for London. All recent arrivals had at some point
worked in the cleaning industry, in which exploitation
of irregular migrants is common.
The immigration status of recent arrivals is one
factor undermining intra-community cohesion, as
many long-term residents feared the consequences
of helping irregular migrants. Many interviewees
commented on this, and how this could be
remedied. Strengthening people’s sense of Bolivianness was considered key in this respect: creating an
interest in Bolivian people amongst the local
population, it was argued, would provide Bolivians
with a platform for unification through collective
pride in their culture.Thus, the celebration and
promotion of Bolivian culture is not just for Bolivians,
but was felt to be instrumental in paving the way for
integration with British society as well.
If a complex and essentially elusive term such as
‘integration’ could be quantified, one could say that
Bolivians integrate well to London life. In this respect,
the multicultural aspect of London was cited as a
facilitator for integration.The discrimination described
by interviewees was primarily experienced at an
institutional level. While many interviewees said they
had experienced racism from the public, this was not
considered to be a prominent part of life in London.
Rather, the multicultural character of London allows
for being both a Bolivian and a Londoner, fostering a
sense of belonging.
Still, most were of the opinion that a potent
Bolivian identity is in a symbiotic relationship with
intra-community cohesion: one appears to be
dependent on and nurture the other. Both are, in
turn, conducive to good inter-community relations, as
healthy relationships within the Bolivian community
would promote healthy relationships with other
communities. Pride in Bolivian-ness, it was argued,
would present Bolivians with a platform from which
they could constructively interact with other groups.
Indeed, the multi-ethnic character of Britain is a
welcoming environment in which to build and retain
a strong ethnic identity, vital for Bolivians to feel part
of our community of communities. ❑
Bienvenue? Narratives of
Francophone Cameroonians
Since the 1990s, the numbers of Francophone Africans settling in the UK have increased
dramatically, a trend that is changing the profile of the African presence in London. However,
few empirical studies have been conducted on Francophone Africans in Britain.This is an
unfortunate situation, because it is clear that many of the issues faced by Frenchspeaking Africans are not necessarily shared by their English-speaking neighbours.
Kjartan Páll Sveinsson has been undertaking a study of one Francophone African
group: Cameroonians.
The Francophone Cameroonian community in
London provides unique insights into the issues faced
by Francophone Africans in Britain generally. Although
the majority of Cameroon is French speaking, there
is a substantial minority of English speakers as well.
While the tensions between the two groups in
Cameroon do not appear to translate over to
London, most of those interviewed for this study
stated that there is little contact between
Francophone and Anglophone Cameroonians in
London. Where French-speaking Cameroonians tend
to form links with other Francophone African
communities, English-speaking Cameroonians tend to
associate themselves with other Anglophone
Africans, such as Nigerians and Ghanaians.This may,
to a certain extent, reflect differences in the cultural
preferences of both groups; however, the divide
between them also represents the different barriers
to social and economic inclusion they face in
London, largely due to differing migratory
experiences.
Interviewees spoke about five main barriers. First
and foremost, none of the Francophone interviewees
spoke English when they first arrived.This presented
them with problems in the labour market, in
education, and adaptation to British society.
Second, and connected to the previous point,
many interviewees commented on how the British
administrative system is different from the
Cameroonian system, which largely follows the
French model.This was most apparent in terms of
education. For instance, a large number of
interviewees who had studied at university in
Cameroon had a hard time getting their qualifications
recognised in Britain, which in turn led them to take
on jobs well below their level of skill.
The third barrier to social participation, as
outlined by interviewees, is the discrimination they
have had to endure as Francophone Africans. While
African-ness figured prominently in this, so did
language. Some interviewees stated that the British
public tends to make a connection between
Francophone Africa and refugee issues. As there is
discrimination against refugees generally, their being
identified as refugees would lead to discrimination
COMMUNITY
STUDIES
against them.
Fourth, poverty and lack of finance
were seen as a fundamentally
marginalising element, and many
interviewees said they had endured
financial hardship in London.
Fifth, and a direct consequence of the
previous four barriers, interviewees said
that a lack of confidence was a major
problem for Francophone
Cameroonians, for instance in seeking jobs that
matched their level of skill, or dealing with situations
where they have identifiable rights.Taken together,
the five barriers to participation in British society, as
identified by these interviewees, illustrate with great
clarity how and why many Francophone
Cameroonians feel both voiceless and invisible.
Another important consequence of the deskilling
and social exclusion many of the interviewees had
been through was not being able to send money
home. Remittances were said to be of utmost
importance, and not getting a job in accord with
their skills severely hampered the interviewees’
capacity to send money back to their family, which
caused them much anxiety. Furthermore, many
interviewees expressed aspirations to one day return
to Cameroon with experience and enhanced skills
acquired in the UK, or use these skills to set up
business links between Britain and Cameroon. While
skilled migration has certainly been recognised as a
powerful tool for international development, the
conditions for generating potentially positive effects
from skilled migration do not seem to be present in
the UK, neither for return migration nor transnational
business networks.
Importantly, however, it would be a grave error to
ignore the agency and great resourcefulness of
Francophone Cameroonians in London, who are not
willing to become helpless victims of circumstance.
Extensive participation in community organisations, as
well as highly effective social networks set up to
provide mutual help, illustrate the aptitude of
Cameroonians to change or, if change should be out
of reach, adapt to the adverse situations they may
find themselves in. ❑
11
‘Choice’, lotteries, race and
educational decision making
EDUCATION
Dr Debbie
WeekesBernard is a
Senior
Research &
Policy Analyst
at Runnymede
and heads
Runnymede’s
education
programme,
Transitions.
Her research
report, School
Choice and
Ethnic
Segregation:
Educational
Decision
Making among
Black and
Minority Ethnic
Parents, will be
published by
Runnymede in
May.
12
In December’s Bulletin we reported on some of the findings contained within research we
have been conducting on black and minority ethnic parents and school choice.The final
research report - School Choice and Ethnic Segregation: Educational Decision Making among
Black and Minority Ethnic Parents - will be launched at a debate in May of this year. A
full-scale education conference, highlighting this and other current Runnymede
education projects, is planned for summer 2007, in order that many of the issues raised
can be discussed more widely. Debbie Weekes-Bernard, the report’s author, highlights
some recent media coverage of the ‘school lottery’ debate.
Current popular discussions
of education and ‘choice’
have illustrated how
pertinent these debates
have become, yet the race
impact of this discourse
persistently fails to materialise.
School choice has captured
the public imagination, as recent
media coverage of the now
national date for parents to
receive decisions from admissions
authorities regarding their
applications for school places for
their children has demonstrated.
Parental choice of their child’s
school or, rather, the expressing of
a preference for a school place
for their child, has garnered
increasing media discussion time
in recent years. However, the
relationship between choice,
property prices and class has
created a set of public debates
which extend beyond the
immediate concerns of parents,
schools and children. Notably,
these debates continue to omit
any discussion as to how choice
systems, and indeed the most
recent discussion surrounding
random allocation of pupils to
schools (or ‘lotteries’), will impact
upon black and minority ethnic
(BME) parents and their children.
Our research report details
the way that such omission
ignores the truly complex and
widely unconsidered decisionmaking processes entered into by
BME parents when faced with
choosing schools at both primary
and secondary level. It suggests
that given the current lack of fit
between education policy and
those it intends to benefit, such
omission has implications for our
understanding of why that gap
exists for BME families.The
research also suggests that it is
simplistic to reduce the
educational decision-making
processes of BME parents to
class-based criteria. Whereas the
timely research of Gewirtz, Ball
and Bowe1 found that individuals
from certain class/income
backgrounds could be mapped
directly onto their definitions of
different types of educational
choosers - the privileged/skilled,
the semi-skilled and the
disconnected - we did not find
this to be the case for BME
parental choosers. What has been
so interesting about recent public
debate about the decision of
Brighton and Hove local authority
to introduce a random allocation
process as a means of
determining places in schools that
are oversubscribed, is the focus
within this discussion about the
effects of local policy change on
different class groups, with very
little discussion about the
potential impact on BME families.
Random allocation, based on
re-sizing geographical catchment
areas and then randomly
allocating students within that
area to the schools within them,
has been mooted as being of
benefit to those who cannot
afford the high property
premiums to be paid in order to
live very close to popular schools.
Poorer and middle-income
families will benefit, and wealthier
parents who have sought
expensive homes within walking
distance of academically successful
schools will not. Research recently
conducted at Newcastle
University2 suggests, however,
that lottery systems will actually
have a negative impact on poorer
families, specifically where they
experience ‘transport poverty’
having no access to cars, or
where choosing a local school
relates specifically to parents
being able to get to work quickly
or reduce the time pressures they
experience.Thus, children being
assigned to schools that are not
near to their homes by virtue of
such a system may create
problems for those families for
whom locality is important.
The nature of the criticisms
levelled at the Brighton and Hove
authority decision to implement
random allocation as an
oversubscription policy has also
included concern by many
middle-class parents that their
children may be given a place at a
school which is not as
educationally successful as the
one they might prefer them to
attend. Other concerns have
centred around the possibility
that these parents may opt for
the independent sector, a factor
which originally influenced
government attempts to increase
parental choice and school type
diversity in order to stem the
flow of such families away from
the maintained sector.3
In view of the findings from
our research on School Choice,
we would argue that a system
whereby school places are
allocated randomly may certainly
be one of the fairest ways of
meeting the needs and wishes of
BME parents. In line with the
findings of Jarvis and Alvanides,
and indeed of Gewirtz et al.,4 our
research found that parents from
lower socio-economic
backgrounds were more likely
than those from other groups to
rely on local schooling. However,
this was often the case despite
the concerns of other parents
surrounding local school
‘reputations’ or inadequate
educational standards, which
suggests that many BME children
are being educated in schools
largely rejected by others, i.e.
those schools with high pupil and
teacher turnover, high
proportions of children eligible
for free school meals, high
numbers of ‘casual’ pupil entrants,
for example refugee pupil
populations, and often high
numbers of pupils from BME
backgrounds.This suggests, as
does the general argument for
such lottery or voucher schemes,
that it will engender a fairer
distribution of pupils from a
variety of groups among all
schools.
The debate surrounding the
Brighton and Hove ‘lottery
system’, as well as ignoring how it
would only operate as a means of
determining spaces to
oversubscribed and popular
schools, also largely ignores how a
‘loaded lottery’ system is currently
already in existence. BME parents
from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds
downgrade their choices before
they even complete school
application forms. And where
most local education authorities
can honestly claim that up to 90%
of all parents are usually
successful in gaining at least one
of their school place preferences
for their children, the ideal
choices of many BME parents are
qualitatively different from the
schools their children are actually
now attending. A fair lottery
system is surely better.
Ultimately, however, many
parents are unable to exercise
actual choice and we argue that it
is essential for government to
focus on improving local schools
so that lotteries are not
necessary. Even more importantly,
and reflecting some of the
arguments expressed in Jarvis and
Alvanides’ research, given the
current debate, if social and
community cohesion is to be
achieved within the schooling
system and adequate
representation of social and
ethnic groups is to be found
within schools, any ‘lottery’ system
must draw its catchment
boundaries in such a way that this
can be properly and equitably
achieved. ❑
A new Runnymede Perspectives Report
Distant Neighbours
Understanding How the French Deal with
Ethnic and Religious Diversity
Christophe Bertossi
24pp. ISBN: 978-0-9548389-11
Published in February 2007 and distributed with this issue of the
Bulletin, Christophe Bertossi’s report deals with the nature of French
interpretations of and responses to social unrest among the youth of its
migrant communities. France, as a secular society with a strong notion
of citizenship rights and obligations, takes a different approach from
the UK’s multiculturalist model and experiences different reactions
from its disaffected youth, who are demanding some of that republican
equality they have been taught is theirs by right of citizenship.
EDUCATION
1 S. Gewirtz, S.
Ball and R. Bowe
(1995) Markets,
Choice and Equity
in Education.
Milton Keynes,
Bucks: Open
University Press
2 H. Jarvis and S.
Alvanides (2007)
Understanding
School Choice as a
Function of
Inequality:
Combining
Biography with
Spatial Analysis.
Available at:
http://www.staff.ncl
.ac.uk/s.alvanides/
schoolchoice/
3 Department for
Education and
Skills (2005)
Higher Standards,
Better Schools for
All: More choice for
parents and pupils.
Norwich: HMSO.
4 S. Gewirtz, S.
Ball and R. Bowe
(1995) Markets,
Choice and Equity
in Education.
Milton Keynes,
Bucks: Open
University Press.
Dr Bertossi addresses the contradictions of French citizenship,
historically and as mediated by EU integration, and as it has further
evolved since the mid-1990s in the aftermath of the Amsterdam Treaty. He also addresses the conflicts between
being a Muslim and a French citizen, and the new identity politics that is emerging from the debates on French
secularism.
This report is available in both paper and electronic versions. Contact Runnymede (info@runnymedetrust.org) for
further printed copies; or view the electronic version on our website (at www.runnymedetrust.org).
13
The Gujarat Carnage
Bringing down the barriers
BORDERS
‘Bringing down the barriers’ was an event recently held in
Birmingham by the South Asian Alliance and CultivAsian to
mark the five-year anniversary of the Gujarat carnage. Shivit
Bakrania, Parita Mukta and Savita Vij describe the event
itself and the circumstances that led to its commemoration.
The 27th of February 2002 saw an
episode of unprecedented antiMuslim violence that lasted three
months, claimed over 2000 lives
and resulted in the internal
displacement of 200,000 people.
Today, many parts of Gujarat State
(West India) remain deeply
polarised. In the state capital
Ahmedabad, Hindus and Muslims
live divided by towering walls
topped with shards of glass.These
physical barriers have come to be
commonly known as borders, a
term that usually denotes the
division between two nation-states.
Gujarat 1:
Screening of ‘The
Final Solution’,
directed by
Rakesh Sharma,
at the
Birmingham
gathering. Photo:
Savita Vij
14
This year’s Birmingham event
brought together eminent
speakers and film footage to
document the process of borderbuilding between communities
both in South Asia and the UK. It
was also an opportunity to look
back with respect for those who
died and to re-emphasise
empathy and solidarity with those
who survived and are yet to see
justice done on their behalf. In
particular, a re-examination of the
Gujarat carnage and issues
emanating from it provided
valuable insights for current
debates around segregation and
community cohesion in modern
multicultural communities.
Segregation:
A Politics of Fear
Rakesh Sharma’s award-winning
documentary The Final Solution
was one of the films shown in
Birmingham. It graphically
demonstrates the psychological
barriers of segregation which
resulted in and from the 2002
incidents. One of its scenes
includes conversations with
Muslim children who are
no longer welcome in the
Don Bosco school in
Ahmedabad, who go on to
express their hatred of all
Hindus.This, alongside
voluntary ghettoisation and
formal calls for an
economic boycott of
Muslim businesses, are
associated by the director
with the influence of rightwing Hindu politics in India.
Sharma’s recordings reflect
on how fear of the Muslim
‘other’ was politically
manipulated in the runup to state
elections later in 2003. Speeches
by political parties that have
formed offshoots from Hindu
right-wing networks of the Sangh
Parivar and are running for reelection question the capacity for
loyalty of Indian Muslim citizens in
a Hindu India. Activists proudly
state that the Gujarat Genocide
demonstrates what ‘Hindu
courage’ and ‘Hindu pride’ are
capable of.
Ram Puniyani, a prominent
commentator on communalism
from Mumbai, stated that the
incidents in Gujarat were in some
ways a brutal culmination of a
long history; a Hindu/Muslim
divide that has become politicised
through a misguided colonial view
that saw Indian history and the
communities there as static,
monolithic and representative of
opposing civilisations.This religious
divide between multi-ethnic and
multi-faith populations produced
the violence of the 1947 partition
process. Now, the era of
globalisation has seen the rise of
a Hindu nationalism that wishes
to see India turned into a ‘Hindu’
state.The carnage witnessed in
Gujarat expressed this politics of
hate directed against Muslim
citizens with fierce intensity.
Organisations such as Amnesty
International, Human Rights
Watch and the National Human
Rights Commission of India have
all marshalled detailed evidence
to show that the Gujarat
government was both complicit in
the violence, and did very little to
safeguard the survivors in helping
them rebuild their lives.They have
all pointed to how political actors
directly engineered and helped
facilitate the violence.
Although the social and
political landscape in the UK is
very different from that of India,
we can draw distinct parallels in
terms of a particular type of
identity- and religious-based
politics. Arun Kundnani from the
Institute of Race Relations argued
that post-1981 (a year that saw
major riots in Brixton and
Handsworth) public policy has
framed communities into distinct
religious- and identity-based
groups, all competing against each
other for political patronage.
Ethnic and religious cleavages
have become further pronounced
under current community
cohesion policies, which have
propagated an over-simplified
view of culture and community.
The government has encouraged
and even directly facilitated the
growth and establishment of
identity-based organisations, who
claim to ‘represent’ and speak on
behalf of particular communities.
Whether such narrowly defined
organisations are representative
of a huge multiplicity of identities
and histories within minority
communities is questionable.
Members of any ethnic/religious
community, however well defined
in terms of their own terms, have
multiple and varied needs and
interests too, depending on
factors such as social privilege,
gender, political affiliation and
sexuality.
Community cohesion: a
politics of care
In place of critical lines of enquiry
into how segregation can be
politically manifested, key debates
in the UK today centre around
the somewhat contentious terms
of community cohesion and
integration. Post 9/11 and 7/7, and
in the aftermath of recent riots in
Bradford, Oldham and
Birmingham, the crux of the
debate is essentially this: How can
diverse communities be brought
together through British values?
Parita Mukta, senior lecturer at
Warwick University, directed
attention to a different question
of cohesion in the context of
Gujarat: How can we promote a
politics of active care and
citizenship based on collective
understanding over a politics of
fear based on vilification of
certain identities and religions?
Parita Mukta’s term, of evolving
a ‘politics of care’ is a useful one
here for enabling us to move
beyond a simplistic identity-based
politics. She has used this concept
to point to the necessity of
providing care for the survivors of
the 2002 carnage (those
displaced from their homes and
hearths, and those who are living
in relief colonies) to receive both
political care and real, genuine care.
She argued that it was vital for
the survivors to receive political
attention so that legal processes
are protected and the
perpetrators of the violations
punished. Over and above this,
however, Mukta claims that the
task of looking after the needs of
vulnerable citizens living in the
relief colonies should not be left
to Islamic religious organisations,
but be evolved on a broader
scale, both in India and the
diaspora, so that the basic needs
of food, shelter, education and
livelihood are met.
This understanding of a ‘politics
of care’ is also valuable in Britain,
for it can encourage a focus on
the issues of disadvantage and
discrimination (around questions
of employment, education,
housing, health, gendered violence
from within the community and
without) while recognising and
acknowledging the infinite shades
of difference and multiple
identities of the people in need of
such support.This would instil in
young people values that could
enable them to be confident,
responsible and independent
thinkers, and that would harness
the energies and skills of all
generations. It would also offer
the prospect of forging solidarity
across communities in working
towards common goals. At both a
policy level and in terms of
practice it is important to focus
on how this approach can be
fostered and a momentum built
up, so that progress can be made
outside of the paradigm of
labelling – and independently of
the structures of fear.
Breaking boundaries
The five-year anniversary of the
Gujarat carnage is an apt moment
to lower the barriers on a
historical moment that has been
shrouded in international silence.
Policymakers at both a high
governmental level, as well those
working in local authorities,
charities and international
organisations, have a key role to
play in ensuring that abuses of
human rights at an international
level (such as in Gujarat 2002)
are noted and acted upon, and
also in ensuring that divisive
boundaries (specifically along
religious lines) do not become
institutionalised in Britain.The
view of community cohesion
outlined above moves away from
bringing together communities
through narrowly defined notions
of culture and an apolitical
acceptance of minority ethnic
spokespersons. It involves creating
alliances at local, national and
global levels that work together
on issues of human rights, justice
and education, whether in
London or Gujarat. ❑
BORDERS
The coauthors of this
report are
Shivit Bakrania
(South Asian
Alliance),
Parita Mukta
(Warwick
University)
and Savita Vij
(CultivAsian)
Gujarat 2:
Ram Puniyani
(foreground)
addresses his
audience at the
Birmingham
event. Photo:
Savita Vij
15
When is political will
not political will?
EUROPE
Anna Visser is
Senior Policy
Officer at the
European
Network
Against Racism
1 Proposal for a
Council Framework
Decision on
combating racism
and xenophobia,
COM (2001) 664
2 EU ICS data set
and research report
(2007) The Burden of
Crime in the EU.
Available at:
www.european
safetyobservatory.eu
3 S. Nicola, ‘Rising
racism alarms EU,
Germany’. United
Press International, 20
February 2007.
Available at: http://
news.monstersandcri
tics.com/europe/featu
res/article_
1266184.php/
Rising_racism_
alarms_EU_
Germany
4 ENAR (2006)
Racism in Europe –
ENAR Shadow Report
2005. Brussels:
ENAR. Available at:
http://www.enareu.org/en/publication
/shadow_reports/ind
ex.shtml
16
All European governments reject accusations that they do
not have the political will to fight racism. However, 6 years
after the European Commission’s publication of the
Framework Decision on Racism and Xenophobia,1 there is
still no adopted proposal for a common instrument on racist
crime. Anna Visser, Senior Policy Officer at the European
Network Against Racism, deplores the lack of success of
attempts at harmonising anti-racist legislation in Europe.
Few deny that racism continues to be a serious
problem in Europe. In February the European Crime
and Safety Survey concluded that over 9 million
people, or 3% of the population, experienced racist
crime in 2004.2 Speaking in Berlin the same month,
European Commissioner Frattini pointed to a report
of the European Union Monitoring Centre on
Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), concluding that
‘Xenophobia and racism is [sic] tremendously on the
rise in Europe… In many states, the surge was
between 25 and 45 percent’.3 These findings
underline the analysis of ENAR members which
points to persistent and serious racist incidents
across all EU member states.4
In 2001 the European Commission responded to
the need to enhance and harmonise protection
against racism in Europe by publishing a draft
Framework Decision on Racism and Xenophobia. A
framework decision is a European legal instrument
which – when adopted unanimously – aligns the law
of member states. While a framework decision
outlines the objective to be achieved, it leaves it up
to member states to decide how they will reach that
objective. Framework decisions are legally binding
but, unlike Directives, the European Commission
does not have the same powers to monitor theirf
implementation and instigate infringement
proceedings. In other words, because they deal with
the sensitive area of police and judicial cooperation
in criminal matters, framework decisions are by their
nature more limited than legal tools in other policy
areas, such as the anti-discrimination directives.
Since 2001, and despite substantial watering down
of the European Commission’s proposal, the
European Council has been unable to reach
agreement on racist crime.The last attempt to do so
was under the Luxembourg presidency in 2005.
However, in the second half of 2006 indications
emerged that the German presidency was prepared
to put the instrument back on the agenda.The
Presidency has argued that as there was substantial
agreement on the text under the Luxembourg
presidency – an Italian general reservation which has
since been removed blocked its adoption at that
time – in theory the Council should be able to move
to adoption quickly. Despite this confidence, there
are already indications that a number of member
states continue to have problems with the text.
In recent weeks two issues have emerged as
stumbling blocks.The first is an objection to the
provisions on mutual assistance by countries
including the UK, Denmark, Ireland, Malta and
Portugal.The provisions on mutual assistance would
mean that a member state could only apply the
principle of double criminality in limited
circumstances; in other words, one member state
would have to assist in bringing a prosecution in
another member state, even when it does not
criminalise the behaviour in question. For instance
Sweden, which has not banned Mein Kampf, would
be required to assist in prosecuting a Swedish
national for the dissemination of the book in Austria,
where it is banned.
The second issue which appears to be
undermining the efforts of the German presidency is
one which also characterised discussions under the
Luxembourg presidency: that is, the inclusion of a
reference to the crimes of totalitarian regimes.This is,
in particular, an issue for former communist
countries, who would like to see the Decision apply
to the denial and trivialisation of Stalinist crimes.
However, the position of such countries is still
unclear and it is difficult to predict whether some
countries will block the adoption of the Decision
unless these crimes are included.
Whether or not these barriers are surmountable,
they are certainly characteristic of negotiations which
have proved extremely sensitive and controversial.
Time and again different member states have raised
concerns, and given the unanimity requirement, the
potential for blockage, as we have seen in practice, is
extremely high. Should the questions of mutual
assistance and Stalinist crimes be resolved, it is far
from clear that adoption would be a foregone
conclusion.
For ENAR, the last six years have been
characterised by a series of disappointments. With
each new failure to adopt the Framework Decision,
we have witnessed its weakening, the reality of
political negotiations meaning that each revision and
negotiation waters down the proposal, giving up
ground which cannot be won back. A process of
attrition has meant the German Presidency started
with a relatively unexciting text, and we do not yet
know what the costs of the current negotiations will
be.That said, the Framework Decision continues to
represent an important first step, a step which has
been a long time coming. It is difficult to be
optimistic about the fate of this instrument if the
German Presidency is unsuccessful. A third, and
potentially final, failure to adopt the Framework
Decision would send a disastrous message to both
the victims and perpetrators of racist crime in
Europe.
That is why in February ENAR launched a
campaign for the adoption of the Framework
Decision. We accepted the position of the German
presidency that a substantial strengthening of the
draft text is not possible; instead we called for the
inclusion of implementation provisions which would
help secure a positive legacy for this instrument. Key
amongst our demands is the inclusion of a nonregression clause to ensure that the implementation
of the Decision does not lead to a lessening of the
existing protections at national level. We have also
called for the inclusion of a reference to the
International Convention on the Elimination of all
Forms of Racial Discrimination.The UN Convention
contains more substantial protections in this area,
and we certainly do not want to see a situation
emerge whereby a member state would argue that it
is in compliance with the Convention because it has
implemented the Framework Decision.5
Criminal law is the ultimate expression of a
society’s abhorrence of a particular behaviour, and
racism is widely acknowledged by governments not
only as an abhorrent breach of human rights, but
also as a serious and persistent problem in Europe.
Why then has it proved so difficult for the European
Council to adopt this instrument? In effect, headline
agreement that racism is wrong makes for good
public statements, but when it comes to agreeing,
even in the broadest terms, what exactly constitutes
criminal behaviour and what should be done about
it, the political will to fight racism is notably patchier.
Should the Council once again neglect its
commitments to the fight against racism, anti-racist
activists will not be the only ones questioning
political will. If the EU member states cannot even
agree a relatively weak legal instrument, with limited
scope, it sends a clear message to the perpetrators
of racist crime across Europe. ❑
A Certain Idea of Integration
Integration is now the fashionable word on every policymaker’s lips whether in Brussels,
London or indeed Germany and Portugal, the current and next holders of the EU Presidency.
But in an enlarged, more diverse European Union, views diverge on how much integration
each Member State requires of those who move to live and work in their economies. What
follows are highlights of a briefing paper drafted by Sarah Isal and Katalin Halasz in preparation
for a UKREN seminar on integration,1 shedding some light on those complex issues.
Whilst the European Commission’s Vice-President
Franco Frattini states that ‘there can be no
immigration without integration’,2 here in the UK, a
Commission on Integration and Cohesion has been
set up to consider ‘how local areas can make the
most of the benefits delivered by increasing diversity
[and] how they can respond to the tensions it can
sometimes cause’.3 However, despite the abundance
of references to integration, there is still a
tremendous lack of clarity as to what it means, who
it applies to, who is responsible for delivering
integration policy and how it can be measured.
Over the last 8 years, immigration has increasingly
been seen as a key policy area for the European
Union. Whilst Member States have varied histories
and approaches to migration, there is a growing
consensus that migration is necessary to the success
of the EU’s economic development and has to be
effectively managed. In its 2005 Green Paper, the
European Commission put forward an ‘EU approach
to managing economic migration’, stating that ‘while
immigration in itself is not a solution to demographic
ageing, more sustained immigration flows could
increasingly be required to meet the needs of the
EU labour market and ensure Europe’s prosperity’.4
The latest European policy developments, whilst
accommodating the strict controls insisted on by the
leading Member States (border controls, visa policy,
detention action programmes, plans to combat illegal
immigration, etc.), also encourage positive action to
EUROPE
5 ENAR (February
2007) Framework
Decision on Racism
and Xenophobia:
Europe cannot afford
to fail a third time.
Available at:
http://www.enareu.org/en/policy/
feb07_framework_d
ecision.pdf
1 Impact of the
European Integration
Agenda in the UK
held in London on
13 March 2007.
2 F. Frattini (2007)
‘The future of EU
migration and
integration policy’,
Lecture given at the
London School of
Economics on 23
February 2007.
Available at:
http://www.
lse.ac.uk/collections/L
SEPublicLecturesAnd
Events/pdf/20070223
_Frattini.pdf.
3 http://www.com
munities.gov.uk/index.
asp?id=1501520.
4 Green Paper on an
EU approach to
managing economic
migration COM
(2004)811Final.
Available at:
http://ec.europa.eu/ju
stice_home/doc_cent
re/immigration/work/
doc/com_2004_811_
en.pdf.
17
(L) At the
morning plenary
of the UKREN
seminar on
integration,
chaired by Don
Flynn (centre),
Chair of UKREN,
the two speakers
were Sandra
Pratt (left) of the
European
Commission and
Sarah Spencer
(right) of Oxford
University.
(R) Sarah
Hayward (left) of
the Employability
Forum and Wilf
Sullivan (right) of
the TUC
facilitated the
Employment
Workshop at the
UKREN seminar
on integration.
5 The Common
Basic Principles
are available at:
http://ue.eu.int/ue
Docs/cms_Data/
docs/pressData/en
/jha/82745.pdf.
6 J. Niessen
(2005) Migration
governance and the
Lisbon Agenda.
Brussels: European
Policy Centre.
Available at:
http://www.
epc.eu/en/ce.asp?
TYP=CE&LV=177
&see=y&t=42&PG
=CE/EN/detail&l=
2&AI=447.
7 The Prime
Minister’s Speech
is available at:
www.runnymede
trust.org.
18
allow for integration of legal immigrants.
This emphasis on integration is a recent area of
European policy, having appeared on the European
agenda 4 years ago. Previously treated as subordinate
to other issues, it has now emerged as an important
element in its own right. However, despite these
recent policy developments, no legal competence on
integration in relation to third-country nationals is to
be found in the treaties.Therefore, the European
Union has taken a pragmatic and incremental
approach to the development of integration policies
in recent years.
Common Basic Principles on Integration
One of the most important steps towards
developing a common strategy on integration was
taken in 2004, when the Member States adopted a
set of principles with the view to supporting the
development of national and local integration policies
by offering a non-binding set of principles against
which they can assess their efforts.These Common
Basic Principles (CBPs)5 aimed to serve as a basis for
Member States to explore how EU, national, regional
and local authorities could interact in the
development and implementation of integration
policies.The CBPs recognise that the development
and implementation of integration policies is the
primary responsibility of individual Member States;
however, the failure of a Member State to develop
and implement successful and effective integration
policies may have negative effects on the economy
of other Member States and undermine respect for
human rights.The implementation of the common
basic principles on integration is therefore viewed as
essential given the shared interests of Member
States.
The Lisbon Agenda
Another key driver impacting on EU immigration and
integration policy is the so-called Lisbon Agenda,
which aims to boost employment and economic
growth, and make the EU ‘the most dynamic and
competitive knowledge-based economy in the
world’. In this sense, integration policy is seen by the
EU as a means to equal and full participation of
migrants to the EU in the labour market. As
explained here by Jan Niessen:
The Lisbon Agenda is a vehicle for the EU and its
Member States to stimulate growth and
productivity, and to promote sustainability and
social cohesion. Immigration and the integration of
immigrants are beginning to find their way onto
the agenda, not only because they pose particular
challenges but also because they may contribute
to achieving those goals.6
The Common Basic Principles and other integration
measures promoted by the European Union should
therefore be examined with this objective of
economic development in mind, as this is the key
policy driver for the EU for the next 5 years.
Recent UK Policy on Integration
Although the UK government acknowledges the
positive economic asset of migration (while
maintaining a tough security framework to combat
irregular immigration), its recent direction in relation
to integration indicates a growing difference from the
underlying framework of EU policy.The CBPs and
the Lisbon Agenda provide the basis for a
progressive policy on integration that aims to ensure
full and positive participation of migrants in the
economic growth of all EU Member States. In the
UK, integration policy is coming to focus more
heavily on ‘values’ as the main indicator of integration.
In his lecture on multiculturalism and integration,
‘The Duty to Integrate: Shared British Values’, in
December 2006,7 Tony Blair made it clear that the
government puts ‘a duty to integrate’ and accept
British values on immigrants. He asserted that ‘the
right to be in a multicultural society was always
implicitly balanced by a duty to integrate’. However,
the government has so far failed to deliver clear
definitions of integration and who it applies to.
Debates on integration, and what that means in
practice, have emerged with a focus on common
values, knowledge of English, duties put onto
immigrants, community cohesion, civic participation and
social inclusion. However, this approach has done little
to clarify the nature of the obstacles to integration which
have historically arisen in the form of the entrenched
poverty of some immigrant groups and their absence
of influence in shaping equality outcomes in such key
areas as the labour market, housing, health and
educational policies, and the particular interests of
women from those communities.
The newly established Commission on Integration
and Cohesion was set up to bring clarity to the
debate on integration. However, its interim report
seems to continue along the lines of designating
‘cultural integration’ indicators as being the most
important ones to define integration strategies.
Has the UK Implemented
the Common Basic Principles?
Language
One of the important elements of the definition of
integration provided in the CBPs is that it is a dynamic,
long-term and continuous two-way process of mutual
accommodation, not a static outcome. It demands the
participation not only of immigrants and their
descendants but of every resident.This seems to be
increasingly challenged in the UK, the most recent
illustration being the suggestion by the Chair of the
Commission on Integration and Community Cohesion
that candidates for family reunification should speak
English before even reaching the UK borders.This
would significantly challenge the proposition that
integration is a two-way process, requiring adaptation
on the part of the host society to ensure that the
needs and interests of newly arrived migrants are
properly accommodated.
Language is being identified as the major barrier to
integration by the Commission on Integration and
Community Cohesion.Whilst it is true that literacy is
crucial in ensuring the full participation and integration
of migrants (and non-migrants for that matter), the
emphasis put on their duty to learn English contrasts
with the failure of government to develop a
comprehensive strategy for ESOL, which needs to
include language training in the workplace and courses
focused on women at home and in the community.
Values and ‘the duty to integrate’
In his lecture on multiculturalism and integration
referred to above, the Prime Minister gave an account
of his views on the balance between integration and
diversity. He explained that integration is not just
about culture or lifestyle; it is more importantly about
essential values: belief in democracy, the rule of law,
tolerance, equal treatment for all, respect for the UK
and its shared heritage. He underlined that obedience
to the rule of law is not optional; being British carries
rights and demands duties.To achieve this balance he
stressed that there was a need to talk openly about
the problem, to precisely define common values and
make it clear that all citizens are expected to conform
to them.
Critics of the Prime Minister’s approach regard
interventions of this kind as potentially dangerous in
that they have the effect of generating controversy in
areas where there is essentially a broad agreement
between immigrant communities and the host
population.The issue is not that of a marked
divergence in commitment to democratic values,
tolerance and the rule of law between the various
communities, but the fact that, under the prevailing
conditions of British society, democracy, tolerance
and the rule of law produce very different outcomes
for the various parts of British society.The existence
of gross inequalities, with the experience of migrants
and black and minority ethnic communities providing
examples of forms of disadvantage which extend to
wider sections of marginalised, predominantly poor
communities, continues to disfigure many aspects of
civic life. Public discussion about tackling inequality is
poorly served by rhetoric which claims that
significant differences exist between the basic values
adhered to by some communities compared with
the vast majority of people living in the UK.
The CBPs also talk about how important it is for all
citizens to abide by the basic values enshrined in
European Treaties.This includes respect for human
rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law.
However, it could be argued that the European
perspective encourages these to be seen as powerful
instruments placed within reach of civil society, which
would assist its work in achieving a better integrated
society, robust enough to ensure that equality of
opportunity is entrenched within the workings of the
European labour market. In contrast to the position
currently being developed by the British government,
respect for common values would be less of a
checklist condition for joining a club and more of a
vital mechanism for bringing about progressive change.
Economic integration and political participation
Whilst recent debates on integration in the UK have
very much focused on the ‘cultural’ agenda, there has
been a lack of focus on other indicators of integration,
such as the benchmarks for indicating the eradication
of discrimination, recognition of skills, wage parity,
improved health and education, and equal participation
in and benefit from prevailing standards of growing
prosperity and living standards. One area where this is
particularly seen as a missed opportunity is that of the
engagement of employers in integration policy. Indeed,
insufficient economic incentives, campaigns or measures
are offered to employers to facilitate the entry of longestablished third-country nationals or their descendants
into the labour market. Employers are provided with
EUROPE
Sarah Isal (left)
and Katalin
Halasz at the
UKREN seminar
on integration on
12 March 2007.
Seminar photos
were taken by
Katalin.
Sarah Isal is a
Senior Research
and Policy
Analyst at
Runnymede and
heads
Runnymede’s
work on Europe
and Criminal
Justice; Katalin
Halasz is a
Research
Intern/Associate
at Runnymede.
19
EUROPE/
REVIEWS
8 Commission on
Integration and
Cohesion (2007)
Our Interim
Statement.
Wetherby: CIC.
nothing more than a helpline to deal with their
enquiries about employing migrants.
Similarly, the participation of immigrants in the
democratic process, which could be considered an
important benchmark for integration, is heavily
dependent on their status. Immigrants from the EU
Member States are entitled to vote and stand as
candidates only in European and local elections,
whereas Commonwealth citizens can stand for
election as a local councillor or Member of Parliament
and can vote in a local election or general election.
Third-country nationals (with the exception of
Commonwealth citizens) are entitled to limited voting
and representation rights.
Continuous lack of definition
and measurement of integration
The Commission on Integration and Cohesion has
recently published its interim statement in which it
recognises the need to reach some agreement on a
Fair Play
Debbie
WeekesBernard is a
Senior
Research &
Policy Analyst
at Runnymede.
1 Greater London
Authority (2006)
Black Teachers in
London. London:
GLA.
20
Equal in Play? is a report of research conducted with a
variety of play organisations in London to assess how
thoroughly the recommendations detailed in Playing in
Parallel – a report published in 2002 and written by the
same author – had been implemented .The original 2002
report examined the barriers in access to play for back and
minority ethnic (BME) children and found
that a number of problems existed for BME
staff working in play organisations,
including the much higher proportions of
white staff members found in senior
positions in comparison to their BME
counterparts.
Revisiting these issues in Equal in Play?
has revealed that a number of the barriers
both to access for children and career
progression for staff to be persistent, despite
attempts by many play organisations to
address these issues.The greatest levels of
concern raised within the report surround
the abilities of staff to access work in play
organisations, and, where this has been
achieved, to progress within the workforce and access
adequate training to enable them to do so. Parallels with
the experiences of BME teaching staff in schools are
unmistakable here1 and, given the wide cultural diversity
among those resident in London, raises a set of very
important questions.Where the LGA research on Black
Teachers in London highlighted the clear anomaly
between the proportions of Black teachers in the city
compared to BME young people of compulsory school
age (whereas in some London boroughs only 16–18% of
teachers are Black yet almost half of all pupils are from this
particular background), Equal in Play? notes that well over
one-third of children are from a BME background yet
only 5% of those employed within the playwork sector are
definition of integration and what that means in
practice.The suggestion by the Commission is to
include the following five ‘ingredients’ in the definition:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Engagement and participation
Meaningful interaction across groups
Respect for diversity and social trust
Solidarity and collective community action
Equality of opportunity, access, treatment and
services8
Whilst these ‘ingredients’ remain vague at this
stage, it is hoped that the Commission’s work over
the next few months will clarify indicators of and
benchmarks for integration. We would encourage
the Commission to take a closer look at the
underlying European approach to integration, which
has its merits in recognising that it is a means to
ensure economic integration as well as full
participation of all migrants in British society. ❑
Equal in Play? A Survey of Employment of Black
and Other Minority Ethnic Staff in Playwork
Haki Kapasi (with Mandeep Rupra)
London: London Play, 2006
Pp. 29; £10.00; ISBN: 0 9540539 2 3
Reviewed by Debbie Weekes-Bernard
of similar minority ethnic heritage. It is this overall
message within the report which is the most striking.
It must be noted that there are clearly many examples
of good practice highlighted within this report:
playworkers creating a positive, child-centred environment
for children; actively seeking families from diverse
backgrounds within the community in order to increase
representation of those groups within play projects
through visiting local estates and speaking to children to
assess what might encourage them to attend; opening on
Sundays and increasing the numbers of local Asian
children attending a centre; and overall actively researching
the surrounding community in order to ascertain what
local needs were and addressing them.These are clearly
success stories that should be publicised and learnt from as
the report does. However, the report also pays close
attention to the barriers to career progression for BME
staff. For example, the availability of funding for training at
individual authority level was sparse, which is important
given that many of the BME employees who were
interviewed cited this as being central to their own career
progression. Others wanted to avoid tokenistic
representation on management committees or within
senior posts, whereas others lacked confidence due to
being unsupported in their desire to seek promotion.
Consequently, there was a high turnover of staff in some
boroughs, and the majority of BME playworkers were
clustered in face-to-face work with children rather than to
be found within senior management. As Kapasi notes, the
persistence, therefore, of many of these issues four years on
certainly requires urgent redress. ❑
The Challenging Battlefield
Days of Glory (Indigènes). France 2006
Directed by Rachid Bouchareb
Release date: 30 March 2007
Duration:120 minutes
Reviewed by Simon Mercer
Rachid Bouchareb’s World War II drama Days of Glory
(Indigènes) has garnered a great deal of attention since its
release.Though a portion of the praise it has received can
be attributed to artistic and aesthetic merit, more
remarkable is the way this film has challenged the
dominant historical narrative, and influenced government
policy in relation to its treatment of war veterans from
former French colonies.
Focusing on the perspective of North African soldiers
drafted into the French army to help liberate ‘la patrie’, it
grapples with racist policies, exploitation and injustices
perpetrated by the French government during the second
world war, and all the way up to the present.What has
resulted is a direct response by the French government at
the release of the film, reversing six decades of
discriminatory treatment and leading to pension reform
for this group of war veterans. Effectively shaming a
government into action, this war tale demonstrates how a
dominant bureaucracy can be transformed through
positive artistic influence.
Dealing with a relatively overlooked piece of history,
the film follows the story of young colonial African
soldiers who opt to leave their families and homes in
order to fight for France. From the smallest humiliations
of exclusion from food rations available to their French
comrades, to the far-reaching implications of some
postwar government pensions policy, the film’s narrative is
riddled with disappointments for the protagonists. Ideals of
liberty, equality and fraternity are fought for vigorously by
the devout Muslim soldiers, yet the film sets out in no
uncertain terms that, in return for such devotion, the men
will remain unable to elevate their position within military
or social ranks.Worse still, they are treated as cannonfodder during battles, and after the war their contribution
to victory is cruelly ignored by the French government.
Colonial rule is depicted at the outset of the film as a
somewhat idealized relationship, as anti-Nazi fervour
ignites a willingness by the Africans to serve the interests
of France, for an immensely noble cause. On the
battlefield, social class and racial differences are for once
REVIEWS
overlooked. Subordination of one group to
another is based only on military rank, not
external social factors.Yet this arrangement is
tenuous, as the ‘guest’ soldiers remain the
‘other’ to the French soldiers, the French
citizens they help liberate, and the French
government who all end up rejecting their
contributions. Frustratingly ambiguous
expectations are laid on the young men, with
a patriotic duty to their ‘fatherland’ asked for,
while in return their status as citizens remains
conspicuously second-class. In 1959, as French colonies
(notably Algeria) moved towards independence, the
military pensions of these soldiers were frozen by the
French authorities on the grounds that they were being
used to fund the independence struggle. Astonishingly, it
was not until President Chirac attended a screening of this
film that funds for restitution were finally authorised, six
decades on.
Utilising a major feature film to undertake some
historical revisions, and giving new perspective to a
nation’s history, appears to have worked with startling
effect. Days of Glory’s use of social context and a more
personal ground-level view of shared human experiences
on the battlefield makes the consequences of
discrimination and government policy a very engaging
and emotional affair. Just ask M. Chirac. ❑
Invisible victims
Ghosts. UK, 2006
Directed by Nick Broomfield
Duration: 97 minutes.
In selected theatres: ghosts.uk.com
Reviewed by Simon Mercer
Trying to come to terms with the 2004 tragedy in
Morecambe Bay, filmmaker Nick Broomfield offers up his
second fiction feature film, Ghosts.
By maintaining many of the idiosyncrasies of
his previous documentary films, it allows the
central characters to become grippingly
convincing stand-ins for the 19 Chinese workers
who drowned picking cockles that night. From
their rural southern China homes, through to
their wholly avoidable demise, the circumstances
and inhumane motives which drive this culture of
migration are critically examined. Also, an
unsettling and unspoken thesis acts as the subplot
of these people’s plight, a bigger-picture view of
Simon Mercer
is an
Administrative
Officer at
Runnymede
and a Film
Studies Major
21
REVIEWS
what drove this to happen.What we have is a story, not so
much as allegory but as a clear-cut example of the practice
of modern slavery, happening right here in Britain.
Morecambe’s immigrant workers exist under shrouds of
twilight, false passports and work permits, hidden
accommodation and unreasonable work hours.This
partially fictionalized account of their lives is given extra
legitimacy with a cast made up of actors who were once
illegal migrants themselves. Following the central character,
Ai Qin, we come to understand the painful circumstances
that force this single mother to leave her only child with
family in order to try and elevate their economic means
beyond the dire. Her vulnerable state is optimal for the
criminal gangs who conspire to force the hand of those
under financial duress.
From the first gripping scene of encroaching water, the
word ‘Ghost’ acts as an appropriate refrain throughout the
film, linking multiple thematic strands. Shifting meanings, it
describes the foreign world the Chinese workers are
immersed in (‘ghosts’ is the nickname they give to the
white westerners they encounter), as well as the way in
which they are treated by this new world (an ignored,
invisible labour force).The word swirls around them,
before it takes hold definitively, once the water climbs
above their heads.
Could the circumstances faced by Ai Qin and the other
victims be considered a form of modern slavery? The
evidence seems to suggest so.These workers were subjected
to abusive relationships from specific people such as the
snakeheads and gangmasters, and forced to work with no
possible alternative available to them, save for some serious
harm befalling their families back home.This points to a
clear example of what is considered bonded labour. By
taking large loans in China to get themselves to the
promised windfall of paid work, they are coerced into
cycles of working long hours for little pay, unable to ever
pay off their debts. Broomfield tries to be as clear as
possible that many within this system are complicit. Major
grocery stores buy the produce derived from this labour,
the produce-buying consumers continue to consume, and
the State will not enforce proper wages as well as living
and working conditions for ‘illegal’ workers. All are made
to share some of the blame for what has happened.
Coming across as both an intimate elegy for the lives of
those who perished, as well as a politically charged
investigation into the reasons why, the film mixes pathos,
drama and humour to present a troubled portrait of these
Chinese workers’ lives. ❑
A guide to understanding
anti-discrimination legislation
Discrimination Law Handbook, 2nd edition
By Camilla Palmer, Barbara Cohen, Tess Gill,
Karon Monaghan, Gay Moon and Mary Stacey
Edited by Aileen McColgan
London: Legal Action Group, 2007
Pp. 968; £55; ISBN: 978-1-903307-38-0
Reviewed by Katalin Halasz
Katalin Halasz is
a Research
Intern/Associate
at Runnymede
There are now 10
prohibited grounds
of discrimination and
harassment which
are: race, including
ethnic and national
origins, colour,
nationality; sex;
pregnancy and
maternity leave; being
married; being a civil
partner; gender
reassignment; being
disabled; sexual
orientation; religion
and belief; and age.
(DLH, p. 61)
22
The revised and expanded edition of the
Discrimination Law Handbook, published in January
2007, is a long-awaited and timely follow-up to its
original version of 2002.
Since 1965, when a start was made with institutional
intervention in race relations, and the adoption of a
legislative package outlawing race and sex discrimination
in the mid-1970s, followed by legislation in relation to
disability a good two decades later, there hasn’t been such
major and groundbreaking change in anti-discrimination
legislation as what we are experiencing today.The
prohibition of discrimination on the grounds of sexual
orientation, religion and belief, and most recently on age,
has achieved statutory recognition, and the positive duty of
public authorities to promote equality has been expanded
to include gender and disability. A new, single-equality
body has come into being, faced with the challenging task
of how to guard human rights, promote equality and
tackle discrimination and harassment in relation to the
now ten protected grounds.1
Alongside these legislative developments, we are
witnessing the start of an exciting process which started 2
years ago with the announcement of the Discrimination
Law Review (DLR).The efficacy of Great Britain’s
current equality enactments and the requirements of
European equality legislation are under rigorous
examination by government, the equality bodies, antidiscrimination organisations, trades unions, campaigners
and activists as well as lawyers and experts.
The extensive combined expertise that the authors
Palmer, Cohen, Gill, Monaghan, Moon and Stacey bring
to the Handbook is reflected in the breadth of issues and
areas it covers. Edited by McColgan, this edition includes a
detailed analysis of the:
• legal structure of discrimination law;
• relationships between domestic and international
human rights and EU law and UK discrimination
legislation;
• definitions and implications of provisions of the ten
prohibited grounds of discrimination;
• concepts of multiple discrimination, direct and indirect
discrimination, harassment and victimisation;
• positive action and the equality duties of public bodies;
• maternity and parental rights;
• discrimination in relation to and outside of
employment, including education, goods, facilities and
services, housing and private clubs, charities and public
bodies;
• equal pay and discrimination in occupational pension
schemes;
• procedure and remedies; and
• structure, duties and powers of the equality bodies and
the Commission for Equality and Human Rights.
The Handbook has been designed to provide a userfriendly and comprehensive overview for all – claimants
and victims of discriminatory practices, academics and law
students, thinkers and practitioners, equality officers in the
public, private and voluntary sectors. Extensive crossreferencing between related issues, chapters and court
cases, and a summary of key points before each chapter
Bicentennial
Britain
As Britain celebrates the bicentenary of the abolition of
the slave trade, questions inevitably arise on the extent to
which slavery exists in modern-day Britain.To shed some
light on these questions, the Joseph Rowntree
Foundation commissioned a timely literature review on
the subject, Contemporary Slavery in the UK: Overview and
Key Issues.
Although there is no longer any state which recognizes, or
which will enforce, a claim by a person to a right of
property over another, the abolition of slavery does not
mean that it ceased to exist.There are millions of people
throughout the world – mainly children – in conditions
of slavery, as well as in various forms of servitude which
are in many respects similar to slavery.1
From the logging industry in Latin America to the
still functioning slave markets of the Sahel area in Africa,
modern slavery takes many forms throughout the world.
Most Britons, however, would be surprised to learn that
slavery is practised in the UK in various guises.2 Forced
labour, debt bondage, child trafficking and labour, and
sexual slavery all exist in Britain today.The reasons for
this lack of awareness appear to be twofold: the scarcity
of empirical inquiry into, and general knowledge of,
forced labour and trafficking; the current government’s
inability or unwillingness to see modern slavery for what
it is and act accordingly.The JRF report usefully
highlights the former, and makes helpful
recommendations regarding the latter.
The authors of the report identify three elements of
exploitative relationships which, taken together, constitute
slavery.They involve:
• severe economic exploitation;
• the absence of any framework of human rights;
• the maintenance of control of one person over
another by the prospect or reality of violence.3
In the modern context, the dividing line between
slavery and appalling work conditions is a fine one.The
crucial difference separating the two is the element of
coercion, where the individual concerned has little
choice but to submit to the abuse of the coercer.This can
manifest itself in various modes, such as debt bondage,
deception, physical violence or the threat thereof,
help users to find their way through this increasingly
complex body of law.
With the imminent (and long-awaited) publication of
the Discrimination Law Review at the end March 2007,
the Discrimination Law Handbook appears at just the
right time to guide discussions and advise on complex
legal definitions and concepts. Updated on October 2006,
it is the only fully comprehensive (and comprehensible)
guide on discrimination law today. ❑
Contemporary Slavery in the UK: Overview and
Key Issues
Gary Craig, Aline Gaus, Mick Wilkison, Klara
Skřivánková and Aidan McQuade
York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2007
Pp.79; ISBN: 978 1 85935 573 2 (pbk) and 978 1
85935 572 5 (pdf)
Reviewed by Kjartan Páll Sveinsson
withholding of wages or unlawful wage reductions,
retention of passport or other documents, and so on.
As Skrˇivánková points out, the UK appears to be
primarily a country of destination for trafficking,4 which
brings to the fore the intricate relationship between
trafficking and migration. In this respect, knowledge of
rights in the UK becomes a powerful tool for coercion,
where unscrupulous employers use migrants’ lack of
familiarity with their rights against them, even in cases
where the migrant has legal entitlements to live and work
in this country.This makes the identification of those
trafficked for forced labour highly complicated; many
people may not understand or believe that they had any
choice but to do what was demanded of them.
This difficulty in identification of those afflicted
means that the actual scale of human trafficking in
Britain is unknown. No reliable estimates exist for forced
labour, and the rather sketchy assessments of sexual
trafficking and forced prostitution suggest that, in the last
decade, at least 10,000 women and up to 4000 children
have been trafficked into Britain for the purposes of
sexual exploitation. Judging from the scarce, albeit
important evidence we have, it is clear that the problem
is substantial. For example, the interviewees of
Skrˇivánková’s qualitative study on trafficking for forced
labour worked in a range of different sectors of the
labour market, such as agriculture, food processing and
packaging, nursing and care, construction, domestic help
and cleaning.There is no reason to believe that
Skrˇivánková identified a handful of exceptional cases.
A common theme running throughout the literature
on human trafficking to the UK is the government’s
complacent stance towards this serious issue.The overlap
between trafficking and migration has led the authorities
to view forced labour primarily as an issue of
immigration. Given the current political climate where
immigration is concerned, the victimisation of trafficked
individuals is of secondary concern in government policy,
which places greater emphasis on policing, immigration
and law enforcement. Craig et al. give an interesting
example in this respect:
REVIEWS
1 Anti-Slavery
Society (2003)
available at:
www.antislaverysociety.addr.co
m/slavery.htm.
2 A MORI poll,
commissioned by Set
All Free, indicates
that a minority of the
British public are able
to identify any form
of modern slavery.
Available at:
http://setallfree.net/
downloads/mori_
report.pdf.
3 G. Craig, A. Gaus,
M. Wilkinson, K.
Skřivánková and A.
McQuade (2007)
Contemporary Slavery
in the UK: Overview
and Key Issues. York:
Joseph Rowntree
Foundation.
4 A. Skřivánková
(2006) Trafficking for
Forced Labour: UK
Country Report.
London: Anti-Slavery
International.
5 Craig et al. (2007:
64–5).
6 The Palermo
Protocols are two
protocols adopted
by the United
Nations in 2000 in
Palermo, Italy,
together with the
Convention against
Transnational
Organized Crime.
They are: the Protocol
to Prevent, Suppress
and Punish Trafficking
in Persons, especially
Women and Children;
and the Protocol
against the Smuggling
of Migrants by Land,
Sea and Air. These
protocols and
conventions fall
within the jurisdiction
of the United
Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime.
7 K. Bales (2001)
‘Going cheap’, New
Internationalist, vol.
337, pp. 14–15.
Kjartan Páll
Sveinsson is a
Research &
Policy Analyst
at the
Runnymede
Trust
23
CONTENTS
Slavery:
We’re Here because You Were There:
Understanding the Legacy of Slavery
Rob Berkeley
The Slave Trade in British History
Omar Khan
Shooting the Past – New Skills for
Challenging Slavery’s Racist Remnants
Marion Vargaftig
A Health and Safety Executive official may identify a situation of labour
exploitation and wish to initiate an investigation of those responsible. Immigration
officials, when becoming aware of this situation, generally pursue the enforcement of
immigration regulations and often treat the exploited workers as illegal immigrants
rather than victims of crime and have them deported.5
1
4
9
Community Studies:
Bolivians in London
10
Kjartan Páll Sveinsson
Bienvenue? Narratives of Francophone
Cameroonians
11
RUNNYMEDE
TEAM
Michelynn
Laflèche
Director
Robert
Berkeley
Deputy Director
Education:
‘Choice’, Lotteries, Race and Educational
Decision making
12
Debbie Weekes-Bernard
Sarah Isal
Senior Research
and Policy
Analyst
Borders:
The Gujarat Carnage
Shivit Bakrania, Parita Mukta and Savita Vij
Debbie
WeekesBernard
Senior Research
and Policy
Analyst
14
Europe:
When is Political Will not Political Will? 16
Anna Visser
A Certain Idea of Integration
Sarah Isal and Katalin Halasz
Reviews:
Fair Play
Debbie Weekes-Bernard
The Challenging Battlefield
Simon Mercer
Invisible Victims
Simon Mercer
A Guide to Understanding
Anti-discrimination Legislation
Katalin Halasz
Bicentennial Britain
17
20
21
21
22
23
Bulletin No. 349, March 2007
ISSN 1476-363X
In 2006,The Bulletin, Runnymede’s
Quarterly newsletter,will be
published in the months of March,
June, September and December by:
The Runnymede Trust
7 Plough Yard, Shoreditch
London EC2A 3LP
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7377 9222
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7377 6622
Email: info@runnymedetrust.org
Url: www.runnymedetrust.org
Annual subscription in 2007 is
£32.00
Typeset and printed by:
St Richards Press Ltd.
Leigh Road, Chichester,
West Sussex PO19 2TU.
Tel: 01243 782988
Vastiana Belfon
Real Histories
Directory
Omar Khan
Research
Associate
Savita Vij
Research
Associate
Jessica Sims
Research Policy
Analyst
Kjartan
Sveinsson
Research Policy
Analyst
Simon Mercer
Projects Officer
Kings Mill
Partnership
Accountancy
Services
Photos of the
Runnymede
Team members
used in this
issue were
taken by
Benedict
Hilliard
24
Indeed, although the government signed the UN Palermo Protocol in
2000,6 it was only ratified in February 2006. More importantly, perhaps, this
month the UK finally signed the Council of Europe Convention on Action
against Trafficking in Human Beings, having received considerable criticism for
not doing this sooner.The reason given for this lateness was that the convention
could leave Britain open to migrants using the protection to gain illegal entry
to Britain. As a result of the lack of a clear policy on trafficking, many statutory
agency personnel who come into contact with victims of trafficking may not
know how to respond to their plight or who to refer them to.
The terminology of forced labour in contemporary Britain is perhaps
contestable.The extent to which human trafficking is directly comparable to
the transatlantic slave trade, for instance, is open to debate. However, an
important, even defining, aspect of the slave trade is missing from modern
slavery: legally sanctioned ownership.This is not to devalue the gravity of
contemporary trafficking. Indeed, as director of Free the Slaves, Kevin Bales,
points out, the universal abolition of state-sanctioned slavery has radically
altered the dynamics of trafficking, including the relationship between slave and
master: “The expensive slave of the past was a protected investment; today’s
slave is cheap and disposable.’7 These terminological issues notwithstanding, the
coerced exploitation of a large number of people is still happening right under
our noses, and is part of our daily life – although we may not know it. Our
offices may be cleaned by people trafficked into the country, and our Sunday
roast chicken could have been packed by someone living in fear and under
severe threat. ❑
Identity, Ethnic Diversity and
Community and Cohesion
Edited by
Margaret Wetherell, The Open University
and Michelynn Lafleche and Robert Berkeley,
The Runnymede Trust
Published by SAGE Publications in May 2007
A flyer for this new book is circulated with this copy of the
Bulletin. Further details are available from Sage Publications at 1
Oliver’s Yard, 55 City Road, London EC1Y 1SP
[www.sagepub.co.uk ]. Contact the marketing department for a 10%
discounted copy.
A pensions position paper has been
enclosed with this issue – The Impact of
Pensions Reform Proposals on the SelfEmployed from Black and Minority
Ethnic Groups.
We are also circulating the most recent
Perspectives report, by Christophe
Bertossi. Further details of the Bertossi
report can be found on page 13 of this
Bulletin.
Copyright © 2006 Runnymede Trust and individual authors.
The opinions expressed by individual authors do not necessarily represent the views of the Runnymede Trust.

Runmed March 2001 Bulletin

Transcription

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