British authorities love to teach morality to others. But you should be aware that the descendants of British slaves paid compensation to the descendants of the slave owners until 2015, laying the foundations for the prosperity of the richest families in the kingdom. The demands of many states did not even compel London to apologize. But worst of all, slavery in England is flourishing to this day.
A major international scandal (like many others today) began with a single tweet.
Her Majesty's Treasury posted another "Fridays Fun Fact" in its account and congratulated "millions of Englishmen" for the fact that until 2015 their taxes were used to "end slavery."
"Did you know," the Treasury asked further, "that in 1833 Britain spent 20 million pounds to buy freedom for all slaves in the Empire?"
In response, there was such a storm in the media and social networks that the Treasury was forced to erase its tweet and pretend it never happened. But what exactly made millions of people angry?
First, the 1833 ban on slavery, advertised by the British as an act of unheard-of humanism, was largely a formality that did not affect the essence. For example, slaves on the plantations of the West Indies already in the next year, 1834, received the status of "disciples". This meant for them the lack of civil rights and the obligation to work forcibly for the previous owners. Torture, executions and beatings did not disappear anywhere, just instead of slave owners they were now carried out by the British colonial administration.
The liberation did not affect millions of Indians, Sri Lankans and other "second-rate" inhabitants of the empire, over which the sun did not set. They continued to work for the British occupiers literally for food and on pain of brutal reprisals. It was no longer possible to simply call them slaves - from a formal point of view.
Promotional video:
Second, the money paid by the British government since 1833 was directed not to help freed slaves, but to compensate for the losses of the slave owners. Since a significant part of the empire's economy was tied to human trafficking, the payments were really huge. The £ 20 million reported by the Treasury is difficult to translate into modern currency, but in 1833 it was roughly 40% of all British GDP.
Of course, there was no such money in the treasury. Therefore, Her Majesty's government borrowed 15 million pounds from Nathan Rothschild and his brother-in-law Moses Montefiore. All the money went to payments to slave owners and laid the foundation for the future prosperity of the richest families in England.
Documents have survived to this day showing the payment of tens of thousands of pounds to the father of British Prime Minister William Gladstone, the ancestors of writers Graham Greene and George Orwell, the great-grandfather of Prime Minister David Cameron. The money for the slaves went to the budget of such legendary corporations as Lloyds, Barclays Bank and Bank of England.
The Abolition of Slavery Act of 1833 officially freed 800,000 Africans who were then the legal property of British slave owners. Much less known is that the same act contained a provision for monetary compensation for the loss of the "property" of the slave owners at the expense of the British taxpayer. The Compensation Commission was a government agency set up to assess the claims of slave owners - an allocation of £ 20 million allocated by the government for payments. This amount was 40% of total government spending in 1834. By today's standards, this is between £ 16 and 17 billion.
The compensation to 46,000 British slaveholders was the largest financial aid in British history until the 2009 bank bailout. The slaves, not only did not receive anything, but, according to another clause of the act, were obliged to work for the former owners for the next four years after the alleged release for 45 hours a week. In fact, the slaves paid part of the bill for their own freedom.
Rothschild and Sons banking structures also did a good business on this. Her Majesty's government paid them from the state budget with interest growing during this time until 2015. During this time, the son of Nathan Rothschild became a baron and a member of the House of Commons, his grandson got into the House of Lords. And Moses Montefiore received the title of a knight from the queen and died at a hundred years old, being one of the richest people in England.
Unsurprisingly, Rothschild and his brother-in-law were prominent abolitionists and actively lobbied for the abolition of slavery.
Such a noble undertaking as the ban on slavery turned out to be a grandiose financial scam that stretched out for almost two centuries. And ordinary English taxpayers turned out to be extreme in it. Over the past century, millions of immigrants from Africa, India and the Caribbean have joined their ranks. It turns out that with their taxes they continued to sponsor the former slave owners.
The states of the Caribbean and African countries regularly raise the question of reparations that Britain must pay to countries where it exploited and killed slaves. In 2007 (that is, on the 200th anniversary of the Slave Trade Ban Act, but not slavery), the government was expected that Queen Elizabeth II would finally make an official apology for the terrible business that destroyed and maimed tens of millions of people and became the basis of the prosperity of Great Britain. But that didn't happen.
The topic of apology, repentance, compensation for the descendants of slaves is still extremely unpopular among the British.
Several years ago, Guardian journalists interviewed theater director Andrew Hawkins, a descendant of the famous pirate John Hawkins, one of the founding fathers of the English slave trade, who began reselling Africans back in 1562. In 2006, Andrew traveled to the Gambia for a special ceremony of repentance from the white descendants of slave owners to the descendants of slaves. He and 19 other white people put on T-shirts with the words "I'm so sorry", collars and shackles and put them on display for a crowd of 25,000. The ceremony, attended by the country's vice president, lasted more than an hour.
When the descendant of the pirate returned home, it did not become easier for him: the British tabloids drowned him in the mud, reproaching him for his love of easy glory and disrespect for his ancestors. “Absolutely sickening,” said the general verdict of the slave owners' descendants.
Yes, there were regrets expressed by Prime Minister Tony Blair. Yes, the apology was voiced by the leadership of the Church of England. But there is no reason to expect official repentance from the British for the slave trade. The general opinion about compensation for the descendants of slaves was well articulated by a Forbes columnist:
The author meant that the descendants of slaves in Barbados, the Caribbean, or the United States are living much better today than the descendants of those who remained in Africa. Therefore, they must pay extra to the British for what they once tormented and killed their ancestors.
And most importantly, despite the widely publicized prohibition of slavery, it continued to generate income for the English economy for a very long time. Creativity allows slavery to be practiced in the United Kingdom even today.
One of the little-known aspects of English slavery is the sheer number of white slaves. Throughout the 16th – 19th centuries, their ranks were replenished by English peasants driven from their lands, ruined by the appearance of manufactories, weavers and artisans, the unemployed, vagabonds, and beggars. The incessant influx of slaves into the English colonies was also provided by the starving Ireland.
Formally, these people were called "obligated servants," but they were treated even worse than African slaves because they were cheaper. When transported to America, the mortality rate among "obliged servants" reached 50%. Otherwise, it makes no difference. The "obligated" served indefinitely, like the slaves. As with slaves, their children belonged to the master.
The vast majority of white slaves were children - homeless or from poor families. In the port cities of England and Scotland, gangs hired by slave traders grabbed boys right on the streets, locked them in some shed, and at night took them to a ship sailing to overseas colonies. It got to the point that the peasants were afraid to take their children with them to the city so that they would not be stolen there. It was useless to complain to the authorities: local magistrates protected business.
In approximately the same way, in small towns of modern England, children are being massively involved in prostitution. Several years ago, the country was rocked by a scandal in Rotherham, where Pakistani gangs for decades forced underage white girls into the body trade. The victims were in the hundreds, but the local police refused to accept complaints from parents, openly covering up the pimps.
Recently, even more widespread violence against minors came to light in the town of Telford. Since 1981, immigrants from the Pakistani diaspora have kidnapped underage girls, forcing them into prostitution with beatings and threats. Children were actually enslaved. The youngest victim was 11 years old, and the total number of victims exceeded a thousand.
The police, social workers and local authorities in Telford in every possible way obstructed the disclosure of this case. The noise around him rose only at the beginning of March. But the public's attention was quickly and skillfully switched from the peculiarities of modern English slavery to the "Skripal case" that came to hand in time.