By British Democrats Chairman, Dr Jim Lewthwaite
Throughout history, while many barbarian groups have massacred or absorbed their defeated enemies, every civilisation has engaged in some form of enslavement. The British were neither the first nor the worst offenders in this regard. Classical civilisations were primarily based on slavery. Hinduism operates within a hierarchical system of four major castes, which originated from the conquest of indigenous peoples by ‘Aryan’ invaders over 3,000 years ago. Those in lower castes pass on their status to their descendants, who are forbidden from intermarrying or even sharing meals with their superiors and thus cannot escape their societal position. Additionally, Islam has never fundamentally rejected the practice of slavery.
British Christians were the first people to reject slavery on moral grounds and to try to suppress it worldwide at great cost in lives and treasure. Thousands of Royal Navy sailors, for example, died in the West Africa Squadron.
The Portuguese traded twice as many slaves across the Atlantic as the British did. For every slave sent to the Americas and the Caribbean, another was traded by Arab slavers across the Indian Ocean. Meanwhile, the Tuareg (Kel Tamasheq) people herded additional slaves northward across the Sahara along the Trigh el-Abd. Why is it that we British are often singled out? It seems to be because we are perceived as the most likely to give in, weakened by the post-colonial guilt encouraged by the White-hating Left.
Slave traders like Edward Colston of Bristol did not enslave Africans directly; they purchased them from African coastal tribal chiefs, spanning regions from Senegal to the Congo, including the infamous Dahomey, which is now part of Benin. Why are reparations not sought from them? In 1994, Ghana issued a public apology, as have individuals such as Léopold Sédar Senghor and others named by Professor Nigel Biggar.
Slavery cannot simply be viewed as a situation where dominant whites oppressed innocent blacks. The term ‘slave’ itself is derived from ‘Sklav’, referring to the Slavic people who the Saracens enslaved and later by the Ottomans. Approximately one and a half million Christian Europeans were captured and forced into slavery by the pirates of the Barbary Coast (the modern Maghreb), which even included the entire population of Baltimore, Ireland.
Furthermore, some of the first battles fought by the young U.S. Marine Corps, which were celebrated in song, took place on the shores of Tripoli. The famous phrase ‘Britons never shall be slaves’, sung in Eyre’s classic Last Night of the Proms, reflects that the Royal Navy had only recently begun to ‘Rule the Waves’, alleviating the threat of enslavement for many coastal communities.
It’s important to maintain a balanced perspective when discussing slavery. The author Arthur Kemp points out that at the height of slavery, only 1% of white Americans and 4% of white Southerners owned slaves. In contrast, 28% of Black freedmen in New Orleans were slave owners themselves. A significant legal case that shifted indentured servitude from a specified duration to lifelong and inheritable servitude—the Nat Turner case—was instigated by a Black slave owner.
Abraham Lincoln firmly believed, like Marcus Garvey later on, that the best place for freed slaves was Africa. He fought the American Civil War to preserve the Union, not primarily to emancipate the slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863 when the North was facing defeat. Ironically, once the freed slaves settled in the newly established Liberia, they enslaved the local Africans and established themselves as a dominant caste led by the Tubman family and the True Whig Party. This dominance continued until recently when Liberia’s president was assassinated by Sergeant Doe in a violent coup. Will the remaining ‘True Whigs’ pay reparations? What do you think?
Finally, it’s important to remember that the earliest indentured servants were poor Whites, often of Scottish or Irish descent. Their descendants, known as the Redlegs of Barbados, have surnames commonly found in the Caribbean. Over time, they were replaced by Africans, who were better suited to the climate and resistant to tropical diseases.
Nigel Biggar highlights that the life expectancy of a Lancashire millworker was only half that of a Caribbean plantation slave. Therefore, why should the great-great-grandchildren of the former be responsible for paying reparations to the descendants of the latter?
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The Party of British Identity
Inhabitants of the former British West Indies should reflect that those countries would not exist, their populations would not exist, had their ancestors not been carried there by English slavers. And they want us to apologise for bringing them into existence?
Yes, of course slavery was bad but would Jamaicans, Barbadians etc. really prefer to be living back in Africa? If not, they should thank our forebears for bringing theirs to those “islands in the sun.”