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traces of slavery in the United Kingdom

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    traces of slavery in the United Kingdom

    Prompted by this clip from Frankie Boyle (I didn't know about Glasgow before watching it)
    {TWEET]https://twitter.com/WildernessPeace/status/1233513240887484419?s=20[/TWEET]


    I started to think about about all the traces of slavery in the UK. In Germany you can no longer call squares after Adolf Hitler or Josef Goebbels

    But we have a Codrington Library

    Loads of schools and buildings named after the Beckford family.

    I was particlaurly prompted by this piece by Zadie Smith- (content warning unbelievably shocking)

    https://twitter.com/litfests/status/1226025377677684739?s=20

    so who are the slave owners commemorated in your part of the world. And is there any reference to the slaves who made their fortunes?

    #2
    When folk like Kevin Hague talk about Scotland getting rich from access to the "U.K. single market" in the 18th century, they are really talking about access to the slave and related commodities trades after the repeal of the Aliens Acts (which stopped Scots trading with England and the Empire, despite the Union of Crowns) post 1707 Union, only later (really with the loss of the 13 colonies) would the East India Company pillage become an equal or greater source of unearned wealth.

    Even relatively poor folk from all over Scotland would have had part shares in slaves. It's the source of many a cunty Scotch family's lasting wealth, from fucking David Cameron to that unbearable tedious hypocrite (a sulphurous combo of Orange Book Classical liberal, Brownite tedious Christian moralist and Blairy Liberal Interventionist) Gladstone.
    Last edited by Lang Spoon; 29-02-2020, 00:31.

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      #3
      Bristol is pretty bad for this. Various parts of the city centre including Colston Hall the main live music venue, are named after Edward Colston, a noted local philanthropist. He was of course also a slave trader.

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        #4
        Isn't the fact Bristol and Liverpool became big cities at all instead of random regional port towns like Lowestoft down to slaves being shipped through there?

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          #5
          There are quite a few Methodist churches who proudly announce their connections to George Whitefield. Most Methodists don't know that Whitefield pressured the state of Georgia to allow slavery in order to boost its economy.

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            #6
            Penny Lane of Beatles fame was named after an MP from Liverpool who was honoured for his steadfast opposition to the abolition of slavery.

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              #7
              Penrhyn Castle near Bangor was built on land owned by the 1st Baron Penrhyn, a slave owner that also owned local slate quarries. The estate passed to his second cousin on his death and a new chain of infamy began.

              The son in law of the new owner, later named The 1st Baron Penrhyn (second creation), went on to sack 80 workers from Penrhyn Quarry for failing to vote for his son, The 2nd Baron Penrhyn, in a general election.

              The 2nd Baron's stewardship of the quarry led to "The Great Strike of Penrhyn", which was the longest dispute in British industrial history. His decision to employ 600 non-unionised workmen still reverberates today in the signs "Nid oes bradwr yn y tŷ hwn" ("There is no scab in this house")..

              Penrhyn Casrle is now owned by the National Trust.

              For anyone that hasn't been to the Maritime Museum in the Albert Dock I'd recommend the history of slavery floor. It depicts all stages of the process from the forced removal from Africa through the Triangular Trade and Plantation work to abolition. There is also a connected section related to the black experience of 20th century Britain. It was very effective for the learners that we took there on a school trip.
              Last edited by Kowalski; 29-02-2020, 19:02.

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                #8
                Cambridge university is in the process of investigating all its historical slavery links, including gifts, bequests, etc. A report is due in autumn 2021.

                https://www.cam.ac.uk/news/cambridge...nks-to-slavery

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                  #9
                  The Tate?

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                    #10
                    There’s an impressive country manor nearish to us (now converted into posh flats) called Oldlands Hall. Rambling past I noticed some unusual depictions on the iron gates and pillars: sugar and cotton. Sure enough, a little bit of research showed that the family who had it built (Nesbitts) were sugar plantation owners in the Windies, whilst the subsequent owner (Ecksteins) was centrally involved in the Sudan Plantations Syndicate, who didn’t own slaves themselves but had contracts with the local Muslim landowners who had non-Muslim slaves work the cotton fields, etc. Slavery wasn’t abolished in Sudan until the 1920s, and even after that the ol’ indentured labour trick was in use for years.

                    Naturally, the “great men” didn’t get their hands too directly dirty - it was just capital investments and export/import to them - and concerned themselves more as art collectors and antiquaries, who doled out philanthropic baubles to the local community.

                    As an aside, UCL’s legacy of British slave-ownership database is good for researching this sort of thing.

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                      #11
                      Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post
                      Isn't the fact Bristol and Liverpool became big cities at all instead of random regional port towns like Lowestoft down to slaves being shipped through there?
                      Not entirely.

                      Part of the triangular trade.

                      Goods to Africa

                      Slaves to the Carribbean and America

                      Raw materials (sugar, tobacco, and cotton) back to Liverpool and Bristol

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                        #12
                        Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post
                        There are quite a few Methodist churches who proudly announce their connections to George Whitefield. Most Methodists don't know that Whitefield pressured the state of Georgia to allow slavery in order to boost its economy.
                        As well as to stop it being the Southern route of the underground railroad.

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                          #13
                          Originally posted by Guy Profumo View Post

                          Not entirely.

                          Part of the triangular trade.

                          Goods to Africa

                          Slaves to the Carribbean and America

                          Raw materials (sugar, tobacco, and cotton) back to Liverpool and Bristol
                          Goods to Africa = Weapons

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                            #14
                            Originally posted by Tactical Genius View Post

                            As well as to stop it being the Southern route of the underground railroad.
                            Wasn't that a bIt after Whitfield's time? I think he died before the colonies went independent.

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                              #15
                              Originally posted by Gangster Octopus View Post
                              The Tate?
                              Henry Tate (and Abram Lyle for that matter) were not born when the British slave trade ceased, and Tate was 14 when abolition passed.
                              Tate made his cash from refining and then selling the (admittedly still slave grown) sugar in the UK.

                              So not a slave trader or owner, but got rich off slave products, like an awful lot of Victorian industrialists.

                              https://www.tate.org.uk/about-us/his...es-and-slavery

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                                #16
                                Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post

                                Wasn't that a bIt after Whitfield's time? I think he died before the colonies went independent.
                                My understanding is slaves from other areas would escape to Georgia where slavery was outlawed and then make their way down to Florida.

                                There were various escape routes for slaves before the times of Tubman.

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                                  #17
                                  Slavery was banned in Georgia between 1737 and 1751. Whitfield was instrumental in getting the ban overturned by royal decree.

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                                    #18
                                    Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                    Slavery was banned in Georgia between 1737 and 1751. Whitfield was instrumental in getting the ban overturned by royal decree.
                                    Man of God............

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                                      #19
                                      Needed those windfall profits from slavery in order to keep his "good works" going .

                                      Slavery had been outlawed in the young Georgia colony in 1735. In 1747, Whitefield attributed the financial woes of his Bethesda Orphanage to Georgia's prohibition of slavery.[33] He argued that "the constitution of that colony [Georgia] is very bad, and it is impossible for the inhabitants to subsist without the use of slaves."[35]

                                      Between 1748 and 1750, Whitefield campaigned for slavery's legalisation. He said that the colony would not be prosperous unless farmers had slave labor.[36] Whitefield wanted slavery legalized not only for the prosperity of the colony, but also for the financial viability of the Bethesda Orphanage. "Had Negroes been allowed", he said, "I should now have had a sufficiency to support a great many orphans without expending above half the sum that has been laid out."[35] Whitefield's push for the legalization of slavery "cannot be explained solely on the basics of economics." It was also that "the specter of massive slave revolts pursued him."[37]

                                      Slavery was legalized in 1751.[36] Whitefield saw the "legalization of slavery as part personal victory and part divine will."[38] Whitefield now argued a scriptural justification for slavery. He increased his number of slaves, using his preaching to raise money to purchase them. Whitefield became "perhaps the most energetic, and conspicuous, evangelical defender and practitioner of slavery."[4] By propagating such "a theological defense for slavery" Whitefield "participated in a tragic chapter of the nation's experience."[37]

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                                        #20
                                        Like I always say, christianity (In the european form) has a much worse effect on Africans than Slavery.

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                                          #21
                                          Originally posted by Tactical Genius View Post
                                          My understanding is slaves from other areas would escape to Georgia where slavery was outlawed and then make their way down to Florida.
                                          Now that you mention it, I remember reading that

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                                            #22
                                            Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post

                                            Now that you mention it, I remember reading that
                                            Possibly from one of my previous posts.

                                            These escaped slaves would hook up with the Native Americans in Florida and became known as the Gullah, Seminoles or Black Seminoles.

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                                              #23
                                              Could have been. Or it might have been in the original article I read about Whitfield.

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                                                #24
                                                'Father of Liberalism' Colston apparently distanced himself from slave-trading ahead of his death. Given his previous record of involvement within it, this was presumably to cement a decent legacy.

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