Slavery

... and the fight against it

What Washington can teach London about history

Last week, on a visit to Washington, D.C., I spent some time in two new museums and walked away wondering why we don’t have museums like that in the UK. The first was the National Museum of African American History and Culture. This museum, established by an act of Congress in 2003 and finally opened just seven years ago, is enormously popular. It tells the story of the Black experience in America, from slave ships right up until the Black Lives Matter movement. One cannot walk through its many rooms and not be moved. Some of the rooms warn the visitor: a thick red border around an image is...

Far right calls off 9 April march

The far-right “For Britain” organisation was forced to cancel a racist demonstration planned for 9 April in Bristol, citing fears of “Antifa… plotting to disrupt”. The organisation, which claims Tommy Robinson as a member, planned a rally in support of slave-trader Edward Colston, and against Black Lives Matter. Many left groups were mobilising to prevent them marching, and the fascists complained that the police had not guaranteed them the support they need. The police have protected fascist protests, kettling anti-fascists, in the recent past, but it looks like this time the numbers willing...

A previous culture war: Turner and Styron

Nat Turner planning the rebellion In 1967, 136 years after Nat Turner led a slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, the white US novelist William Styron published a book, The Confessions of Nat Turner . The book was written in the first person, Styron giving words to Turner and his story. Prior to the publication of Styron’s book the history of the Turner insurrection was not widely known. For several months Styron’s book received great reviews and grandiose praise. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1968. But within a few months universal acclaim had turned into a very...

Barbados ditches the monarchy. So should we!

On 30 November-1 December, the Caribbean nation of Barbados became a republic, removing the UK monarch as its head of state. The English monarchy took control of Barbados from 1625, wiping out the island’s indigenous population and creating a society based on slavery. The forced labour of black Barbadians played a crucial role in the rise of the first capitalist empire: by 1660 Barbados generated more trade than all other English colonies combined. Enslaved Barbadians resisted fiercely, including through a major uprising in 1816, an important precursor to the abolition of slavery in the...

The real-life William Walker

It was great to have the exceptional film Queimada flagged up for essential viewing in Kino Eye ( Solidarity 611 ), but the article missed relating the film’s positive ending following on the execution of the revolutionary leader Jose Dolores. As the cynical British agent William Walker makes his exit from the island, he encounters a black dockworker who reminds him of his first meeting with Dolores. This time Walker gets his come-uppance when the docker stabs him to death. The end “message” of the film is that the people have learnt a valuable lesson through struggle and their fight goes on...

Kino Eye: Queimada - the slaves revolt

Directed in 1969 by the brilliant Gillo Pontecorvo (best known for The Battle of Algiers ), Queimada is usually released in the UK under the stupid title Burn! The year is 1844 and British agent Sir William Walker (played by Marlon Brando) helps to instigate a slaves’ revolt against the Portuguese colonial authorities on the (fictional) Caribbean island of Queimada. He aligns himself with the leader of the black slaves, José Dolores (Evaristo Márquez), but his main purpose is to dislodge the Portuguese so that the British colonialists can monopolize the lucrative sugar trade. The revolt is...

Kino Eye: Eisenstein's unmade films about Haiti

A first for Kino Eye — films you can’t see because they were never made! The Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein had always been fascinated with the slaves’ revolt on Haiti. It was one of his lifetime ambitions to make a film about this subject but, unfortunately, none ever materialised. The nearest he came was on an extended trip to the USA and Mexico in 1930. Arriving in Hollywood in May he read Black Majesty: The life of Christophe, King of Haiti , written by John W. Vandercook. Eisenstein wanted the black singer and actor Paul Robeson to play the leading role. However, Paramount Studios, who...

Haitian revolution vs British empire

The French Revolution was a bourgeois revolution, and the basis of bourgeois wealth was the slave trade and slave plantations in the colonies. Though the bourgeoisie traded in other things than slaves, upon the success or failure of the traffic everything else depended. Therefore when the bourgeoisie proclaimed the Rights of Man in general, with necessary reservations, one of these was that these rights should not extend to the French colonies. There was the abolitionist society to which Brissot, Robespierre, Mirabeau, Lafayette, Condorcet, and many such famous men belonged even before 1789...

Statue wars: some should go up

Some people — and by that I mean some Tories — have whipped themselves up into a frenzy over the issue of statues. The pages of newspapers like the Daily Mail and Daily Express are full of “rage” about the statues of Edward Colston in Bristol, or Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College in Oxford. Colston’s statue was toppled and tossed into the water. Rhodes’ statue remains in place, due to the college’s reluctance to take it down. This week protests have taken place in east London demanding the removal of a statue of slave-ship owner Robert Geffrye, which stands outside a museum in Shoreditch. The...

Plutocrat philanthropy and workers' rights

Andrew Forrest is an Australian mining magnate and billionaire who set up a foundation with the seemingly benign purpose to “end modern slavery in our generation”. But as with Bill Gates and his philanthropic foundation , all is not what it seems. In spite of his lobbying for patents and intellectual property, Bill Gates has actually helped some people in the global south get vaccinated. Forrest’s advocacy does very little to alleviate the material conditions which make modern slavery, namely poverty. Within Australia, Forrest’s chief lobbying has been for controls and limits on welfare...

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