3. An atonement needs meaning

The dictionary definition of atonement is the action of making amends for a wrong or injury. And in case you are wondering, amends means to put right. Which creates quite the conundrum when it comes to historic wrongs like slavery. How do you make those past wrongs or injuries right when in so many cases the people wronged or injured are long gone? How to atone for that today?

Do you apologise? On the surface that might seem the obvious thing to do, but then companies and governments are loathe to apologise in case it is seen as an admission of guilt, creating a means for the wronged or the injured, or their descendents, to seek compensation. So company lawyers are reluctant to allow apologies. And as we know politicians seem, as a group, largely allergic to apologies, unless its one of those, “if you are or were offended then I apologise” type of non-apologies that suggest people should be less sensitive and made of sterner stuff. The old “its really you that is the problem and not my behaviour that is at issue” argument politicians and disgraced celebrities seem to trade in.

Do you pay reparations? Well if you don’t want to apologise so as to avoid paying compensation then of course you don’t. And its not that in the case of slavery reparations are a straight forward thing. Does the British Government, for example, heed calls from some of its former colonial possessions (a term that really sums up the colonial viewpoint) for reparations to be paid for slavery. If so how is that money used? Does it go to the descendents of slaves, or to infrastructure or health or education or who knows what?

And how far do you go with seeking reparations? Do you go after individuals whose families centuries ago got into sugar cane farming in the Carribean, like Tory MP Richard Drax, whose forebears ran sugar cane plantations on Barbados and Jamaica. Drax has said that he regrets his family’s slave owning past, but he himself still owns at least one of those plantations that still produces sugar cane. (And lets just take a moment to acknowledge that having a surname that is the same as a Bond villain makes it pretty easy to cast Richard in a poor light!) Are institutions like Cambridge University, that now acknowledges it benefitted from links to individuals who traded in slaves, fair game? So if you assume that yes, Drax and Cambridge are fair game, then what?

How far back do you go? After all the Vikings used to raid throughout Europe for people to sell into slavery. And the Romans invaded and subjugated half of Europe and relied on a slave workforce for much of their lifestyle. So where do you draw the line, in historical terms? What is the statute of limitations here? Should the Scandanavian nations and the Italians be called upon to pay reparations, to apologise?

So maybe it’s just better to let history lie? Well yes and no. Yes its easier not to deal with these things. But slavery is one of the prime drivers of racism and the stratified societies we have today. And if we say slavery is too hard to deal with then what else can we ignore?

Then we need to deal with this? Yes. But again how? Do we draw a statute of limitations on slavery, and if so where do we draw that line back in time? Would it be legitimate to say that once slavery was outlawed, was made illegal, that anyone taken as a slave after that time has a legitimate claim, but not those before say 1808, when Britain outlawed slavery? How do we manage the moral argument that we today impose on the past, viewing slavery as wrong, when it was legal for centuries? Can a legal act from years or centuries ago be prosecuted, or amends made for it, given that act is today illegal?

Which begs the question, should slavery have ever been legal? Again looking back from today no, but then people in the past sometimes (albeit not often) sold themselves into slavery. It was a part of life and legal. People could be owned by others. But the reality is most slaves were either forced into slavery or born into slavery, and the majority had no way out of it, other than to break laws in place at the time. So its a real legal minefield.

And who actually pays? Given that the majority of Africans transported across the Atlantic sailed on British owned vessels, then Britain should pay. Right? Well those British sailors bought or bartered goods for slaves sold by African slave traders, many of those traders coming from some African empires. Do modern tribes that in past were involved in the trade pay? Do African nations? Do British companies, or the British Government? And how much does each party pay? Assuming that all those involved in the supply chain for slaves are held to account, and not just some.

What about other forms of atonement? Some companies, upon discovering historic ties to slavery, be it involvement or income from the trade are looking to create opportunities for blacks and minorities in those companies. Which is good but why wait until you have a historic connection to slavery to do that? And does action today atone for links to slavery yesterday?

You may have noticed a lot of questions above and not a lot of answers. Which is the problem facing those discovering historic ties to slavery, wrestling with what their ancestors or predecessors may have done and how to tackle that today. It is a real problem for many, and there are few quick and easy answers. Often there are only more questions.

But we need to acknowledge that slavery is wrong, and we need to find ways to atone, if for no other reason than to start to address racism as a legacy of slavery. My book A Slaver’s Tide is one story of how that may have been done back in the heyday of slavery. It asks the question of the individual, how to find a way through the moral minefield. It doesn’t contain all the answers, and researching and writing it only raised the questions above, and many more. It didn’t provide a clear-cut answer, other than the idea that an atonement must have meaning of some sort. Certainly to the person atoning, but also to those wronged. Which in this case is no simple task. At the least I can say that I now know about these questions, about this past, and that is a starting point.

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