The Making of the Black Working Class in Britain

THE MAKING OF THE BLACK WORKING CLASS

IN BRITAIN

For Irma and Ronnie

The Making of the Black

Working Class in Britain

Ron Ramdin

This updated edition first published by Verso 2017

First published by Gower Publishing Co. Ltd 1987

© Ron Ramdin 1987, 2017

All rights reserved

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

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ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-065-0

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ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-066-7 (UK EBK)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

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Typeset by Acorn Bookwork, Salisbury, Wilts.

Printed in the UK by CPI Mackays

Contents

Preface

Introduction to the Second Edition

PART I THE ‘BLACKAMOORES" PRESENCE (1555–1900)

1 Profits, Slavery and the Black Poor

The rise of African slavery

Profits

Pets and domestic servants

Liberty

Free black voices

Enemies and friends

The struggle of the black poor

2 Black Radicals and Black Women in Service

Robert Wedderburn

William Davidson

William Cuffay

Mary Prince: slave and ‘servant’

Mary Seacole: ‘nurse and doctress’

3 Post-Emancipation Developments: Indentureship and the Rise of Pan Africanism

The Indian diaspora: ‘a new system of slavery’

Pan Africanism: origins and early development

PART II THE ‘BLACK MAN’S BURDEN’ (1900–1962)

4 Britain, Empire and Labour

East Indian labour: the abolition of indentureship

The British labour movement and imperialism

Cardiff: black seamen and soldiers

Liverpool: ‘negro’ workers and race relations

5 The League of Coloured Peoples and Black Radical Groups

Harold Moody: black moderate (founder and leader of the LCP)

The formation of the League

The LCP: development and issues

The Cardiff crisis: local organisations and the LCP

The League and other black groups

Pan Africanists in the twentieth century

6 The Development of a Black Radical Ideology

The black intelligentsia in Britain during the 1920s and 1930s

Indian nationalism

The radicalisation of Pan Africanism

7 Post-war Immigration: Racism, Riot and Legislation

Housing

Employment

The riots of 1958

Reactions: prelude to control

Racial tension

Post-riots organisations

The General Election

Liberal groups

The door is shut

PART III THE BLACK WORKING CLASS (1962–1986)

8 Capitalism, Class, Black Workers and Racial Disadvantage

Migrant labour and capitalism in Western Europe

The black community: urban deprivation

9 The Black Workers’ Industrial Struggle

Industrial relations: the colonial context

Racial disadvantage in employment

Racial discrimination in employment

The struggle against the employers and trade unions

Black Caribbean women: nurses and ancillary workers

The textile industry

Black workers and the trade unions

Black workers and the trade unions: the British experience

In principle: TUC policy and resolutions

In practice: the disillusionment of black workers (alternative organisations)

Capitalism and curbs on discrimination

The black workers’ response

10 Organisers and Organisations

Black Power and its advocates

Liverpool: ‘Negro’ associations

Asian workers’ associations

The Asian workers’ struggle and the IWAs 1968–1981

The Standing Conference of West Indian Organisations

Organisation from the top: CARD

The collapse of CARD

West Indian organisations in Moss Side and Easton

Black churches

Black organisations: the 1970s and 1980s

11 Black Working Class Consciousness

Black youth: the oppressed seen as a social problem

Racism and sexism

Black feminist responses

Gender, race and class

The oppressor: Blacks and the police

The police against the people

The police and the community

Race, class and autonomy

Black consciousness: spontaneous crowd violence

Black revolt

Conclusion

APPENDIX I Aims and Objects of the IWA-GB

APPENDIX II Organisations Affiliated to the West Indian Standing Conference in 1966

APPENDIX III The Aims and Objects of the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination

APPENDIX IV Organisations That Sent Delegates or Observers to the National Founding Convention of CARD in July 1965

APPENDIX V Black Women’s Groups and Organisations

APPENDIX VI James Townsend: Pioneering Black Politician

References

Bibliography

Index

That England, that was wont to conquer others,

Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.

William Shakespeare

Labour with a black skin cannot emancipate itself where labour with a black skin is branded.

Karl Marx

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line.

W. E. B. DuBois

… none of us can shrink from the challenge of racialism … this Bill [The Race Relations Bill 1968] … is to protect society as a whole against actions which will lead to social disruption and to prevent the emergence of a class of second-class citizens.

James Callaghan

The reorganisation now of society on classless lines by the proletariat will release immense energies in an uninhibited environment. It is a miserable, cringing mentality, confined to the ‘higher standard of living of our people’, striving to hold on to what it has and to keep people where they are, which does not understand that the only way out is to give people new visions of themselves, so that they will find new ways to express them and to create new ties, new bonds and a new understanding between those who are now so divided.

C. L. R. James

Preface

This book is an attempt to put in historical perspective the Black presence in Britain as it relates to the development of British capitalism and its control and exploitation of black labour. The making of the black working class in twentieth-century Britain has been a long process, reflecting essential changes in Britain’s labour needs over time, both at home and abroad.

As overseas trade expanded, the discipline and control of labour (both black and white) became imperative to Britain’s economic well-being. To ensure the continued exploitation of colonial labour, an ideology based on racial differences, which bred an inferior/superior nexus both in interpersonal relations and in international trade, was constructed to keep Blacks in subjection.

Thus, plantocracy racism supported by British capitalists, politicians, historians and influential people of letters, engendered dogmatic belief in white supremacy and institutionalised racism in Britain and her colonial ‘possessions’. Consequently, the cultural transmission of racist ideas was handed down over generations. Historically, as Blacks in the colonies laboured under the inhuman and deplorable working conditions endemic in slavery, indentureship and trade union-regulated working conditions, in response, they resorted either ‘spontaneously’ or in an ‘organised’ way to various forms of resistance, creating in the process, their own ideologies of Indian nationalism, Pan Africanism and Black Power, and autonomous organisation. This tradition of struggle has, in turn, informed and strengthened the black working-class movements both in the colonies and Britain in recent years.

In order to avoid any confusion that might arise in the reader’s mind, it is perhaps necessary to define the ‘black working class’ in the context of this book. In general, ‘black’ refers to non-white persons, particularly those from former colonial and Commonwealth countries. Within this usage, there are sub-divisions denoting the various constituent groups: these are Africans, Asians, West Indians, Afro-Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, Asian-Caribbeans and Black British. ‘Working class’ refers essentially to those unskilled and semi-skilled Blacks who came to Britain throughout the period, but particularly during the heavy post-war immigration in search of jobs.

The task of writing this book has been made less onerous by the encouragement of many people, particularly Tim O’Keeffe and Louise Floyd; Ziggi Alexander, Jane Anthony, Crispin Cross, Ghazala Faizi, Moira Ferguson, Peter Fraser, Peter Fryer, David Hill, Peter Hogg, David Paisey, Lina Patel, Brian Rooney, Allen Synge and Rosina Visram. I would also like to thank many of my colleagues and members of staff in the British Library (at the Reference Division, Bloomsbury, the Newspaper Library, Colindale and the India Office Library); the staffs at the Public Records Office Library (Chancery Lane and Kew); the Library of Economics and Political Science; the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library; the Labour Party Library, and A. Sivanandan, Director of the Institute of Race Relations for permission to use the Institute’s unique collection of material. My grateful thanks to Jen Scallan for her assistance.

Finally, I am grateful to my parents, brothers and sisters for their invaluable support.

Ron Ramdin

Bloomsbury, London

14 April 1986

Introduction to the Second Edition

On 16 April 2016, a special event was held at Congress House in Central London to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the completed manuscript of The Making of the Black Working Class in Britain. The occasion was filmed and a clip titled ‘An Audience with Ron Ramdin’ was put online. Prior to the event, I was approached by Verso Books about republishing the book. For both the book and myself to be so honoured made me pause for reflection.

On its first publication in 1987, a book reviewer in New Society described it as a ‘pioneering and valuable work of scholarship and interpretation’. I was struck by ‘valuable work of scholarship and interpretation’. Why? Because hitherto I’d not read such a positive reference to any book on the history of Black people in Britain, especially one featuring Black workers. Even more encouraging educationally, the book was widely read and used by researchers, students, and writers. As one author put it, he had ‘cannibalised’ the book for his own work. As time passed, in-depth academic book reviews appeared in the British Journal of Sociology, the American Journal of Sociology and History Today among others; and the Times newspaper included it in its ‘Pick of Paperbacks’. Given that hitherto British historians had largely ignored the long-standing existence of Black and Asian people in Britain, from the outset, I’d intended that The Making should take a long view of this hidden presence, certainly long enough to show continuity. In the context of an expansive history, this ‘presence’ and contribution, I felt, would make more sense than it would in any short, largely general account and, at the same time, correct a widespread misunderstanding that Black people began coming to Britain only in the 1950s. Thus, given that there had been Black people in Britain since Roman times, I structured the book in three parts to cover the period from 1555 to 1986; a perspective which I thought was preferential if one was to better understand not only the pre-twentieth-century Black presence, but also the interwar period and the turbulent forty years prior to 1986. Overall, such a long view of Black people in Britain would, I felt, not only incorporate their multifaceted contribution both in war and peacetime, but also place The Making as an integral study relating to a deeply ingrained attitude and therefore to all aspects of British society.

After I’d published From Chattel Slave to Wage Earner, a work on labour history in the Caribbean, I was surprised that there was no book on Black workers in Britain. Thereafter, I became increasingly fascinated by the pre- and early-twentieth-century contribution of Black and Asian people to the British economy. As I stated in the preface to The Making,

To ensure the continued exploitation of colonial labour, an ideology based on racial differences, which bred an inferior/superior nexus, both in interpersonal relations and in international trade, was constructed to keep Blacks in subjection … Historically, as Blacks in the colonies laboured under the inhuman and deplorable working conditions endemic in slavery, indentureship and trade union-regulated working conditions, in response, they resorted either ‘spontaneously’ or in an ‘organised’ way to various forms of resistance, creating in the process, their own ideologies of Indian Nationalism, Pan Africanism and Black Power, and autonomous organisation. This tradition of struggle has, in turn, informed and strengthened Black working-class movements both in the colonies and Britain in recent years.

As these ideas and struggles evolved, I continued to question aspects of social orthodoxy – namely race, tribe, caste, colour, class, gender, culture, religion and so on – categorisations reflecting aspects of divisive social behaviour that were more often than not to be found in various academic journals and books. Indeed in relation to one of these forms of totalisation – class – I was surprised to find that after years of research contrary to my understanding, one famous textbook, The Making of the English Working Class, had entirely overlooked the presence and contribution of Black leaders who were prominent in English working-class struggles.

For the purposes of The Making of the Black Working Class in Britain, my definitions of ‘Black’ and ‘working class’ were clear. Thirty years on, those descriptions are still relevant and often used today by trade unionists, socialists, politicians and social commentators. In recent years, however, the influx of migrants (including those seeking asylum and refugees) from all over the world has added to an even more diverse working population; an extraordinary commingling of people speaking a large number of languages, especially in London and the larger British cities.

Soon after I’d completed the manuscript there was no doubt in my mind that The Making (for so long a hidden story) was an essential and timely text which not only broadens and gives depth to our understanding of the past, but also foregrounds an evolving multicultural Britain. It was also very rare that a book of this kind should become a bestseller and quickly go out of print at a time when academics were still largely disinterested in the growing populations of Black and ethnic minorities as integral to British history. But while The Making has been informative for students and general readers, for a new generation of those born and bred in Britain, as well as new immigrants from outside the Commonwealth, a great deal was (and is) taken for granted! Some fundamental ‘rights’ (for example, the Race Relations Act, affecting people at the workplace and in communities) enjoyed by today’s citizens were not achieved overnight. In fact, such ‘rights’ became law as a direct result of insistent, bitter campaigns against racism and sexism waged by Black and Asian workers in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. But while there has been change, racism and sexism have persisted.

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the Grunwick strike. The ‘Grunwick 40’ exhibition currently on display in the Brent Museum and Archives at the Willesden Library retells the celebrated story of the ‘Strikers in Saris’. Thus, by the 1980s, the heightened consciousness of Black workers had generated the need to form autonomous organisations which pointed the way ahead. For me as a writer, The Making was a watershed, the beginning of a new phase in my intellectual development. My quest was for a deeper truth about people and society for, in spite of their relevance, I felt there was too much of a cosy woolliness about the prevailing ideas such as race, class, colour, gender, culture and religion. Something vital was missing. Thus I committed myself to an intense exploration of these ideas while I continued to write about histories, cultures and identities. The result was that twelve years after The Making, I published Reimaging Britain, which helped to clarify in my mind the idea of difference, of celebrating ‘the creative potential of human difference’. So far so good, I thought, but not good enough.

And so fifteen years after the publication of Reimaging Britain, I took a further step and confronted head on the totalising effect of social categorisations such as race, class, tribe, colour, gender, culture and religion which stymies individuals (‘Striker in Saris’, for example) instead of freeing them. Thus since The Making of the Black Working Class in Britain, given the making and remaking process, my ideas continued to evolve crucially from autonomous organisation to respect for difference.

Today, the fundamental question that confronts us is this: where are Black and ethnic minority workers located in the employment structure? As if to confirm the persistent, stark daily lived reality of many working people, a few reports on pay and disadvantage have recently appeared. ‘Analysis of pay data by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) suggests that the difference in average pay rates amounts to a gap of 23 percent,’ stated a BBC Education and Social Affairs report titled ‘Black Workers earning less than white colleagues adding that Black graduates earn less than their white counterparts, the average pay gap between Black and white workers with A-levels being 14 percent; and at GCSE level, the gap is 11 percent. So many issues raised and dealt with in The Making, including the inequities in relation to race, education and pay, still confront us. A generation on, how should we address the problem?

Frances O’Grady, the TUC General Secretary identified the problem: ‘Race still plays a huge role in determining pay.’ She added the ‘harsh reality is that at any level of education, Black and Asian workers are getting paid LESS than their white counterparts. The Government cannot afford to ignore these figures and must now take genuine action to tackle pay discrimination.’ And what role could or should the government play? One way forward was urgently needed ‘interventions’. When dealing with the deprived and disadvantaged, the last Labour Government was convinced throughout its long reign that the key to social mobility was ‘education, education, education’. Alas, whatever the beneficial effects of the Labour Government’s policies, though masked by self-righteous rhetoric (and, at times, exaggerated political correctness), deep-seated problems remain. While disproportionality in the number of disadvantaged Blacks and Asians attending universities was flagged up repeatedly as a major hurdle, beyond this, there were other consequential inequalities to confront. Various researchers, including those at the BBC and the race equality think tank the Runnymede Trust have found that ‘pay gaps are not due to the type of university attended, they even extend to Black workers with degrees’. In fact, the TUC’s analysis, based on the Labour Force Survey figures from 2014 and 2015, shows the pay gaps were widest among the more qualified. And so education is not working for the benefit of the aspirant as it should. This is shocking. Such evidence of ‘pay gaps’ is confirmed by recent findings of the University of Essex and the Institute of Economic and Social Research. The implications of these workplace inequalities on the rest of society are significant. Furthermore, the British Referendum on 23 June 2016, which resulted in the British people’s decision to leave the European Union, will, no doubt, have unknown consequences for migrant workers, especially Blacks and Asians.

Given repeated demands for change, indeed the need for ‘interventions’, the Prime Minister, concerned with developing a race-equality educational strategy said, ‘Transparency would force top universities like Oxford to work harder to broaden their intake.’ Fine words from the leading politician, but in spite of his ‘intervention’ a few weeks later, on 14 September 2016, an Evening Standard headline read: ‘POLICE DO TARGET BLACK PEOPLE.’ In the article Scotland Yard’s new diversity chief, Victor Olisa, a Black man, admitted ‘stop and search’ on the streets targeted Black people. Thirty years earlier in The Making, I had written at length about ‘sus charges’, Black youth and confrontations between Black people and the police. Now, with great interest, I read that the police were still ‘routinely discriminating against Black people in stop and search operations in London as part of a misguided performance culture’. Furthermore, the diversity chief attested that ‘it was accepted practice to stop young black men to try to boost arrest rates for drugs such as cannabis’. To avoid the ‘negative stereotyping of black people’, he felt stop and search should not only be based on intelligence, but most importantly officers should be able ‘to explain as an individual why you stopped Joe Bloggs’. This official statement points to the very essence of the evolving ideas contained in The Making that culminated in the recent publication of my original essay On Respect for Difference. Given that ‘difference is the DNA of social relations’, crucially I concluded the essay in relation to migrations and the globalized world thus: ‘Like Britain, few countries can claim to have an indigenous population. But wherever human beings congregate in so-called civilized communities and societies, the insistent calls for freedom and human rights would indeed remain elusive, meaningless slogans, unless people genuinely relate to each other with respect for difference.’

Against this background, in scope and depth, educationally the value of The Making of the Black Working Class in Britain is as timely now (if not more so) as it was when it first appeared: an instructive, informative text for readers regardless of age, race, class, colour, gender, culture or religion about a crucial period in our past. It is at once of major historical and contemporary significance; an educational resource that crucially adds to our understanding of neglected aspects of British history. The oft-quoted historian Peter Fryer, in his ‘Suggestion for Further Reading’ on Black history stated, ‘Some gaps in this cursory reading are due to gaps in the literature … One at least of these gaps will be filled by Ron Ramdin’s forthcoming history of the black working class in Britain.’ In fact The Making is about a great deal more. Significantly this new edition is the first book to incorporate a ‘forgotten’ and little known aspect of ‘British’ history which hitherto chroniclers of the Black presence have either not known about or had overlooked: for many people, Dadabhai Naoroji, elected in 1892 is known as the first Black MP. But new research refutes this. The first Black Member of Parliament was James Townsend, whose election to the House of Commons predates Naoroji by some 125 years. He was also the first Black Lord Mayor of London. (For more on the fascinating story of James Townsend, see Appendix VI.) And so The Making of the Black Working Class in Britain, described thirty years ago by The Times as a ‘pioneering’ book continues to enlighten us. Its republication is a rare event which gives due recognition of its place in British history, culture and society.

RON RAMDIN

The British Library,

21 May 2017

PART ONE

The ‘Blackamoores" Presence (1555–1900)

The long standing presence of black people in Britain dates back to Roman times. By the seventeenth century many were employed as servants, pageant performers, court jesters and musicians. Later, this black presence would become significant as trade and economic expansion forged a fundamental connection between the demands of British capitalism and black labour. Indeed, it was argued that Negro slavery and the slave trade were responsible for providing the capital which financed the Industrial Revolution in England and of ‘mature’ industrial capitalism which, in turn, destroyed the slave system.¹ Since this thesis was propounded, it has been hotly disputed and debated by historians. The purpose here is not to pursue this argument, directly. Nevertheless, a significant consequence of the commerce and trade in slaves, cotton and sugar was that black people began to appear in England in increasing numbers. And throughout the period of slavery, and thereafter, black labour has remained a crucial factor in the development of the British economy.

The rise of African slavery

The arrival of Christopher Columbus in the New World had far-reaching consequences. England joined Spain and Portugal in their rivalry over actual and potential colonial possessions as a result of Cabot’s voyage to North America in 1497. By 1580 the English government sought to implement the principle of effective occupation in determining sovereignty. In the struggle for possession in the West Indies, the ‘Iberian Axis’ was challenged by England, France and Holland. In this struggle for a ‘place in the sun’, as Eric Williams put it, ‘The negro, too, was to have his place, though he did not ask for it: it was the broiling sun of the sugar, tobacco and cotton plantations of the New World.’²

In the ensuing years, the English claim to colonial possessions grew. The major economic determinant of prosperity in a new colony, according to Adam Smith, the English economist, was ‘plenty of good land’. Not surprisingly, by 1776, British colonial possessions were already divided into two types, the self-sufficient and diversified economy of small farmers and the colony with facilities for the large-scale production of staples for an export market. The northern colonies of the American mainland were in the first category, while the mainland tobacco colonies and the sugar islands of the Caribbean fell in the second. Given that both land and capital were useless unless labour could be controlled and disciplined, labour became of primary concern to the British colonial planter.

To achieve the maximum gains, the kind of labour required on the plantations had to be constant and able to work in co-operation. These demands resulted in a dispersal of the rugged individualist small farmers. The alternative for the Caribbean colonies was slavery. This system was an economic institution of the first importance, a key factor in large-scale plantation production. As one historian saw it:

In modern times it provided the sugar for the tea and coffee cups of the Western world. It produced the cotton to serve as a base for modern capitalism. It made the American South and the Caribbean islands. Seen in historical perspective, it forms a part of that general picture of the harsh treatment of the underprivileged classes, the unsympathetic poor laws and severe feudal laws, and the indifference with which the rising capitalist class was ‘beginning to reckon prosperity in terms of sacrificing human life to the deity of increased production’.³

While slaves and land-hunger moved in tandem, the role of the African in slavery became crucial. Although slavery in the Caribbean has been narrowly identified with the African, it is clear that a racial twist had been invented and superimposed on what was fundamentally an economic institution. For slavery was not the result of racism but rather, racism was the consequence of slavery.⁴ Before the African, unfree labour in the New World was brown, white, black and yellow. In fact, the first instance of slave trading and slave labour developed in the New World involveds not the ‘Negro’ but the Indian. Indian slavery, never sufficiently extensive in the British Dominions, did not interfere with African slavery. The planters demanded sheer physical strength for the future production of the New World staples, sugar and cotton. This, they felt, the Indians lacked. Indeed, the Spaniards had already sought in 1518 that ‘permission be given to bring Negroes, a race robust for labour, instead of natives so weak that they can only be employed in tasks requiring little endurance, such as taking care of maize fields or farms’.⁵ The epithets ‘cotton nigger’ and ‘sugar mules’ became common usage. While the supply of Indians was limited, that of the African was plentiful. Thus, with time, the system of slavery forged an inseparable link between West Africa and the West Indies.

It is important to point out, however, that the immediate successor of the Indian was the poor white, not the African. These white servants comprised indentured servants, ‘redemptioners’ and convicts. Between 1654 and 1685 a regular traffic developed in these indentured servants; ten thousand sailed from Bristol to the West Indies and Virginia.⁶ In 1683, one-sixth of Virginia’s population were white servants. As the trade in white servants prospered, commercial speculation encouraged abuses. Kidnapping in London and Bristol became part of a regular business. Convicts provided another source of steady labour. While Benjamin Franklin opposed this ‘dumping upon the New World of the outcasts of the Old’ the West Indies was prepared to accept ‘even the spawn of Newgate and Bridewell’. In effect, these colonies became the dumping ground for the ‘riff-raff’ of British society.⁷

Moreover, the political and civil disturbances in England between 1640 and 1740 helped to supply white servants. Transportation, mostly to the sugar islands, was the penalty imposed on political and religious non-conformists, such as Cromwell’s Irish prisoners who were sent to the West Indies. Transportation was actively associated with the West Indies to the extent that to ‘Barbadoes’ a person became a verb in the English vernacular.

As trading links grew stronger, the transportation of servants and convicts produced a powerful vested interest in England. Indeed, when the Colonial Board was set up in 1661 one of its more important duties was to control the trade in indentured servants. By the end of the seventeenth century, the aim of economic policy in England was the development of industry, the promotion of employment and the encouragement of exports. But, the question of emigration from the home country to the colonies produced a serious debate. In the context of the argument that ‘whatever tends to the depopulation of a Kingdom tends to the impoverishment of it’, a British population drain was costly and had to be stemmed. A policy of drawing on cheap labour from elsewhere to people the colonial plantations was under serious consideration. By then, the Royal Family had already given patronage to the Royal African Company and the African slave trade. Thus, Africa aided British capitalism in launching its process of industrialisation.

By 1680 there was already evidence⁸ (in Barbados) that the African was more suited to the demands of production than the European. It seemed clear then that white servitude had no place in a system of chattel slavery. The servant’s loss of liberty was for a short period of time, while the African was a slave for life. Furthermore, the servants’ status was passed on to their offspring, but African children assumed the status of their mother. The servants also had rights. In the final analysis, the fact that the Negro slave was cheaper proved to be decisive. The cost of securing a white man’s services for ten years could buy an African for life!⁹ The Governor of Barbados stated that ‘three blacks work better and cheaper than one white man’.¹⁰

The experience of one trade served as a rough guide for another. Not surprisingly, therefore, Bristol, the hub of the white servants trade, played the role as one of the centres of the slave trade.

The reason for the origin of negro slavery then, was economic, not racial; it was the cheapness of labour rather than the colour of the labour which was decisive. Features such as hair and colour were the subsequent rationalisations to justify the simple economic fact that to fill the vacuum of colonial labour requirements, African labour was resorted to because it was cheapest and best. Moreover, it is important to understand that where the whites disappeared, the cause was not the climate, but the replacement of the small farm by the large plantation and its consequent demand for a large, cheap and steady labour supply. African slavery’s origin can be expressed in terms of three plantation products: sugar, tobacco and cotton. A change in the economic structure produced a corresponding change in the labour supply. In the Caribbean slave society King Sugar reigned supreme. This was a society in which there were only two necessary classes – the wealthy (absentee) planters and the oppressed slaves, the exploiters and the exploited.

Profits

In comparison with the wealthy planters of the sugar islands, the planters in the tobacco colonies came a poor second. The West Indian sugar planter was among the biggest capitalists in the mercantilist era. Indeed, the West Indian (with wealth beyond dispute) was dramatised in a play at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London in 1771.¹¹ He became a familiar figure in the English social scene in the eighteenth century. But why was he lording it in England when he should have been attending to his fortune-making sugar plantations in the West Indies? The answer must be sought in absentee landlordism;¹² the ‘curse of the Caribbean’.

Absenteeism affected the prosperity of the islands. One of the more serious consequences was the mismanagement of the plantations by overseers. There was also the growing imbalance between the whites and the black slave populations. The slave population increased making the prospect of rebellions real. Nevertheless, risk-taking was incidental to the fundamental fact that slavery meant wealth.

Among the absentee landlords of the sugar plantations, the most prominent were the Beckfords, an old Gloucestershire family. Sir Thomas Beckford was among the first absentee proprietors, getting £2000 per annum net (of all charges) from his Jamaican holdings.¹³ Another member of the family, Peter Beckford, became the most distinguished of the new colonists, holding military and civil positions in Jamaica. When he died in 1710, he left ‘the largest property real and personal of any subject in Europe’.¹⁴ In 1737 William, his grandson, with the inheritance of the family wealth became ‘the most powerful West Indian planter in England’.

Another family with West Indian interests were the Hibberts. They operated as planters and merchants, supplying cotton and linen checks for the plantations and the African market. The income received from his West Indian property was enough to enable Robert Hibbert to live comfortably in Bedfordshire. The abolition of slavery brought its compensation to the Hibberts. They received £31,120 for their 1618 slaves.¹⁵

The Long family were also connected with Jamaica. When Charles Long died he left property in Suffolk, a house in Bloomsbury and 14,000 acres of property in Jamaica. His income ‘by far the largest enjoyed by any Jamaican proprietor of that period’¹⁶ entitled him to live in splendour.

Planters and merchants both reaped vast profits from the West Indian trade. The merchants were particularly fortunate. Professor Namier argued that there were ‘comparatively few big merchants in Great Britain in 1761 who, in one connection or another, did not trade with the West Indies, and a considerable number of gentry families had interests in the Sugar Islands, just as vast numbers of Englishmen now hold shares in Asiatic rubber or tea plantations or oil fields’.¹⁷ Relations between the two groups however, were not without problems. Planters and merchants belonged to separate organisations. And in spite of their common bond (credit), their interests were, at times, opposed. The basic area of conflict was the planters’ determination to maintain monopoly prices. In 1793 conflict between them increased considerably as the planters’ struggled for a grant of direct trade to Europe. Ultimately, as the capitalist class, their common interests outweighed their inter-group antagonisms. About 1780, planters and merchants combined in an effort to defend their monopoly against the gathering forces of free trade.

In the eighteenth century planters and merchants, working with colonial agents, became the powerful West India interest. Together, they exploited West Indian resources to the hilt, making large fortunes. To maintain the level of profitability in the age of rotten boroughs, the wealth of those with West Indian interests very often proved decisive during Parliamentary debates. Votes and rotten boroughs were bought. Once in Parliament their competition (and who could successfully compete against them!) increased the price of seats. Elections were no longer foregone conclusions for the English landed aristocracy. In fact, they were indignant and baffled by the West Indians at elections. This was not surprising especially when one recalls that in the 1830 elections a West Indian planter was elected in Bristol having spent £18,000.¹⁸ Money, however, could not buy every Parliamentary seat. Nevertheless, a large fortune more often than not was the barometer which measured political power and influence. The Beckford dynasty, for example, was well-represented in Parliament in accordance with their wealth.¹⁹ In addition to the Beckfords, Richard Pennant represented Liverpool, one of the Barbados Codringtons was an MP in 1737, Edward Colston held the Bristol seat from 1710 to 1713, George Hibbert represented Seaford from 1806 to 1812 and John Gladstone represented Woodstock and, later, Lancaster.

Because of the impulse given to trade and agriculture in England, Henry Goulburn in 1833 was still pleading with Parliament to look at the towns that had sprung up as a consequence of the connection with the colonies.²⁰ It was difficult to ignore the West Indians; their presence mattered. Ten out of fifteen members of an influential Committee of the Society of Planters and Merchants held seats in Parliament.²¹ In effect, the slave traders and slave-owners were entrenched both in the Commons and in the House of Lords. From these powerful positions they were able to repel attacks on their plantations and their social structure. In the balancing act of give and take, peerages were conferred in return for political support. There was a hard ring of truth in the statement that there were few, if any, noble houses in England without a West Indian.

The slave-owners not only dominated Parliament, but they had an all-pervasive effect as aldermen, mayors and councillors. William Beckford was not only an Alderman for the City of London, but also twice Lord Mayor.²²

Nevertheless, the West Indian interest was the ‘enfant terrible of English politics until American Independence struck the first great blow at mercantilism and monopoly’.²³ In 1764 there were fifty or sixty West Indian voters who held the balance of power.²⁴ The West Indian sugar interest was enjoying the heyday of its power. But although sugar (and monopoly) would be replaced by cotton (and laissez-faire) in the eighteenth century, sugar remained supreme throughout this period. The vast profits made by the slave traders, slave-owners, planters and merchants were openly displayed in England. Indeed, such West Indian wealth courted the displeasure of King George III who, on a visit with Pitt, having encountered a wealthy Jamaican is reported to have said, ‘Sugar, sugar, eh? all that sugar! How are the duties, eh, Pitt, how are the duties?’²⁵ Duties or no duties, given absentee landlordism, the fact remains that West Indian profits were spent in England. In short, it was all to the benefit of the home country.

As the slave trade developed and sugar became King (later succeeded by cotton in the United States) many Blacks were brought to the mother country by their masters; a living reminder of the slavery-profits nexus. On the question of this fundamental relationship two distinguished black historians have reached significant conclusions: C. L. R. James suggested in his history²⁶ of the Haitian Slave Revolution and the rise of Toussaint L’Ouverture that Britain abolished the slave trade and slavery for economic reasons. Six years later, Eric Williams in Capitalism and Slavery²⁷ also showed how economic rather than humanitarian reasons led to the abolition of the slave trade and slavery in Britain. While few would dispute these conclusions, logically, one might well ask: how did the black slaves in Britain live and how did they become ‘free’?

Pets and domestic servants

Before John Hawkins sold his first group of Africans into slavery in 1563, towards the end of 1555, John Lok had already returned from his second voyage bringing to England with him ‘certaine black slaves, whereof some were tall and strong men, and could wel agree with our meates and drinkes’.²⁸ Naturally, the ‘colde and moyst’ air offended the Africans. This was the inauspicious beginning of the importation by the Merchant Adventurers of Blacks from West Africa into England. Over the next two and a half centuries the trade between West Africa, the Caribbean, the Americas and England grew enormously. Consequently, the number of Blacks in Britain increased.

The commercial probings of the Merchant Adventurers opened up a new world, the world of the black peoples. Thus from the 1550s, the Blacks became a haunting and focal point of political debate among the ruling class in England. By the late sixteenth century, the Englishman no longer resorted to reading exotic and fantastic tales about the African. Indeed, the African had become human, a real presence on the streets of English seaports, in London and more particularly, as ‘pets’ and domestic servants in wealthy English households.²⁹ Among some members of the English working class, the Black had become an object of envy who, it was argued, did not have to worry about the next meal.³⁰ By the end of the century, as cheap black labour was sought, there had been a considerable increase in the number of Blacks in England.³¹ Initially, these Africans were brought to assist English traders who ventured to Africa. A rare sight, the English were curious about the black persons they saw. Indeed, in social circles they were highly valued. Increasingly, black slave domestics became part of noble households. This early contact with West Africans was to have far-reaching consequences. Queen Elizabeth I gave her blessings to African slave-trading, bestowing a knighthood on the slave-trader, John Hawkins, who used one of the Queen’s ships, the Jesus on his second slave-trading voyage.³² As the trade in human cargo between Africa and the New World developed, more Africans arrived in England as the property of whites, ‘human ballast’ for sale or to be used at will.

During the first two centuries of black settlement in England, the most common form of work for black workers was found within the servant class.³³ As their numbers grew, their employers became less exclusive. By the late sixteenth century, for example, black servants were employed not only close to the Court, but by those of humbler status.³⁴ Many years later Samuel Johnson’s black servant, Francis Barber, was fortunate enough to receive an annual income of £100 after his master’s death. This, however, was an exceptional case of good fortune.

Among the Africans, most of whom lived in London (a reflection of the mercantile importance of the city), a few became ‘relatively prosperous residents’. In fact, a group of Blacks were able to build their own house in London in 1597.³⁵ Although they did not conform to ‘building regulations’, they nevertheless showed an independence quite at variance with the received attitude of contemporary Englishmen.

By the end of the sixteenth century, the black presence had become noticeable to no lesser person than the Queen. The growth of a black minority in London was, to say the least, assuming the proportions of a real problem. The social problem which faced England, as poverty, famine and hunger spread over the country, had adverse effects on the Blacks who were singled out for special treatment. Queen Elizabeth alerted the mayors of the major cities ‘that there are of late divers blackamoores brought into this realm, of which kind of people there are allready here too manie considerynge howe God hath blessed this land with great increase of people of our owne nation as anie countrie in the world’.³⁶ Accordingly, she ordered ‘that those kinde of people should be sente forth of the land’. In her deportation order, she identified the Africans imported by Sir Thomas Baskerville.³⁷ She had objected to black settlement in July 1596 and repatriation was already becoming a preoccupation by the beginning of the seventeenth century. An order was issued to hand over all black servants to the Lubeck merchant, Van Senden, emphasising that Her Majesty’s subjects should ‘be served by their owne countrymen (rather) than those kind of people’.³⁸ The Blacks had become a ‘problem’ to the extent that in January 1601, the Queen issued a proclamation to deport ‘such Negroes and blackamoores which … are carried into this realm … who are fostered and powered here, to the great annoyance of her own liege people’.³⁹ Already Blacks were being set apart from the rest of the British people. As the slave trade entered into high-gear, in addition to direct importation from Africa, more and more Blacks entered Britain via slavery in the West Indies and in North America where, particularly after the War of Independence, the black slaves who had fought on the British side were promised their freedom.

Liberty

The presence of black slaves in Britain introduced a new social ‘problem’. The ownership of human beings as property was a challenge to the common law. This was reflected in a number of slave cases in which contradictory decisions were taken, indicating confusion and uncertainty in the law. In 1729, however, in an attempt to clarify any misunderstanding about slaves becoming free on entry to England or Ireland, or as a result of being baptised, the Solicitor-General and the Attorney General were of the opinion that a slave coming from the West Indies to Great Britain or Ireland, with or without a master was not free, and that the master’s property or right in the slave was not thereby determined or varied; and that baptism did not bestow freedom on him or made any alteration in his temporal condition. They added, ‘We are also of opinion that his master may legally compel him to return again to the plantations.’⁴⁰

Known as the Yorke-Talbot opinion, this view prevailed, upholding slavery in England until 1772, when the case of the runaway slave Somerset was heard in the Court of King’s Bench before Lord Chief Justice Mansfield. The case is regarded as a ‘watershed’ in English legal history. In the case Lord Mansfield effectively decided that a slave could not forcibly be taken abroad by his master against his wishes. The case also had historical significance in showing the positions of contemporary schools of thought on the slave question.

The verdict on the Somerset case was indeed of great significance to the anti-slavery movement. In spite of this decision, however, the practice of taking slaves forcibly from England continued after 1772. The law remained defective, offering no protection to the ‘free’ black person in England from unlawful enslavement. Slavery in the colonies then was a rude reminder to the Blacks of their confused status in Britain. As F. O. Shyllon argued, it was not until 1834 that it can truly be said that black slaves in Britain were emancipated, as were their fellow Blacks in the West Indies.⁴¹

Free black voices

Among the ‘free’ Blacks there were a few who spoke out on the intolerable conditions of slavery and the plight of the black poor in Britain. Having come ‘Up from Slavery’ in the upsurge of abolitionist sentiment in the 1780s outstanding contributions came from three Africans, Ignatius Sancho, Ottobah Cugoano and Olaudah Equiano, amongst others. They were all men of letters. Cugoano and Equiano both wrote essentially for publication, while Sancho was published posthumously. Indeed, Sancho became the best known African in London. He was the author of a book on the theory of music and appeared on the stage. These talented Blacks appealed to the liberal instincts of a few distinguished Englishmen. In fact, at this time, the pro-abolition campaign to arouse British public opinion against slavery through petitions (given missionary zeal, the growth of non-conformism and humanitarian agitational pressure) had begun to receive widespread support from radicals and the British working class.

Such men as Garrick and Sterne were among Cugoano’s friends, and his portrait was painted by Gainsborough.⁴² He was best known, however, for the representations made on behalf of his unfortunate fellow Blacks. In his campaign, he solicited the help of Laurence Sterne by drawing attention to the acute distress of the black poor in London. They needed food, clothing and shelter, and many were desperate and dying he argued. In 1797, in his Thoughts and Sentiments Cugoano denounced the evil of slavery and pleaded for human dignity; for kindness and mercy, not transportation to Sierra Leone.⁴³ Moreover, he cited the appalling lack of consideration of the British government by elaborating the real difficulties of the ill-advised plan of settlement in West Africa for London’s black poor.⁴⁴

More political than either Sancho or Cugoano was Equiano. His autobiography, published in 1789, made him famous.⁴⁵ He gives a detailed and moving account of how he and his sister were kidnapped in Africa and taken aboard a slave ship. After years in slavery, he was employed as a sailor and gained much experience on vessels plying the Caribbean waters and beyond. He travelled as far as the North Pole.

In 1774 he set out with Captain John Hughes from the Thames, on a ship called Anglicania bound for Smyrna, in Turkey. On the journey he acted as steward and John Annis, a ‘clever black man’ was the cook. Equiano told how Annis, after two months on board ship was hounded by a Mr. William Kirkpatrick, a ‘gentleman’ of St. Kitts, from whom he had parted by consent. Kirkpatrick nevertheless sought to have Annis back in bondage. After several unsuccessful attempts to ‘trepan him’ (and when all attempts at kidnapping proved abortive) Kirkpatrick with six men and two boats boarded Equiano’s ship, tied Annis and forcibly took him away as the crew and the chief mate looked on. This lack of response on the part of the ship’s company to retrieve Annis, troubled Equiano. ‘I believe’, he wrote, ‘that this was a combined piece of business.’⁴⁶ And any vague ideas he might have had about the goodness of the Captain were now clearly revealed. He added, ‘but, at any rate, it certainly reflected great disgrace on the mate and captain also, who, although they had desired the oppressed man to stay on board, yet he did not in the least assist or recover him, or pay me a farthing of his wages, which was about five pounds’.⁴⁷ Given his own suffering and experience of slavery, and having borne witness to the suffering of others, no wonder Equiano was moved to give voice to the voiceless.

Enemies and friends

Enemies

While the black writers pleaded the cause of the slave and the black poor, between 1750 and 1838 the anti-abolitionists’ arguments centred on the personality traits and physical features of the African slave. Over generations, the prejudice of white racists against the African had imbued the popular consciousness with certain ‘characteristic’ traits peculiar to the African. A desperate anti-Black campaign was mounted on behalf of the planters’ interest to counteract the struggle for black freedom.

In their accounts of slave life and ‘scientific observations’ of the African in West Africa and the West Indies, bourgeois writers furthered the planters’ propaganda. The literary talents of these propagandists were supported by West Indian properties and metropolitan interests that were interlocked. Indeed, the absentee planters offered their explanations (or prejudices) based on past experiences on the plantations.

Edward Long was one such planter. Born in 1734, he lived in Jamaica for twelve years. His History of Jamaica, published in 1774, became ‘a classic description of the machinery of colonial government on the eve of the American Revolution’. Long certainly had strong views about the African. While he must be credited with being outspoken, his feelings about Africans were instructive and must not go unnoticed. In fact, as a respected author, he made ‘scholarly’ references to support his arguments, and was widely read by a captive audience. In a burst of unscientific nonsense, revealing a preoccupation with black sexuality, he wrote: ‘I do not think that an orang-outang husband would be any dishonour to an Hottentot female for what are these Hottentots?’ In describing the Hottentot Black as ‘one of the meanest nations on the face of the earth’,⁴⁸ Long, the successful exploiter of black slaves, betrayed much about himself and his society of British planters. Having attempted a debasement of the black man’s physique to a subhuman level, he went on to insult his intellectual faculties, his diet and eating habits, (and most interestingly) expressed his alarm over their alleged sexual capacity. ‘Their hearing is remarkably quick’, he observed, adding ‘their faculties of smell and taste are truly bestial, nor less so their commerce with the other sex; in these acts they are libidinous and shameless as monkies, or baboons. The equally hot temperament of their women has given probability to the charge of their admitting these animals frequently to their embrace.’⁴⁹ So much for Long’s sexual fantasies! A pleasure rooted in racism; the oppressor justifying oppression and exploitation through his own weakness?

Another pro-slavery book, a History of the British Colonies in the West Indies, was written by Bryan Edwards in 1793. In recognising the simple fact that the degrading nature of slavery had the effect of conditioning the behaviour of the slaves, he made pronouncements on the morality of sex. Edwards denied that, in reality, the Negro had any ‘visions of romance’ or capacity for a caring relationship with the opposite sex.⁵⁰

Fifty-six years later, The Nigger Question, written by Thomas Carlyle, was published. He was particularly abusive and dismissive of Blacks. As far as he was concerned, from his comfortable bourgeois perch, Africans were ‘all very happy and doing very well’. West Indian Whites, on the other hand, were unhappy. One might well ask how he arrived at this incredible conclusion. The clue to the answer, it would seem, is in the fact that this relative concern over the slave/white relationship in the West Indies afforded him the opportunity of a larger bone to pick nearer home. He contrasted the impoverished Whites with the Blacks thus:

But, thank Heaven, our interesting Black population – equalling almost in number of heads one of the Ridings of Yorkshire, and in worth (in quantity of intellect, faculty, docility, energy, and available human valor and value) perhaps one of the streets of Seven Dials – are all doing remarkably well. ‘Sweet blighted lillies’ – as the American epitaph on the Nigger child has it – Sweet blighted lillies, they are holding up their heads again! How pleasant, in the universal bankruptcy abroad, and dim dreary stagnancy at home, as if for England too there remained nothing but to suppress Chartist riots, banish united Irishmen, vote the supplies, and wait with arms crossed till black Anarchy and Social Death devoured us also; as it has done the others; how pleasant to have always this fact to fall back upon: our beautiful Black darlings are at last happy; with little labour except to the teeth, which surely, in those excellent horse-jaws of theirs, will not fail!⁵¹

He saw oppressed Blacks and Whites as being forced by hunger to labour for their living and feared that an emancipated West Indies would be turned into a ‘Black Ireland’. Further, he likened such a reality to be stronger than a nightmare dream.⁵² He refused to explore the question of African rights. And with a facile consideration, he excused himself from further discussion by saying what ‘a complex’ thing it was.

In 1859, Anthony Trollope joined the chorus of racist writers with the publication The West Indies and the Spanish Main. He, too, showed a preoccupation with ‘the black skin and thick lip’ of the ‘Negro’, drawing a distinction between that strange race of creole ‘Negroes’ born out of Africa and those born within. He derided the black slave for having ‘no language of their own’ and for speaking ‘broken English’ as uneducated foreigners always speak a foreign language. The lack of educational opportunities was the farthest thing from his mind. In fact, his view of the African was that he was capable of the hardest physical work which could be endured ‘probably with less bodily pain than men of any other race’. Nonetheless, he was ‘idle, unambitious as to worldly position, sensual, and content with little’.⁵³ This was his raison d’être for not educating the black man who was forced to eke out the barest existence, yet was seen as being ‘content with little’! Trollope bowed to the deity of profits, emphasising his concern for competition and the labour market. One might well ask, what indeed did the rich planters and merchants (whom Trollope and others have so staunchly defended) give in return for the vast profits they reaped at the expense of the cheap, mercilessly exploited labour of generations of enslaved Blacks?

Friends

The slave trade and Negro slavery had been a matter of conscience for many English philanthropists who sought to educate public opinion about the black slave. The pro-planters and merchants lobby had to face a countervailing force described as ‘The Humanitarian Impulse’. Granville Sharp, one of the guiding lights among the philanthropists gave shape and direction to the humanitarian movement. He was in close contact with the slaves in London and became controversial in dealing with their problems. In 1765, he rescued an ill-used slave Jonathan Strong, who in 1769 was recaptured and jailed. Sharp’s determination in rescuing him again was followed by Strong’s ‘owner’ David Lisle taking legal action against Sharp whose lawyers advised him that because of the Yorke-Talbot opinion of 1729, Lisle had a strong legal case. Not to be outdone, Sharp undertook research to prove that slavery in England was unlawful. In 1769 the result of his research, A Representation of the Injustice … was published. His fight against English slavery was rewarded with the famous judgement on the Somerset case in 1772. Throughout the case, Sharp played a crucial role, directing popular attention to the illegality of slavery in England. This case was used as a platform for political organisation and propaganda in the campaign for abolition and emancipation.

John Wesley also rallied crucial support for the philanthropist cause. In Thoughts Upon Slavery, published in 1774, he attacked British involvement in slave trading. This publication had a huge circulation in the 1780s. It was influential in turning the growing body of Methodists against the slave trade. Moreover, it led to extensive missionary work in the West Indies. His description of the Negro helped to restore a ‘human image’ which played an important part in the campaign of the abolitionist cause.

Another influential campaigner against the evils of slavery was James Ramsay. His decision to do so was the result of a visit to a disease-ridden slave ship and the appalling treatment meted out to the slaves. He took Holy Orders and became a missionary in the West Indies. His involvement with the slaves brought inevitable displeasure to the planters. This experience served him well. On his return to England, Ramsay wrote his Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves. He worked together with William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson and the abolitionist Quakers.

Thomas Clarkson, regarded as the greatest of all the abolitionists, undertook the demanding and dangerous task of gathering evidence (from the slave traders themselves) against the slave trade. As a student at Cambridge, his prize-winning Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species was first published in 1785. This aroused a wave of public indignation against the slave-traders. Further, it evoked sympathy for the slave that was ‘never to be surpassed’. And after Henri Christophe (the King of Haiti) died, his wife and daughter stayed with the Clarksons. Clarkson’s friend, the poet William Wordsworth (who also went to Cambridge), aware of Clarkson’s essay on slavery, recognised both Toussaint L’Ouverture and Clarkson in the following sonnets:

Toussaint, the most unhappy man of men!

Whether the Whistling Rustic tends his plough

Within thy hearing, or thy head be now

Pillowed in some deep dungeon’s earless den;

O miserable Chieftain! Where and when

Wilt thou find patience! Yet die not; do thou

Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow:

Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,

Live and take comfort. Thou hast left behind

Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies;

There’s not a breathing of the common wind

That will forget thee: thou has great allies;

Thy friends are exultations, agonies,

And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.⁵⁴

On the final passing of the Bill for the abolition of the slave trade in March 1807, he wrote:

Clarkson! it was an obstinate hill to climb:

How toilsome – nay, how dire – it was, by thee

Is known; by none, perhaps, so feelingly:

But thou, who starting in thy fervent prime,

Didst first lead forth that enterprise sublime,

Hast heard the constant voice its charge repeat,

Which, out of thy young heart’s oracular seat,

First roused thee – O true yorke-fellow of Time,

Duty’s intrepid liegeman, see, the palm

Is won, and by all Nations shall be worn!

The blood-stained Writing is forever torn;

And thou henceforth will have a good man’s calm,

A great man’s happiness; thy zeal shall find

Repose at length, firm friend of human kind!⁵⁵

In Letters on Slavery, published in 1789, William Dickson challenged the widespread belief in the inferiority of black men. He too had first hand experience of