Thoughts on Slavery
The extract below from THE SECOND CASE BOOK OF IRENE ADLER by San Cassimally (available on Amazon, published with the author’s permission) refers to a little-known consequence of emancipation. Irene Adler and her like-minded friends at the Club des As spend a Sunday afternoon in Hyde Park.
A stroll in Hyde Park was planned for Sunday of the following week. It was more than a year since we were last at Speaker’s Corner, once a regular haunt of ours.
On that late Spring Sunday, in the hope of brilliant sunshine, we scrambled into three hansom cabs loaded with baskets of the finest wines and more solid epicurean delights and made for that oasis of free speech in the middle of London. Of course the time will come when investors and speculators will find a way of urging their friends in parliament to pass laws enabling its sale for the construction of obscene mansions upon it, and put fences around to exclude the general public. For the time being, however, it belongs to us, and we mean to enjoy our rights. I am already talking like one of the speakers on their soap-boxes.
We spread our mats under an oak which leant a bit to one side, reminding us of a stooping fat man. ‘Stooping woman,’ challenged Bartola, who never left a controversy unturned. Happily the clouds kept away from the peerless blue sky most of the time. That we had a great time was not unusual and does not deserve dwelling upon.
Naturally we then made our way to Speakers’ Corner. This is obviously one of the features of our capital which we value greatly. People are allowed to stand on a soap box and air their views, idiosyncratic as well as downright idiotic, idealistic or fanciful, earnest and intense, but often light-hearted. Most people go there for fun, as many of the speakers are sharp-witted and often have their audience in stitches. If an enterprising impresario was willing to take the chance and offer a platform to some of these orators, he would be making good money for himself and them. However, it is not all entertainment. Every now and then someone would broach a topic of great significance from which landmark ideas sprouted. On that Sunday, the man we listened to kept us enthralled by what he was expounding. He said his name was Ibrahima Hampaté Ba and that his roots were in Casamance in Senegal.
Although at the Club we keep ourselves informed of the important issues of the time, we were stunned when we realised that our knowledge on the particular topic was pretty shallow. The orator was a tall thin individual, and against the sun, one did not immediately notice that he was of mixed origin. He appeared white, but he had curly reddish hair. He spoke falteringly, but with obvious passion. His theme was the outrageous compensations still being paid to slave owners after the abolition of that obscene practice. Many people gathering around the self-styled fighters for justice have little interest in the issues under discussion, and are simply after entertainment. Bartola drew my attention to a man with the shape of a boxer taking down notes.
‘Must be a reporter from The Times,’ she said. I pursed my lips but did not disabuse her, keeping my strong suspicion of the fellow being a police spy to myself.
Many orators set out to present their case wrapped in humour, causing people to laugh with them, whilst others are so intense and fanatical that their arguments and presentation are nothing short of ludicrous, and their audience end up laughing at them. Heckling is not reserved for people with outrageous views — it is a sport indulged by everybody, usually for fun. The young orator did not attempt to make people laugh, nor was he someone you could easily laugh at. Many people challenged him, some aggressively, but he responded with facts, keeping his anger in check.
‘Why,’ someone asked, ‘is it right to sell your house or furniture, but wrong to expect payment when you free a slave for which you paid good money?’
‘Hear! Hear!’ some people shouted.
‘Good question,’ conceded the speaker. ‘In this belief lies the heart of the problem. A cupboard or a bed is an object, but a human being is God’s creature.’ Two or three people applauded, but many more sneered.
‘My own view is that people who bought and sold human beings, rather than receiving government handouts, should pay big fines for what they did, or even be sent to prison,’ the expounder said calmly. ‘Or, in this Christian land, maybe they should be made to do penance, by being paraded in stocks outside their parish churches.’
‘Ha!’ went one stout man with twirling whiskers dispassionately, ‘what laws did they break? Pray inform me. I’ll grant you that now it is illegal, but allow me to point out that when these transactions took place, it was perfectly legal to buy and sell Blacks.’
As I was observing the reaction of the man on the soap box very closely, I noticed how hard he was trying to hide his anger, but he nodded and spoke in a composed voice.
‘Sir, and ladies and gentlemen, you are right to say that it was considered legal to trade in human beings. I’ll grant you that, but I beg your indulgence in letting me point out to you some facts of which you may not be aware.’
‘Go back to the jungle,’ one young man mocked laughingly, but Bartola turned on him, and in a loud voice, shouted, ‘If you don’t want to hear the man’s views, then you should go back … to your home.’
Some people turned round to look at her, but although they disapproved of a woman participating in the dialogue, perhaps at this Mecca of free speech they felt a bit of admiration for her.
‘Thank you ma’am,’ the orator continued, ‘now just imagine a black family outside their hut on a Sunday afternoon, the woman pounding yam with a baby on her back and three others playing under a palm tree, and a band of armed Arabs burst in brandishing pistols and sabres. The husband puts up a fight to defend his family, but he only has a stick and ends up getting shot. Or decapitated! Then his wife and children are dragged away to the ships waiting in the cove, to be taken to the Americas. Would you say that no crime was committed by the people who ended up buying these children? In this country there is a law against buying stolen property, isn’t it worse to buy property obtained by murder, kidnapping and forcible eviction? Would you say that no crime was committed when the widow is sold to some drunken sugar cane plantation owner who rapes her the same night? This is just one among a million examples.’
It was quite striking how subdued the audience had become at that point. Many despaired of getting the few laughs they were expecting, and walked away. The stout man with the twirling moustache looked dazed and I caught him nodding. I noticed that Bartola had tears in her eyes. There were fewer than twenty people left. The orator produced a sheet of paper and reading from it went on.
‘I have here a list of the beneficiaries of our government’s largesse. I won’t read it all out, but did you know that Mr James Blair received a compensation of ￡83,530? You could buy a whole row of houses on the Edgware Road from Marble Arch to George Street for that. And that was not the record. The Prime Minister’s father, Mr John Gladstone ended up with ￡106,786. He no doubt bought half of Edinburgh city with this windfall. That was not the record. Not even Mr Douglas McGarel Hogg’s ￡130,000 constitutes a record. Altogether, a total of ￡20 million was paid to 3000 slave owners. I will let you imagine to what use that money could have been put.’
I noticed some people nodding. Our prolocutor had not finished yet. He took a deep breath.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, let us assume, for the sake of argument, that paying compensation to those people was something entrenched in the laws of this country. But who were the real victims of this, the biggest man-made tragedy in the world? How much was paid to the true victims of this obscene crime against humanity?’
