Implications for reparations

By Devon Dick

DR DAIVE Dunkley, University of the West Indies (UWI) lecturer, in response to my article 'Young Historians' challenge states, "While a more thorough search of contemporary documents would have produced a table with no dashes, Rev Dick's book surely does not provide such data. As for the Native Baptist preachers, I required figures for specific dates, 1831 and 1841."

However, a more thorough review of Table 4 in my book The Cross and the Machete would show that there were 20 preachers/pastors and the end note for that data states "This related to 1841" (235). Additionally, there were no native Baptist pastors/preachers in 1831.

More important, Dunkley states, "I was not wrong in stating that 'slavery was not practised in England'." There is a difference between practice and presence.

However, the nature of the beast called slavery means that there can be no difference between presence of the enslaved persons in England and the practice of slavery. Slavery is about being owned. Instructively, one definition states "Slavery is the practice of owning slaves." Therefore, it does not matter whether the enslaved in England were asked to stand or sit down only; it would mean that slavery was practised in England. In any case, after 1772, newspaper advertisements showed enslaved persons being bought and sold in England.

Furthermore, Dunkley states, "As with all of the other cases over slavery in England, the Somerset case in 1772 did not abolish the presence of slaves on English soil. Nevertheless, it did conclude with a popular judgment by Mansfield that "the black must be discharged". The discharge is a reference to James Somerset only, NOT the enslaved in general. A careful reading of the transcript of the Mansfield judgment shows he dealt with a narrow issue based on the fact that no master has ever been allowed in England to take an enslaved person against his will to be sold abroad because he deserted from his service.

FALSE IMPRESSION CORRECTED

Many leading historians have written on the Somerset case. In the 1940s, Eric Williams, later to become prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, in his classic book Capitalism and Slavery corrected the false impression that the Mansfield judgment declared slavery illegal in England (45-46). F. O. Shyllon, Black Slaves in Britain (1974), James Oldham, The Mansfield Manuscripts and the growth of English Law in the Eighteenth Century (1992) and James WalvinBlack Ivory: A History of British Slavery (1993) all contend that the case ruling decided that the enslaved Somerset could not be forcibly removed from England to Jamaica. Shyllon also claimed that the man canonised for emancipating the enslaved was a slave owner for 21 years after the Somerset ruling (234). From way back in 1992, Oldham said, "Popular history credits Lord Mansfield with freeing the slaves in England through the decision in the Somerset case. That he did not free the slaves is by now agreed and is a point featured in modern scholarship on slavery" (1221).

Furthermore, in 1827, Lord Stowell ruled in the High Court of Admiralty, in the case of the enslaved Grace Jones, that any enslaved brought into England did not become free by that fact alone (Shyllon ix).

Today at 6:00 p.m. at the UWI Mona campus, Professor Verene Shepherd is co-hostess of the launch of Professor Hilary Beckles' book, Britain's Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Genocide. It would be good to hear their views on the implications for reparations, with the premise that "Slavery was not practised in England" and "The black must be discharged."

Rev Devon Dick, PhD, is pastor of the Boulevard Baptist Church in St Andrew. He is author of The Cross and the Machete, and From Rebellion to Riot. Send comments to columns@gleanerjm.com