A Monumental Failure

Not only are Woke convictions deciding which statues stay intact, they are now dictating which statues can be put up.

It has made the news that Landsec, the commercial owner of Portsmouth’s Gunwharf Quays, has rejected plans for a statue honouring the heroic efforts of the sailors of the Royal West Africa Squadron in fighting against the Transatlantic Slave Trade. When asked why, Landsec’s reply was that they had consulted their ‘employee diaspora network’ and said the statue was not in keeping with the company’s inclusive environment and that it would display insensitivity over an emotive topic and a dark part of British history. Well, where does one begin with such nonsense? With some historical facts, of course.

According to David Olusoga’s book Black and British: A Forgotten History, in 1807 the Abolition Act was passed by Parliament which allowed for the confiscation of any British ship caught trading slaves and the fining of slave traders. The punishment of slave traders was increased to that of exile to Australia with the passing of the Slave Trade Felony Act in 1811. In the ensuing years, Britain agreed treaties with other nations giving Britain the right to stop and search their ships if they were suspected of trading slaves. To enforce these measures, the Royal West Africa Squadron was established, and it continued to operate until 1860 when the transatlantic slave trade collapsed because of the North’s victory in the American Civil War. It is Olusoga’s opinion that this humanitarian effort is a largely forgotten part of Anglo-African relations. All the more reason then, I say, for a statue to be erected to the Squadron.

Nigel Biggar, the author of Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning, states that between 1807 and 1860, the Squadron confiscated about 1,600 slave-ships and liberated 150,000 African slaves. Two thousand sailors lost their lives in the process, mainly to disease and battles with armed slave ships. Why should these men who gave their lives for a great good not be recognised?

Economic historian David Eltis calculates that the Squadron and other anti-slave trade activities cost British taxpayers at least £250,000 per annum which in today’s money is billions. He concludes that the British spent almost as much attempting to suppress slave trading as they received when they themselves were trading slaves. The political scientists Chaim Kaufmann and Robert Pape argue that Britain’s efforts to obstruct the Atlantic slave trade was the most expensive international moral campaign of modern history. Those who are demanding today that Britain pays millions if not billions in compensation to descendants of slaves never mention these facts and when confronted by them, conveniently ignore them. Let us be clear: Britain made an enormous financial sacrifice to end the transatlantic slave trade and at a time when it could ill afford to do so, as it had already spent great sums of money on defending itself and its allies against Napoleon. There is therefore absolutely no need to pay compensation.

When Landsec claims a statue would contradict its policy of inclusion, they fail to see that banning slave trading and then enforcing that ban was an inclusive act, for it recognised that those victimised as slaves were humans and therefore worthy of being treated with dignity. Some of the Squadron’s sailors were former slaves. Surely multi-ethnic crews are inclusive. Landsec are right to say that the statue would be a reminder of the Atlantic slave trade, but its overriding focus would be on a particularly good part of British history when most British people and their government repented of slave trading and then did something about it.

If you want to support the campaign for a statue to the Squadron’s sailors to be built, follow this link.

Penny Mordaunt likes to remind us that she was once commissioned in the Royal Navy Reserve. She even cosplayed Britannia who once ruled the waves at Charles III’s coronation. She also is the MP for Portsmouth North. If you are one of her constituents, you might consider writing to her about this matter. It is high time the Tories took on properly the Left’s identity politics.

It is high time too that British history ceases to be presented exclusively as a narrative of evil and is taught, like all nations’ histories should be, as the mixture of the good and bad that it is.

Peter Harris is the author of two books, The Rage Against the Light: Why Christopher Hitchens Was Wrong (2019) and Do You Believe It? A Guide to a Reasonable Christian Faith (2020).

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