By Ashley Coates, 17.

http://abolitioninterviews.uk.to
www.youtube.com/ashleyinterviews

In October 2006, the developers of the £500 million redevelopment of Bristol’s central shopping district were forced to change the proposed name for their project, “Merchant’s Quarter”. The word “merchant” was said to have links with the slave trade, so, devoid of any controversial nuclear power stations or mobile phone masts, the city’s busy-bodies got together to make sure that the name was changed. Initially, I thought this was insane, Bristol has been a port for 2000 years, and was only involved in the slave trade from the mid 18th to early 19th centuries. The abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire was approaching its 200th anniversary, which seems a long time ago. Moreover, we are supposed to have moved on from this shameful area of our past and dragging it back up again was not helpful. But the more I looked into it, the more I could see that many people find it genuinely difficult to “let it go”.

The legacy of the slave trade is felt very strongly in Bristol, it is estimated that 500,000 slaves were transported on Bristol’s ships, that’s more than the current population of the city, and needless to say, they were in horrendous conditions. In West Africa, whole communities were uprooted and taken to the Caribbean, many died on the transatlantic crossings. Those that survived were subjected to a life of intolerable hardship, working sugar plantations.

Bristol City Council, understandably, felt that the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade should be commemorated. They organised a series of events to mark the occasion – calling it “Abolition 200”.

The Lord Mayor of Bristol, Peter Abraham wrote to Nelson Mandela to see whether he would want to come to Bristol to lead the proceedings. Whether he would have come or not is a mystery because the Consortium of Black Groups (COBG) also wrote to Mandela urging him not to come to Bristol as the black population had not been properly consulted over Abolition 200. The COBG and other black rights groups protested against Abolition 200. The COBG believes that “Bristol City Council (BCC) has a track record of organising and planning events that promotes the wealth and development of the City without consideration for or involvement of people of Afrikan descent.” They saw this “insensitive” attitude was also being shown in the planning of Abolition 200. Operation Truth 2007 went further, labeling Abolition 200 as “yet another psycho-spiritual attack on Afrikan people”.

I had already done a series of interviews, made to promote the restoration of Bristol’s at risk historic buildings, and, intrigued by the controversy over Abolition 200, I decided to do another series of interviews that would investigate the problem. What follows is a documentation of the interviews I made.

My first interview was with Dr. John Savage, CEO of Business West (the Bristol Chamber of Commerce). He had publically opposed apologising for the slave trade in May 2006. The acceptability of John’s opinion suffered for several reasons. He is in charge of an institution that was around in the 18th century and was involved in the trade. His place of work, a vast Georgian mansion in Abbots Leigh (Leigh Court), was built by a slave trader being called 'Mr Savage' did not help either.

The interview itself did not get off to a good start. A lapse of communication somewhere between myself, John’s secretary and John meant that he did not realise he was going to be filmed. A barrage of questions followed as John tried to protect himself from any misuse of the footage we obtained.
The problem was quickly resolved and the interview got underway. My first question to him concerned something he had said in a local newspaper: “Apologising for the slave trade is like asking the Italians to apologise on behalf of the Romans for killing Boudicca”. He stood by his statement.

John put a major emphasis on the importance of education in ensuring Bristol and the rest of the country understands the significance of the slave trade “it should be giving young people the chance to work out for themselves that we’re just not going to tolerate this kind of behaviour into the future”. He also pointed out that slavery of a different form was taking place taking place elsewhere, “there were millions of ordinary people living in England who were slaves of the industrial revolution”.

I also took the time to ask John about his life, specifically, why he went into business when he had intended to become a priest. “My priest, who was celibate, very high church, convinced my mother that I was called – maybe I was.” “I still believe, and I don’t think I was brainwashed into believing – but I wouldn’t have made a very good celibate priest”. He said the last few words with a very big grin and if you watch the footage, you will see my rather strained attempt to mimic it, we swiftly moved on.

My second interview took place just a day after the first. I discovered Paul Stephenson whilst researching the slavery apology debate. In 1963, Paul Stephenson was a teacher, working in the St. Pauls district. At the time, the Bristol Omnibus Company was operating a “colour bar” that banned Black and Asian people from being bus drivers or conductors. In protest, Mr Stephenson organised the Bristol Bus Boycott. Most people stopped using the buses and the boycott soon made national news. During this time Stephenson spoke to Harold Wilson, the Labour leader who was soon to be Prime Minister. He promised Stephenson that he would bring in legislation to combat racial discrimination. This legislation came to be known as the 1965 Race Relations Act, the first act to directly confront racism in the U.K.

Stephenson, who still lives in Bristol, agreed to meet me at my school. I was given a dingy conference room to conduct the interview in and a good hour was spent before-hand trying to make the room look respectable and getting the lighting and sound sorted. As it happens, Stephenson had just got back from 10 Downing Street the day before. He remembers the 1980’s when Margaret Thatcher accused him of de-stabilising society when he campaigned for the freedom of Nelson Mandela. It was nicely contrasted with what Tony Blair had to say to him – which was only his heart-felt congratulations for all the work he had done to improve race-relations.
“I had my wake-up call when I was young – I knew there were streets I couldn’t go down because kids were picking up bottles and bricks saying ‘nigger’ ‘Blacky’ ‘go home’”. Paul Stephenson has lived with racism all his life and has taken a personal interest in the slave trade. “They demeaned an entire continent of people on the basis of their colour” Stephenson said.

As with John Savage, I talked to Stephenson about his life experiences. He told me about the time he had met Martin Luther King’s wife, Coretta, in London. Her son was getting a bit bored, so Coretta asked Stephenson to look after him. “’I said, do you want to come outside for a while?, he said ‘yeah’. Then I said cheekly to him – would you like to try the policeman’s hat on?, he said ‘yeah, yeah’, so I went up to the policeman and said ‘this is Martin Luther King’s son, he wants to try your hat on’, he said ‘oh no problem, no problem’ and gave him the hat. I’ve often said that he was one of the first to be recruited by the Met.”

Paul Stephenson now uses Bristol’s buses and is “perfectly satisfied” with the service.

Operation Truth 2007 (www.operationtruth2007.co.uk) holds the view that Abolition 200 is “yet another psycho-spiritual attack on Afrikan people”. The main campaigner, Jendayi, told me to meet her on Stapleton Road in Easton. I wasn’t entirely sure where this was, so I typed “Stapleton Road” into Google. The second entry was a page by the Daily Mirror titled “Stapleton Road – most dangerous road in Britain”. The Guardian was more reasonable, labelling Stapleton Road as the fifth most dangerous road in Britain, following the roads that had either caved in or blown up. On further investigation I discovered that, in 2005, Stapleton Road had 915 crimes in seven months, including 3 murders within the space of 8 weeks.

I discussed these findings with Hal, my fellow producer, and together we concluded that we would need a minimum of three well-built individuals to protect us. But we were running out of time and no one was man enough to come with us. So, in full suits, with two cameras, two tripods and balls of steel, we made our way to Stapleton Road by bus. The claims made by the two newspapers seemed a little exaggerated.

I have to be honest, I was expecting Jendayi to be highly argumentative. But she turned out to be a bubbly lady, who laughed a lot and explained her case intelligently. “You have called William Wilberforce ‘William Wilberfarce’”, I began, “you may also have heard of the term ‘Wilberfest’” she responded. What she was implying, quite clearly, is that Abolition 200 has put Wilberforce up on a pedal stool, giving him all the credit for ending the slave trade. “It sets up this idea of European’s being the liberators of the slaves” “they are patting themselves on the back”.

Jendayi’s main accusation is that by not consulting black groups over the planning of Abolition 200, as well as only promoting “palatable abolitionists” , the Council is reinforcing the “mental enslavement” of black people. I found myself agreeing with this view. Abolition 200 condones a version of the slave trade abolition story whereby William Wilberforce, amongst other campaigners, convinced Britain to end slave trade in the Empire. Not properly acknowledging the uprisings/revolutions that took place both at sea and on the plantations is to portray the slaves as helpless individuals who were given, by the grace of Britannia, their freedom.

The final interview Hal and I conducted was with the Lord Mayor of Bristol, Councillor Peter Abraham. Preparing for the Lord Mayor interview was challenging, so much so that we made a short film about it entitled “Preparing for the Lord Mayor interview”. Our first obstacle came when a couple who were waiting on the Mayor got up to look for the coffee and biscuits they had ordered. In the mean time, the butler came in and gave us the coffee and biscuits, which, to the horror of the returning couple, we devoured. The second problem was noise pollution. It seemed that the day we had chosen to interview the Mayor was the day his gardeners wanted to mow the lawn, trim the hedge and re-pave the patio all at the same time. Fortunately, by the time the Mayor arrived, they had stopped and we began the interview.

My first question was “how does the council intend to deal with the legacy of the slave trade in the next few years?” I realised that it was a little demanding of me to ask Bristol City Council to deal with the legacy of the slave trade – which is clearly impossible – but I knew his answer to the question would be interesting. It was. He claimed that he had “never met a slave” and that he “doesn’t see this legacy”. I understand where the Mayor was coming from, he wants Bristol to recognise the slave trade not be burdened by it, but denying that there is a legacy is controversial.


The breadth of opinion between what the Mayor was saying and what Jendayi was saying is vast. Both want a better understanding of what the slave trade means to the various communities they are concerned with. The Mayor, of course, is most concerned with what the slave trade means to Bristol, whereas Jendayi is more concerned with the reconciliation of African people and the descends of slaves. This disagreement was going to happen at some point, Abolition 200 was merely a catalyst. Unlike the Holocaust, Western European nations were not in a situation to condemn slavery and the slave trade out-right. Transatlantic slavery did not just end on a certain date, at which point the Western European nations all decided what they were doing was barbaric, it took a century of campaigning by “humanitarians” to bring an end to it all. Of course, racism and exploitation by the European and American Empire’s continued and that is why there is this clash of opinion. There never was a sudden emancipation of black people by the European nations, so we have never had a coherent attitude to the slavery and the slave trade. Consequently, different social and cultural circles develop different attitudes to this great tragedy and that is unavoidable now. The best we can do is to take the time to learn about what took place for ourselves and come to our own conclusions.

The interviews were shown in a presentation at the Manchester Contact Theatre in May last year and are also online at: www.youtube.com/ashleyinterviews