CH and slavery

[rockfreak]

Come on guys! Has no-one seen the Guardian's exposure of CH benefitting from slavery? Connections with Edward Colston? Dear oh dear! Are we all Daily Mail readers? Doesn't anyone read a proper newspaper?

[Foureyes]

Sorry, but I don't read newspapers which publish anti-semitic cartoons.
David

[dsm]

A bit radical. Do you support schools with a history of slave money and child molesting? I don't think you should tar the school for the actions of a tiny minority or boycott a newspaper for letting one cartoon slip through the net (it was later removed with an apology).

[Straz]

Here's a link to the relevant Guardian article:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... y-revealed

[scrub]

Sorry, but I don't read newspapers which publish anti-semitic cartoons.
David

So in other words, you don't read newspapers.

As for the original point, after reading the article, I think that CH appeared to be one of the very few schools actually willing to acknowledge receiving funding and bursaries from slave traders/companies and wanting to find a way to properly assess it with hints towards trying to find some way to address it.
It doesn't make it right or excuse anything, but they do at least seem to be making the appearance of doing something rather than just shrugging and saying "eh, it happened in the past" and sweeping anything to do with it under the carpet with everything else. It's not perfect, and I have no idea what an ideal response to this would be, but they appear to be doing better than most other institutions. I understand this is an extremely low bar.

[80s90s]

Edward Colston went to CH, as I understand it, as well as being a governor and benefactor.

It's odd how most of that article is essentially about CH, where as it points out, the 'Big Five' - Eton, Harrow, Charterhouse, Winchester and Westminster - all also have extensive financial links to slavery. As do countless other institutions, to be honest. The money from that appalling episode in history is forever entwined in the British establishment.

I did have one thought about it. A large percentage of the demographic make-up of CH is now BAME, with a great number of pupils of Afro-Caribbean heritage. Perhaps continuing to educate black pupils that would otherwise be unable to afford a public school education is ultimately the best use of some ancient financial foundations that were built from the misery of black Africans.

As for the statues, did anyone ever care about them in the first place? Or know who they were? Just take them down and put them in the museum. Let people learn about them there.

[rockfreak]

This anti-semitism thing is a bit of a minefield. While in no way wanting to racially profile people (except in jest) it is a fact that the Jews do seem to have a strong ethnicity which people seem to notice (unlike for instance the Belgians, the Sudanese, or indeed the English).There's an old saying that the Jews are just like the rest of us - only more so. Jews always say that they tell the best Jewish jokes. Camille Paglia said that she thought Barbra Streisand was right to resist having a nose job because she would have lost that strong ethnicity which is such a part of her appeal. And Victoria Coren, writing her column in The Observer one week, said: "OK, I'm Jewish, I have a big nose" (she doesn't actually), but went on to say that, almost worse than anti-semites, were people like Julie Birchill who were always banging on about how many wonderful people the Jews had produced. And she added that with friends like Julie Birchill do we really need enemies.

[MrEd]

If rockfreak went to CH, he benefitted from slavery. So he should pay reparations.

Sell your possessions, hereditaments and worldly goods and enter a monastery in penance.

We will also have better forum into the bargain.

[sejintenej]

Come on guys! Has no-one seen the Guardian's exposure of CH benefitting from slavery? Connections with Edward Colston? Dear oh dear! Are we all Daily Mail readers? Doesn't anyone read a proper newspaper?

Sorry. Local newsagent does not stock The Red Fl ag

[jhopgood]

I did have one thought about it. A large percentage of the demographic make-up of CH is now BAME, with a great number of pupils of Afro-Caribbean heritage. Perhaps continuing to educate black pupils that would otherwise be unable to afford a public school education is ultimately the best use of some ancient financial foundations that were built from the misery of black Africans.

I had the same thought but when I mentioned it to my son, he advised me not to go that route as it would be badly interpreted.
You have said it much more eloquently than I would have.
I also asked him how far back it was reasonable to go to apologise and rectify the errors of our ancestors. It seems to me that if you are continually looking back you will never move forward.

[Pe.A]

Edward Colston went to CH, as I understand it, as well as being a governor and benefactor.

It's odd how most of that article is essentially about CH, where as it points out, the 'Big Five' - Eton, Harrow, Charterhouse, Winchester and Westminster - all also have extensive financial links to slavery. As do countless other institutions, to be honest. The money from that appalling episode in history is forever entwined in the British establishment.

I did have one thought about it. A large percentage of the demographic make-up of CH is now BAME, with a great number of pupils of Afro-Caribbean heritage. Perhaps continuing to educate black pupils that would otherwise be unable to afford a public school education is ultimately the best use of some ancient financial foundations that were built from the misery of black Africans.

As for the statues, did anyone ever care about them in the first place? Or know who they were? Just take them down and put them in the museum. Let people learn about them there.

So take down anything to do with Charles II who commissioned the Royal African Company...? What strikes me about this furore is how uninformed people are about world history. Just saying...

[Pe.A]

I did have one thought about it. A large percentage of the demographic make-up of CH is now BAME, with a great number of pupils of Afro-Caribbean heritage. Perhaps continuing to educate black pupils that would otherwise be unable to afford a public school education is ultimately the best use of some ancient financial foundations that were built from the misery of black Africans.

I had the same thought but when I mentioned it to my son, he advised me not to go that route as it would be badly interpreted.
You have said it much more eloquently than I would have.
I also asked him how far back it was reasonable to go to apologise and rectify the errors of our ancestors. It seems to me that if you are continually looking back you will never move forward.

Precisely. Thing is that the political states which existed in Western Europe from 1500 - 1900 still exist today, so there's apparent accountability. Not really so in other parts of the world, apart from Morocco and Oman...

[sejintenej]

I had the same thought but when I mentioned it to my son, he advised me not to go that route as it would be badly interpreted.
You have said it much more eloquently than I would have.
I also asked him how far back it was reasonable to go to apologise and rectify the errors of our ancestors. It seems to me that if you are continually looking back you will never move forward.

agree; otherwise we would be having a go at Julius Caesar, William of Normandy (and the Danes whose descendants begat him) ad infinitum

[loringa]

Most of the current debate on slavery seems to me to be somewhat misunderstanding of history. Clearly the whole concept is utterly appalling and unacceptable to us but the simple fact remains that ever since humanity ceased to be hunters and gatherers and started to settle down, dominant forces have subjugated and enslaved their less dominant neighbours. This goes back as far as we have any sorts of records and is one of the things that every empire or dominant kingdom has in common. it doesn't matter whether the civilisation was Chinese, Persian, Greek, Roman, Islamic, Mongol, Mughal, Ottoman, Spanish, Portuguese, Abyssinian, French or British, all kept slaves. We quite rightly decried Apartheid in South Africa but the Africans who were so badly treated and discriminated against had only been there since they displaced, subjugated and destroyed the indigenous Khoisan people. In short, the strong have always dominated the weak and, in so doing, slavery has been central to much of that domination.

The difference with the British Empire (and revolutionary France until Napoleon) was that our forebears actually put a stop to it, not something that any other civilisation had really ever done. In the case of the British Empire, not only did we ban the slave trade and later on ban slavery (the two were not sadly concurrent), we then set about enforcing the ban with a permanent Royal navy presence off west Africa from, I think, 1801. Some may say it was all too little too late but our modern world is the first where slavery is almost (not entirely) universally illegal. The reason for this is as much down to what was decided in this country, and then enforced. As a nation, particularly post-Brexit, we are as irrelevant to the rest of the world as we have ever been but there is much in our past of which to be proud and I am not sure there is anything to be gained from beating ourselves up about whether Edward Colston's endowments came from the profits of slavery. So were almost everyone else's one way or another, in this country and everywhere else in the world.

I would not be against some form of reparation for slavery from the West though one must ask how far back does one go. It would, for example, completely beggar Spain to go even a small way to compensation Central and South American countries for their depredations. The problem is that what are now the nations of Africa were hugely complicit in, and profited from, the Slave Trade. With the exception of the returned slave colonies of Liberia and Sierra Leone, the descendants of those who sold their neighbours into slavery are often those in power today. Who would you pay reparations to? Improving the prospects of British citizens of Afro Caribbean origin as CH is doing is probably the most appropriate and valuable thing we can do.

[JustRob]

It is a well known principle in statistics that selection results in nonsensically biased conclusions. While it may be undeniable that CH benefitted from wealth acquired through slavery the question that must be posed by the investigation into the finances of independent schools is whether that benefit was disproportionate to the benefits of slavery to the rest of British society and if so why. In particular to assess that it would be necessary also to investigate the sources of finance for state run schools, the alternative to independent schools, which would most likely unearth an even larger bag of worms if the historical sources of all such wealth were to be traced. In fact in statistical terms the investigation would have to focus not on the financing of independent schools or even schools at all but instead on the benefits that Britain gained overall from slavery in every respect.

It is hardly surprising that those who gained financially from slavery would choose to settle their consciences at some stage by donating large portions of their wealth to good and charitable causes such as CH. The problem now is that CH is being treated as an independent school no different from any other such whereas it has always been a charitable institution in reality, but a government short of solutions to the country's real problems does not have the luxury of facing up to the long established reality and is forced to create its own version of it to justify its behaviour.

What exactly should people do with their ill-gotten wealth if giving it to charity simply tars that charity with the same brush as them? For example, how big a beneficiary of slavery was the Church of England or Salvation Army or any other well respected pillar of our society?

Henry VIII solved his financial problems by taking over the wealth of the Catholic Church but in so doing also had to create alternative welfare organisations such as CH to replace its benevolent activities. Equally the present day apparent wealth of CH is an illusion and it could not be acquired by the state without also acquiring the social responsibilities that go with it. The result would be that that wealth would be instantly dissipated without any evident improvement in society as a consequence but merely a slight blip in government accounts. It would be just like cutting down vast extents of the rain forest merely to discover that the ground beneath is barely fertile as all the natural wealth was in the destroyed forest itself.