On Sunday we reported on a story which had appeared in the London Guardian relating to the 1823 Demerara rising. Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy of the Labour Party asked the British government to pardon 70 men convicted for their part in the revolt. He was reported as saying that the uprising represented a “seminal moment” in the history of slave resistance, because although it was unsuccessful at the time, it played a role in the abolition of slavery ten years later in 1833.
In his letter Mr Lammy said that exercising the royal prerogative of mercy to grant pardons to those involved in the rising would be “a significant step in Britain’s acknowledgement of its role in the history of slavery”. He singled out for especial attention Jack Gladstone, who was effectively the leader of the action and the London Missionary Society’s Rev John Smith, both of whom had their sentences commuted. It might be added that the first received his commutation from the Governor for political reasons, and the second was given a reprieve by George IV with the condition he was to be deported. However, he died in prison of tuberculosis before it arrived.
The letter identified 73 people who were tried by court martial, 70 of whom, it said, were found guilty. It might be mentioned that there were many others who were given perfunctory court martials on the plantations and were executed before the authorities decided to take others down the East Coast to Georgetown and try them there. As is well known, those who received death sentences were hanged somewhere on the Parade Ground, which in those days included what is now the Promenade Gardens.
John Smith did not have a part to play in the uprising per se, contrary to what his accusers maintained, although he did have prior knowledge of it at some level. He was, it is true, an abolitionist by persuasion, although he confined his teaching in the Bethel Chapel on Le Resouvenir where he was based to religious matters. Owing to the fact that he was white and had been condemned to death, his case became a cause célèbre in the UK, and a motion was brought in Parliament in 1824 for him to be given a posthumous pardon, but it was defeated. It provided the occasion for a famous – and prolix − speech by Lord Brougham, which played a part, along with other developments, in resuscitating the abolitionist movement.
The Guardian reported that Mr Lammy had spoken before on the subject of slavery’s legacy and its effects on black Britons, and his letter was founded on information about the Demerara rising contained in the book White Debt… by Thomas Harding. Secretary of State for Justice Dominic Raab was not about to acknowledge the request had any validity. According to the daily he said that since Guyana became independent in 1966 and then a republic in 1970 it would be for the President of Guyana to grant such pardons. “Shocking”, was Mr Harding’s response to this.
He was quoted as going on to say: “Britain was responsible for this gross miscarriage of justice, not Guyana, and the British government should be the one to pardon those found guilty. The men and women who took part in the Demerara uprising of 1823 were attempting to abolish British slavery.” This, of course, is true, but while Mr Raab’s reply is nonsensical it might not be as ‘shocking’ as Mr Harding suggests.
A review of his book, also published in the Guardian, has the writer asking, “why didn’t I know about this? Why are we so familiar (as Harding himself observes) with the drawl of the American slaveowner and the caricatures of slavery in movies such as Django Unchained, but not with the large cast of British characters?” The reviewer answers his own question by saying that it is those characters who wrote British history. “And through slavery, they amassed such wealth and influence that, like John Gladstone, the largest slave ‘owner’ in Demerara and a fierce anti-abolitionist, they managed to launch themselves from relatively humble beginnings into the ranks of landed gentry and political aristocracy.” The classic example of this is John Gladstone, father of British Prime Minister William Gladstone.
That is true for the period up to the first half of the twentieth century, but thereafter West Indian historiography comes into its own, beginning with Eric Williams’s remarkable work, Capitalism and Slavery published originally in 1944. Since then the number of publications on British (and European) slavery and related topics has been substantial. And these are not written by authors who see the history of the region through the lenses of the UK’s self-serving vision of being a leading abolitionist state; they emerge from a West Indian perspective.
There is too the Association of Caribbean Historians, which has been holding regular meetings for decades, and producing academic papers for publication in its journal. Issues connected to slavery and indentureship have been taught in Caribbean schools for decades, and while the quality of some of that teaching sometimes may be in question, the topics themselves are not alien to children. Mr Lammy, if he wants to, could have recourse to a wealth of material on British slavery, in addition to which he could expand his interests in revolts to include those in Antigua in 1736, or Jamaica in 1760-1 and 1831, or Barbados in 1816, to cite some of the major ones. There is enough written material available on all of them.
Now it is true that far less has been written on Guyana than on Jamaica or Barbados, say, but even on 1823, work has been done. Dr Winston McGowan produced a long paper on 1823 which appeared in a work on African-Guyanese history in 1998 and which was republished in 2009, while the Brazilian historian Emilia Viotti da Costa had a substantial book on the uprising published in 1994. Dr McGowan’s writing had only regional circulation, and as is clear, regional publications do not filter through to the consciousness of the UK reading public. That said, Dr Viotti da Costa’s work was published by Oxford University Press, but if it was reviewed in Britain – and it may not have been – no-one seems to have taken much notice.
Perhaps it is a case that everything has its time, and we are only now entering an era where the matter of Britain’s role in slavery is being explored at a more national level, as opposed to being restricted to discussions in limited academic circles. Thirty years ago nobody wanted to know, but now statues of personalities with a dubious past are being heaved into Bristol harbour.
Which brings us back to the question of pardons for those who were convicted by court martial following the 1823 rising. Aside from the fact that this tally could be expanded to include an enormous number of enslaved people over the entire period of slavery, there is a more fundamental question to ask. Why should the Oppressor (or his historical descendants) give pardons to the Oppressed? Isn’t that to get everything the wrong way around? If there is any case for a pardon, isn’t it the Oppressor above all others who should be asking for it? (After the requisite mea culpas have been said, of course, which so far they haven’t.)
It is not a matter of whether the enslaved were wrongfully convicted; it is that they were victims of a morally reprehensible system which they sought to change, and which even at the time many in Britain condemned. To give an extreme analogy: would anyone expect the modern German government to issue a pardon to Dietrich Bonhoeffer who following a court martial was executed for his association with a plot against Hitler?
