Dealing with the legacy of the slave trade

Thurayya Cahill

This call for the need for more education was echoed by Thurayya Cahill from The Union of African and African-Caribbean Organisations locally in Stoke-on-Trent. She re-iterated that the way she looks at it is educational. "It's important that people understand slavery as it is now and look at where we move on to from here. "

I asked her what she thought could be done to repair the damage caused by the slave trade."We can never go back, but we need to look at the present issues now, at the black people now. To repair the damage we need to be treated with respect and dignity. Don't let us feel left out of anything a lot of us are citizens here!"

She continued, "If you look at the statistics, in the mental health field for instance a lot of black people are in mental institutions, this is not the case in Africa or Jamaica we're perfectly sane. So let us look at the systems and make them right. It's about time we were taken seriously. We're intelligent professional people and need to be treated fairly. We're very multi cultural in Britain and it's important that we move forward together now."

"What I'd like to see is employment, in Stoke-On-Trent I'd like to see more black people employed in the city councils, in the NHS, in all organisations. This would go some way in solving some issues. I'd like to see our black organisations funded properly, I'd like to see more of our people in colleges. I'd like to see policies and procedures of all organisations reflecting multi culturalism and how they work equally with different ethnic groups. Not plans on the shelf, but how are they implemented? I'd like to go to the city council and be greeted with something that I can associate with as a black person, like pictures. This is extremely important as you have a lot of people feeling extremely isolated and ignored. Sometimes we're included but we don't participate so we need to look at ourselves too. It's important not to blame anybody."

"The most important thing is we have to understand the history to understand the now and to come up with plans for the future."

And perhaps that is really where we all have to begin, with education.

As the march commemorated Josiah Wedgewoods legacy of producing the first and most identifiable image of the 18th century abolitionist movement of the kneeling African man with the words 'Am I not a man and a brother', I asked Lloyd Cooke, the organiser of the Stoke leg of the march whether people in Stoke-on-Trent were aware of this legacy and whether it was taught in the schools and he confirmed my thoughts, "I think people aren't aware of the legacy, I think it's well known internationally and nationally but it's one of those gems that those of us born and bred here aren't aware of."

So whether it's the positive legacy of the abolitionist movement or the painful legacy of the slave trade on the African and African Caribbean descendents it seems education is still a vital need to give a strong voice to all communities.

For me, the lasting impression of the day is the contrast of the woman from Trentham, unaware of the history of the slave trade and seemingly uninterested in something happening today relating to it, with a Jamaican gentleman who at the close of the march, released the white people from the chains and yokes. Visibly moved he told me afterwards, "It really moves me, it's brought tears to my eyes and it reminds me of stories my grandmother told me that her parents and grandparents had told her passed from generation to generation. And the suffering that people had gone through in those days and they had no choice and no way of getting out of it and it's brought tears to my eyes and I'm very emotional about it."

If we're ever to begin to deal with the effects still seen in our society today of the slave trade, surely we must start by caring about what our neighbour cares about and taking on board their pain and history and David Potts is doing just that.