<
https://www.theguardian.com/news/commentisfree/2023/mar/28/how-our-founders-links-to-slavery-change-the-guardian-today>
"I remember the moment. We were meeting the historians who had been
commissioned by the Scott Trust, which owns the
Guardian, to look into our
past. The Black Lives Matter movement had put unprecedented focus on racism in
our societies, and it had inspired the
Guardian to look at itself. Dr
Cassandra Gooptar, an irrepressible expert on the history of enslaved peoples,
had done some early work, and the evidence was inescapable: there was no doubt
that the
Guardian was founded with money partly derived from slavery, and the
links were extensive. David Olusoga, one of Britain’s top historians who
happens to sit on the Scott Trust, was not surprised; this history had, in many
ways, been hiding in plain sight. As editor-in-chief of the
Guardian, I felt
sick to my stomach.
It is a deeply uneasy feeling to know that one of my predecessors, the
Guardian’s founding editor, John Edward Taylor, derived much of his wealth
from Manchester’s cotton industry, an industry that relied on firms such as
Taylor’s trading with cotton plantations in the Americas that had enslaved
millions of Black people forcibly transported from Africa. The great American
abolitionist Frederick Douglass made the connection plain: “The price of human
flesh on the Mississippi was regulated by the price of cotton in Manchester.”
The
Manchester Guardian was founded in 1821 in the aftermath of the Peterloo
massacre, with an inspiring mission arguing for the right of working people to
have parliamentary representation and for the expansion of education to the
poor. It was in favour of the abolition of slavery.
Yet Taylor, and most of those who lent him money to found the
Guardian,
profited from cotton, a global industry that was reliant on the systematic
enslavement of millions. One of Taylor’s backers was not only a cotton merchant
but also co-owner of a sugar plantation in Jamaica where 122 people were
enslaved. It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that these interests may have
influenced the paper’s editorial policy. In 1833, when the enslavers demanded a
huge payout for giving up their human “property”, a
Guardian editorial
supported them, arguing: “We are convinced, that no plan for the abolition of
slavery could have been worthy … which was not based on the great principles of
justice to the planter [
that is, the enslaver] as well as to the slave.”
Justice to the planter meant a share in a massive £20m gifted by the state;
justice to the enslaved meant only freedom, with not a penny in compensation.
These facts, laid out plainly in the
Legacies of Enslavement report,
published by the Scott Trust today, are horrifying. “Different times” is no
excuse for chattel slavery, a crime against humanity."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
