It was interesting to see the comment attributed to Dr Nick Draper that “establishing the connections between slave owners and their impact on British society would not have been possible even a couple of decades ago...But technology has allowed historians to mine millions of advanced records” (“From Austen to Beatrice and Eugenie... the long reach of UK slave owning families”, News).
This statement highlights the “debt” owed by contemporary historians to Dr Eric Williams, the former prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago and a historian, whose classic text, Capitalism and Slavery, researched and published in 1944, provides the template for the UCL research database.
More recently, African diaspora scholars such as Professor Robert Beckford with the 2005 Channel 4 documentary The Empire Pays Back, and Professor Sir Hilary Beckles Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide (2013) have sought to bring these important issues to the attention of a wider public, within and beyond academia.
The economist Thomas Piketty, discussing the subject of slavery, abolition and compensation paid to slaveowners, has called for “reparations through transparency”.
Nigel Carter
Oxford
If Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie have slave-trading ancestors, it’s very likely I have too. Going back only nine generations, I have at least 1,024 ancestors. Who knows that one of them wasn’t a slave trader?
The point about slavery is that it was common throughout the world throughout history. As far as I know, the British were the first to abolish it anywhere, ever.
Not merely did the Europeans practise slavery but so did the Africans, the Chinese and the native Americans, and everybody else too. The reason why Europeans went to Africa for slaves was because that was where they could buy them, ready-enslaved.
Laurence Carter
Farnham
Surrey
A new deal for centrist voters?
I feel sad that the Labour party, as the standard bearer of centre-left progressive political thinking, is not providing the opposition and scrutiny our parliamentary democracy needs to function correctly (Editorial).
When will the party again realise it’s the economy most voters think about before casting their votes? I think these voters want an aspirational, growing economy as well as to move forward with a social justice agenda. And it’s always winning the centre ground of British politics that secures power. If the Labour party cannot or will not provide this, then another new centre-left party will need to be created. Maybe similar to Nouvelle Donne (New Deal) in France?
Stephen Agar
Chalfont St Peter
Buckinghamshire
Reframing sexism in art
Whereas Helen Frankenthaler “did her own thing and developed her own techniques”, Tiffany Jenkins writes, the male abstract expressionists created art “tremendous and of its time...an expression of individual freedom”. (“Art show too male? At times, this cry makes no sense”, Comment).
According to Jenkins, of these original artists, only those of the male gender should have their work exhibited in major retrospectives of their historical period.
To insist on the inclusion of women artists in our museums is not to disregard the achievements of great artists, as she suggests, but to create an opportunity to understand the greatness of artists dismissed in their own time.
Having to witness 1950s US sexism replayed in the Royal Academy is bad enough, without seeing it replicated in the pages of the Observer.
Maura Reilly, Helena Reckitt, Lara Perry on behalf of fCU, Feminist Curators United
University of Brighton
Weighing into air travel angst
Well said, Barbara Ellen! (“Whingers should try self-control too”, Comment). I once sat between a grossly obese passenger and a compulsive nail-biter on a flight between St Louis and Orlando, for three hours. We landed. At the baggage carrousel, several fellow passengers told me I should have complained. I said that, in the scale of a lifetime, three uncomfortable hours were as nothing compared with how tough life must be for a 25st man and someone who found air travel terrifying. I was berated by the sympathisers for my ingratitude.
Margaret Waddy
Cambridge
No, Barbara Ellen. If I buy a long-haul ticket, I expect to have bought a whole seat for the whole flight, not have to share it, without consultation or agreement, with a stranger who overflows into it.
Some years ago, on a flight from Minneapolis to Seattle, I was squashed between two clinically obese women whose huge arms, elbows and thighs invaded so much of my seat space they left me unable to move enough even to eat my meal. Today, I would refuse to take the seat.
People know if they are obese and it is they, not their unknowing and unlucky fellow passengers, who should be penalised for taking more than the space they have paid for.
Anne Johns
Derby
