the ghosts of slavery
Mikki points out that anyone who is familiar with the horrors of the Industrial Revolution and the earlier enslavement of hundreds of thousands of innocent poor people from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales -- who, before convict transportation and black slavery, were kidnapped, sold and shipped in chains to the New World colonies to be worked as slaves in perpetuity from the early 1600s to the early 1700s -- knows that poverty and overpopulation leads to slavery and gross civil abuses.“Even those not familiar with British colonial history feel intuitively threatened by masses of immigrants coming into their country, taking their jobs, undercutting their wages, creating housing shortages and generally lowering the standard of living of ordinary people while increasing that of the rich and powerful,” says Mikki. “All of the good work done by the slave abolitionists and the Trade Unions is now being undone, and the ghosts of slavery are coming back to bite us.”
“There was never any consideration given to paying the kidnapped people for their labor or freeing them -- it was slavery for life,” says Mikki. “And the role of the Scots in the slave trade, both white and black, is particularly damning.”
“Scottish highland chiefs -- like their counterparts in Africa -- actually colluded with slavers and shippers to sell off their surplus populations,” says Mikki, “and venal justices, usurers and landlords in Edinburgh also colluded with them by using devious debt, tenancy and vagrancy schemes to more or less legalize kidnapping, shipment and perpetual slavery of innocent people in the New World.”
“It wasn’t until 1757 -- 130 years after white slavery to the New World commenced -- that a number of Aberdeen businessmen and magistrates were exposed for their involvement in the white slave trade.”
“By then, the African slave trade had become far more profitable than the white slave trade, and free white settlement was the norm after the 1776 Revolution,” says Mikki. “So, the bulk of white people being sent to the New World just before the 1776 Revolution were convicted criminals, petty or otherwise, mostly political dissidents, and they were not particularly welcomed by the plantation owners because of their bad character or attitude.”
“So popular were black slaves that the British gentry even wanted them as household servants, and when slave markets openly trading in Negro slaves actually appeared in London and Liverpool the awful reality of slavery was brought right into the heart of the nation. Slave markets were the norm the the USA, but they had not been seen in England since the Roman Empire!"
“As with immigration today, the native English population was horrified at the sight and plight of the black slaves within their midst,” says Mikki, “but mostly they resented that the gentry were buying these slaves in order to avoid paying a wage to a local person.”
“The activists expressed economic as well as moral outrage against slavery in England and the colonies,” says Mikki, “and in this sort of climate it wasn't surprising that the American Revolution of 1776 took place, separating the old and the new world.”
Read more by Mikki on this issue:
Labels: America, Barbados, barbary coast, convict transportation, England, freedom, indentured servitude, Ireland, Jamestown, kidnapping, Scotland, slavery, slaves, west indies, white slavery
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