The following is extracted from ALWYN TURNER’s All in It Together: England in the Early 21st Century.

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In advance of the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade in 2007, the government set up a committee, jointly chaired by John Prescott (whose Hull constituency had once been represented by abolitionist William Wilberforce) and Baroness Amos, the first black woman to serve as a cabinet minister. This was to be a celebration of one of the great pieces of reforming legislation in British history, with a range of cultural events: ‘museum exhibitions, theatrical productions and music festivals’.

There was also a much less welcome consideration: the question of whether to say sorry for British involvement in the slave trade.

It was a contentious issue. Liverpool City Council had apologised in 1999 for the city’s part in the transatlantic trade, but Business West – which represented firms in Bristol – dismissed the idea of an apology as ‘balderdash’. Now, in the build-up to the anniversary, it was speculated that Tony Blair, as prime minister, might formally apologise on behalf of the nation.

There was a potential pitfall here. In America, demands were growing for reparations to be paid for slavery, either by the nation or by businesses, and similar calls were starting to be heard in Britain; in a Channel 4 documentary The Empire Pays Back (2005), Robert Beckford of Birmingham University calculated that Britain owed the descendants of slaves £7.5 trillion, at the time just shy of six years’ worth of national GDP. (Activist group Ligali felt this understated the case: ‘£7.5 trillion barely scratches the surface of the debt Britain owes to Africa’.)

This was the danger for the government. If Blair did apologise for the empire’s involvement in the pre-1807 trade, and for the continuation of colonial slavery through to abolition in 1833, it might imply a liability under law, and would embolden campaigners. ‘It is the fear of reparations which has prevented Western nations from holding up their hands,’ said David Fleming, a museum director in Liverpool.

Fleming was then unveiling plans for what would become the International Slavery Museum, which opened in 2007 and was the most substantial legacy of the commemorations. Other cities also marked the occasion. The Museum of London Docklands, which was housed in nineteenth-century sugar warehouses, opened a new gallery: London, Sugar, Slavery. Birmingham took the opportunity to clean and repair its long-neglected statue of Joseph Sturge, founder of Anti-Slavery International, the world’s oldest human rights organisation (a new left hand was also added to the statue, the original having fallen off in 1875). And in Bristol there was a campaign to rename the Colston Hall, a concert venue called after eighteenth-century slave trader and MP Edward Colston; the proposed new name was Abolition 200, though that didn’t come to fruition, and it would be another ten years before the City Council agreed that Colston’s name should be dropped.

As the anniversary approached, a piece appeared under Blair’s name in the New Nation, voicing regret if not quite apology. The bicentennial, he wrote, was a chance ‘to express our deep sorrow that it ever happened, that it ever could have happened and to rejoice at the different and better times we live in today’.

Michael Eboda, editor of the New Nation, professed himself content: ‘It’s pretty much as close to an apology as he can give. I am pleased with it.’ The columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, normally a critic of Blair’s government (‘They trash, bleed and loot Iraq, never apologise, and still grab control of its future’), was ecstatic. ‘This morning has broken like the first dawn,’ she wrote. ‘The self-righteous leader who never says sorry has proffered fulsome contrition.’

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Some were still dissatisfied, among them Ken Livingstone, who criticised the lack of explicit apology. He got a chance to make amends at a ceremony to mark Annual Slavery Memorial Day: ‘As mayor, I offer an apology on behalf of London and its institutions for their role in the transatlantic slave trade.’ It was an emotional moment. Livingstone’s voice was faltering, he had tears in his eyes, and twice he had to be comforted by veteran Civil Rights campaigner the Reverend Jesse Jackson.

By then, however, the prime minister had apologised, in unscripted comments that didn’t attract much attention. Asked at a press conference in March 2007 why he hadn’t said sorry, Blair replied, ‘Well actually I have said it. We are sorry, and I say it again now.’

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