On 18 August 1518 the King of Spain, Charles I, issued a charter authorising the transportation of slaves direct from Africa to the Americas. Previously they had been taken by way of Spain or Portugal.

This quincentenary is of a tragic event that caused untold suffering and still today leaves a legacy of poverty, racism, inequality and elite wealth across four continents. But it also quite literally changed the world and still geopolitically, socially, economically and culturally continues to shape it even today – and yet the anniversary has been almost completely ignored.

“There has been a general failure by most historians and others to fully appreciate the huge significance of August 1518 in the story of the transatlantic slave trade,” Professor David Richardson, University of Hull’s Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation.. Read more here.

New research revealed on today's Independent front page has found that black teenage boys guilty of homicide are 62% more likely to get convicted of murder rather than manslaughter, and that they get harsher sentences. Analysis of figures for 2009-17 shows one in four black teenage boys guilty of manslaughter were given maximum jail terms, while white children found guilty of the same crime were sentenced to no more than 10 years, with the majority getting less than four. It argues that “'cumulative' racial discrimination within policing and the judiciary means black young offenders are subjected to harsher punishments and therefore have worse life chances.”

​MP David Lammy commented: “As I found in my 2017 review of the criminal justice system, some of the difference in sentencing is the result of a ‘trust deficit’. Many BAME defendants simply still do not believe that the justice system will deliver less punitive treatment if they plead guilty”.  Read the full article.

An article by Dr Lawrence Brown claims the origins and spread of HIV can be seen as a legacy of Belgian colonisation in the Congo. "​We now know that HIV-1 emerged from Leopoldville in the 1920s and spread first among African people. The colonization of the Congolese by King Leopold II and the Belgians helps explain how the virus became a global pandemic".

It also comments how the disproportionate effects of HIV on sub-Saharan African people is "... precisely because European colonization exacted tremendous violence, extracted critical resources, disrupted social structures, and weakened the health of indigenous populations. European nations broke their promise to protect and promote the welfare of the indigenous African people. Instead the Belgians dehumanized and debased African societies producing the social determinants of death that gave rise to deadly infectious diseases. HIV-1 was ignited in Leopoldville, but the resulting HIV global pandemic is also the apparition of a grotesque and horrific legacy—the European infection of mass historical trauma and the devastation of Congolese health wrought by King Leopold II, the Force Publique, and Belgian colonisation."

​Read the full article here.

Yesterday the MJR trustees gathered in in Manchester to meet and share with a wider group from the Manchester area and the North West. We heard the latest news about and discussed MJR's Zong project, the replica slave-ship and exhibition which we are hoping to bring here as part of a summer 2019 voyage around Britain. This tour will be dependent on the local interest and ownership at each of the ports of call and it was good to welcome enthusiastic supporters from not only Manchester but also Whitehaven and Lancaster. 

We also looked at – in the city where it happened – the 'Peterloo Massacre', where on August 16, 1819, cavalry were ordered by the authorities to charge a peaceful crowd of 60,000 who had gathered to support electoral reform. 18 died and over 650 were injured – some horribly – yet the churches, believing the poor should be "resigned to their God-given lot" mostly took the side of the authorities. This dark day has its 200th anniversary in 2019 and we looked at how Christians today could mark this significant anniversary.

A big thank you to our hosts the Nazarene Theological College for their hospitality.

A new Legacy museum has been opened in Montgomery, Alabama by the Equal Justice Initiative. The museum traces the history of enslaved black people in America from the horrors of slavery to the terrors of lynching, the humiliation of Jim Crow and the current crisis of police brutality. Nearby a National Memorial for Peace and Justice, also opened last month, becomes one of the country’s first memorials dedicated to more than 4,000 victims of lynching.

Bryan Stevenson, founder and director of the Equal Justice Initiative, said the country cannot heal until it confronts the truth of what happened, especially in the South.

“This landscape is littered with a kind of glorious story about our ‘romantic past’,” said Stevenson, a lawyer who has helped overturn the convictions of more than 125 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row. “You can’t say that if you fully understand the depravity of human slavery, of bondage, of humiliation and rape and torture and lynchings of people.” Read more in this article. Visit the museum website.

The shameful treatment of the 'Windrush Generation' that has come to light in recent weeks has been commented on in this article entitled 'Prejudice and Injustice' by MJR trustee Dr Clifford Hill. In it he comments: "Our mistreatment of people from the Caribbean islands goes back at least 200 years to the days of slavery under British colonial rule. This legacy of slavery has never been finally expunged from our social attitudes and culture." Read the full article here.

MJR welcomes two announcements from the Labour Party that would mark progress in the recognition and addressing the problem of the legacy of slavery.

​According to this article in Voice, Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn says he wants institutions to “give back” to descendants of slave trade. The donations would fund bursaries for people from British BAME communities which would provide education and training for underrepresented groups in sectors such as finance and banking. 

Plans for a new Slavery Education Trust have also been unveiled by the Labour Party  which will not only educate people about the horrors of slavery through school programmes and trips to historical landmarks but also highlight the resilience of those enslaved and the contribution to the world made by Africa and the Caribbean.

Read the full article here...

Edward Colston died nearly 300 years ago but remains a controversial figure in his home city of Bristol. A generous benefactor to the city, Colston has been unquestioningly venerated for many years, but with little or no mention of the fact that the fortune he donated from was generated by his trading in slaves: a major factor in Bristol's growth as a city. Bristol Council is about to recognise this aspect of his past, but this article on the BBC website asks if it going far enough. The group 'Countering Colston' has long been campaigning for this reconsideration of Colston who has dozens of streets, buildings, institutions and memorials named after him.

Bristol poet laureate Miles Chambers sums up the legacy of enslavement in Bristol: "Some people don't get that black people still feel the full impact of slavery today. We can look at the descendants of the slaves and economically they are still worse off; psychologically they are still worse off; mentally they still feel collectively as inferior; more African-Caribbean males are disproportionately in prison and in the judicial system; they do worse at schools; economically are paid less and are working less.

"The pattern continues and even though many people say slavery is over, because of those legacies we still feel enslaved. A name change or statue move is not going to rectify racism or eradicate the slave mentality that still exists, but it will help to say to black people: 'You are equal to us, you are British, you are valuable and you mean as much to us as any other citizen.'"

Read the full article here.

In 1833 when the slavery was finally ended by Britain £20 million was paid as compensation to slave owners by the  Government. This was 40% of the total budget for that year and the equivalent of £17 billion today. Until the bail-out of the banks in 2008 it was the largest single payment ever made by a British government. Now the Bristol Post has discovered that this compensation was still being paid off by taxpayers in 2015: revealed by the Treasury under a Freedom of Information request. It means that "anyone who paid any tax at all before February 1, 2015 was paying off the debt created from the millions paid to British slave owners in 1833". The slaves received nothing.

The Treasury then trivialised this fact through a tweet which said: "Here’s today’s surprising #FridayFact. Millions of you helped end the slave trade through your taxes.” Several historians queried the tweet's tone and accuracy (the slave trade actually ended in 1807) and it was quickly deleted. Read the full story here.

In this new two-part documentary staring at 10pm tonight on Channel 4, rapper Professor Green explores why many working class white men feel demonised, forgotten and angry. One of the issues he looks into is that of educational failure among children from poor white communities – particularly boys, who get the poorest GCSE results and are the least likely to go to university. This is an issue MJR has investigated as part of our 'Proving Legacy' research. Read more about 'Working Class White Men' and the educational attainment problem in this interview with Professor Green.