Legacy

History repeats itself. It has too. No-one listens. (Steve Turner)
Definition: legacy - something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past.[1]
What connection is there between our contemporary society and the exploitation of African slaves overseas and working people here that took place many years ago and made the British Industrial Revolution possible?
​The attitudes that justified that exploitation for economic gain did not disappear when slavery was ended or the Factory Act and other reforms were passed, invariably after long and hard campaigns against powerful vested interest. Advantage for the beneficiaries and disadvantage for the oppressed has morphed and continued.
MJR believes this legacy of oppression has left a hidden footprint on the souls of many people living in deprived areas, resulting in a common feeling, across ethnicities, of powerlessness and disenfranchisement. This is reinforced daily by over-representation in prisons, hospitals and low-paid jobs (and now Covid-19 deaths) and under-representation in 'top' jobs, schools and universities.
 Picture
"We don't need you to feel guilty or ashamed for a history that wasn't you. You can't help what your ancestors did any more than I can help what mine did." Bishop TD Jakes.
Picture
"The anti-African history of the past 500 years has seeped deep into the Western psyche. Many white people seem unaware of the heightened resentment black people have towards the racism that blights so many black lives in a world that moves to the tune of whiteness." ​​
​Dr Joe Aldred.
MJR seeks to address both areas of legacy – for descendants of enslaved and working-class people. While being careful to respect the aspects individual to each, we are also interested in the areas of overlap and common cause. These were seen in the Tottenham riots of 2011 when residents from deprived areas, black and white side by side, vented their frustrations.[2]
The descendants of the oppressed are well aware of their disadvantage – they are reminded of it daily, usually in small, niggly ways. However, the descendants of the beneficiaries of the wealth generated by the slave trade, the white population, are largely unaware of their 'unearned privilege', not intentionally, but because it is hard to recognise and address something that has always been there. ​​They are not directly responsible for the actions of their ancestors, but they are responsible for righting the consequences of their wrongful actions – starting with recognising how history and a culture rooted in supremacy feed into modern-day injustice.
Image Maja Kukova
Picture
"The slave trade tells us more about ‘white’ history than anything else — a trade that was conceived by white people and largely organised to profit European nations and their colonies in the Americas." Afua Hirsch
To find out more visit these pages: Stories, The Legacy of Colonial Slavery, The Legacy of Industrial Exploitation.
[1] Merriam-Webster Dictionary
[2] Read more in this article by Dr Clifford Hill from 2015.