The public shows a studied lack of interest
Periods of reflection come and go. The killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, in 2020, prompted soul-searching about race around the world, including in Britain. Activists in Bristol toppled a statue of Edward Colston, a slave-owner, and dumped it in the harbour. The largest ripples since have come from institutions looking at their own pasts.
Such acts remain exceptions, however. Britons’ attitudes to their country’s past are shifting a bit, but as a whole they show little interest in re-assessing it. Polling data mostly suggest indifference, including over the nastiest aspects. When asked by pollsters about the empire some Britons, especially older ones, used to express pride. Today people mostly shrug, although a few call it shameful.
It is rare for the topic of slavery to be tackled nationally. Take the Demerara uprising of 1823, when British colonists brutally suppressed a non-violent uprising of 10,000 slaves in what is today Guyana. One of the resisters, Quamina, was strung up for so long that a colony of wasps built a nest in his abdomen and took to flying in and out of his jaw. The incident sparked outrage in Britain and helped to invigorate the movement for the abolition of slavery in the colonies.
Such apathy sets Britain apart from other former imperial powers. In December the Dutch government apologised for that country’s role in slavery and set up a fund to raise awareness of its legacy. Portugal’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, said in April that his country should accept responsibility for the slave trade. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, paid tribute to Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L’Ouverture. In contrast the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is more circumspect.
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