Slave catchers galore

In Nigeria, I remember my grandmother saying that when she was a little girl her great grandmother always said, ‘be careful how you’re behaving, if you’re naughty I’ll give you two the slave catchers’.

That must have been a terrible, terrible thing to tell a child…

Coco also remembers being told: ‘Watch out or the bogey man will get you’, though who ever said it I do not now remember. It may even have been on my own lips to one of our many cousins. I suppose such things have often been said to little children to bring them into line.

These words were reported by the BBC being on the lips of professor who by reason of her provenance and vocation really should know better.

You see these words were said in connection with the Atlantic slave trade which was abolished by the United Kingdom over 200 years ago. Now it may have been possible that Coco’s grandmother’s great-grandmother may have been born before the act of abolition, but I think it hardly likely that the speakers’ grandmother would have heard her great grandmother saying these words to her before then. We must understand then that the slave catchers referenced here are not the same category of slave catcher that was involved in the European sponsored slave trade which we had long before then abolished, but perhaps they were; let ius see.

To whom is the reference made? We know that the slave trade continued in Africa long after we had renounced, and repented of our part in, it, for despite [colonial] efforts to do so in Nigeria it continued until the middle of the twentieth century. In effect we had to (perhaps were forced to) live with it. We also know that the slave catchers for the trade in which our ancestors had been involved was fed by the ancestors of those who today live in West Africa, and many Africans also made themselves rich on the proceeds of the trade.

Coco can only suppose then that the slave catchers of which the lady’s grandmother heard were those African slave catchers who refused to give up slavery during the twentieth century. So why bring them up in connection with a discussion about whether to retain statues of and monuments to men who were involved in the Atlantic Trade? We perhaps need to consider that the monuments may not be there because of their involvement but despite their involvement.

At least it is a little bit of an acknowledgement that without the willing co-operation of African slave catchers the Atlantic trade would not have been possible. Perhaps it is also an unwitting acknowledgement that the lady’s own ancestors, and perhaps even some of the close relations of the grandmother’s great-grandmother, were themselves slave catchers. The tip of the iceberg has been revealed, but when will the remainder of the iceberg of African involvement be exposed? I guess it is easier to transport an iceberg intact to Cardiff, Edinburgh and London than it is to Calabar and Bonny; to Birmingham than to Abuja. Coco doubts that reparations shall be required of the descendants of the real slave cacthers.

I love, I love my Master. I will not go out free, for he has paid the price for me. He has set me free (Frances Ridley Havergal alt.). I have referred to this before, but it remains true: ‘God has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘ From one blood, or from one man, means we of all nations have one common ancestor. We are all cousins, and it is his intention to gather his people from all of the many nations into one family.

Let us seek the Lord through the Lord Jesus Christ in whom alone we shall find salvation.