Captured African slaves before deportation to America
Just so as you know I’ve learnt a great deal about Britain’s involvement in the slave trade, or should I re-phrase that, British businessmen financed by British banks, sailing their transatlantic ships to West Africa where they captured and enslaved Black African unfortunate souls. Now fully laden with a desperate human cargo they returned to selected American States, to live and die in forced labour camps (cotton plantations), with the grand finale of transporting bales of hand picked cotton to Lancashire cotton mills, and in the process making a great many White men vast amounts of money….. and there lies Britain’s twenty first century guilty problem, now it’s people are expected to accept a seventeenth century Trader’s guilt as their own.
F*** that……… I’m not playing that game!
I get it! But I’ll be damned if I’m going to feel guilty for crimes I neither committed or were party to……. George Floyd didn’t deserve to die chocked to death under the foot of a racist policeman, Black lives matter I get it, now this atrocious crime has triggered British blood letting the like of I’ve never seen before. Statues celebrating slave Traders ‘good work’s’ paid for by blood money are toppling (the beginning), but perhaps leave them standing, attach a bronze plague with the words:
‘Here stands Slave Trader Edward Colston a racist’,
then allow intelligent passers-by a moment of thought and contemplation as they remember just for a second, this figure cast in bronze before them enslaved and sold human beings.
Slave Trader Edward Colston 
Slave Trader James Penny
After much thought also searching of the soul I’ve come to a momentous decision I AM NOT going to be party to this circus I’m going to phrase ‘hunt down everyone with a tenuous historical connection to slavery’, nope I’m not going to use what little time I have left on this planet apologising for my country’s Colonial past, nope I’m taking no part in this hate filled campaign to search every cultural nook and cranny in the hope of finding places, songs, people that may or may not have an association with Britain’s shameful slave capturing past. Yes truly awful, but to be quite honest I’m not gonna expend emotional energy saying sorry to every do gooder liberal who’s deeply offended by ‘my’ chequered past, I didn’t do the crime!….. I’ve enough to worry about with Brexit, Covid-19 and my employment.
Who knows perhaps my Grandfather’s business published sheet music with the words and melody to a happy negro singing a plantation tune, could have happened, and this one example of a ridiculous charade will play out in White families up and down the land, all wondering if they to have a connection to Britain’s slavery.
Just leave it be.
One other thing, I’m not partaking in this orgy of mudslinging where everyone is accusing everyone else of being racist……. a ridiculous spectacle to the point where the word’s true meaning is lost!
Boxer Anthony Joshua says Blacks should only donate to Black charities…… what a lovely thing to say 😦 and heal a nation.
America’s race riots are little over a week old, life will return to a normality and hopefully change will blossom into a country where Blacks and Whites can co exist (more) peacefully, I’m saying no more, not my business. However they’ve triggered British racial tensions that are only just beginning, 80 Policeman have been assaulted, police cars pelted with stones as they pass city streets, riots in major cities and lol hundreds of road signs to be renamed……… it’s only the beginning oh and btw we’re living through a health pandemic killing 42,000 people…….. just saying!
You’d like an example? Ok then, Liverpool’s Penny Lane, made famous by The Beatles is “in danger of being renamed” if links to slavery are found. Researching will take time but people won’t wait for democracy to run it’s course, nope in the in-between time, iconic Penny Lane was last week defaced following claims it’s associated with 18th century slave merchant James Penny. You see the city of Liverpool has a dark and shameful past their politicians and citizens would rather wished never happened, hundreds of years ago the port of Liverpool carried around 1.5 million enslaved Africans on approximately 5,000 voyages, with the vast majority going to the Caribbean. Vast wealth was accumulated, schools and hospitals constructed in Colston/Penny’s names but these good works now count for nothing…….. and perhaps they shouldn’t? Discuss.
So Penny Lane one of the most beautiful soulful ballads ever written, is to be no more, mark my words if a connection is discovered the Beatles song will be removed from Radio playlists, dropped by Spotify. I kid you not, remember the most financially successful film ever made ‘Gone With The Wind, has been dropped by HBO (ok lol, I agree the content is err a little questionable 😉 ). My take on the hysterics surrounding Penny Lane’s ‘should it stay or should it go?’ My opinion for what it’s worth is leave the Street be and keep the name Penny Lane, yes this song’s inspiration just may have been James Penny, but so what, what better way to remember this evil slave trader’s shameful past than have a Street named after him for everyone to read and see….. and as for all this money time and effort trying to research if there is a connection……. why doesn’t someone pick up the phone and ask Paul McCartney! (I’m 🙂 rather pleased with that observation all my own.)
A. Shepherdson 2020
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