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Ken Livingstone

London's mayor Ken Livingstone will next week issue a formal apology for his city's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade,

As campaigners step up their drive to have the Government declare August 23 as a National Day of Remembrance for the transportation of more than 12 million black people from Africa to the Americas.

Livingstone has organised what he expects to be an annual memorial service to mark the day at City Hall at 10am, August 23. But that will be hours after an all night vigil, ending at 6am, at Southwark Town Hall, Peckham Road, South East London, organised by Remembrance Day campaigners.

The events will coincide with the UNESCO-led International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition as well as the 216th anniversary of the 1791 start of the anti-slavery revolution in Haiti, which led to that country becoming the world's first black-ruled republic.

Campaigners said last week that they will be using the day to renew calls for an annual Slavery Memorial Day and urged black communities and organisations to pressure their MPs and other politicians to get reparations, and for the state to officially give posthumous recognition to slave heroes who were branded criminals and executed for fighting for their freedom.

Speaking with The Voice last week, Kofi Klu, head of Rendezvous of Victory, said a host of organisations will join the Southwark 2007 and Beyond Steering Committee (S2007B) for the vigil to raise awareness of the campaign. The campaign has spawned a resolution asking for official recognition of August 23 as an annual slavery memorial day and for the government to redress the damaging of the legacies of the slave trade and slavery.

"Up till now, despite all the pronouncements and much ado about the Bicentenary of the British Parliamentary Abolition of the so-called Slave Trade, Her Majesty's Government has still not addressed the growing demand for the official establishment of an annual national day of relevant commemorations as has been done with the Jewish Holocaust Memorial Day," Klu said.

"We strongly believe that unless such a necessary, and indeed long overdue, step of action is taken right now, all the official pronouncements and state-sponsored activities in connection with the 200th anniversary of the British Parliamentary Abolition of what to us is the Transatlantic Traffic of Enslaved Afrikans (TTEA) will ring hollow."

He said it was time for the authorities to "seriously respond to our demands for an apology of substance, embracing holistic Pan-Afrikan reparations for global justice, in such way and manner as will help to eradicate Afriphobia and other forms of white supremacist racism".

"That is why we of the ROV renew our call for an All-Party Parliamentary Commission for Truth, Justice and Reconciliation on Afrikan Enslavement and its Legacies now!" Klu said.

Earlier this year, Livingstone joined the call for a national day to recognise the contemporary legacies of the slave trade and the courage of the Africans and abolitionists who resisted it. Livingstone's office said that the City Hall service will be part of an annual remembering and acknowledgement of the role of the city and of Londoners in the trade and its abolition.

"He will also use this occasion to issue a formal apology for London's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade," a spokesman said.

Among those who will witness Livingstone's symbolic apology as well as speak at the event will be the US civil rights leader, the Rev Jesse Jackson, a number of black British MPs and rights activists, the poet Linton Kwesi Johnson and the Jamaican intellectual and choreographer, Professor Rex Nettleford.

The earlier Southwark vigil will include traditional Afrikan-style wake-keeping talks, storytelling, songs and performances, aimed, according to Esther Stanford, the coordinator of the S2007B Steering Committee, at raising the awareness of "those who suffered and are still enduring the legacies of the African Holocaust of enslavement which we call the Maangamizi".

Said Stanford: "The vigil will be a powerful and dignifying commemoration of African and African Caribbean people's determination, against all odds, to keep their cultural heritage alive, and defend their humanity. It is coming at a time when a lot of the bicentenary fervour is waning in many quarters. Lessons will drawn from the past on how best to tackle legacies of enslavement such as internalised community violence, escalating gun crime and the decimation of the lives of growing numbers of the descendants of enslaved Africans."

Published: 17 August 2007
Issue: 1283

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