As a historian, I see how the voices of enslaved people have been excluded from history. Now we must listen and respond to their descendants
On 27 March 2007, nearly 450 years after Elizabeth I sponsored John Hawkins’ slaving expeditions to west Africa, Elizabeth II attended a service in Westminster Abbey to commemorate the bicentenary of Britain’s abolition of the slave trade. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, delivered a sermon focused on slavery’s “hideously persistent” legacies. “We, who are the heirs of the slave-owning and slave-trading nations of the past, have to face the fact that our historic prosperity was built in large part on this atrocity,” he said.
Moments later a Black protester dashed in front of the altar, disrupting the service with shouts of “This is an insult to us!” Her face impassive, Queen Elizabeth watched as security guards struggled with the protester, Toyin Agbetu, founder of the pan-African human rights organisation Ligali. As he was forcibly ejected, Agbetu pointed at the queen and yelled: “You, the queen, should be ashamed! You should say sorry!” In keeping with her own protocol and that of her namesake, Elizabeth I, whose motto was video et taceo (I see and keep silent), Queen Elizabeth said nothing.
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