Pastor Bell's Words To Live By

As we celebrate remembrance Sunday (11^th November 2012) and reflect on those who sacrificed their lives for us to be free to participate in a democratic society, let us also remember how the history of those taken to the Caribbean was systematically ‘air-brushed’ out of the history books. History recalls that, Wilberforce and his workers almost single-handedly dismantled the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery itself. It makes little mention of the efforts of conscientised members from the slave communities. People like, Paul Bogle, William Gordon and Sam Sharpe from Jamaica; Toussaint L’Overture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Donatien-Marie-Joseph de Vimeur from Haiti. If the slaves had not rebelled in the Caribbean and made the business of providing sugar for the sweet-toothed British, uneconomic, then perhaps slavery in the Caribbean would not have been abolished in 1834.

Let us also remember that the Church of England, the Catholic Church and many of the protestant churches with us today were complicit in the Trans- Atlantic slave trade. And although the Quakers were Christian pacifists, the chains used to tether slaves once captured on the shores of Africa, were made in Cadbury’s foundries in Birmingham.

So, whilst we remember those who died in the wars of 1914-18 and 1939-45 and the subsequent wars to date, history needs to actively cite those great men of colour who were instrumental in abolishing of the worst incidence of human trafficking in the history of humanity.

Let us remember those who died in the great wars, but let us also remember those who are still living with the continued effects and the emotional and spiritual scars from slavery.

Read Luke 4:18.