Europe: From where I stand
Joyce Trotman explains why her personal choice is Brexit
I am brown in complexion. I bear an English Christian name and an English surname. I speak the English language and a Creole dialect based on English. I am a practising Christian. In British Guiana, where I was born, I received a very English education.
These simple facts encapsulate my history and that of the British people, for they meet in a packet of Demerara sugar, the product of a sugar industry that was based on the brutal enslavement of African men and women. They were transported, in inhuman conditions, on slave ships to the Caribbean islands and British Guiana – where they laboured as branded beasts of burden on sugar cane plantations and in the factories to produce the sugar. The sale of this product in the British Isles helped provide the funds that laid the foundations of the Industrial Revolution and put the ‘great’ into Great Britain.
Quaker involvement contributed greatly to the abolition of slavery. The descendants of emancipated slaves remained in the British owned territories, became colonists, and were assured that they were ‘children’, not ‘men and women’, of the Empire owing allegiance to the British Crown and entitled to hold a British passport. Churches of the various denominations provided an English education: history, literature, dances, folk songs and, of course, the National Anthem. The Commonwealth emerged from the gradual independence of each colonial territory. The process: slave, to colonist, subject of Her Majesty, to member of the Commonwealth.
These brown mixed race descendants – many the result of the rape of their African foremothers by their European/British slave owners and their employees – supported the ‘mother country’ in two world wars. After the second world war many arrived to contribute to post war regeneration. Many came on the invitation of the Edward Heath government.
Over the years the number of their children and dependents grew until Enoch Powell, in his famous/infamous ‘rivers of blood’ speech, voiced the fear that the black (in fact, brown) man would have the whip hand over the white (in fact, pale) man. By Act of Parliament the children of the Empire in all the lands over which the sun didn’t set, and members of the Commonwealth, were deemed foreigners and aliens needing a visa to enter the country – a country built partly on the lives and labours of their African ancestors.
Many people, like myself, presently live here, but if any of our relations living in former British colonies that are now independent wish to visit us they would need a visa. Barack Obama, in one of his speeches, referred to his wife as a descendant of slaves and slave owners. If she were living in Guyana or in the Caribbean she, too, would need a visa.
British membership of the EU, I believe, has already made us second-class citizens. Continued membership would mean that all the citizens of member countries of the EU – particularly those of recent member states and possibly Turkish citizens in the future – would have a right of entry and a freedom of movement now denied former subjects of the Crown. The Quaker testimony to equality comes to mind. There may be valid reasons for remaining a member of the European Union but, from where I stand, it is Brexit for me.
Comments
I’m afraid I find the author’s attitude far from Quakerly.
By gturner on 9th June 2016 - 15:48
UK visa rules for Guyana have nothing to do with the EU, so it is a little unclear why this is a reason - and the only one raised in the article - for leaving the EU.
Secondly, how would leaving the EU change the visa rules?
By AndyCarling on 9th June 2016 - 17:00
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