EVERY time August 1st is upon us, audiences are regaled by speeches and presentations about the end of chattel slavery in the English-speaking Caribbean. Some of these sermons border on praise for the Emancipation Act as the repository for the high morality of British policy-making on this issue. This is simply not the case — the racist principles that undergirded the Slavery Abolition Act should not be hidden from history.

On the night of July 31st, 1834, the slaves gathered across the muddy plantation yards in great fanfare to dance the night away in anticipation of the grand announcement. It was well whispered and discussed across the slave barracks that chattel slavery in the English-speaking Caribbean would come to an end on August 1st, 1834. Who can blame them, the mere suggestion that you would no longer have to endure what was the most inhumane existence in the history of mankind, ought to spark unbridled joy. However, unbeknownst to them, when the sun came up across the Caribbean on August 1st 1834, the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which received Royal Assent on August 28th, 1833 and commenced on August 1st, 1834, was another stark reminder of the low regard and contempt in which they were held by their ‘enlightened masters.’

Firstly, the Emancipation Act of 1833 only activated the freedom of slaves under the age of six, those who were above six were considered apprentices of three distinct categories. They were subjected to four years of free labour, in the same slave-like conditions that existed in the colonies. The legislation essentially demanded that you no longer call them slaves, but their dastardly existence remained with all the essence of slavery intact. This law was in the true spirit of what Wilberforce stated in his writing in 1807, ‘It would be wrong to emancipate the slaves. To grant freedom to them immediately would be to insure not only their master’s ruin, but their own’. The general mindset was that these beneath human creatures could not take care of themselves and needed humans to shepherd them through civilisation, this recurring theme was glaring in this Act of 1833.
Secondly, added to this and equally egregious was the fact that Section XXIV of this Act stated:

‘And whereas, towards compensating the Persons at present entitled to the Services of the Slaves to be manumitted and set free by virtue of this Act for the Loss of such Services, His Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal Subjects the Commons of Great Britain and Ireland in Parliament assembled have resolved to give and grant to His Majesty the Sum of Twenty Million Pounds Sterling;’
(http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1833/act/73/enacted/en/print.html)
Translation, the slave owners were compensated for the loss of slaves and the slaves received nothing. The great hoax was the belief that this act of the British Parliament was this saving grace and some gesture of humanity. Far from this. During the debate in the British House of Commons on this legislation, arguments were made that slaves cannot receive any compensation for 400 years of free labour in the most inhumane conditions, because property cannot receive property compensation. The Emancipation Act promoted and upheld the racist ideal that black people were not humans. Further, by forcing 800, 000 enslaved people to work for free over a four-year period, the Apprenticeship System facilitated the payment of 27 million pounds by the slaves to their former slave masters. The Emancipation Act forced the slaves to pay 50 per cent of the compensation for the slave masters’ loss of property. (Beckles: 2014)

Thirdly, this action by the House of Commons was guided by the principle of gradualism. The framers argued that gradual freedom was necessary, so they ensured the law had an eight-year adjustment period to full freedom. Even though England recognised since 1772 that ‘…in a case of so odious a nature as the condition of slaves…’ (Mansfield: 1772), the Emancipation Act still insisted that slaves were not human enough to receive full freedom. Full freedom was legally expected until 1841. August 1st, 1838, freedom came about due to the fact that the system was not working. I shall continue to argue that the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 was no legal instrument that is worthy to be hailed as some philanthropic posture — the devil was in the details.