‘View yon vessel, with sails expanded, ploughing the deep – Contemplate for a moment the scene which it exhibits – Within that receptacle of human misery, are contained hundreds of beings, possessing passions and feelings congenial to thine own’ – William Belsham, 1790
In May 1788, Sir William Dolben, one of two MPs for Oxford University, described conditions on board the British slave ships as they transported their captives from Africa to the Caribbean. The enslaved people, he said, were crammed into the holds of ships, with very little room to sleep, chained to each other and to the deck. They were given very little food or water, and they were left to “roll about in their own sickness”.
In our current political climate, invoking the horrors of the Middle Passage plays into political narratives of evil traffickers and perilous crossings. But it’s not the sea that links the slave trade to what’s happening now on the English Channel. Nor is it the people providing the boats. If there’s a parallel to be found, it’s that, in both instances, the British state has sanctioned the capture and abuse of people on the move.
