Can the breaking of their chains by enslaved persons inspire today's trade union movement?

 

Following the unveiling of a statue by Belfast City Council to former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Unite in Ireland wants his legacy and those of other enslaved persons such as Oloudah Equiano, born in Nigeria, to inspire today’s trade union movement.

Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland around 1818. He worked on a plantation. When he was sent to live in Baltimore as a house slave his mistress, not knowing it was illegal to educate slaves began teaching him to read. When though the slave master ended this the experience, Douglass continued his education by swapping food scraps to poor white children in exchange of knowledge.

At 18, Douglas was reading about the abolitionist movement. In 1838 he escaped, using faked papers, to New Bedford, Mass. In 1841 he gave his first anti-slavery oration speaking boldly and honestly about life as a slave and the traumas it leaves behind. He thereafter became a national leader of the abolitionist movement.  

Chattel slavery was to be outlawed on 6 December 1865. Douglass, who wrote three autobiographies, died in 1895. Six years earlier he became the United States ambassador to Haiti where slaves, on what was then known as Saint-Domingue, waged between 1791-1804 the first successful revolution under the leadership of former slave and first black general Toussaint Louverture and by defeating Napoleon Bonaparte’s forces achieved freedom.

August 23^rd is the International Day for Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition which Unite marked by its regional equalities officer Taryn Trainor stating “Today commemorates the insurrection in Saint-Domingue by self-liberated slaves – an event which played a crucial role in the eventual abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and reminds us that abolition was driven and eventually won by enslaved and formerly enslaved persons.

“Earlier this year, we welcomed the unveiling of a statue to former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, funded by Belfast City Council. Douglass, like Oloudah Equiano in the previous century, travelled throughout Ireland, and was supported by a network of determined anti-slavery activists, women and men, from Cork to Belfast. They knew that, as Frederick Douglass pointed out, there can be no progress without struggle. 

 “As trade unionists, the fight for abolition reminds us that struggle must always be informed and directed by those most directly affected.”

When Douglass travelled to Britain and Ireland in the 1840s his lectures excited great interest and now that Belfast has become the first in Europe to honour Frederick Douglass there are plans in places such as Halifax to erect plaques at some of the locations he spoke at.

The life-sized bronze statue in Belfast is located at Rosemary Street, close to where Douglass addressed crowds in 1845.

Ms Trainor concluded:

“The impact of chattel slavery continues to resonate today – not just in monuments and the names of public buildings and spaces, but also in the ongoing discrimination faced by people of African descent.

 “As attempts are made by far-right actors to stir up hatred, fear and anger against migrants and refugees, many fleeing war and oppression, trade unions must draw inspiration from the movement to end slavery and work side-by-side with those being targeted by these messages of hate to build an inclusive society.”

Belfast historian and tour guide Dr Tom Thorpe said the statue was appropriate as the statue "takes us into a history which united us rather than divides us.

"The anti-slavery cause was followed by people from across the political divide, unionists and nationalists, but also from the Catholic and Presbyterian communities.”