Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
Latest editorial
The slave trade: unfinished business
Remembering slavery on August 23 each year is not about closing the chapter and reassuring the guilty, but a call for justice: the descendants of those that profited still enjoy that wealth today — we must have meaningful reparations for the descendants of slaves, writes ROGER McKENZIE
ANGUS REID explains the significance of Cuba’s egalitarian in letter and spirit Family Code and the pertinent lessons it holds for democracies anywhere in the world
Special report by PEOPLE’S WORLD
NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
SLAVERY was the family business for the Longs of Cornwall. Edward Long, born on August 23 1734, was a slave owner and he himself was the son of a slave owner.
His family presided over what they regarded as their property, the plantation and the people who were forced to work without wages on it, from the mid 17th century. There is no evidence to suggest that Long ever wavered from his commitment to the institution of slavery and the belief that the Africans he believed to be his were anything other than inherently and vastly inferior to white people.
Edward Long is best known for his book History of Jamaica, written in 1774. Less a historical work than a diatribe of pseudo-scientific racism.
Similar stories
BOB NEWLAND appreciates an important contribution to the debate about how slavery helped to build the wealth of Western companies and states
On the anniversary of the implementation of the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, ROGER McKENZIE warns that the legacy of black enslavement still looms in the Caribbean and beyond
MOLLY DHLAMINI welcomes a Pan-Africanist and Marxist manifesto that charts a path for Africa’s resurgence
SUE TURNER is appalled by the story of the only original colonising family to still own a plantation in the West Indies