Boycott!

Until protesters dumped his statue in Bristol Harbour, the name Edward Colston meant nothing to me. I now know that the man donated large sums to worthy causes in Bristol, founded two almshouses and a school, gave money to other schools, churches and hospitals, and that Bristol’s largest concert hall was named after him. I also now know that Colston – who was MP for Bristol between 1710 and 1723 – was heavily involved in the slave trade, having been Deputy Governor of the Royal African Company, which transported approximately 212,000 slaves from Africa to the Caribbean between 1662 and 1731, of whom 44,000 died en route.

 

In all, Britain transported and enslaved an estimated 3 million people from Africa during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. In 2007, Prime Minister Tony Blair apologised for Britain’s association with the slave trade: “I have said we are sorry and I say it again … [It is important] to remember what happened in the past, to condemn it and say why it was entirely unacceptable,” he said after meeting Ghana President John Agyekum Kufuor on 14 March.

 

Words are cheap, but when Britain passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1835, the government stumped up £20million (the equivalent of more than £300billion today) in reparations. The loan that the government took out to do so was so large, it wasn’t paid off until 2015, meaning that descendants of those very slaves were paying off the government’s debt through their taxes. This would be bad enough had the reparations been paid to the slaves themselves, but they were not, they were paid to the owners, in compensation for their ‘loss.’ And the slaves themselves were not made free until 1838; during the intervening years, they continued to work without pay.

 

The toppling of Edward Colston’s statue, the daubing of the word ‘Racist’ on the figure of Winston Churchill recently, and the furore over the statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College have been controversial. Applying today’s morals and ethics to Britain’s actions in the past is contentious, especially with regard to slavery, since the practice has existed for millennia. It pre-dates written history and was commonplace among many civilisations: Ancient Egypt, ancient China, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Babylonia, ancient Iran, ancient Greece, ancient India, the Roman Empire, the Arab Islamic Caliphate and Sultanate, Nubia and the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas, to name but a few. Britain, however was responsible for it on an industrial scale.

 

While we rightly look at historic slavery, and especially Britain’s part in it, with abhorrence, it is easy to neglect the fact that slavery exists - thrives even – in the 21^st century. According to the International Labour Organisation, over 40 million people are in some form of slavery today, and almost all of us support such slavery, no matter how unwittingly. Chocolate, which many of us consume as a treat, or from habit, is built on slavery. According to The Byline Times, a 2015 US Labour Department report revealed that more than 2 million enslaved children were engaged in dangerous labour in cocoa-growing regions, of whom 1.8 million work on the cocoa farms of Ghana and the Ivory Coast. (https://bylinetimes.com/2020/06/24/the-toxic-ingredient-in-chocolate-child-slavery/)

 

In the war against slavery, a boycott of brands such as Hershey, Nestlé, Godiva, and Mars might be more significant than removing statues and renaming things. Except boycotts rarely seem effective, especially in the short term, and quite often hit the wrong targets.

 

With the Government’s decision to further ease lockdown by allowing pubs to re-open from 4^th July, there have been calls for drinkers to boycott Wetherspoons. Before lockdown, Wetherspoons owner Tim Martin was calling for pubs to be allowed to stay open on the spurious grounds that there had “hardly been any” transmission of coronavirus in pubs. When pubs were closed on 20^th March, Martin initially said that he would not pay his staff, suggesting they go and get jobs in supermarkets instead. He also said that he would not pay suppliers for March invoices until the pubs reopened. Much public criticism followed, persuading him to reverse his decision and pay staff and suppliers.

 

Despite Martin’s change of heart, calls for a boycott of his pubs remain, but such action would likely hit Wetherspoons staff even harder than Martin himself. That tends to be how boycotts work, with the presumed ultimate goal of the action – forcing the company out of business, or at least driving down their profits – hurting workers harder than bosses and owners. And if we boycott Wetherspoons, how many other companies are there out there whose actions – historically, or more recent – mean we should boycott them? The Guardian, who were founded by John Edward Taylor on the back of profits made from the slave trade? Or Lloyds of London, or Greene King the brewers, who were both also involved in the slave trade? Or Barclays Bank, whose links with South Africa supported apartheid? Or Shell, for similar reasons? Or Hugo Boss, and Mercedes Benz for their links with Nazi Germany? Or Amazon, or Caffe Nero, who pay little or no UK tax?

Calls to boycott Wetherspoons pubs would harm staff more than owner.

 

It is probably possible to make a case for boycotting just about every major company for one reason or another. How should we choose, indeed is it morally right to choose, or is picking and choosing which to boycott as hypocritical and indefensible as being a vegetarian who shuns beef and chicken, but eats pork and lamb?

 

If there’s a more legitimate reason for avoiding Wetherspoons on 4^th July, it’s one that applies equally to every other pub in the country that intends opening on that day. In fact, there are a number of reasons, some of which would apply even if coronavirus had been completely eradicated, and the pubs were reopening exactly as they functioned before they were forced to close.

 

Reopening pubs on a Saturday, after 14 weeks of closure, is reckless, especially as the weather has been so fine and is likely to remain so. The demand for a nice cold pint is likely to far outstrip the supply of spaces in the pubs that are able to reopen (some pubs, like The Nutshell in Bury St Edmonds, which is the UK’s smallest, will not be able to meet the new restrictions and have decided that they cannot reopen). Pubs will have to limit the number of customers they can admit, and unlike supermarkets, where there is a constant stream of customers leaving, those waiting outside will have their patience tested while they wait for a ‘one-in, one-out’ policy to free up a space for them.

 

The Nutshell in Bury St Edmunds will not be opening on 4th July.

Even without the restrictions with which they will reopen, going to a pub on 4^th July may not be the most relaxing or enjoyable of experiences. Police recognise that Saturdays are when they are more likely to be called to pubs to deal with incidents of disorder than any other day of the week, hence the concerns raised by a number of senior police officers, including the president of the Police Superintendents’ Association, Chief Superintendent Paul Griffiths, who would have preferred a “soft launch” on a Monday or weekday. Frankly, it’s difficult to disagree.

 

Quoted in The i newspaper, Steven Alton, chief executive of the British Institute of Innkeeping, said that pubs should not have to meet stricter requirements than other businesses where people might mingle, such as clothes shops. He might have a point if Next, or Miss Selfridge, or Primark had a bar, but they don’t. Adding alcohol to an environment where people are being asked to socially distance and tolerate restrictions on how they would normally behave would be an interesting experiment under any circumstance, with coronavirus still in circulation it will redefine ‘interesting.’