10/3/99
Dear Editor,
I was rather taken aback and not a little disturbed by your recent somewhat bizarre article "The father of the Island revealed". Aside from perhaps a cynical desire to jump on the 'Millennium' bandwagon, it is hard to see why anyone would want to promote a celebration of the bicentennial of the founding of the west India Docks; unless it is to be deliberately offensive.
Anyone who even dips their toe in local history knows that the name of the Isle of Dogs goes back to Elizabethan days, and indeed was immortalised by the Thomas Nash and Ben Jonson's play of 1598. Were it not for the fact that this play was suppressed, Jonson jailed and Nash driven into hiding, no doubt the play script would still exist, and could be performed. It is hard to see why you imagine that the Isle of Dogs was only founded over two hundred years later!
What is so offensive about your article is that you skirt round the fact that the West Indian merchants who were behind the West Indian Docks were all slave owners. When you invite readers to cast our minds back to 1793, it is to go back to the period when the struggle to abolish slavery and the slave trade was making vast strides forward. Key to this was the successful revolt in San Domingue (now called Haiti). While the middle-class intellectuals of the French revolution debated whether slavery should be abolished, the slaves bandied together to overwhelm the slave owners and defeat both the French and British armies which sent to re-enslave them. Nevertheless, slave owners in the British West Indies continued to treat Afro-Caribbean people as less than human and the oppression of slavery was upheld with a reign of terror. Many were branded like animals by their 'owners'. Those who stood up to this brutality and asserted their humanity were treated like criminals, hunted with dogs and hundreds upon hundreds were murdered in the most cruel ways in order to protect the prosperity of the West Indian merchants.
The plight of the slaves did not go unheeded in Britain millions of people signed petitions and boycotts of West Indian sugar were organised. Slaves who reached London could seek sanctuary in the East End. In these circumstances, what is the significance of the ceremony conducted by the assembled notables in July 1800, when the foundation stone of the West India Docks was laid? Your editorial speaks of a toast to prosperity of the Isle of Dogs. But in reality they drank to the prosperity of the slave owners. It served as a rally for all those who profited from slavery and defended its brutality. That the Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, graced the occasion with his presence merely confirms the power of the West Indian lobby, which blocked moves to abolish the slave trade from 1787 to 1807, and then blocked the end of slavery until 1834.
The recent Stephen Lawrence Inquiry has not only highlighted institutionalised racism in the police force, but also raised the issue of tackling institutionalised racism elsewhere in society. I feel that your one-sided account of the foundation of the West India Docks not only obscured the participation of thousands of Afro-Caribbean people in the creation of wealth in Britain, but actually glorified the small clique of hardened racists who profited from racism and created the historic dynamic that lead to the sort of racial hatred involved in Stephen Lawrence's death and the sort of institutionalised racism that treated his death as a matter of little importance. I feel you should apologise for the article.yours sincerely,
Fabian Tompsett
Letter to Canary Wharf plc. concerning plans for bicentenary