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an
Slavery. [ LORDS] Slavery.
House the abolition of slave-owning, arrangement but do I quite understand that it is proposed to sit after 4 o'clock slave-trading and slave-raiding is
urgent international duty. That while to-morrow?
this House fully apreciates the action hitherto taken by the League of Nations, it is of opinion that further steps of a definite nature appear to be required in order to bring about the extinction of slavery in all its forms.
LORD PARMOOR: I said we would rise at 4 o'clock, but that we might wish to sit for a few minutes after that hour in order to finish any Amendment which might be under discussion. The arrangement I have suggested will give ample time to take the remainder of the Committee stage of the Agricultural Marketing Bill on Friday.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: Perhaps the noble and learned Lord will notice that on the Order Paper at one time there was a certain amount of formal business put down before the Committee stage of the Agricultural Marketing Bill. suggest that as we are to sit to-morrow for only a short time this formal business might be put last and, if necessary, con- sidered on Friday morning.
LORD PARMOOR: We of course have a Standing Order about private business, but with regard to other formal business -not private business-we will arrange for the Committee stage to come first.
UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE (No. 3) BILL,
Brought from the Commons; read 1o; and to be printed.
SMALL LANDHOLDERS AND AGRI- CULTURAL HOLDINGS (SCOT- LAND) BILL.
Returned from the Commons, with certain of the Amendments made by the Lords agreed to and certain other Amendments made by the Lords dis- agreed to, for which disagreements the Commons assigned Reasons.
NORTH KILLINGHOLME (ADMIRALTY PIER) BILL. House in Committee (according to Order) on re-commitment of the Bill : Bill reported without amendment.
SLAVERY.
EARL BUXTON rose to call attention to the question of slavery and to move to resolve, That in the opinion of this
The Marquess of Reading.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, it is about 120 years since the participation of any British subject in the slave trade was made a criminal offence, and next year will be the centenary of the Act passed to abolish the slave trade in British Possessions, which, with others, my grandfather, Fowell Buxton, following in the footsteps of Clarkson and Wilber- force, was largely instrumental in putting on the Statute Book. Therefore, noble Lords may perhaps be surprised that it is necessary in the year 1931 to raise this question here, and to ask His Majesty's Government, in conjunction with other nations, to take steps to see that slavery and the slave trade shall be entirely and absolutely abolished throughout the world. Unfortunately, the slave trade to a certain extent, but not to any very large extent, still exists, though it has been very largely brought to an end through the action of His Majesty's Navy, and if the League of Nations would agree to the proposal of the British Government to declare the slave trade to be piracy, I think the whole of it would very soon disappear and there would no longer be any slave trade.
our
As regards slavery or some form of servitude that is, unfortunately, in a different position, and a temporary Com- mission of the League of Nations a year or two ago reported that it existed in some form or other in 12 or 14 countries, and they gave details as to where the main part of that slavery was taking place. There is no question, from the information in the possession of Foreign Office and other Foreign Offices, that in certain countries slavery does exist to a very large extent. It is esti- mated that no fewer than 5,000,000 people are in a state of servitude in these various nations. That may be an exag- geration, but at all events the number must be counted in millions, and slavery does exist in a very large number of cases. It is because of that that I am raising this question this afternoon, and
[22 JULY 1931 ]
Slavery.
asking the British Government, on behalf of this nation, to make further representations to the League of Nations in respect of this matter. I have no doubt whatever that I shall have а favourable response from the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House, for fortunately in no sense is this a Party question, but all sections of the country are equally united in desiring
hat further steps shall be taken.
There is some satisfaction to be derived from the fact that in recent years there has been some manumission of slaves in various parts. Noble Lords may be surprise to learn that in Sierra Leone, which is under British protection, only three years ago something like 200,000 slaves were freed, and are
now free men, and in Tanganyika, British man- dated territory, 180,000 slaves, formerly under the German régime, have also been released.
The Maharajah of Nepal, the other day, greatly to his credit he showed great courage in regard to the matter- declared that the slaves in his territory, some 80,000 in number, should no longer remain in a state of servitude. Those are good steps, but the mere recital does, I confess, cause some uneasiness as to how far in other parts of the world slavery exists to a larger extent than we anticipated. The fact that under the British Crown 200,000 slaves were only recently released shows that we are not fully aware to what extent slavery stil! does exist.
I am dealing to-day mainly with the question, not of the slave trade, but of slavery. The slave trade requires no definition. The definition of slavery is one given by the League of Nations as an international definition in the League of Nations Convention. Article 1 says:
C
Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attached to the right of ownership are exer- cised; in other words, slavery is limited or unlimited ownership of one being over another with a right to treat him as a chattel or as live stock."
Then the difficulty of dealing with the question of slavery is very largely due also to the fact that in various parts of the world it varies so much, though all states of servitude of that description have the common evil of property owner- ship. We have in some parts what might
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Slavery.
almost be called the old form of slavery, in which there is the crudest absolute ownership, with no protection against oppression and cruelty, and no redress of any sort, in which the children who are born are born slaves, in which the slaves belong to the estate owner, and at his death the families can be separated and sold merely as chattels. And from that we have grades up to a far milder form of servitude, which may be in some cases a kind of parental relationship.
I have heard apologists of the present position of slavery say that it is of a mild character, and that the slaves them- selves do not object to it, that they are well looked after, and are happy in their conditions. All I can say is, I hope that it is true in a large number of cases; it certainly is not true, from all the infor- mation one has, in a vast number of other cases. At all events, however mild the form of servitude may be, it does give no protection against caprice or cruelty or ill-treatment on the part of the owner, and the slave has no means of obtaining redress against it. I think it is rather a curious paradox that a humane slave owner has in the past very often helped to continue, or to delay, the manumis- sion of the slaves on the ground that they are well treated. As regards the West Indies and the United States of America, the St. Clares were the ones who were put in the forefront of the picture, and the Legrees were always kept in the back- ground, and if possible never mentioned; whereas, I think if they had all been Legrees, and none St. Clares, slavery in both those places would have been abolished at a much earlier period. But, in any case, slavery at the worst has been described in a Dispatch by a British Foreign Secretary, Sir Austen Chamber- lain, as a crime against human nature, and Lord Lugard has said that the mildest form is demoralising to the master and debasing to the slave.
I do not propose to-day to give your Lordships any harrowing cases of slavery and of the cruelties and criminalities which necessarily accompany it in many cases. What I desire to do is more to endeavour, as far as we can, to en- courage those in authority in the various countries where slavery still exists, to take action themselves, and, as far as they can, themselves to bring about an improvement in the condition of slavery.
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