I toddled off to the Merseyside Maritime Museum for a quick squizz specifically at the International Slavery Museum.
On the way up I popped in to see the exhibition "Titanic and Liverpool: the untold story". Basically, the untold story in question seems to be "we have this model of the Titanic, let's jump on the Titanic bandwagon".
This left me slightly irritated.
My mood did not improve in the slightest when I when to the slavery exhibition. It was a "vibrant celebration of African culture" with loads of words carved into walls, loads of twats talking UTTER shit on video screens and only a handful of exhibits that actually related to slavery.
I really can't see where Liverpool gets its reputation for mawkish sentimentality from.
Cunts.
3 comments:
I wish someone would tell the truth about the slave trade and that it's still going on today. saudi arabia and their child jockeys comes to mind....but we can't go upsetting the arabs.
Visited the slavery museum, as part of a city tour, fairly recently while visiting friends just outside Liverpool. Despite lookijg very hard, I found no mention of the fact that Britain was the first Westernised country to outlaw slavery and, over the following 50 years, sacrificed many sailors and soldiers in fighting those western countries who still practised it. The history of Africa before European involvement appeared to be a script from a Disney animated film. There is lots of evidence that African tribes practised slavery long before European involvement but couldn't find any mention of this, either. One thing I subsequently discovered is that the 'noble savage' depicted in the film "Amsitad" returned to Africa and became...a slave trader. Funny that!
And before Africans were enslaved en mass, British people were sent as bonded labour to the West Indies. But they died from disease and heat in great numbers. So it wasn't a uniquely black experience.
In the Viking period Slaves were taken from Ireland to the Middle East. The Greeks used slaves extensively in Classical times, as did the Romans. Barbary Pirates raided coastal towns all over Europe taking slaves before the Royal Navy was strong enough to stop the activity.
Slavery is not and never was a uniquely black experience.
But hand wringing liberal apologism seems to be a uniquely British phenomenon.
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