The Unsettling Origins of Britain's Railways

It's been a terrible year, 2020, and things have to get better. History tells us that they usually do, most of the time, for most people. But some things never seem to, and one is the killing and impoverishment of people around the world just because they are from one ethnic group rather than another. Let's call it what it is: racism. It's more often than not directed at black people and dished out by white people. News around the world is full of protests about the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, USA, knocking Coronavirus off the front pages for the first time in months. This evening the statue of Edward Colston, a slave trader, has gone into Bristol harbour. LinkedIn and social media are full of righteous indignation by people and companies against the scourge of racism. But, beyond indignation and anger, justified as they are, it is worth considering the origins of the present situation in the US, the better to find ways to eliminate racism here.

I believe most people and absolutely all organisations involved with Britain's railways would earnestly and urgently like to do that. London Underground and Network Rail (for both of whom I've worked) have made forceful efforts to eradicate overt racism in recent years and to foster a sense of community and diversity. I think some pride can be taken in that, but I'm male and very pale (though hopefully not quite yet stale) so I can't judge whether people with BAME backgrounds feel that enough is being done. I acknowledge that this article is written from the perspective of my white privilege, but I'm trying harder than ever to understand. As some of you will know I have for the past couple of years stepped (slightly) back from my frenzied railway career to study history at university, and thought it worthwhile to share what I've learnt with the railway community.

The railways were a battleground for post-war race tensions in Britain, and as recently as 1966, when England were winning the world cup, British Rail managers at Euston finally had the courage to overcome an informal trade union 'colour bar' which prevented non-whites being employed. Similarly, London Underground was in the vanguard of breaking down longstanding white British attitudes to race, recruiting directly from the Caribbean. When I started on the railways in the late 1980s there were very few BAME engineers or managers, although the number wasn't zero, and there was evidently still race tension as there was in British society as a whole.

Later in Australia and especially in Washington DC (at the Ivy City Acela train maintenance depot) I found again that railway workforces reflected the tensions in their societies. At Ivy City, in a poor part of town, the workforce was diverse but it was not equal. There was a stark racial division (and distance) between those in higher paid jobs like me and the people doing the much harder (and much less well paid) work of train cleaning and maintenance. I think I amused my African-American colleagues, from whom I earned the epithet 'Sean Connery', but it felt as though we were from different planets and not just because of my sexy Scottish accent. Amtrak were just as fastidious as today's British railway employers - perhaps even more so - in dealing with overt racism in the workplace, and yet there was an edge and sharpness that I had not encountered in London (although I'm reticent to judge given my paleness). Thus began my interest in the troubled story of race relations in the US.

I must now slip into 'historian' mode, relating objectively only what is known, based on the surviving evidence and its interpretation by academics. Since it's not an essay I won't provide all the references and sources but if anyone's interested I'd be glad to send them separately. I'm also just going to tell a small part of the story - that of the Atlantic 'triangular' slave trade and its role in building up the British Empire - but it's worth telling because I was never taught this in school, and nor would I ever have understood the horrible truth and scale of it from a lifetime's exposure to British popular culture. Of course I knew about slavery, but not how big, and bad, it really was.

The Atlantic slave trade involved manufactured goods being shipped from Britain for sale in Africa and the Americas; the proceeds were used to acquire captive humans in West Africa, who were shipped across the Atlantic for sale in the West Indies, or in North and South America; ships then returned to Britain laden with slave-produced commodities such as sugar and cotton. England (Britain after 1707) entered this trade in the 1560s with state?sanctioned privateers such as Sir John Hawkins, backed by Elizabeth I and London money. Hawkins included a bound slave on his coat of arms and has left a vivid and unabashed account of his bloody methods. Britain was relatively late to the trade, the Portuguese and Spanish having previously dominated, but Britain was the biggest slaving nation from the 1670s. Royal patronage lay behind its early development. The Royal African Company was given a monopoly of trade with west Africa enforced by the Royal Navy. Newly submerged Bristolian Edward Colston made his fortune trading humans for them. Profits were recycled back into Britain's economy, enriching its employees, shareholders, creditors, and the king. Slaves were branded with 'RAC' or ‘DY’ (Duke of York, later James II).

London and its burgeoning financial, shipping and insurance institutions such as Barclays and Barings, as well as Bank of England directors, West Indies merchants and many others, often including the royal family, ‘London’s mercantile elite’, were at the heart of the slave trade. London institutions pooled and spread risk, a critical role involving financial expertise and liquidity, since slaving was risky and capital-intensive. London merchants and trading houses, and their tradable bills of exchange, supported the entire enterprise. This was the basis of London's pivotal role in insurance. The consequent financial engineering gave rise to a mature and liquid financial infrastructure which was to have a profound effect on London’s emergence as the global finance capital.

Increased demand for sugar and cotton in Britain greatly increased the volume of the slave trade. Slaves shipped by the British rose six-fold in the century to 1760, peaking at around 42,000/year after which time volumes declined only a little before abolition in 1807. Historians argue about the exact contribution of slaving to the wealth of the British Empire but they agree it provided a substantial contribution to its growing might and global domination. The ‘sugar interest’ was a powerful force in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century London and built what was then the largest dock complex in the world, the West India Dock, opening in 1802. The great northern mills, which turned slave?produced raw cotton into textiles, came to dominate the global market in clothes. This was a catalyst for the development of steam power.

Even after abolition in 1807 Britain's relationship with the slave trade did not end. Slave-originated wealth had accumulated and spread widely down the generations through inheritance. Eventually, in the 1830s, compensation was paid to slave owners by the government, which has only in the last few years paid off the loan it took out to do this. There was a feeding frenzy amongst the British elites. University College London’s database ‘Legacies of British Slave Ownership’ allows us to trace where the money went, which points to what may have been the most important long-term consequence in Britain: around one-fifth was invested directly in early railway schemes. To take just one example, Abel Rous Dottin, who was awarded ￡3,885 (over ￡400,000 today) for his Barbados estates in May 1836, became an investor in and first chairman of London’s first railway, the London & Greenwich in that year. You may have wondered why I chose a picture of that to illustrate this article.

The manufacturing and financial industries which had grown strong on the Atlantic slave trade propelled the first industrial revolution - the steam age - and the two came together to power the great Victorian railway boom from the 1840s. Slavery was officially gone by then but our railway system was built using technical and financial skills honed during the slaving era, as well as capital directly sourced from it. We can't say that the railways were a direct result of slavery but there are a great many indirect connections. Would they have happened anyway? Perhaps, but surely not so quickly. And maybe they would have arisen first elsewhere.

The best estimate of the total number of slaves exported by Britain is 3.1 million (of whom 2.7 million arrived). Their descendants such as George Floyd, and many many other victims far too countless to mention, are grappling with endemic racism in the US and elsewhere to this day. Slavery played a critical role in the development of Britain’s economy beyond its financial impact, propelling the trading, institutional and financial infrastructure which sustains it to this day. Britain still also benefits from the physical infrastructure financed directly or indirectly by slave-originated wealth, using technology and financial skills developed in large part because of the Atlantic slave trade. This includes our railways.

Coming back out of 'historian' mode and returning to the mess that is 2020, I think it is important to be circumspect. There is nothing anyone can do to change this history, but we should worker harder to understand it, and I believe that we need to rethink history teaching in schools. For many British people today, including me before having had the chance to learn about it more fully, slavery is thought of as a blemish on the generally benign period of British Empire. After all 'we gave the world railways, and we abolished slavery'. These statements are true, but they minimise or wilfully ignore the 250-year human catastrophe on which Empire was built. We may see racism as predominantly (but not exclusively) an American problem, but our country was instrumental in creating the situation in the US today, and without realising it we still benefit from its ghastly backstory in surprising ways.