FRANCAISAnti-Slavery International - History
1910-1919
-1910-1912, Peru: in London, the Society relays the complaints of Benjamin Saldana Rocca against the wealthy Julio Cesar Arana, who registered his company in England and who is accused of the massacres of the Amazonian Indians workers in his rubber plantations along the river Putamayo, on the border with Equator, Brazil and Colombia. As with the Congo (territory finally entrusted to Belgium in 1906) the scandal provokes the creation of a governmental inquiry commission which, led by Roger Casement, hands in its conclusions to the British Parliament in 1912, quoting the figure of 30,000 deaths linked to the production of rubber in the region since 1900.
-1912, Nigeria : after protesting in November 1906 against the hanging of nine Ogoni who had resisted forced labour and land alienation in Agbor, the Anti-Slavery Society starts to support the Diobu who are expelled when the British colonial master establishes the town of Port Harcourt in November 1912. But the organisation soon gives up in March 1914 because it refuses to name its informants and the Colonial Office threatens to sue it for libel in November 1913. As a matter of fact, the Anti-Slavery Society does not have enough financial resources to stand for a trial and to investigate in Port Harcourt to check the allegations of the natives and their traditional chiefs, who officially signed agreements surrendering their sovereignty to the British. Moreover, there are conflicts of interests, for some members of the Anti-Slavery Society support the establishment of Port Harcourt. John Cavendish Lyttleton is one of them: a secretary of the Colonial Office, he organised the military operations of 1902 and 1910 to pave the way for a British control of the hinterland of the Niger Delta.
-1913, South Africa: the Society opposes the Native Land Act which, on the instigation of the British colonial power, reserves 93 % of the country’s land to the white, excluding black farmers and reducing them to labour tenancy. In London, the King George V, who disapproves of the criticism of British policy, resigns from the Anti-Slavery Society, of which he had been the honorary president. As a general rule, the organisation doesn’t demand independence for Africans at this time. It approves the civilising mission of colonisation and only wants to limit its abuses.
-1914, United Kingdom: the strategic alliance between London and Brussels, at war against Germany, forces the Anti-Slavery Society to tone down its attacks of the Belgian exactions in Congo. As for Edmund Dene Morel, he launches a pacifist party, the Union of Democratic Control (UDC), which leads to his being imprisoned in 1917 but which will have a certain influence on the political scene – nine of its members will belong to the Labour government in 1924.
