"I regard Concorde as a social evil but . . . "

Richard West

Bristol, Wednesday One evening in June 1787, the Rev Thomas Clarkson, who had dedicated his future career to the destruction of the slave trade, rode into Bristol to start his investigations in the capital of the slavers. On coming in sight of the city just as curfew was sounding, Clarkson had sudden qualms: "I began to tremble at the arduous task I had undertaken of attempting to subvert one of the branches of the commerce of the great place which was then before me." Modern reformers might feel similar qualms about coming to Bristol to destroy another social evil — the manufacture of Concorde aircraft. For the livelihood of this friendly and pleasant city is just as dependent

today on the Concorde works of the British Aircraft Corporation and RollsRoyce as it was in 1787 upon trading in slaves between Africa and the West Indies. If the 'Stop the Concorde' movement got its way, about 12,000 people might be thrown out of work in a city already suffering from unemployment. The 6,000 BAC men who struck yesterday in protest against some enforced redundancies, were not protesting against the aircraft, of which they are proud. Many were relieved when the management agreed to negotiate and the strikes were called off, as it was feared that these might be used as an excuse by the Government to cancel its half of the Anglo-French Concorde project.

The question is : should the livelihood of

some 12,000 families be subsidised by the production of an aircraft that is insupportably noisy, possibly poisonous to the outer atmosphere, grossly wasteful of fuel and so expensive in manufacture and operation that it is certain to cost this country hundreds of millions more pounds, even in the unlikely event that airlines are foolish enough to buy it?

By some quirk of history, much of Bristol's wealth has depended on wasteful or harmful industry. Her wine shippers and cigarette manufacturers have flourished on other people's liver troubles and lung cancer. Brunel's famous suspension bridge was an engineering achievement as daring and graceful as Concorde, but almost as uneconomic. But Bristol's most lucrative commerce was slaves; and the arguments over this commerce have such relevance to the present dispute over Concorde that they are worth recalling in detail.

As early as the eleventh century, Bristol exported English slaves, "particularly young women whom they took care to put into such a state as to enhance their value." Under the influence of St Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, the merchants of Bristol turned to trading cloth for French wine, until in the seventeenth century there was again a market in the Americas for slaves. Ships would leave Bristol for West Africa with a cargo of cloth, gunpowder, rum and trinkets to purchase a cargo of slaves to carry on the notorious 'middle passage' to North America or the West Indies, where the ships were reloaded with sugar or tobacco to take back to Bristol on the third leg.

The enemies of the slave trade — the counterparts of our modern con

servationists — were the Evangelicals, like Wilberforce, Hannah More and Zachary Macaulay — who also were jeeringly

called the Saints.' Young Thomas Clarkson was employed by them to get the facts and figures about the slave trade — the numbers shipped, the size of the holds, the food provided and cruelties inflicted. His inquiries in Bristol took Clarkson to drinking dens frequented by seamen: "These houses were in Marsh Street, and most of them were kept by Irishmen. The scenes witnessed were truly distressing. Music, dancing, rioting and drunkenness were kept up from night to night."

Even allowing for Clarkson's sober and pious prejudices, the inns of that age were probably less well behaved than the modern Clifton suburb pubs where BAC boffins appear in off-duty tweed jackets and neck-scarves to sip directors ' bitter and talk about motor cars. But even Clarkson had to admit that the merchants and shippers of Bristol were not all personally evil or cruel. Indeed the majority of the town's pious bourgeoisie were against the Evangelicals. When the first motion for the suppression of the slave trade was put to the Commons in 1789, a petition of protest came from the Mayor, Commonalty and Burgesses of Bristol and another from the Master, Wardens and Commonalty of the Merchant Adventurers. There was a petition from the West Indian planters, West Indian merchants and from the principal manufac turers, shipbuilders and general traders. Bristol hired lawyers and 'representa tives,' or what we would call public relations men, to advance their case and to plant pro-slavery articles in the venal newspapers.

The arguments used in defence of the slave trade were almost the same as those used for the Concorde. Three-fifths of the trade of Bristol depended on it. The abolition of Britain's trading would not benefit the Africans (read enemies of noise ') because other countries (read France and the USSR') would continue to sail slaving ships (read 'fly supersonic aircraft ') across the Atlantic. If the trade was stopped, our colonies (read 'our balance of payments ') would suffer, and Britain would fall behind in naval strength (read ' aero-space technology ').

Bristol kept up this blocking campaign until 1807, when the slave trade was declared illegal by Parliament. But strangely enough, by this time most of the

Bristol slavers had turned to other forms of trade or had come to think that abolition might be to the West Indies' advantage. In 1814, the Mayor of Bristol headed an anti-slave trade demonstration, while shouts were heard from the crowd of 'A negro is a man!'

Bristol is still very aware of her shameful, slave trading past. It is still believed, erroneously, that there are dungeons under the city centre, where the water at high tide came up to the slaves' necks. The fact that Whiteladies Road leads up to Black Boy Hill in Clifton, is taken to mean that Bristol matrons went there to buy slaves at a market. In fact the trade was direct from Africa to the West Indies and the only plack slaves brought to Bristol were personal servants of the returning planters. But legend and guilt account for Bristol's touchiness which extends by inference to the Concorde project People are fiercely, even nastily, on the defensive. Some prominent people defend the Concorde for opportunist reasons. The trade union boss and bon viveur, Clive Jenkins, has many Concorde workers in his union. Even that technocratic gasbag, Anthony Wedgwood Benn, has been heard to say that he would not support the Concorde unless Bristol was his constituency. All three big parties in Bristol are pro-Concorde, as are the Communists and even some of the Trotskyite groups, who, although small, are skilled at disrupting factories. I understand that the local International Socialists question the policy of their mentor Paul Foot, who is one of Concorde's leading opponents. The rival Socialist Labour League is against the Concorde, partly because the Soviet Union, stronghold of Stalinists, is building a supersonic aircraft.

The convenor of shop-stewards at BAC, Mr Lew Gray, who has called out the workers on lightning strikes in protest against redundancies, sports a Concorde tie at the microphone. Indeed at one recent meeting he declared: "As far as we're concerned we've one hundred per cent behind the Concorde project. We are more in support of the Concorde project than the management. I'm sure if I asked you to raise your hands in support of the Concorde project I'd get a hundred per cent support." He did not ask them, but after the meeting I raised this question with an intelligent, very radical technician. "Yes, I'd have raised my hand ", he said. "1 regard Concorde as a social evil but we were on television and if I hadn't put up my hand it could have been misrepresented to mean that I'm against the lightning strikes."

Several BAC workers told me that they opposed lightning strikes because they thought these endangered the Concorde project. "It's costing a lot already ", said an executive type. "If people read about these strikes they'll be still more reluctant to buy it." There is a general sense that the British government is lagging behind the French in its eagerness for the Concorde. Some suggested that the Government might be glad of the strikes as an excuse for getting shot of the Concorde. Not since the time of the 'Saints' has Bristol been so nervous.