Slavery Remembrance Day

Today is Slavery Remembrance Day and during my lunch break I was able to join the Walk of Remembrance through the city centre.

Liverpool, of course, played a key role in the transatlantic slave trade with 1.5 million enslaved Africans carried on Liverpool-based ships to the Caribbean and North America. In return, the 'fruits' of the slave trade - cotton, tobacco, sugar and coffee - came back to Europe via Liverpool and helped to make the city wealthy.

Liverpool's Black community has been established for some three centuries and continues to grow in numbers and in confidence and visibility but participants in today's walk came from all backgrounds, races, creeds and colours and showed that Liverpool hasn't forgotten the crimes of the past whilst also reminding us all that, despite the abolition of slavery in 1833 (in the UK), there are still close to 21 million adults and children in slavery in the world today, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO). That's a situation that we should all be doing something about - urgently.