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England No More

from Stolen From God by Reg Meuross

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about

By the second half of the 17th Century enslaving and trading African people seemed to be fundamental to the British economy. In Bristol practically everyone, from the lowliest market trader and shopkeeper had a share of the business.
Slavery at this time wasn’t exclusive to black Africans. The demand for cheap labour for the colonies was high, and unscrupulous British merchants in league with Press Gangs would kidnap and steal the destitute and the homeless, prisoners, gypsies and children and trade them as indentured servants. And the law supported this action.
While our illustrious naval lords were trawling the oceans for Africans to trade or steal, The Barbary Pirates, or Corsairs of North Africa were doing the same all over the West African Atlantic seaboard and the Mediterranean. And in South West England farming men and women were taken from the fields and fishermen plucked from their boats. At one time there were believed to be as many as sixty Barbary Men o’ War cruising the Devon & Cornwall coast. Records say as many as one million white people were either kidnapped, deported or transported as indentured servants from Britain to work in the colonies.
Those who survived could expect an average of four years of hard labour, wretched conditions and starvation rations, after which they would be freed and it would fall to whatever families they might have, with no government assistance, to get them home to England.
The difference with the African trade was that it was racial and a commercial business sanctioned by law and by royal decree, and it allowed Europeans to continuously exploit African labour without feeling the guilt of human misery weighing on their consciences. Black slaves had no options for freedom, in fact no human rights at all, they were chattels, owned outright by their masters. In 1660 a law was passed in Virginia making slavery hereditary. Meaning children born to slave mothers were born enslaved, and unless a white man or some legal intervention deemed otherwise, remained so for life!

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from Stolen From God, released April 7, 2023
Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne: Concertina
Reg Meuross: Guitar / BVox
Tom Jobling: Percussion

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Reg Meuross England, UK

The breadth and depth of Reg Meuross’s material is unparalleled in contemporary folk: songs about forgotten heroes, famous names, folk legends, the climate emergency, tales from the kitchen sink and news from the world stage; if something needs to be sung about then Reg Meuross has a song for it. ... more

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