This was very powerful for many people. It means that the radicalism of people of colour in the US had partly passed the British people by. They did not know there was a history of slavery in mainland Britain. Worse than that, I think some people had a sense that they were economic migrants who had to earn their fortune and earn their rights in a country which had allowed them in, but had no obligation to support them.

Not so. Slaves were taken from Africa and dispersed in the West Indies, South America, North America by European ships, predominantly British ships. In my view, these leaves the slave trading and the slave owning nations, even today, with a moral responsibility for tackling their own racism, and for a programme of reparation to Africa.

When slavery run by Europeans on such a massive scale in Africa the African societies were self-supporting, indeed, some of them were phenomenally wealthy, peaceful, and successful. Slavery existed in Africa, but it was not a hereditary condition: a slave's son or daughter was born free. A slave could buy his or her own freedom. And, as important as both of these: a slave was not regarded as racially inferior to his or her masters.

Slavery as managed by Europeans was a massive business. Nobody knows how many men and women were taken as slaves, 15 million people is a currently accepted estimate. Nobody knows how many men and women were killed in the slave wars, it could be as many as another 15m or 20m. No society could survive the extraction of so many people, especially since, for choice, the slavers took the fittest, strongest young men. No society could survive the impact of slave wars and such a disruptive trade, especially when its main currency was guns. It is my belief that Africa could have become an economically successful, peaceful country of different nations. The horror and poverty that we see in Africa today was caused, I believe, to the terrible disruption to the political systems, and to the anarchy released by mass-kidnap and war. By the time that the European countries and the American powers were ready to give up slaving it was too late. The only way to restore peace to Africa, as they saw it - and the only way to buy African products and exploit the fertility of the African soil - was to dominate the country. I believe that imperialism came to Africa as a result of the slave trade, and the resulting disorder in the post-imperial country stems directly from the injustice and racism of the European empires.

It is a terrible history of wickedness and error, and I believe that white Europeans and Americans today should come to terms with their debt to Africa and repay it: by financial and political support offered generously and without strings.

Gardens for The Gambia
I visited The Gambia as part of my research for the novel A Respectable Trade, in order to see the sort of country that my hero Mehuru would have known.

It was an extraordinary trip - and one of the most extraordinary moments was visiting a little primary school, our in the bush, where the headmaster had appealed to the tour company for money to re-roof the school's kitchen.

He showed me the improved facilities - a corrugated iron roof on whitewashed mud-brick walls and told me that his new hope was to raise money to put a well in the schoolyard so that the children could learn how to grow crops from irrigated land, and could raise enough vegetables to feed the poorer children at lunchtime, who would otherwise go hungry.

The well would cost only £300. I thought I would take a chance and give him the money. The story of what happened next can be found under the Gardens for The Gambia section of this website, and you can be part of this story.