Civic leaders in Greater Manchester will make the case to government for education around slavery and the slave trade to be 'compulsory' learning in primary and secondary schools. They have also collectively agreed to call on the Prime Minister to introduce a national Slavery Memorial Day.
The Greater Manchester Combined Authority met on Friday - coincidentally Holocaust Memorial Day - to consider a request from Salford City Council to support its call for a national Slavery Memorial Day.
The motion said: "The GMCA is recommended to support the motion presented by Salford City Council to call on the Government to declare a national Slavery Memorial Day and to consider making slavery a compulsory national curriculum schools' subject."
The motion agreed in Salford stated: "Slavery was practiced by several nations, including the United Kingdom, for decades. In the process fortunes were made and those forced or sold into slavery suffered many indignities including beatings, shackling, and appalling living conditions.
"Many died, some were tortured and likely all were traumatised. There is already a Holocaust Memorial Day, and the Srebrenica massacre is also marked annually.
"It would help to better understand the impact of slavery if an annual Slavery Memorial Day, or similar event, was established ideally nationwide, so that current and future generations are made more aware of the appalling suffering and the destruction of well developed cultures because of the horrors of the slave trade.
"Slavery should be more publicly acknowledged and studied, taught in all of our schools and given the same local and national level of importance as the Holocaust.
"Although the transatlantic slave trade is covered in the national education curriculum in the UK, it is not compulsory for primary and secondary schools therefore, it would be great to request that the slave trade should become a compulsory subject/topic for our primary and secondary schools.
"A Slavery Memorial Day would also help to further raise the profile of modern day slavery which this council has already debated. Modern slavery was recently highlighted in the revelation by the Olympian, Sir Mo Farah, who tells us he was trafficked."
Salford's mayor, Paul Dennett, said slavery was 'institutionalised when the first civilisations emerged'. He said the main aim of the motion was to 'call for a better understanding of slavery within our education system'.
"It calls for more public acknowledgment, it calls for slavery to be studied and to be taught to fully appreciate the appalling suffering and the destruction of cultures and the horrors of the slave trade. We know at the moment that 49.6 million people are subject of slavery - a quarter of those people are children."
Mayor Dennett said it would be in addition to the Abolition of Slavery Day, marked internationally on December 2, and the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.
The mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, said it was 'relevant today' because of modern-day slavery as well as the history of the city region. Mr Burnham said there was unanimous support and a letter would now be drafted and sent to government.
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