An antiques auction selling chains linked to the enslavement of African people in Zanzibar has been accused of “profiting from slavery,” according to The Guardian.
The shackles, dated to 1780 and valued at about £1,000, are among objects listed in the auction, called “Challenging History.”
The auctioneer Marcus Salter, of Cheeky Auctions in Tain, Ross, said he wanted to ensure history was confronted with the sale of the “sensitive artifact” and did not wish to offend.
“I think it’s important not to upset and offend, but shock people into learning the whole truth,” Salter said. “There are certain things we’re not allowed to sell at auction. We had to check with the platform we’re selling with that we could do this. They consider the slave chains to be a historical artefact, therefore we can.
But Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group for Afrikan reparations, said trading in such items meant people were “continuing to profit from the slave trade.”
She said, “If they were to be put in a museum I would understand, but buying and selling them like oddities is the same thing that people do when it comes to human remains– treating them as collector’s items, something to be fetishized rather than items that should be looked at in horror.”
Salter said he was selling the chains for a dealer whose father had owned them for 50 years, adding: “No matter what happens there’s going to be money made out of it from somewhere.”
He claimed if the item was donated to a museum, it could be “put into storage and never seen again”, and that slavery-linked mahogany was sold and used without controversy.
In 2024, the Antiques Roadshow expert Ronnie Archer-Morgan refused to value an ivory bangle linked to enslavement.
Caecilia Dance, an associate at London law firm Wedlake Bell, has advised on the restitution of Nazi-looted art. Dance said she could not comment on the auction, but that there was “no specific law against” trading objects linked to slavery.
She added that “public interest stewardship” – donation, sale, or long-term loan to a museum with relationships with affected communities – would be the “ideal management pathway” for an item linked to slavery.
