Empire: World History - 71. Nazis, reparations, and laws 'just for the English to see'

Episode Date: August 10, 2023

Did the Nazis use slave labour? Should Britain pay reparations? What is the origin of the Portuguese phrase 'just for the English to see'? What was the role of Islam in abolition? Listen as William and Anita answer these questions and more... Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. And welcome to Empire Part 2 of a special Q and A episode. My name is Anita Arnden. And mine is William Duremberg. We've got to be tight on time here because I'm a busy woman tonight. You're suggesting that I was porting for too long, Anita?

No, no, no. I'm some ways of you to ask me why I'm a busy woman today. Sorry, you're a busy woman. Sorry, I missed my cue. Anita, are you starring in a major motion picture this week? Lord, have mercy. Let's just talk about you for half an hour. So I very much enjoy it.

I was sitting enjoying my own business one evening in Delhi, watching the wonderful slow horses when you popped up reading the news. Much to my surprise, because I hadn't expected this. that hadn't been warned. So I have a side hustle in life. Yes, I do have a side hustle in life. Shall I tell you what my side hustle is? I play myself in TV dramas and in films.

So I have done this before. I'm going to do that this afternoon in a major emotion picture. And if I'm not mistaken, I know you didn't want it out there, but I can't resist it. With Rabby Malick. Because they might cut me out. Oh my God. Oh, my God. You and your bond with them.

But, but, but, but, but I have done, if you want to go back and find me. Why is Wally? There she is. She's a Wally. I have done Black Mirror. I have done Slow Horses, as you've mentioned. I've done The Spy Who Dumped me with Milakunis and Kate Bikinan. Very exciting. That was. Went to Budapest to do that. And I've got another one, just basically being me and I've had a hilarious conversations with the costume department. And do you get to meet Rabby? Let me say yes, but no. It doesn't work. It never works like that on the set. One day when we have chit-chats about this, I will tell you very funny stories about my very, very out-of-place behavior on a film set.

What happened? That got it. Go on. Save it. Save it. Save it. No. No, it's worse.

It's so embarrassing. I can't even begin. Shall we do the question? Give a head. I'm not going to let it go. I'll give you a tiny, tiny taste. Please. I was let loose on celebrity trailer with a joystick version of.

I can touch it. I'm not going to touch it. I'm not. I'll go into detail. That doesn't answer any questions. Well, that's fine. I'm a woman of mystery. Anyway, look, let's go back to these questions. So, William, this is from Dennis Chanto, who says,

I've read various articles about the history of Zanzibar, and often come across mentions of the Arab slave traders who were based there, set up slaving routes into the East African Interior and shipped slaves to the Middle East and possibly to India. Please, could you talk about this a bit more? I mean, this is sort of Malikamba territory, isn't it? It is. And more specifically, it's a character called Tipu Tip. And if you go to Zanzibar today and go to Stone Town, you can go and see Tipu Tip's house, which is this magnificent palace in the middle of Stone Town, which incidentally is one of the most extraordinary and fascinating places to visit, if ever you're looking for somewhere off the beaten track. And the Tipu Tip was the largest slaver in East Africa based out of Zanzibar. He was mixed blood. Afro-Omani ethnically, and he organized a whole series of slaving raids into the interior of the

African continent using guns and weaponry, which is not available in the interior. And some of his raids penetrated so deep it actually crossed the continent, and he would march these armies of slaves back to Zanzibar, where Zanzibar remained the largest slave market. because it was under a dynasty that were Omani and were outside British control. And there's a lot of written about this because Livingston and all those early colonial missionary stroke explorers write about this. And one thing we need to say is that in the Gulf, slavery continues until the 1960s and 70s. and in Amman and various other parts of the Hajjahs, you're getting slavery continuing, even as Sergeant Pepper is being recorded.

That is extraordinary. Look at that. It's 1970 that it's abolished finally in Amman. I mean, there's just breathtaking. Breathtaking. So, I mean, it's sort of linked to another question that Abra Haida has put to it. I want to request you guys to share your opinion about the role of Islam in the abolition of slavery. Many Muslims claim and refer to the address of the Prophet during Hajj, and then some practices of freeing the slaves as a form of atonement.

So, look, I don't know much about this, but I do remember our brilliant Gessna Biel Matar, who was talking about the Barbary Corsairs, who said that a lot of the time for Brits who were taken from the British Isles and then deposited around what is now the Middle East and Morocco and North Africa, that actually, the thing was that their route out of slavery is often conversion, that if they did convert, it made it easier or more likely that they would be freed as slaves. So I think that cannot be true because we know about the whole history of Goulam slavery, the military slavery, whereby you remain a slave, even though you might be a ruler or a governor or a general. And so there are certainly forms of slavery that seem to have been in practice. permissible under Islam. So I would doubt very much if that's true. I'm sure that in practice, whatever the theological niceties of it, that slavery continued. Yeah, and you just talked about

Omaran and other places. I mean, those are the places until very recently that had slaves. Yes, and those wouldn't all have been non-Muslims, although many of them were. And there was this trade in black Africans from the coast of East Africa being shipped up to the Gulf. until modern times. Okay, good. So this one here, a lot of people asking this question, I think it was quite an involved question, very happy to answer it.

We sort of touched on it a little bit when we talked about the Netherlands in the last Q&A. Owen Reese, dare I mention the word reparations in all of this? What do you think of reparations? I thought our Alex Renton episode was utterly breathtaking, I thought. So this was, if you've missed it, go back and listen, but it's a man whose family were,

deeply involved in the slave trade and enriched by the slave trade. And he has with a number of other people and some of the very prominent people indeed. And we're talking about people like the Earl of Harewood, David LaSalle's. Retired social, Lassels. Is that how you said? Lassels. Oh gosh, I'm so silly. Rosemary Harrison, retired social worker, Charles Gladstone, who is, I think, one of the Gladstons,

and former BBC correspondent Laura Trevelyan, formerly of my parish. who have all, with Alex, been looking at their family's involvement in the slave trade and who are talking about restorative justice to, in their words, tackle the ongoing consequences of this crime against humanity. So you have, on the one hand, William, you know, we talked about apologies, I suppose, with the Netherlands, but reparations are a separate issue. What are the hues of this debate, would you say? I never know what I think about this, and I've thought a lot about it. On one hand, of course, these are massive crimes against humanity and on an industrial scale unprecedented in human history. On the other hand, as we've seen in the course of the series, slavery is something universal. It's been practiced all over the world throughout human history, not all times, not all places. But where do you, I mean, where do you stop it? Are we going to have historians researching the

number of black Africans taken from East Africa and shipped to India in the Middle Ages. I'm only talking about the Middle Passage in the 18th century. I don't know what I feel about this. On one hand, obviously, if someone like Alex or the Trevelyans who personally made money demonstrably, historically, are willing to make these extraordinary gestures, I think it's a wonderful thing. But where do you, I don't know, where you stop? I mean, you know, do you go back to Mesopotamia. What about, if not two individuals, then two countries? So, for example, we talked about Haiti, and, you know, Haiti owe a huge debt to the French. So what about reparations to countries that have been impoverished as a result of slavery, not to individuals, but if that is hard

to find and to trace? What about two nations that have been impacted by this phenomenon of 1700s to 1800s slavery, which it does seem to be unprecedented in human history? I just don't know how you'd measure it and how you'd police it and where you'd stop is my only anxiety about it. I can see the logic in it and I can see the justice in it, but I don't know how you'd quantify it. Well, I mean, the way some people are doing it, again, because I've been looking at the Netherlands in detail, because of your questions, in fact, from last week. This is the way that Mark Rutter, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, who made the apology, has decided to go about this. So he has pledged to commit 200 million pounds worth of government funds towards restoration work in former

Dutch colonies. So that's the way that they are dealing with it. I think that would be a very good thing. I don't know how, is this, is this something voluntary? Is there something that you impose on countries? Is this, I don't know how. Well, it has to be voluntary because no one can oppose it, can they? No one can, unless you sort of say, right, we're going to have sanctions against you. I mean, there's no way of imposing it. It has to come from the country itself. But the Netherlands, that's how, that's how they're dealing with it. I mean, others have argued that, you know, you can't much as you're saying is too difficult. And also I think, you know, people like Nigel Bigger have said there's no moral imperative to do anything about this slavery is just a fact of life.

Both sides of this debate make me feel uncomfortable. I just don't know how to how to. How to answer it. Yeah. I mean, sort of maybe that is the way. I mean, if it is too hard to find individuals and reparations to countries that have been affected. I don't know. I don't know if that's not really a clear-cut answer, but this is not a clear-cut subject, perhaps.

perhaps. Another question here, Tom Gillif. Oh, I like this question very much. Would you go so far as to describe Dr. Johnson as an abolitionist? I, you know, I described him always in my head, and I think on our podcast as well, as a sort of a protein abolitionist before it was a thing, you know, that his sensibilities were roused in the way that nations were then stirred by the abolitionist movement. So I don't know. We said in the podcast, do you remember, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, famously said, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes? So he definitely knew the hypocrisy of what was going on. And when he was talking about America in that instance, what do you think? Is he? Is he an abolitionist? I've never

heard him fight for abolition of slaves, but he clearly disliked it personally. It's very clear that he found it vile and that he did his best in his personal life to treat Francis Barber with love and with with the quality. But I don't think you could actually say that he... He's not a card carrier. He doesn't politically organise. He's not like Wilberforce. He's not stirring up, you know, Parliament to fight slavery.

It's more of a personal thing. And it's clear that he dislikes it. As we know, great swathes, the population always did. And actually, you know, this whole abolitionism as a movement really only starts getting going as an organized thing. He dies, Samuel Johnson in 1784, but the society for affecting the abolition of slave trade begins in 1787. So he just sort of predates it. So I'd still stand by that protein abolitionist, maybe. But what he represents is that swath of English opinion which hated the slave trade and hated slavery.

That's not the same as being abolitionist. No. I'm going to throw you a question now that I know you've been itching to get your teeth into. the role of the Portuguese, because you've been saying this for, we should have covered the Portuguese, and maybe we'll come back to this in a future series. But Louis Miranda says, or Luis Miranda,

says, can you talk about how the Portuguese were really terrible slavers? They had a whole huge role in the slave trade, and they haven't been focused on at all. So they had the biggest role in the slave trade. They were bigger slavers even than the British, who were the second biggest. And this is because they started long before everyone else, And they were the first, along with the Spanish, to invent the idea of the middle passage of moving slaves from West Africa to the cleared new plantations being erected in the Caribbean Islands.

And so that's happening from the, is it the 15th century? From the 1490s from time of Columbus onwards, right through until the 19th century. And after the English abolish the slave trade, there is still a massive slaving operation moving between Mozambique on East Africa and Brazil. And this becomes the largest slave network after the English pull out in the early 19th century. Can I give you another stunning figure to add to your stunning figure? From 1800 to 1850, the Portuguese shipped two and a half million slaves, just on. under two and a half million slaves. So that's way more than the British ever did in a period of 50 years.

And as you say, Brazil receiving the most slaves during this period. And like the United States, Brazil is still having to deal with the legacy of all of this. I mean, that's still a really contentious and hot issue in Brazil. And the way in which, you know, sort of colourism again kicks into politics in modern Brazil is a vestige of that. So I think Mozambique becomes a very important centre for the Portuguese. slave trade at this time. And a quarter of a million slaves are carried from Mozambique to Zanzibar in the first half of the 19th century heading eastwards. And then you have this long and horrific voyage, because it's so much longer than the West African Middle Passage from Mozambique all the way to Brazil.

And on top of very, very crowded conditions on the slave ships, which were every bit as bad as the ones going to the Caribbean, you get the slaves getting very cold in the whole. And the whole, when it's going through the Cape because you get freezing conditions or cold conditions in that in that southern dive and it's a much longer voyage and there are more storms so apparently it was the worst it was the worst of all the slave passages and when you go to Mozambique there are these amazing on the coastal cities oh the forts the vestiges of the forts and all these extraordinary rich houses in which the slavers lived are there some of the forts where you still have sort of the brickwork, the stonework, where you can see where shackles were attached and things like that,

which are really just so horrifying. And then you get very large Portuguese firms as later as the 1840s. There's a Portuguese company directed by someone called Manuel Brasilio de Chunaheres, if that isn't the wrong pronunciation, who has bases in Cuba, New York and Mozambique. And so there's these very complicated commercial operations running quite late on with large scale. slaving operations going on in Portuguese territories. Right. Going about that long voyage from Mozambique to the slave territories,

some of the temperatures get very low when they're crossing the Cape, but they go up to 130 degrees Fahrenheit when they're in the tropical zone. So they have the largest death rates of any slaving voyages. Of course that, because they are not transporting meat. They are transporting men, women and often children, too, in these conditions. And they have often 50% mortality rates. Yeah, well, okay. By the way, I think we should definitely do, sorry, just thinking about your last answer,

we should definitely do the Portuguese Empire in the future. I'd really like to do a Vasco da Gamma stuff exactly go. Absolutely. It would be so important to do this. When you're talking about the Portuguese, I just love this so much. Because I have actually spent time in Brazil, but I still have a really terrible Portuguese accent, so I'm sorry about this. But there is an idiomatic equivalent in Portuguese for, this is not worth the paper it's printed on. And it's something that the Portuguese came up with in the 1800s when Britain abolished slavery and was putting pressure on all other countries to follow suit.

They would play along, almost play along. So they passed a law forbidding slavery, but in practice nothing changed at all. So the law was literally just for the English to see. And that now gives rise to the idiomatic phrase, Paros englis is fair, which is just for the English to see. Only for the English to see means nothing. Oh, very good, Anita. Very good. Obrugada. Okay. Shahar has written to us and said, could you expand a bit about other European empires of the day, Spain, France, Austria, Hungary, and whether they enslave people, be it of African descent or other. Okay. So we've talked a bit about Portuguese slavers,

and the most active slavers in the world. But the Spanish Empire was in decline at this time. We've talked about this. as well where we talked about Tucson Overture and the position of the French. The British actually were the ones who supplied Spain with a lot of their slaves. So in 1713, England acquired something called the Asiento contract. We talked about a little bit in the Royal African Company episode. And that allowed them to supply Spain's American colonies with about, well, just under 5,000, 4,800 slaves every year. The French were a very powerful slaving force. largely because Sandoamank, which we've been talking about a lot in this series, because it is so fascinating.

What is now modern-day hate? The French are the third in the rank. The order is Portuguese and Brazilians at the very top. What is this list that you keep? It's like top of the pops, but the most grim top of the pops I've ever seen. I'm reading this from a book, which was the first book I ever read on slavery, which was a great classic from 30 years ago by Hugh Thomas, the slave trade, the history of the Atlantic slave trade, 1440 to 1870. But it's very interesting. It's only 20 years old this book.

And already the terminology feels very dated and it feels oddly sort of bloodless in its description of the horrors. I mean, you keep going to it for the numbers, yes. So, yes, just to conclude, you know, the French were a really very powerful slaving force, largely because of Sandemank, which was, you know, their cash cow in the empire. But after Haitian independence, their slaving empire declined significantly and quickly. Okay. This one here, this is interesting. Savitha says, could you compare or do a comparison

of the African slave population in North America and Britain? When I think about slaves in America, I'm thinking about large plantations, horrible treatment, segregation, hostility. What about black people who found their way to Britain, either is freed people or slaves? Was their segregation? Was their hostility where they lived? Well, look, the first thing that you should know...

There are no plantations in Britain. So, yeah. It's almost invisible here to Britain. So although Britain is so strongly represented, in the slave trade. People don't see it here, which is why, you know, it sort of goes, it goes on and it's, it is bloodless to use the word that you used about the book that you've just been looking at, William. But in America, in the South, you see it everywhere. You have to ennure yourself to it. They are enslaved people in such large numbers that you cannot,

but unless deliberately close your eyes to this. And I thought the Maya Jasanoff episode that we did was, was, you know, startling. I did know about this, but to be reminded of how many of the founding fathers were slave owners themselves. You know, the greats, Washington, for example, Jefferson people do know about and they know that he fathered children, but Washington himself, others as well, you know, of this cadre. So the difference, I suppose, is that here in Britain, the numbers are so small. Are people treated with racism? Well, I think, you know, again, in the France, this Barber episode, Peter Moore, you know, sort of told us that, yeah, it can't have been a lovely life for Francis when he, you know, it can't have been a safe place sometimes running from Samuel

Johnson's House of Fleet Street to get pamphlets published or books published. It wasn't altogether safe. I think there's an important legal distinction also in that the USA had legally segregation and there was never legal segregation in Britain. You're talking about modern United States, you know, the more modern politics, yeah. But the UK until 1965, never had laws prohibiting racial segregation. Oh, that's interesting. Okay, they didn't do it, but there were no prohibitions. Oh, that's interesting. I never thought about it in that in that way. Okay. But I think the key, the key thing to take away, though, is that in Britain, slavery powered the economy, but was almost invisible. So you get in Jane Austen, in Mansfield Park,

you get the money coming from the slave plantations, and that is registered there. But you don't see it. It's only in the movie of Mansfield Park, where you have Harold Pinter playing the hideous slave owner with this sort of chamber of horrors. Okay, look, this is a good point to take a break. Join us after the break for more of your Q&As. Hello, welcome back.

You're listening to a very special Q&A episode of Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Drupal. I think this is a complicated question that comes from Louise Schallever. Well, let's try and answer it. Luis, I was puzzled by your omission of the slave labour used by the Nazis during World War II. For Jews, especially, there was no possibility of being freed from this slavery. Rather, it was a sure death sentence. As a matter of discussion, what's the difference between forced labour and slavery?

Very interesting question. It is fascinating and a moral, philosophical question. So I think we've talked about the difference, but just to recap, the difference between forced labour and slavery is your descendants will be slaves also, I suppose, is if you are a purchased product, which is what slavery does. The Nazis are such a specific and utterly cruel, inhumane and monstrous concept. The labour is almost not their first concern when it comes to the final solution. It is the eradication of a people.

And that is not the same as those who indenture servitude or those who enslave people. So those who went and bought from the kingdoms of Dahomey did not do so to white. out the neighboring tribes of Dahomey. They did it for economic gain. But it's almost as if the side product of wiping out a people is to work them to death. I mean, it's a nuance and it's, I mean, it's all horrific. It's all awful. There is no relativism in this at all. But if there are differences, maybe those are where they are. I think also, I mean, it doesn't mean any any better or worse, but the idea of private ownership, if you're a slave, you're owned by a person, and you are property legally. And I'm not sure that was true. I mean, I don't think the horrible concentration

camp, commandants owned the people there. No, but you had, you had companies, didn't you? You had big manufacturers who very happily used for slave. So, you know, Albert Speer and one of the best books I've ever read in my life. Gita Serenis. Keterni. I mean, it's just absolutely, Albert Speer, the search for truth. She hounds him. And in the, in the most brilliant journalistic kind of way, chipping away and chipping away, the one man who takes. takes responsibility at the Nuremberg trials. Albert Speer is the one man who stands up and says, yes, I am responsible. And for that, he is spared the death penalty. The others who say, I didn't know anything. I didn't know about the final solution. I don't, you know, deny and deny and

deny, they go to the gallows. He does, he doesn't. He does something different. But then she keeps asking, Albert, you must have known. You must have known something. You did know something. Come on, you knew. And it goes on for decades. And because Speer at the time, you know, formerly the architect of the Nazis, who then turns into somebody who's looking after manufacture during the war effort, he finally, finally has to admit that yes, he knows. He knows that slaves or, you know, sort of that Jews are being forced to slave labor. There's no other way of calling it, really, into corporations as work for force for corporations for munitions, for cars, for other things.

And it's this horrific revelation, almost that he cannot admit to him. I really commend this book to you when we're talking about books. It changed my life. Change my view of what journalism really means. I met Gita Sereni. She was an extraordinary woman. She was teeny. She's the only woman I've jumped on.

I mean, literally. Normally I have this sort of Sanfoir when it comes to meeting people I like. I normally I play it the other way and pretend I hate them because I just can't afford or bear to embarrass myself. But with Gita Sereni she was speaking at the National Theatre. And this book had meant so much to me that I was and I got one of the cheapseats. was a lot younger. And so I had dashed down the stairs, like about eight flights to try and head her off at the pass, and I couldn't breathe. And I just leapt on this teeny, tiny woman

who was four foot something. Is there a photograph of this? No, no, because it was just me, and I just said, I love you. I just want you to know how much I love you and how much. And she was completely baffled, this mad woman flying at her from the stairs. But it was an amazing thing. To return to the question, I don't think in practice probably there's any great difference. Just like we talked about in the Islamic world, whether the theological stipulations against slavery actually make any difference on the ground. I think the difference between being a slave labor in a Nazi death camp or being slave labor in a plantation, neither of them would have been equally horrible. Equally. Okay, historical fiction. Sarah Tanburn says,

what do you want even need to think about historical fiction, especially as a way to fill in the gaps to do the work of giving voice to those arrays and silenced by the winners. What is your gold standard for historical fiction? I have to say I increasingly get irritated by historical fiction because I want to know what actually happened rather than the fictional version. And the first thing I do whenever I read historical fiction or when I see a historical movie is to go straight into my books to see what actually happened and what's invented.

Me too. Me too. So this is a joy because I do enjoy going to see this. And I will go and see Napoleon when it comes out. But I will take almost as much joy on the way home from the cinema. Made it up. Well, my husband and I, we've made it. We turned it into almost a blood spore where we go, well, that wasn't rubbish. That wasn't true.

And how many inaccuracies can you, I mean, we are a nightmare for historical depictions. It doesn't say I don't go to watch them. If you were to take to your desert island, only historical fiction, what would be on your list? I mean, historical fiction, let's talk about cinematic, okay. cinematic. I mean, I so this is really interesting. So I have rewatched fairly recently, Lawrence of Arabia, and I really loved it.

I remember watching it the first time and being quite bored. I rewatch it. I watched it every Christmas. I watched it in Egypt. Well, I mean, I really enjoyed it and I watched it with my kids, and so it just opened up a whole bunch of conversations that we didn't have. I also rewatched Gandhi, and I found it really slow,

and I found it quite bloodless. Very, very slow, and also just the drama of it, so I didn't like it as much, I remember when I first watched it, I thought it was fabulous. Same story of the jewel in the crown, which is very, very slow. I can't watch it at all. I can't bear it. The other one that I have watched fairly recently, and I still enjoy it just because it's so beautiful as Dr. Javago.

So, you've been on the exact same trajectory. After watching, after watching Lawrence of Raybier, we then watched Bridge over the River Kwai. Did you? Okay. Wanted to know what was true, what wasn't of that. and Dr. Chavago's next on our list. So I still love Dr. Chavago. It's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, and it moves faster.

But we're getting off the question, which is historical fiction. So the writing, I mean, obviously there are great works of historical fiction like war and peace, which is lots of made up people by Tolstoy fighting Napoleon. Well, yeah, I mean, if we're talking Russia, Diary of a Hero, Lermontov, who writes this fantastic thing, which is also set in the same period of time, has a really brilliant moment where a man is furiously ripping up Lermontov's diary and the hero's diary and turning it, folding it and folding it so that his voice will be forever destroyed and turning it to wads for bullets and shaming them into a gun. So, you know, I like Lermontov as well. Of English historical fiction, Robert Graves has to be at the top of my list. I love the I Claudius and Claudius the God. But also, less well-known, Count Belisarius, a sara, a wonderful book about the Byzantine general.

Well, I really like Harris' Pompeii a lot. I really are really. Oh, it's great. I mean, Robert Harris's Pompeii, I thought, was brilliant. I really enjoyed it. So, yes, there's a whole list of stuff. Nigel Jones, well, understandably the series was focused heavily on the slavery resulting from the British Empire and the Caribbean.

I'd be interested to know where else slavery continued to flourish as a significant presence in the early modern age to the 20th century. And Matthew Brown too is kind of linked. I'd be really interested in stavey outside the regions you've discussed, Maori culture, Chinese dynasties or pre-Columbus Latin America. Look, can I talk just very briefly about something that's very, very modern, which is Yazidi women, which I care about an awful lot. So, I mean, that is 2014.

Ladies and gentlemen, 2014, we saw that plateau. We saw these women and children up on this plateau reaching into the sky, saying, please pick us up because we will not be safe here. But help didn't come, and they were in. enslaved, enslaved in every sense of that word by the Islamic State. So, you know, although there are camps where some of these women have now been sort of given some kind of shelter, there are still, according to the Organization for Migration, a UN-backed organization, it's known as the IOM, about 2,700 Yazidi women and children still missing.

And many of them, says this organization could still be with their kidnappers. So that, to me, makes my skin crawl and my blood turn to ice. There is a large Yazdi community in West London, in Ealing. Is that right? There's a whole area full of Syrian refugees and Syrian migrants predating the collapse of Syria in Wembley in Ealing. And there are, I've been to some of these community centres for the Syrians where they who used to have Saturday evening socials in the Smith's Crisp Factory. Oh, really?

Social. I got called to give a lecture there after my book, Holy Mountain, which had a lot of stuff about the Nestorians and the Chaldean Christians, who are also neighbors of the Yazidis. And there are Yazidi cabab shops in Wembley, believe it or not. Are they good? They're very good when I went 20 years ago. I haven't done a quantity. There's a connoisseur of the cabab.

How would you rate the Yazidi Kabab? Anyway, look, but seriously, I mean, that is a modern slavery that, yes, it's just all too recent, isn't it? We talk about the abolition of slavery, but there are enslaved peoples all over the world. There are bonded labors all over the world. And this is an ongoing story. Sadly, it's not history. Thank you for all of your questions. Thank you so much for listening.

Thank you for making this podcast as successful as you have. We pinch ourselves every episode that you're with us and you remain with us despite our incessant prattling. But we're really grateful. We will be shortly announcing what the new series is about. So watch this space, as they say. I was longing to tell you now, and I was forbidden to breaking. I promise I will come over there and I will, honestly, I will taser you. I don't have a tasing it.

I will say it's a good. But I will. It's a good. It's not going to be bad, is it? It's dreadful. We've got a dreadful series. You're really pretty self-standard. Of course, it's a good...

You're going to be really bored over the next three months. You're going to hate it. No, you're not. No, look, next Tuesday is our big announcement. I've just been researching and writing some of the roadmaps for the next series, and it is a cracker. I can't wait. Don't say it any more than that.

It's excited. It's excited. It's excited. It's excited. It's exciting. Anyway, listen, join us then. Till then is goodbye from me, Anita Arden. And goodbye for me, William Duremberg.