Forgetting to heal : remembering the abolition act of 1807

This article investigates the cultural memory of the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade in Britain. It examines official government responses and considers how these were replicated in popular culture, drawing on the film Amazing Grace. The study highlights the rhetoric employed to distance the past of the transatlantic slave trade from the present, thereby contributing to a process of historical erasure rather than tackling the lingering social and political affects of a traumatic past.