UK abolished slavery in 1833 by agreeing to pay slave owners for "loss of property" a sum of £20m (£300bn today), a transferral of wealth from taxpayers to slave owners so huge the debts incurred were only paid off in 2015. Almost all UK taxpayers have contributed to this bill.
A note on "taxpayers": government spending isn’t financed by taxes but by issuing gilts/bonds. The tax and spend is economically misleading and politically the terrain of the right. You can tell because the “Taxpayers Alliance” have never complained about paying off slaveowners.
The biggest individual compensation went toJohn Gladstone (Prime Minister William Gladstone's dad). For the 2,500 slaves on his planations he got - adjusted for inflation - £80,000,000.
When people imagine slave owners, most imaging a Gladstone type planation owner. But slave ownership was rife in the middle class. Many in the UK owned slaves as an investment - "just" one or two who they would rent out to planation owners in the Carribean.
Because women outlived their slave owning husbands and inherited their "property", 2 out of 5 of those who got a compensation pay out were women.
Abolition compensated slaveowners as it was written into law by the slaveowner class. But we shouldn't, as racism and self interest are painted as innate traits that must still today be appeased, the solidarity of the British working class in the struggle to end slavery.
Without the vote, workers used the petition to agitate. A petition of Manchester workers in the late 1700s got 10,000 signatures - 1/5 people in the city. In 1794, a mass meeting of Sheffield metal workers demanded "the total and unqualified abolition of Negro slavery”.
Willberforce, the politician school history books will credit with leading the campaign against slavery, was the enemy of these workers. He was behind anti-union laws which banned meetings to discuss wages, the collection of unions subs and strikes.
Even though he was the worker's enemy, 500 petitions were sent to support Wilberforce’s abolition bill - even in cities where their jobs were closely linked to slavery such as Manchester, Liverpool and Bristol.
The right often counter pointing out that Britain's wealth is rooted in slavery by pointing out the British also abolished it. But they'll ignore the workers struggle. They'll also ignore that, once abolished, the British were still beneficiaries of slavery.
With the USA independant, British abolition didn't abolish slavery there. Cotton and sugar harvested by slaves could still be imported, profit could still be made, but the slavery was elsewhere. This is similar to how the global north exports sweatshop labour today.
Lets also not forget that the first great leap toward the abolition of slavery was in Haiti, where L’Ouverture's revolutionary war against the French, British and Spanish imperialists. Slaves had liberated themselves. They made slaveowners everywhere afraid. They were heroes.
Sources/Reading --
The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution by C. L. R. James
Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain by Peter Fryer
Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves by Adam Hochschild
The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution by C. L. R. James
Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain by Peter Fryer
Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves by Adam Hochschild
Quite a few people surprised to learn this - others surprised that they’re surprised.
UK ignorance of our imperial past is so dire that Labour’s recently elected deputy leader - then shadow edycation secretary - could get applause for this:
UK ignorance of our imperial past is so dire that Labour’s recently elected deputy leader - then shadow edycation secretary - could get applause for this:
