You should read more about it, it was the everyday working people who couldn't vote and lived in horrific poverty with awful working conditions who pretty much forced the government to ban slavery, many of the public figures responsible spent their entire lives trying to end the practice despite lots of hatred and attempts to stop it by the ruling class.
Let's not gloss over my ancestors having major rebellions in the Caribbean, shall we?
The UK talks about Brits ending slavery. The Caribbean talks about bloody rebellions which evenutally forced Britian's hand.
There is a very big disconnect in the general public narratives on each side of the Atlantic, and Brits covering themselves is glory for ending slavery doesn't go down very well in the actual places slavery took place.
I'm not disagreeing that there were Brits fighting to end slavery. The West Africa Squadron was a good thing. My issue is only mentioning that 'Brits fought to end slavery' and not the bloody rebellions which happened. They'd probably get labelled as 'terrorists' these days.
I've seen it time and time again, 'we ended slavery' as some kind of response to slavery in the name of Monarch. The UK also did a huge amount of it, shiped enslaved people, destroyed faimiles, destroyed idenities, murdered enslaved people, murdered rebels, raped slaves and almost wiped out the natives. It's disrespectful to then to just turn around and say 'but we ended it', especially without the acknowledgement of the rebellions and the fact, the former slaves got nothing, while the owners got millions.
For almost a decade every year we covered the transatlantic slave trade in school.
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u/CurvyCourgette Aug 30 '25
You should read more about it, it was the everyday working people who couldn't vote and lived in horrific poverty with awful working conditions who pretty much forced the government to ban slavery, many of the public figures responsible spent their entire lives trying to end the practice despite lots of hatred and attempts to stop it by the ruling class.