Black and British: A Forgotten History, from the acclaimed historian and star of 'Celebrity Traitors'

by David Olusoga

and pioneered the use of the mass petition as a campaigning tool. They harvested millions of individual signatures from the British public and delivered to Parliament hundreds of petitions. Historians have calculated that between 1787 and 1792, 1.5 million people in Britain signed petitions against the slave trade, when the national population was just 12 million.9 The first anti-slave-trade petitions had been presented to Parliament even before the formal establishment of the anti-slavery movement in 1787. The abolition movement also deployed the boycott as a political weapon. Abolitionists were encouraged to eschew the use of rum and cane sugar produced by slaves and instead use sugar produced in India by free labour, or else add lemon to their tea.