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

by David Olusoga

The pioneering work of the historian Mary Ellison shows how in the face of distress some of the workers of Lancashire acted out of self-interest and sided with the Confederacy, or at least favoured its recognition by the British government.38 Her analysis suggests that the areas worst affected by the cotton famine tended to be those most committed to supporting the South’s right to secede from the Union. This is not to say that the people of Oldham or Preston were pro-slavery but merely that they were desperate for their government to intervene on their behalf, recognize the Confederacy and restore the flow of cotton. Yet many workers, the men and women with the least to gain and the most to lose, did support the North and doing so acted counter to their immediate economic interests. There were men and women in all the mill towns who even during the worst months of the cotton famine regarded themselves as the guardians and inheritors of Britain’s anti-slavery traditions and acted accordingly. To them anti-slavery was so intertwined with Britishness that support for the South was unthinkable. Viewing the conflict through the prism of class they also saw in the plantation owners of the Deep South a propertied class that reminded them of the mill owners and the aristocrats of Britain.