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

by David Olusoga

In 1863 the government pushed through the Public Works Act, which allowed local authorities to raise funds to pay for public-works schemes that would provide paid work for the unemployed mill workers. Across Lancashire today are their physical remains. Sewers were constructed, canals dug, parks created, roads resurfaced or constructed from scratch. One of the most bizarre relics of the cotton famine can be found above Rochdale. Running across the Pennines through Rooley Moor is the Cotton Famine Road, a substantial, well-built, Victorian cobblestone highway. It shoots incongruously across the heather going to nowhere in particular. It was the labour of thousands of men who would much rather have been earning the high industrial wages available in the cotton mills.