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

by David Olusoga

As well as owning slaves, plantations and slave ships, Hibbert was the chairman of the cabal of West India merchants who financed and built the West India Docks in east London, a vast system of docks that were opened in 1800 and into which the slave-produced sugar of the West Indies was landed. Although parts of it still exist today, the name ‘West India Docks’ has almost disappeared from the map of London, surviving only as the name of a street and a railway station. The area is today known as Canary Wharf. In the same way that the link between Canary Wharf and slavery has been buried, George Hibbert too has been forgotten. Yet it can be argued that the story of abolition cannot be properly told without him, as Hibbert is the villain of the piece. He can be thought of as the ‘anti-Wilberforce’, the passionate, committed and defiant figure who fought a restless battle for what he believed which, in Hibbert’s case, was to ensure that Africans remained items of chattel that could be bought and sold, beaten and whipped.