Takes place on Thursday 30^th November 2017, 7.30pm to 9.00pm, at The Island Bar, 14-16 Suffolk Street, B1 1LT

Entrance fee: £5

For centuries Britain’s record as the leading opponent of slavery has been part of the country’s identity, and its claim to stand for justice and liberty. Indeed, groups and individuals in Birmingham played a prominent role in the anti-slavery movement. But more recently historians have been pointing to Britain’s history of slave-trading rather than that of anti-slavery. Once-lauded British heroes like Admiral Nelson and Cecil Rhodes are today pilloried as enslavers. Cities that once made their wealth from slave-trading, today get the tourists in to museums and exhibits decrying the slave trade. 

Though the slave trade has long been abolished, modern-day campaigners keep re-discovering it. 

‘Slavery’ today is used to mean all kinds of coerced work, from that of prostitutes to live-in maids – a powerful rhetorical device in framing contemporary campaigns. In the arts, the appetite for films, plays and novels about slavery is stronger than ever. Something about the slave as a figure seems strikingly relevant today. In this Salon, historian James Heartfield will try to shed light on the appetite for slave histories in the present day. 

Speaker

James Heartfield is the author of a number of historical books about the British Empire, the most recent being The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society: A History

Recommended Readings:

When Lincoln and Marx were on the same side. Spiked, January 2013
The Lancashire Cotton Famine, 1861-65
Liverpool student fights to remove Gladstone's name from building. Guardian, November 2017
Hall, Catherine. Legacies of British Slave-Ownership. Cambridge University Press, 2016

Olugosa, David. Black and British: A Forgotten History. Macmillan, 2016

Williams, Eric. Capitalism and Slavery. Nabu Press, 2011

True scale of UK slavery likely to involve 'tens of thousands of victims. The Guardian, October 2017