Corrine Fowler: My writing on colonialism made me a hate figure – so I replied to my trolls

Blair, himself, of course went to Fettes College in Edinburgh (current boarding fees £14,700 per term). And it is no coincidence his children went to the best performing comprehensive in the UK (supplemented by private tutoring which caused a bit of a fuss).

It is more the exclusive social structures and spheres in which the upper classes operate that are a major problem for me.

Mytholmroyd.
That’s interesting. Are you talking about today’s upper classes? What about people who don’t have aristocratic forebears but have made a fortune and live in a similar way?
Tony Blair is an example of this - a big house in London with its own mews; a house in the country with staff; holidays with European nobility in their castles; dinner with the Rothschilds and so on
Ok, he didn’t take part in bloodsports and nor were his children privately educated, but there are other similarities.

Forgotten? I remember watching a programme on 'apprentices' from the workhouse about ten years ago. It's a history certainly in the public domain. How things do disappear.

The Truck Acts were passed in the mid-nineteenth century in the UK, and outlawed payment in tokens, which could only be spent in the company shop, which would also give credit against the next payment in tokens. Acts also freed Scottish miners who had been held in bondage since the 1790s. The Crofting Acts removed the abuses of crofters in the north of Scotland, who were exploited by their landlords. The abuses included rape and making widows pay for the shipwrecks their husbands had died in. Most of this used to be taught in economic and social history, which traced the rise of rights for workers, the anti-slavery movement, the sources, causes and outcomes of the agrarian and industrial revolutions, the effects of the Napoleonic Wars - and included domestic political history of the last three centuries, including the suffrage movement, the move to state universal education and the introduction of the welfare state. Now it is mostly WWI and WWII, which gives little perspective on how we got where we are. (My DD, having had WWII for her GCSE opted to stay at her own school rather than take up a sixth form college place simply because her school did not do the world wars for A level, but nineteenth century political history, which was far more interesting.)
Can I recommend The History of British Trade Unionism by H. Pelling? It is fairly out of date in that it must be 60 years old, but does give a clear explanation of how workers' rights were won and why trades unions are important.

So I've learned the more official term was "truck shop" and the laws to ban that form of exploitation were called the Truck Acts. Wikipedia has a page on the legal reforms required. A cursory reading suggests much of the 19th century was a convoluted fight between Parliament trying to suppress the practice and employers who had spotted loopholes in the most recent piece of legislation.

wikipedia

I'm sure that persisted well into the 19th century, because I've read about miners being obliged to use the mine-owner's "tommy shop".

I wonder what I can find about when that was abolished.

@Barbadossunset not sure - I don't think about it on a personal level - I work with people across all 'classes' and many nationalities - I don't ask them about their class or family money! It shouldn't matter.

It is more the exclusive social structures and spheres in which the upper classes operate that are a major problem for me. And the collective blaming of a whole people for the actions of a powerful few.

I view the upper classes and their houses as something entirely alien although I appreciate the beauty of them and the craftsmanship of the workers who built them

Mytholmroyd

Do you still regard the upper classes as ‘alien’? Even the ones who’ve run out of money?

Yes, interesting. Last year I visited the Bobbin museum at Keswick (a lot more interesting than it sounds). The common practice was to take on children from the workhouses as apprentices (unpaid). Then turn them out when they got old enough to pay, and bring in a new batch.

But I believe that industrialisation happened very quickly, and that the victorians (to their credit) spent a lot of energy on regulating it

I can't remember the name now - but I remember listening to a talk at a conference about an estate in the south of England that owned the land, villages AND the people in them and prevented them leaving. This was after the 14th century - biologists have used the records there for lots of research as there was inevitably a lot consanguinity.

The name will come to me...

Newspaper report of an open access paper in PLOS One on 'pauper apprentices' sent north to work in the mills in Yorkshire - not much different to slaves really:

https://www.darlingtonandstocktontimes.co.uk/news/23528089.durham-scientists-unearth-story-forgotten-mill-children-fewston/

What an interesting thread! I like this concept of trying to impose collective guilt - whilst abhorring slavery I know it was almost uniform across the world in many societies who had the power to enforce it not just Empires but I am northern working class going back generations of servants, weavers, basket makers, carpenters etc and there is no inherited money - nobody even owned a house until my father, all local surnames and DNA etc. And I feel no guilt for colonialism - my ancestors had no power during that time.

I view the upper classes and their houses as something entirely alien although I appreciate the beauty of them and the craftsmanship of the workers who built them.

I was recently in Ireland listening to a talk about the history of Kilkenny and how it was the Normans who invaded Ireland just as they invaded England and the languages spoken in Ireland then were French and Latin and I was nodding along until he suddenly switched from Norman to English and I thought woah! How did that happen? They weren't English!

It is odd that I have never thought about Normans as English or in any way connected to me - but I guess they became the upper class of England and Ireland. But they were just invading thieving swine just like their Viking slaving ancestors 😂

I had heard of bonded labour for Brazil nuts so googled it. https://www.antislavery.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/contemporary_forms_of_slavery_in_bolivia.pdf

Bonded labourers, including the millions that still exist today, don’t have to buy from certain shops. But when you are in debt to the business so have no money as your wage is offset against your debt, then ‘factory shops’ are the only places that will allow you to buy on tick. And if you try to leave the business owner will pursue you for your debt.
This is one of the times that MN has really interesting contributions.
I was querying about how prevalent it was in the IR. I know it existed, but I'm questioning to what extent. Also, was it made illegal, I believe it was.

Serfdom was still very much the state of play when the Black Death hit in the middle of that century resulting in the death of a third of the population (more in some areas). Parliament had to pass laws to allow serfs to be leant to other estates because there was a shortage of labour to collect the harvests. The Peasants Revolt in the 1380s led to significant changes but Serfdom was not finally outlawed until 200 years later.
yes, I agree, I should have been more specific.

I think you're missing out that serfdom effectively died out in the early 14th Century.

Serfdom was still very much the state of play when the Black Death hit in the middle of that century resulting in the death of a third of the population (more in some areas). Parliament had to pass laws to allow serfs to be leant to other estates because there was a shortage of labour to collect the harvests. The Peasants Revolt in the 1380s led to significant changes but Serfdom was not finally outlawed until 200 years later.

Bonded labourers, including the millions that still exist today, don’t have to buy from certain shops. But when you are in debt to the business so have no money as your wage is offset against your debt, then ‘factory shops’ are the only places that will allow you to buy on tick. And if you try to leave the business owner will pursue you for your debt.

The wealth of many of the British aristocracy dates back further than the African slave trade and was built on serfdom - an indigenous form of slavery of the English population that existed until the 16th century. Serfs were attached to the land and bought and sold with it. Then in the Industrial Revolution others made fortunes off the backs off exploited British workers many of whom were bonded slaves - tied to work by debts to factory shops/owners.

I think you're missing out that serfdom effectively died out in the early 14th Century. Re the Industrial Revolution, I think you mean the system where workers had to buy from certain shops. That wouldn't have been universal and, I believe, was outlawed. I'm interested in the period, as so many people left rural areas to work in towns. Obviously for a number of reasons, but I don't necessarily think they were exploited.

The wealth of many of the British aristocracy dates back further than the African slave trade and was built on serfdom - an indigenous form of slavery of the English population that existed until the 16th century. Serfs were attached to the land and bought and sold with it. Then in the Industrial Revolution others made fortunes off the backs off exploited British workers many of whom were bonded slaves - tied to work by debts to factory shops/owners.

I think that is why many resent the woke image - it imposes guilt of the upper classes on people whose ancestors were born in workhouses, lived in slums, whose children died in mines, were sold to their new Lord, had to work in the mills aged five to help pay their families debt, were sent to penal colonies for stealing bread, were cleared off their land to make room for sheep, had their common land stolen by the enclosures act…

And perhaps check out how we get our lithium and cobalt while we're at it

Exactly. Let's do just that.

Afaik the evangelists and Quakers who wanted to abolish the slave trade were moved by their Christian belief, seeing the slaves as brothers and sisters in Christ and made in God's image. Christ's second commandment, 'love your neighbour as yourself' is incompatible with slavery. Hochschild's book sounds very interesting and certainly Thomas Clarkson has been missed by history. I shall look it out.

@Grammarnut well said. Let's include the sweatshops that everyone knows exist in the UK today.

Great post grammarnut.

Slight detour, but Adam Hochschild's book, Bury the Chains, is a fascinating account of how, and why, the British abolished their part in the slave trade

Why just for black and minority people? The working classes of Britain suffered just as much hardship, and sometimes more, from exploitation. Do they not get a look in? And if it's about slavery some of those ethnic minorities will come from societies that still slave, that have slaved recently and which have only abjured slavery because forced to by 'gasp' the ethnic minority that we call 'white Europeans' through international bodies such as the UN. Sure you want to sponsor the descendants of slavers? The problem being that slavery is endemic, everyone has done it and whole societies including 'white Europeans' have been the victims of it. The Atlantic slave trade is a pimple on a pig's bum compared to Ancient Roman slaving, Ottoman slaving, Viking slaving which went on for several hundred years: the slave market in Dublin, the largest in Europe, was shut down by the Normans (Vikings, too) who were fed-up with slave raids on the coast of Wales and Cornwall. Sometimes what looks like colonialism is anti-slaving e.g. the taking of Zanzibar and Dublin centuries apart. If the NT does wish to do something about slavery then sponsoring anti-slavery movements in Africa would be a start (there are something like 9M slaves in various countries on that continent).