Women Chainmakers - statement regarding slavery links

Despite abolition, British people in 1910 would have been aware of the horrors and brutality of slavery and slave trade, not least due to African American abolitionists (many of whom were former slaves) and civil rights activists who came to Britain to talk about their experiences throughout the 19^th and 20^th century.

In this context, this resource acknowledges how the British press and middle-class campaigners appropriated the language of slavery – the ‘white slaves of England’ - to describe the women chainmakers. The women chainmakers were not slaves despite working in appalling and inhumane conditions. They were not owned by another human being or forced to work for another person as Black people were in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.  This does not detract from the inhumane working conditions they worked within for starvation wages, nor minimise the fact that they did not own or control their means of production. 

Today, it is well established that the British Industrial sector made huge profits from the slave trade, including the metal work trades that existed in Birmingham and the Black country. It is evident that some of the chains, cuffs, shackles or locks used in the abhorrent slave trade were made in Birmingham and the Black Country.  It is unlikely that the women chainmakers would have known what the chain they were making was for given their working and living conditions and lack of education.