ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the kind of evidence which has hitherto been used to place antislavery firmly in the capitalist "middle-class" sector of British society, serving in David Brion Davis's words, to screen out and even to strengthen bonds at home by focusing on more visible ones abroad. If factory operatives were convinced by antislavery agents of the utter necessity of immediate emancipation, how was it that owners could refuse to see the analogy between the cart whip and billy roller. Every major antislavery offensive raised the spectre of an ideological counter-attack. By the early twenties the symbolism of "white slavery" was already well-rooted in political discourse. "Slavery" had been a conventional weapon in British political rhetoric long before beginning of the movement against overseas chattel slavery. The chapter focuses on the relationship in dynamic industrial regions of Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire, and on the domestic issue which most closely coincided with emancipation campaign of the early 1830's.