Compensated emancipation from the metropolitan below: class, taxation, and the Slavery Abolition Act (1833)

The Slavery Abolition Act (1833) ended slavery, instituted apprenticeship for the formerly enslaved, and compensated enslavers with £20 million for the 800,000 people whom they claimed ownership over across the British Empire. This article examines metropolitan imperial society’s relationship to compensated emancipation through British working-class and radical dissent. In debates surrounding compensation, members of Britain’s working class and leading figures in the radical movement expressed outrage over compensated emancipation. This outrage was markedly different from upper- and middle-class commitments to the sanctity of property as well as to abolitionist commitments to emancipation by any means necessary. In the critique of compensated emancipation that emerged, Britain’s white working-class defined itself as ‘fellow slaves’ still awaiting emancipation but now also forced to pay slaveholders for Black freedom through taxes. Consideration of metropolitan working-class opposition to compensation reveals a critical moment in the co-production of metropolitan working-class whiteness in the context of slavery abolition.