Lifting the lid on the range and scale of the slavery business as it existed in Britain, historian David Olusoga examines the records and finds it wasn’t just the super-rich who exploited slave labour. Ordinary members of the middle-class, including widows, clergymen and shopkeepers, were also in on the act. Yet many never looked a slave in the eye or experienced the brutality of plantation life.

In 1834, Britain’s government made the extraordinary decision to compensate former slave-owners with the equivalent of $22 billion in today’s money. In the second part of this revealing documentary series, historian David Olusoga traces the bitter propaganda war waged between pro-slavers and abolitionists. But were these pay-offs, as was then believed, the only way to bring the system to an end?