Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners

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?