Talk:Lancashire Cotton Famine
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I remember my history master telling me about this at school in Manchester in the 1960's, although it was not in the syllabus, and he was not a 'trust the people' enthusiast for democracy. His tale was that the meeting voted not to work on any slave-labour cotton. I can't immediately find any more verifiable account Rjccumbria 11:46, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I have added a link to the Virtual Manchester website because it gives some of the text.
Other than that, their apparent POV that a free factory hand led a life little better than that of a slave was one usually found at the time coming from apologists for slavery, so should be approached with some caution. I appreciate that there were some who used similar arguments and probably had better intentions (Cobbett somewhere has a swipe at Wilberforce for being so obsessed in the welfare of Negroes as to show no interest in the destitution and want of the English farm labourers). But in this context there is an obvious rebuttal; if the 19th century millhands would accept hardship if it meant the end of slavery for others, it seems highly likely that they would not have accepted better working conditions for themselves if that came at the price of chattel slavery for themselves Rjccumbria
