Manchester: Cotton, Slavery and Pan-Africanism
The city that petitioned against the slave trade, grew rich on slave-grown cotton, backed Lincoln through the cotton famine, and hosted the congress that planned Africa's freedom.
Manchester likes to call itself a radical city, and it has the history to prove it. It sent Parliament the first great petition against the slave trade. Its cotton workers went hungry rather than back the slave-owning South in the American Civil War. And in 1945 it hosted the congress where Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta and others planned the end of British rule in Africa.
But Manchester's wealth was spun from cotton, and for most of the nineteenth century that cotton was picked by enslaved people in the American South. The same city that petitioned against slavery grew rich on its products. This page holds both stories side by side, and shows you where to find them today.
Manchester, slavery and Africa: key dates
- October 1787: Thomas Clarkson preaches against the slave trade in Manchester's collegiate church, today's Manchester Cathedral.
- 1788: Manchester sends Parliament a petition against the slave trade with 10,639 signatures, about a fifth of the town's people.
- 1830: the Liverpool and Manchester Railway opens, carrying slave-grown American cotton from Liverpool's docks to Manchester's mills.
- 1861 to 1865: the Lancashire Cotton Famine, as the American Civil War cuts off the cotton supply.
- 31 December 1862: Manchester workers meet at the Free Trade Hall and send Abraham Lincoln a message backing the fight against slavery.
- 15 to 21 October 1945: the Fifth Pan-African Congress meets at Chorlton-on-Medlock Town Hall.
- Early 2027: a major exhibition on Manchester, cotton and transatlantic slavery is due to open at the Science and Industry Museum.
Cottonopolis: built on slave-grown cotton
Manchester became the world's first industrial city in the decades around 1800, and its industry was cotton. Mills in Ancoats and along the canals spun raw cotton into thread and cloth for the whole world, and the city earned the nickname Cottonopolis.
The raw cotton did not grow in Lancashire. Most of it came from the plantations of the American South, where it was planted and picked by enslaved African Americans. It arrived at Liverpool's docks and travelled on to Manchester, from 1830 on the new Liverpool and Manchester Railway, whose Manchester terminus on Liverpool Road is now the Science and Industry Museum. Manchester's merchants, mill owners and banks depended on that slave-grown cotton until the American Civil War. Some of them also invested directly in plantations and in the slave trade.
The city's institutions are now looking at this openly. In 2023 the Guardian, founded in Manchester in 1821, published research showing that its founder and several of his backers had made money from slave-grown cotton, and set up a programme to address that legacy. Together with the Science and Industry Museum it is preparing a major free exhibition on Manchester, cotton and transatlantic slavery, due to open in early 2027.
The 1788 petition: Manchester leads the way
In October 1787 the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson came to Manchester and preached against the slave trade in the town's collegiate church. The response surprised even him. A local committee was formed in December under Thomas Walker, a cotton merchant, and within weeks it had gathered 10,639 signatures on a petition to Parliament. That was around a fifth of the town's population, and it came at a time when the London committee still thought a petition campaign was premature.
Manchester's petition was printed and advertised in newspapers across the country, and dozens of towns followed its example. It turned abolition from a cause of a few Quakers and MPs into a national movement. Walker paid a price for his radicalism: in the reaction against the French Revolution, a mob attacked his house in 1792, and he was later put on trial for conspiracy and acquitted.
The Africans, rebels and petitioners who ended the trade.
Lincoln and the Lancashire Cotton Famine
When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, the northern Union blockaded the ports of the slave-owning Confederacy. Cotton stopped arriving, Lancashire's mills fell silent, and hundreds of thousands of workers were thrown into hunger. Many mill owners and politicians argued that Britain should recognise the Confederacy and break the blockade.
On New Year's Eve 1862, the eve of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, Manchester's working people packed the Free Trade Hall, which stood on the site of the Peterloo Massacre. They voted to send Lincoln an address supporting the Union and the end of slavery, whatever it cost them. In January 1863 Lincoln wrote back to the "working-men of Manchester", praising their sacrifice as "sublime Christian heroism".
The statue of Lincoln that now stands in Lincoln Square, just behind the Town Hall, carries words from both letters on its plinth. It first stood in Platt Fields Park and was moved to its present square in 1986.
The Fifth Pan-African Congress, October 1945
Eighty years after the cotton famine, Manchester became the meeting place for the people who would end the British Empire in Africa. From 15 to 21 October 1945, delegates from Africa, the Caribbean, Britain and the United States met at Chorlton-on-Medlock Town Hall for the Fifth Pan-African Congress.
The veteran American scholar W. E. B. Du Bois chaired it, but its organising spirit, as Du Bois himself said, was the Trinidadian George Padmore. The young Kwame Nkrumah, then a student in London, was one of its secretaries. Among the delegates were Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Hastings Banda of Nyasaland, the writer Peter Abrahams of South Africa and Amy Ashwood Garvey. The Guyanese businessman Ras Makonnen, who ran restaurants in Manchester, helped pay for it and secured the hall through his contacts at the Town Hall.
Earlier congresses had asked politely for reforms. This one demanded independence, and it was dominated by a new generation of African activists, trade unionists and students. Within twenty years many of its delegates were leading free nations: Nkrumah in Ghana in 1957, Kenyatta in Kenya, Banda in Malawi.
The week in Manchester that planned Africa's freedom: the full story.
Ghana's first leader and his years in Britain.
A walk: Manchester's slavery and freedom trail
All the city-centre sites are within easy walking distance of each other.
- Science and Industry Museum, Liverpool Road: the world's oldest surviving passenger railway station, where slave-grown cotton arrived, and the cotton mill machinery in the textiles gallery.
- Manchester Cathedral: where Clarkson preached in 1787.
- Lincoln Square: the Lincoln statue and the letters on its plinth.
- The former Free Trade Hall, Peter Street: now a hotel, on the site of the 1862 meeting and of the Peterloo Massacre of 1819.
- Central Library: home of the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre, with collections on Black history in Manchester.
- All Saints Square, Oxford Road: the red plaque to the 1945 Pan-African Congress on Manchester Metropolitan University's arts building, the former Chorlton-on-Medlock Town Hall.
- People's History Museum: Britain's national museum of democracy, with collections on the cotton famine and the 1945 Congress.
The African side of the story
The men who met in Chorlton-on-Medlock went home to lead the fight for independence. Their stories continue on our network:
- Dr Kwame Nkrumah and Positive Action 1950: the road to 1957, on Ghana-Net.
- They Made Ghana: the people who shaped Ghana's independence.
- Kenya Web News: Kenyatta, Mau Mau and Kenya today.
- African Independence: how every African country won its freedom.
Visiting Manchester
Getting there
Manchester Airport has direct and one-stop flights from across Africa, Europe and the Gulf, and a train link to the city centre in about 20 minutes. From London Euston, fast trains reach Manchester Piccadilly in a little over two hours. Liverpool and its International Slavery Museum are under an hour away by train, so the two cities make a natural pair.
Opening times and tickets
The Science and Industry Museum and the People's History Museum are free to enter; check their official websites for opening days and for the dates of the new cotton and slavery exhibition. The Lincoln statue and the Pan-African Congress plaque can be seen at any time.
Tours and experiences
Walking tours of Manchester's radical and industrial history, and day trips into Lancashire and the Peak District, are easy to combine with these sites. Entrance fees for the sights on a tour are always included in the price. Tips for your guide are not included, but they are welcome.
Read next
The port that shipped the cotton, and the people, that fed Manchester.
The week that planned Africa's independence.
Lancashire's other slave-trade city.
Where many of the 1945 delegates learned their politics.
All our pages on the links between Britain and Africa.
The African side of the story
Britain Adventures is part of a network of independent sites on Africa and its history. These are the places where the stories on this page continue:
- Pan-African: African Independence · Uganda · Egypt · Sierra Leone · All African Radio Stations
- Ghana: Ghana-Net · Cape Coast Castle · Elmina Castle · James Fort, Accra · They Made Ghana · War Cemetery Cape Coast
- Across Africa: Kenya Web News · Explore Nigeria · Gambia Vibes · Zambia Vibes
- European history: V2 Rocket and Peenemünde · Tannenberg Memorial
Search our Network. Start here.
