Plaque commemorating the Rochdale millworkers who supported the struggle against slavery during the American Civil war

The cotton industry that fuelled the mills and factories of Britain’s industrial revolution came directly from the American South–produced through the labour of nearly two million African slaves.
Slavery may have been made illegal across the British Empire in 1833, but economically Britain was dependent on it. This contradiction between British morality and Britain’s economic interests came into stark relief in 1861 with the American Civil War.
The Northern states and the Southern states went into battle over the issue of slavery. The North established a Naval blockade on the Southern cotton trade and the free flow of cotton from the Mississippi valley came to an abrupt halt.
For the previously productive workers of Britain’s cotton industry this was a social and economic disaster. Lancashire was soon in the grip of what became known as ‘the cotton famine’. By the end of 1862, a total of 485,444 were receiving some form of poverty relief. The Northern states even sent food aid.
The British government remained officially neutral. And some in Britain even found ways to break the northern blockade on cotton. But not everyone put their own interests first. One mill town was determined to do what was right. Rochdale.
Rochdale had a long history of working class radicalism. It had been one of the hot beds of the abolitionists and the anti-slavery movement.
This plaque commemorates the Rochdale mill workers who supported the struggle against slavery during the American Civil War. It is located by a road still called today what it was known as then–"Cotton Famine Road". The road was cut across the landscape by unemployed workers from Lancashire in a public works scheme – a response to the humanitarian crisis that was unfolding in the region.
The plaque was created by BBC History and is one of twenty placed around the world for the series Black and British: A Forgotten History.