Yahoo News Wednesday briefing: The real origins of the money that helped found the Guardian
Good morning. The story of the Manchester Guardian began in 1821, in the aftermath of the Peterloo massacre, when working people rallying for political reform were killed by the troops sent to disperse them. It was founded with the financial backing of a group of middle-class radicals who shared founding editor John Edward Taylor’s commitment to enlightenment values, liberty, and justice.
That is a true story. But it is also an incomplete one. Yesterday, the Scott Trust – which owns the Guardian today – published a report which excavates a far darker aspect of the newspaper’s history.
The report sets out the evidence that, even as Taylor led a newspaper which favoured the abolition of slavery, he profited from the labour of enslaved people through the cotton trade. It also reveals that at least nine of his 11 backers had similar ties – and one of them co-owned an estate in Jamaica where more than 100 people were enslaved. Now the Scott Trust has apologised “for the part the Guardian and its founders had in this crime against humanity”, and allocated more than £10m to a decade-long restorative justice programme.
Meanwhile, the Guardian has published the first part of Cotton Capital, a series that traces the story from its origins in 19th-century Manchester to its consequences today. This morning’s newsletter takes you through the basics of an appalling history, and the attempt to reckon with Taylor’s legacy. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
Climate crisis | The UK is “strikingly unprepared” for the impacts of the climate crisis, according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC), which said there had been a “lost decade” in efforts to adapt for the impacts of global heating. The body said “fully credible” UK government planning was found for only five of the 45 adaptation requirements examined.
Paul O’Grady | Paul O’Grady, the beloved TV presenter and comedian who broke on to the scene with his drag act persona Lily Savage, has died at the age of 67. His partner Andre Portasio said O’Grady passed away “peacefully but unexpectedly” on Tuesday evening.
Taiwan | The Chinese government has threatened retaliation if Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, meets the US House speaker this week, and urged the US not to let her transit through the country, saying it would be a “provocation”. Tsai is due to visit Central American allies and is also expected to visit the US.
Scotland | Humza Yousaf has said becoming Scotland’s first Muslim leader sends a strong message “to every single person out there who feels that they don’t belong”. But the first minister’s attempts to reunite the SNP after a bitter leadership campaign were dealt a blow after his main rival, Kate Forbes, turned down a position in his cabinet.
Media | Prince Harry has claimed members of the royal family struck a secret deal with newspapers not to sue them over phone hacking because it would “open a can of worms”. In high court documents, he said there was a private deal with Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers, which publishes the Sun.
In depth: The ‘unpayable debt’ owed over transatlantic slavery
Britain’s transatlantic trade in enslaved African people was abolished in 1807, a date that is often celebrated as a moment of transformation and moral triumph. The reality is far messier. The practice of slavery was still legal within the British empire until 1833, while its compounding economic and social legacies – to the benefit of Britain, and the detriment of the enslaved people who produced its raw materials and their descendants – are incalculable.
In 2020, as the Black Lives Matter movement grew after the murder of George Floyd, the Scott Trust commissioned an expert academic review to look into the Manchester Guardian’s founders. To understand their conclusions and the work that is flowing from them today, you first need to understand how crucial the cotton trade was to Manchester – and why its links to slavery were indelible and well-understood.
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How Manchester became ‘Cottonopolis’
The industrial production of cotton was an essential part of Manchester’s – and Britain’s – economic power in the early 19th century. That success was consolidated by knock-on effects in other industries as the city grew. But none of that would have been possible without slave labour on plantations thousands of miles away.
In his remarkable essay explaining slavery’s role in building Britain’s might even after the abolition of the transatlantic trade, the historian and Scott Trust board member David Olusoga sets out some of the specifics:
On the eve of the American civil war the inflow of American cotton into Britain was vast, and around two and a half thousand cotton mills and factories had emerged in Lancashire, many of them in and around Manchester – a city known by the middle decades of the century as Cottonopolis. As was fully understood at the time, much of the cotton that was spun, woven, dyed, processed and traded in Manchester was produced by the almost 2 million enslaved Africans who lived, worked and suffered on cotton plantations in the southern United States.
In this piece reflecting on how the project came about and the obligations that arrive with its conclusion, editor Katharine Viner quotes the great American abolitionist Frederick Douglass: “The price of human flesh on the Mississippi was regulated by the price of cotton in Manchester.”
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The connection to the Guardian
“From the moment that they knew that Taylor was involved in cotton, historians knew that there would be a link to enslavement,” said Maya Wolfe-Robinson, one of the lead editors on the project. But the detail unearthed by researcher Dr Cassandra Gooptar and colleagues after that early discovery painted a much more detailed and unsettling picture. It is also unusual: “It is rare to be able to pinpoint the specific plantations where the cotton was being bought from, and therefore a link to specific descendant communities,” Maya said.
In this fascinating piece detailing the painstaking and dogged work that fleshed out the story, Gooptar explains how the discovery of a single line in an 1821 trade directory revealed Taylor’s links to one of the largest cotton thread producers in England, and therefore to transatlantic slavery. She went on to discover multiple other links to cotton manufacturers and merchants.
Without the financial support of his associates, Taylor’s plan to launch the Manchester Guardian is unlikely to have been realised. There, too, the evidence was clear: of the 11 men who backed Taylor, there are clear links with transatlantic slavery in nine cases. One of the group, George Philips, was not only an importer of cotton produced by slavery or a merchant relying on the trade – but an enslaver himself, as the co-owner of an estate in Jamaica whose primary crop was sugar.
All of this appears to have influenced not just the Guardian’s creation, but its editorial line: while it called for the abolition of slavery, it also demanded that enslavers be compensated for their resulting loss. An 1833 editorial suggested that it was vital to apply “the great principles of justice to the planter as well as to the slave”. Philips himself applied (unsuccessfully) for £1,904 in compensation for 108 enslaved people on the estate. Those who were enslaved, meanwhile, received nothing.
“Some people will say that these are men of their times, and anyhow, maybe they didn’t quite know how brutal the system of slavery was – we know that probably none of them ever set foot in the United States, and it’s unlikely that Philips ever went to Jamaica,” said Maya. “But we also know that when African American abolitionists came on speaking tours to the UK, they made sure to visit Manchester – both because it was known as an abolitionist city, but also because they knew that it was where you’d find the cotton merchants. So we know that they knew.”
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The enslaved people linked to the Guardian
The history of enslavers is, by its nature, far easier to examine than the history of the people they enslaved. “There’s so much more information about them,” Maya said. “Enslaved people were prevented from learning to read and write; their lives were erased from the records. So it felt really important to try to reintroduce those people to the story, and to our history.”
As David Olusoga writes, those people are as foundational to the Guardian’s history as any of the Manchester merchants: “Within the financial DNA of the Guardian are the stolen labour and lives of enslaved people.”
Gooptar and her colleagues started by looking at the history of the estate co-owned by Philips. She found some names in contemporary registers, and adverts for “runaway slaves” and “apprehended deserters”, like Nanny Grignon, captured and held in a workhouse until she was taken back to the plantation. She also found lists of enslaved people on plantations which supplied cotton to Taylor, the Guardian’s first editor.
There were cases where remarkable detail was available, like that of a Jamaican freedom fighter called Granville, who was persecuted for his role in one of the largest uprisings of enslaved people in the British West Indies. But for most of those who were enslaved, the stories of their lives are sparse. Nonetheless, in this piece, their names are recorded. Gooptar writes: “While I am keenly aware that the names of enslaved people … were heavily anglicised – yet another means of control by the plantation owners – these names represent some of the only existing records of their humanity.”
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The Guardian’s obligations today
The consequences of Taylor and his associates’ links to slavery were not confined to the lifetimes of those who were enslaved. As the Scott Trust report says:
Chattel slavery created intergenerational wealth and political power not only in the American south and the British West Indies but also in many other parts of the world. Its legacy is a major factor in the racial, economic and social inequalities faced today by Black people across the globe.
The Scott Trust’s investment in addressing the Guardian’s share of culpability will involve expanding its reporting of Black communities around the world with 12 new journalism roles. Millions will be spent over the next decade on community projects and programmes in the south-eastern US Gullah Geechee region, and in Jamaica – programmes which will be selected and designed with the extensive input of those communities.
This is not the end of the story: as Olusoga writes, the Guardian has an “unpayable debt”. In this video, he reflects on why the work is an obligation nonetheless. “That reality can’t be negotiated with, it can’t be explained away,” he says. “This history can never be solved. It can never be remedied. But something good can come from it.”
• David Olusoga, Dr Cassandra Gooptar, Maya Wolfe-Robinson and Katharine Viner will be on a panel chaired by the Guardian’s senior editor for diversity and development Joseph Harker this Thursday at 7pm BST. To sign up for a free place, click here.
• Follow the Cotton Capital project as it continues by signing up for Aamna Mohdin’s weekly newsletter.
What else we’ve been reading
Bethan McKernan’s analysis from Jerusalem is a helpful guide to understanding the political crisis unfolding in Israel, as the embattled prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu runs out of allies and places to hide. Nimo
After William Hill was fined a record £19.2m for “alarming” breaches of the regulators’ code, Rob Davies argues that the cost is simply not enough to deter deep-pocketed gambling firms – and the Gambling Commission “has neither the stomach nor the budget” to suspend their licences. Archie
Megan Nolan’s contribution to the Guardian’s ‘My biggest regret’ series is perhaps the one that has resonated the most with me. Nolan describes coming to regret moving from her home in Dublin to New York. “I fear that the things I left behind will never be offset on the balance sheet of life – that I will be left thinking only of what I chose to eschew, not what I chased after,” writes Nolan. Nimo
“Take your seats for a preposterously camp battle between a well-to-do retired optometrist who said the high priestess of fanny-steaming skied into him – and Her Vajesty herself”: It’s Marina Hyde on the Gwyneth Paltrow case. Archie
If you are trying to keep up with your reading list, Joanna Cannon writes about a new tactic that is working for her: turning reading into a game. Nimo
Sport
Football | Two goals from Scott McTominay (above) led Scotland to a stunning 2-0 victory against Spain in Euro 2024 qualifying. Meanwhile, Wales claimed a 1-0 victory against Latvia through Kieffer Moore’s header after a sold-out crowd bid farewell to the recently-retired Gareth Bale, perhaps the greatest player in their history.
Football | England’s Lionesses have recalled Hannah Hampton, Esme Morgan and Lucy Parker for next month’s friendlies against Brazil and Australia. Bethany England, who has scored six goals since joining Tottenham from Chelsea in January, still does not have a place on the team.
Boxing | The proposed revival of Conor Benn’s bout against Chris Eubank Jr is in danger of being derailed because the British Boxing Board of Control is likely to deny Eubank Jr permission to take part in the fight even if it is located abroad. Benn lost his licence last year after he failed two drug tests.
The front pages
“Guardian owner apologises for founders’ links to slavery” – our Guardian front-page lead today. Metro has “Callous NHS trust ‘run like mafia’” for a story about the University Hospitals Birmingham trust. Also on the health service, the Daily Express says “British public’s shocking loss of faith in NHS”, and in the Financial Times we find “Hunt to provide fresh cash for NHS pay deal but teachers’ row intensifies”. The Daily Mirror continues the story of David Jason’s recently discovery of an adult daughter, paraphrasing his wife, Gill: “It’s lovely to embrace David’s daughter into our family”. The Daily Telegraph reports “Petrol car ban in chaos after EU climbdown”. The Daily Mail says “Migrants to be housed on cruise ships and barges”. “Lineker 1 Taxman 0” – that’s the i after the presenter won a “landmark appeal against HMRC”.
Today in Focus
Who is Humza Yousaf – and how will he change Scotland?
For eight years Nicola Sturgeon towered over Scottish politics. Now there is a new first minister in charge, how will he make his mark?
Cartoon of the day | Martin Rowson
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Carrier pigeons may evoke images of medieval times or ancient Egypt, but in India’s eastern state of Odisha, police are working hard to make sure that this practice lives on. The birds have been most heavily used in remote regions, where at one point carrier pigeons were the only dependable mode of communication, particularly during or after natural disasters.
Anil Dhir, from the Indian National Trust of Art and Cultural Heritage, works with police to keep the service going. A lot of effort is required to maintain this practice, especially as is viewed by many as outdated and costly, but Dhir says keeping the tradition alive is a matter of cultural preservation. There will be a ceremonial flight of 60 pigeons planned by Intach and Odisha police from Bhubaneshwar to Cuttack that will be attended by the public soon, Dhir adds.
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
