Jeremy Deller: Sarah Parker Remond

When I walk through the streets … and meet load after load of cotton, I think of those 80,000 cotton plantations on which it was grown the $125m worth of cotton which supply your market, and I remember that not one cent of that money ever reached the hands of the labourers.

Textile mills created cloth for expanding markets at home and abroad, including territories such as India where British rule supressed local manufacture. American plantations that still enslaved men, women and children kept the price of cotton low.

Afro-American lecturer and doctor, Sarah Parker Remond, appealed to workers’ organisations to support abolition and women’s rights.