RECENT tumultuous events in Bristol and London have highlighted the abominable historic slave trade, which made a small number of Britons wealthy during the 18th and 19th Centuries, through their ownership of cotton plantations, cruelly governed by overseers, in the West Indies and southern states of America.

Slavery, however, was not confined to those of African descent, since a less obvious form of slavery persisted here in England, mostly in Lancashire: though thankfully without the merciless floggings administered in the plantations.

Children as young as seven years, whether orphans, or those surrendered by impoverished parents unable to feed them, were apprenticed by mill owners until they reached the age of 19 years.

Though fed and accommodated in communal dormitories, they were sadly unpaid.

Each day, excepting Sundays, when one presumes their masters required them to thank the Lord for their miserable existence, they slaved for up to 16 hours.

Conditions were deafening but worse, workers inhaled minute airborne cotton fibres, which resulted in phthisis, a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, inevitably shortening their blighted lives.

Infants were forced to crawl under dangerous moving looms to retrieve cotton waste for recycling, often resulting in fatalities.

Though slavery had been abolished in 1833, here in England, within plain sight, as opposed to possible obscurity overseas, this de facto slavery, euphemistically termed apprenticeship, was to persist for more than a decade after abolition.

Sadly at this very moment, after almost two centuries of emancipation, slavery flourishes here in England again, operated by unscrupulous overseas gangmasters, preying upon their fellow kinfolk, rather than Britons.

Who will protest on their behalf?

Dave Middleton, Stockton on Tees