Slavery Remembrance Day – 23rd August
August 23, 2025
During the night of 22nd to 23rd August 1791 people held in slavery at Saint Domingue, now known as the “Black Jacobins” led by Toussaint Louverture, on the island that is now the Haitian Republic, rose up against their oppressors starting the Haitian Revolution. The Revolution which finally ended in 1804, was the only successful slave rebellion and the founding of the first modern black republic. Thus, it was entirely appropriate that the United Nations chose 23rd August as the date to commemorate the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.
Exchange Chambers, with its sites in the great, historic cities of Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds, joins in commemorating this day, also known as “Slavery Remembrance Day.”
In doing so, we recognise the unspeakable inhumanity of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the fact that so much of the wealth that made our home cities great was derived from or linked to that abhorrent trade, the historic links that bind our history to that of this inhumanity and, our responsibility to work for the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination and for equality.
Exchange Chambers is proud to be rooted in and to serve the communities of the great cities, towns and villages of the North spread along the M62 from end-to-end and reaching North as far as the Roman ‘wall,’ the jurisdiction’s boundary. These cities and towns were once the powerhouse of the country and of the Empire but were also sites of activism to end slavery. On the western side of the Pennines from Liverpool, the port of the Empire, down the Manchester Ship Canal to the “dark satanic mills” of Manchester, “Cottonopolis,” and Lancashire, the cotton and sugar trades built on the degradation and dehumanisation of kidnapped human beings, flowed and thrived creating immense wealth. In Hull, at the eastern end of the M62, William Wilberforce was born, lived and served the people of Hull and Yorkshire as their MP becoming one the most significant figures in the abolition of the slave trade.
Our Chambers were founded in 1944 in Liverpool and operated from premises on Exchange Flags, from whence we derive our name. However, this architecturally glorious square was the site of trading in human beings in the 1750s and 1760s and arguably both the Nelson memorial and the walls of what was formerly Martin’s Bank Building depict the city’s and the country’s reliance on the labour of people held in slavery. Commercial building and the development of infrastructure on Deansgate, the site of our home in Manchester, the ‘first industrial city’ in the world, were fuelled by money generated from slave labour. In Leeds, wealth, derived from the cotton and sugar trades built its civic buildings and the splendour that is Harewood House, the Lascelles’ stately home and estate located just outside Leeds was built on the wealth accumulated from slaves working the family’s sugar plantations in the West Indies.
Today Exchange Chambers reiterates its values and reconfirms its commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion. We recognise the long-lasting and inter-generational harms of slavery and the racial prejudices that continue to blight our society. Exchange Chambers, its barristers and staff, will continue to champion respect for the inherent dignity and rights of individuals, to strive for equality of opportunity and combat racial discrimination in all its forms.
