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The Black Lives Matter movement, reinforced by the killing of George Floyd, led to waves of protest in the USA and UK in 2020 – and a re-evaluation of historic links to slavery. The toppling of the Victorian statue of Bristol slaver and city benefactor, Edward Colston, sharply highlighted the contradictions of Britain’s slaving past. Notably, it drew attention to how the wealth amassed from slavery financed aspects of the Industrial Revolution. Similar debates took place during the British abolition campaigns of the late-18th and early-19th centuries. Historians questioned why their ancestors – freeborn Anglo-Saxons – partook in such practices. In both cases, we are forced to confront our shameful past. 

Pupils may know about the existence of serfs, but are probably unaware that there were also enslaved people in Anglo-Saxon England. Slavery was a major feature of Anglo-Saxon society: the Domesday book indicates that at least 10% of the English population and perhaps as much as 25% were enslaved, and Bristol and London had thriving slave markets in 1050. However, this controversial topic is still often ignored in school texts and popular histories of the Conquest period.