Stephen Fear

Ambassador & EIR British Library, London 2011/16, Lifetime Achievement Recipient, Entrepreneur.
Interested in dogs, books, rural life & classic cars.

[Stephen Fear @FearStephen]

With a very close friend having a kidney removed as I write. Another having a stent fitted & yet another with Pancreas issues seriously affecting her life, & an operation of my own to contend with & PTSD to handle during it all I’m taking a break from social media for a while.

[Proudofus.uk @ProudofusUK]

Britain ran the slave trade. Britain sent seven-year-olds into the mills.

And Britain ended both. 🇬🇧

How can one country be the villain and the hero? It can't. There were two Britains.

One owned people. The other did the work.

When slavery ended, historians counted every slave owner living in Britain. About three thousand, in a country of sixteen million. 📜

Bankers, merchants, lords and MPs. The other Britain couldn't vote them out: most men had no vote, and no woman had one. 🗳️

Take Samuel Greg. In 1784 he built Quarry Bank Mill at Styal, in Cheshire. By the time he retired, it was the biggest cotton mill in the country.

More than half his workers were children. Many were orphans from the workhouse. 🧵

Four thousand miles away, the Greg family owned the Hillsborough sugar plantation on Dominica, worked by enslaved Africans. 🌴

The blankets they slept under were made at his mill. Orphan children here. Enslaved Africans there. Making money for the same family.

So who stood up to them?

In 1787 a young campaigner called Thomas Clarkson went to Bristol. ⚓

Thompson, landlord of the Seven Stars pub, refused to help trick sailors onto the slave ships. Instead he took Clarkson round the dockside pubs at night, at real risk to himself.

The crew lists showed two slave ships to Africa had killed more British sailors than eighty-three ships to Newfoundland. Their stories helped turn the country against the trade.

Manchester didn't even have an MP. So more than ten thousand people, about one in five in the town, signed a petition to end it. ✍️

In 1830 Richard Oastler heard about Bradford's mills. One boy of about ten worked from six in the morning till ten at night.

Oastler wrote to the Leeds Mercury. He called it Yorkshire Slavery. 📰

In April 1832, thousands of mill workers walked to York to fight for their children. They called it the Pilgrimage of Mercy. 🚶

Against slavery, women went door to door. One petition in May 1833 carried 187,000 women's names. Not one of them could vote. 👩

Then came two dates.

28 August 1833: Britain signs the law to end slavery across most of the Empire. 🇬🇧

29 August 1833: the very next day, it signs the Factory Act. No child under nine in most textile mills. 🏛️

Neither law was a gift from the slave owners. Both were won by people with no vote, no money and no power.

So next time someone tells you "Britain did this", ask them: which Britain?

Odds are five thousand to one you come from the side that won.

Watch the full story. 🎥

Be part of us. 🧵👈🇬🇧
Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

[Stephen Fear @FearStephen]

@AdoptionsUk @Dogs4Rescue Don’t breed more & more puppies, rescue the one who have already been born. Don’t breed rescue instead.

[Stephen Fear @FearStephen]

@johncardillo Millions across the West will like this idea. Protecting a nations identity & its people is vital in a very dangerous world. Facing an enemy without isn’t as difficult as protecting against an enemy within 🇬🇧

[Stephen Fear @FearStephen]

@LondonLovesBiz Very worrying given that we are running out of time to protect the nation. I encourage everyone to read what Lord Dannatt has to say. 🇬🇧

[Proudofus.uk @ProudofusUK]

Chinese Gordon rode into a slave traders' camp ALMOST ALONE. 🐪

Inside, an army. ⚔️

He had come to tell them the slave trade was over. 🇬🇧

China's Emperor had once offered him a fortune. He refused it. 💰

Egypt offered him ten thousand pounds a year. He took two thousand.

In less than a year, he caught sixty-three slave caravans. ⛓️

Britain remembers how he died at Khartoum.

It forgot what he did there.

His statue stands on the Embankment in London. Most people walk straight past. 🏛️

The other half of his story has waited a hundred and forty years.

Help us tell stories like his: https://t.co/rih7iKwnvf

Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧

Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

[Stephen Fear @FearStephen]

Never forget our veterans because without them you would not have the freedoms you have today. Those who died & those left without limbs, eyesight or with PTSD did it to protect the nation & people they love. #LestWeForget

[Stephen Fear @FearStephen]

@pettheftaware These vile thieves disgust me. Criminals caught stealing a dog should serve a minimum of 5 years in jail & be banned from keeping dogs for life. It’s high time the police/magistrates & judges stopped pandering to criminals & started protecting law abiding citizens. #Dogs

[Stephen Fear @FearStephen]

@AdoptionsUk Hedgehogs are non aggressive & do not run from danger, they simply curl themselves up tight until the danger passes. Anyone who builds a bonfire without properly fencing it off well before they light it are putting these wonderful little creatures at risk of being burnt to death

[Stephen Fear @FearStephen]

@Proper_Memes @GBNEWS @CamillaTominey You must have a very long memory! 🇬🇧

[Stephen Fear @FearStephen]

A hour or two in remote woodland is more therapeutic than a week on the Algarve. Alfie checks a stream we first found 7 years ago. Britain is full of wonderful places but for me nothing beats the great British countryside where there are more dogs & wildlife than people. 🇬🇧

[Stephen Fear @FearStephen]

@ProudofusUK You are very welcome and I meant every word. People deserve to know and understand what a great nation Great Britain really is. Keep up the good work in showing the truth in such a vivid way. Absolutely brilliant. 🇬🇧

[Proudofus.uk @ProudofusUK]

Alfred the Great died on this day, 899. 🕯️

In 878 the Vikings took his hall at Christmas. 🔥

He hid in the Somerset marshes with twenty men. 🌾

In spring he sent word: meet me at the stone. ⚔️

Edington. He won. Then he built the towns, the navy, the laws and the schools. 🏰

His grandson united England. 👑

The only English king we ever called Great. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Help us keep the story of England alive. 📖

Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧
Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

[Proudofus.uk @ProudofusUK]

Britain's biggest ever petition wasn't about Britain. 📜

1814. We'd just beaten Napoleon. The peace treaty gave France five more years of the slave trade. ⚓

Our own government had signed it. The country erupted. 🔥

One in every seventeen people signed. Children included. ✍️

Castlereagh took those names to Vienna. He could have asked for anything. He asked for an end to the slave trade. ⚖️

France never got its five years because of the British people. 🇫🇷 🫷🇬🇧

Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧
Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

[Proudofus.uk @ProudofusUK]

When men burn women alive, we hang them. 🪢

India, 1829. Widows burned on their husbands' pyres. 🔥

An Indian reformer, Ram Mohan Roy, asked Britain to stop it. 🙏

Britain banned it. 🇬🇧

The priests said it was their custom. 📿

General Napier: "Be it so. My nation also has a custom." ⚖️

"When men burn women alive, we hang them." 🪢

"Let us all act according to our customs." 🤝

The burning stopped. 🕊️

https://t.co/b4NZJGFXAo
Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧

Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

[Proudofus.uk @ProudofusUK]

Their story is chapter 15 of our book, Britain vs Slavery. Out next month: https://t.co/b4zYMLldFM 📖

Support our mission to bring back Britain: https://t.co/Q0bzTDEBHf

[Proudofus.uk @ProudofusUK]

The numbers, since people will ask.

The 1086 survey counted about 1.4 million people in England. Roughly one in ten were outright slaves. Most of the rest were villeins: tied to the land, unable to leave, marry or die without the lord taking his cut. Merchet when a daughter married. Heriot when a man died.

It ended from below. After 1348 there weren’t enough hands, and the people who were left named their price. The 1381 rising failed, and the system died anyway. By 1500 serfdom in England was finished. Nobody abolished it. People walked off it.

That’s chapter one of Britain vs Slavery, out next month. Free PDF for supporters: https://t.co/rih7iKwnvf

[Proudofus.uk @ProudofusUK]

They built that church so the world would never forget.

Help us make sure it never does. 🇬🇧

More stories like this one: https://t.co/b4zYMLlLvk

Join us: https://t.co/U26QM2wOnp

Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧
Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

[Proudofus.uk @ProudofusUK]

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧 Britain sent warships into a friendly country's harbours. 🔥

And burned its ships at anchor. ⚓

That country was Brazil 🇧🇷

More enslaved Africans were taken to Brazil than to any other country on earth. ⛓️

Not America 🇺🇸 Brazil 🇧🇷

Nearly half of everyone shipped across the Atlantic went there. Ten times more than the United States. 🌍

In 1826 Britain made Brazil sign a treaty. The trade would end by 1830. 📜

Brazil signed. Then ignored it. They even had a phrase for laws like that: "para inglês ver". For the English to see. 👀

Tens of thousands of people kept arriving every year. 😔

So Britain changed the law. Brazilian slave ships could now be tried in British courts as pirates. ⚖️

In 1850 the Royal Navy sailed into Brazil's ports, under the guns of the forts. They cut out the slave ships and burned them. 🚢

Emperor Pedro II's government had a choice. War with Britain. Or end the trade. ⚔️

That September, Brazil banned it. Within two years the trade was dead. 🕊️

Yet today only one country is asked to feel ashamed. 🤔

The one that stopped it. 🇬🇧

Be part of us. 🇬🇧

Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧