Slavery Remembrance Day — A Personal Reflection
Published on Exchange Chambers, 23 August 2025.
During the night of 22nd to 23rd August 1791, people held in slavery at Saint-Domingue — known as the “Black Jacobins” led by Toussaint Louverture — 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 to commemorate the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.
The Cities We Serve
Exchange Chambers has its sites in the great historic cities of Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds — cities whose wealth, whose grandeur, and whose civic buildings were in significant part built on the degradation and dehumanisation of kidnapped human beings trafficked across the Atlantic.
Exchange Chambers were founded in 1944 in Liverpool and operated from premises on Exchange Flags — from whence we derive our name. Yet this architecturally glorious square was a site of trading in human beings in the 1750s and 1760s. Commercial building on Deansgate in Manchester were fuelled by money generated from slave labour. And the splendour of Harewood House just outside Leeds was built on the wealth accumulated from slaves working the Lascelles family’s sugar plantations in the West Indies.
In Hull, at the eastern end of the M62, William Wilberforce was born and served the people of Hull and Yorkshire as their MP — becoming one of the most significant figures in the abolition of the slave trade.
Our Commitment
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. We will continue to champion respect for the inherent dignity and rights of individuals, to strive for equality of opportunity and to combat racial discrimination in all its forms.