The People's History Museum (PHM) is Britain’s national museum of democracy, telling the story of its development in Britain; past, present and future. It is located in Manchester, the world's first industrialised city and aims to ‘engage, inspire and inform diverse audiences by showing there have always been ideas worth fighting for’. Attracting over 100,000 visitors a year, with free entry, the museum outlines the political consciousness of the British population beginning with the Peterloo Massacre in 1819. The British transatlantic slave trade and the abolition movement feature in this discussion early on in Main Gallery One. In a small display, the interpretation discusses the role of slave-produced cotton in the rise of Manchester as an industrial powerhouse. It goes on to describe the important role that the people of Manchester had in supporting the abolition campaign. The focus is on the local experience. This is also illustrated with one of the exhibition’s key interpretive characters, William Cuffay, a mixed-race Chartist leader whose father was a former slave.  In Main Gallery Two, the displays are brought closer to the present day, other issues explored include anti-racism and attitudes towards migration and multiculturalism. There is a clear link, although not explicitly expressed, in the interpretive text between these ideas and the lasting legacies of Britain's involvement in the slave trade. 

Nsala of Wala with the severed hand and foot of his five year old daughter murdered by ABIR militia. (Anglo-Belgian India Rubber company). This image formed part of the Harris Lantern Slide Collection. Under King Leopold II the Congo Free State used mass forced labour to extract rubber from the jungle for the European market. As consumer demand grew King Leopold II's private army - the Force Publique - used violent means to coerce the population into meeting quotas, including murder, mutilation, rape, village burning, starvation and hostage taking. Alice Seeley Harris and her husband Reverend John H. Harris were missionaries in the Congo Free State from the late 1890s. Alice produced a collection of images documenting the horrific abuses of the African rubber labourers. Her photographs are considered to be an important development in the history of humanitarian campaigning. The images were used in a number of publications. The Harrises also used the photographs to develop the Congo Atrocity Lantern Lecture which toured Britain and the the USA raising awareness of the issue of colonial abuses under King Leopold II's regime.Source: Antislavery International and Panos Pictures.

Nsala of Wala with the severed hand and foot of his five year old daughter murdered by ABIR militia. (Anglo-Belgian India Rubber company). Sketch based on a photograph taken by Alice Seeley Harris. This image formed part of the Harris Lantern Slide Collection. Under King Leopold II the Congo Free State used mass forced labour to extract rubber from the jungle for the European market. As consumer demand grew King Leopold II's private army - the Force Publique - used violent means to coerce the population into meeting quotas, including murder, mutilation, rape, village burning, starvation and hostage taking. Alice Seeley Harris and her husband Reverend John H. Harris were missionaries in the Congo Free State from the late 1890s. Alice produced a collection of images documenting the horrific abuses of the African rubber labourers. Her photographs are considered to be an important development in the history of humanitarian campaigning. The images were used in a number of publications. The Harrises also used the photographs to develop the Congo Atrocity Lantern Lecture which toured Britain and the the USA raising awareness of the issue of colonial abuses under King Leopold II's regime.Source: Antislavery International and Panos Pictures.