On this day:

In 1831, enslaved people in Jamaica rose up to emancipate themselves in what became known as the "Christmas Rebellion" or "Baptist War" (missionaries and free Black Baptists were blamed and targeted by British authorities for "riling up" slave insurrection.

Between 20,000 and 30,000 enslaved people attempted to overthrow colonial slavery, particularly in the west of the island. Many believed rumours that slavery had already been abolished by parliamentary decree in London, and merely ignored by colonial & plantation authorities.

fourteen whites were killed, more than a million pounds of damage was done to property and it took the authorities two weeks to reassert control. in doing so, British colonial power murdered hundreds of enslaved and free Black people, executing more in the aftermath.

Britain's leading and foundational enrichment from three centuries of Atlantic slavery was drawing to a close (though it continued to benefit from trade with Cuba, US, Brazil, etc).

West India plantations had long been in decline. But it was the world-historical force of slave self-emancipation and Black struggle that helped to drive abolitionism from start to finish, across "New World" territories and beyond.

Not the speechifying of ruling class white reactionaries in the metropole like William Wilberforce. The British state knows no altruism. Every inch of justice or freedom extracted from it has been paid for by sacrifice and with people's lives, by mass struggle from below.