Britain was one of the worst offenders in the slave trade that grew with colonial expansion West Africans were snatched on a grand scale, transported to North America and the Caribbean and forced to work on tobacco, sugar and cotton plantations The abolition of the slave trade eventually came in 1807 and slavery itself was made illegal in 1833 Final Straw for colonies In 2002 the then Home Secretary Jack Straw blamed contemporary troubles in Israel, Kashmir, Afghanistan and Iraq on Britain’s messy withdrawal from its Empire in the 20th century Britain goes industrial In the century after 1750, the British population trebled to more than 16 million By 1901 it had doubled again An agricultural revolution stopped them all going hungry, although improved technology actually reduced the agrarian workforce (by 1850 Britain had fewer workers on the land (less than a quarter of the workforce) than any other country in the world), and freed up labour for a much more celebrated transformation The Industrial Revolution began with cloth and the mechanised textile mills in Lancashire and Derbyshire, before the arrival of steam power in the late 19th century quickened the pace of change dramatically Factories producing metalwork and textiles mushroomed, built close to coal supplies in South Wales, the North and the Midlands People migrated en masse to the new industrial cities: Manchester and Sheffield quadrupled in size in the first 50 years of the 19th century In Glasgow and Belfast, where the shipyards began to boom, the growth was even greater By the 1840s the railways were being laid, upping the pace of change again, and a few years later the telegraph revolutionised communications Political reform took a while to catch up Riots and discontent, led by the Chartist movement, rumbled for a decade 33 Identity: the foundations of British culture Literature and philosophy Art, architecture and design Performing arts Cinema, photography and fashion Media and communications Food and drink Living culture: the state of modern Britain