E1267 - Britain's First Black MPs

John Stewart was elected MP for Lymington, Hampshire on 8th January, 1833. 

On paper, he seemed a textbook member of Britain’s elite: wealthy, well-connected, educated in England, and a plantation owner. 

But Stewart’s mother was an enslaved woman, making him considered by many to be Britain’s first Black MP.

Yet Stewart did not enter Parliament to challenge slavery or injustice. Rather, he was an unapologetic defender of the plantation system, opposed the abolition of slavery, fought taxes on sugar, and later resisted ending the exploitative “apprenticeship” system that replaced slavery after 1833. 

In this...