Bristol’s Imperial Tobacco is profiting from farmers trapped working for suppliers, film reveals
Photos: Roy Maconachie – University of Bath
You might not realise it, but Bristol is a global centre for the tobacco industry. Imperial Brands, the fourth largest non-state-owned tobacco company in the world, is headquartered on Winterstoke Road in Bedminster.
The company had a turnover of £33 billion last year, making it the wealthiest company in the region. The legacies of Bristol’s tobacco past are all around us in the city, from the bonded warehouses that tower over Cumberland Basin to the Tobacco Factory Theatre. But the contemporary tobacco industry keeps a low profile in 21st-century Bristol. And for good reason.
In addition to the widespread harm caused by tobacco products, there is another dark side to the industry. Tobacco companies including Imperial Brands have been accused of exploitation and child labour on tobacco farms in Malawi (allegations they strenuously deny), as well as in other tobacco growing regions.
The Tobacco Control Research Group (TCRG) at the University of Bath investigates the global tobacco industry and the ways it influences science, politics and society to protect its profits. A new TCRG documentary film Tobacco Slave tells the story of modern-day tobacco industry exploitation, told by farmers trapped in debt bondage to tobacco companies. Unable to make any money from the tobacco they grow, and enslaved by their contractual obligations to the companies that supply Imperial Tobacco, they are locked into a modern-day, neo-colonial model of exploitation orchestrated from Bristol.
The story of tobacco in Bristol points to how the practices of our colonial past continue to harm those in the present
The documentary traces these inhumane practices back through the history of the city, to the height of the British Empire and Bristol’s significant role in colonialism, tobacco and the transatlantic slave trade. The film reveals how Bristol today is inextricably linked to its colonial past, and questions whether colonial practices were ever really abolished, or have simply been rebranded.
One of the untold stories about the tobacco industry concerns how it extracts wealth from low and middle-income countries through exploitation in the labour market and by underpaying taxes. Its vast profits are channelled into wealthy western nations like the UK, USA and Switzerland, where the four largest tobacco corporations are headquartered. This profiteering goes back to colonial times.
To tell this story, the TCRG teamed up with other University of Bath researchers who have experience making films about labour exploitation in Africa.
The film builds on previous projects focusing on labour exploitation, including: Cobalt Rush (2023), which chronicled the perilous working conditions of artisanal cobalt miners at the bottom of the supply chain in the Democratic Republic of Congo; Voices from the Mine (2019), which cast a light on exploitation in artisanal diamond mining in Sierra Leone; and Gender and Fairtrade (2016), which explores the lives of female cocoa farmers in Ghana.
In all cases, the medium of film is used to explore the ‘invisible’ realities of those working at the bottom of the supply chain, allowing them to tell their stories on their own terms.
One of the most powerful human stories featured in Tobacco Slave is that of James Sabwe, a poor tobacco farmer in northern Malawi. The father of four children, James has been growing tobacco for almost 20 years, but he still struggles to make ends meet. He is desperate to provide a better life for his family, but remains trapped in a cycle of poverty.
“Since I started growing tobacco, I have never made any profits,” he says in the film. “When we go to the market, after all our efforts in production, it looks like we are giving a donation to tobacco companies and not selling our product, because they offer low prices.
“But one thing that does not surprise me is that the directors and managers for these companies are driving expensive cars, from the sector that we are all working in together.”
Why we need to deal with Bristol’s dark history
Bristolians are increasingly aware of the role our city played in the transatlantic slave trade and colonial oppression. The toppling of Edward Colston’s statue in 2020, a significant moment in the Black Lives Matter movement, helped bring this reckoning with Bristol’s past to the fore. In many ways, the story of tobacco reflects the story of colonialism in Bristol and the way in which it transmuted into systemic racism.
Tobacco Slave speaks to a wide range of Bristolians and teaches us much about the history of tobacco in the city. Imperial Brands evolved out of a merger between the Wills Company and other smaller tobacco producers in the UK. The Wills family are a significant part of the city’s history, and as Lee Hutchinson, curator of history at the M Shed museum puts it, “[the Wills family] were complicit in the slave trade, in that the tobacco they acquired came from slave produced labour”. Even after the abolition of slavery on plantations, indentured labour continued, meaning plantation workers were still brutally exploited.
Perhaps the film, and the personal accounts presented within it, might help viewers to understand that tobacco products are not only harmful to health but they are also part of an exploitative, neo-colonial model of wealth accumulation, much like the fast-fashion and food industries.
Hopefully Tobacco Slave will play a small part in contributing to Bristol’s reckoning with its history of empire, and how it still shapes everyday life for Bristolians. Many others are also doing excellent work in this area. For example in the film BOOMERANG, produced by openDemocracy in collaboration with writer and legal academic Kojo Koram, Dr Koram tells the story of exploitation in Liverpool’s docks.
BOOMERANG provides a similar delve into the history of British colonialism and how it continues to influence the economic and social struggles faced by the cities and citizens of modern-day Britain. The story of tobacco in Bristol points at the same issue, and more specifically how the practices of our colonial past continue to harm those in the present.
The contemporary picture of Bristol’s tobacco industry offered by Tobacco Slave should help inform ongoing discussions about reparations being led by former Green councillor and lord mayor Cleo Lake, and current deputy mayor Asher Craig. The film also highlights Bristol’s colonial past for those who are interested in digging deeper into the history of the city, and its legacies of slavery and exploitation that endure.
A spokesperson from Imperial Brands said: “We are aware of claims made against Imperial, as these are the subject of ongoing legal proceedings in the UK. We continue to defend these claims vigorously.
“We have a long-standing commitment to human rights in our supply chain and take the welfare of farmers seriously. We want to contribute to alleviating poverty in our supply chain and, working through our tobacco leaf suppliers, we fund projects to improve social, economic, and environmental standards.
“The focus of these ongoing projects in Malawi, and other tobacco-growing countries, is on education, drinking water, sanitation & hygiene, worker accommodation, and enhancing farmers’ financial security.”
Tobacco Slave was co-produced with Vital Strategies in the US and readers can watch the film for free on their website from its release date of 26 October.
It will be screened at M Shed on 2 November with a panel of speakers including the filmmakers, deputy mayor Asher Craig and the University of Bath’s Dr. Lonjezo Masikini, an expert on tobacco production in Malawi.
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