Slavery & Abolition
2007 saw the remembrance of the abolition of the involvement of British ships in the slave trade 200 years previously.
Tyneside and the North East
I was contracted as a freelancer to be the Archive Mapping and Research Officer for the Tyne & Wear Remembering Slavery Project looking, with the help of a team of volunteers, at material contained in the archives and collections of Newcastle-upon-Tyne Literary & Philosophical Society, Northumberland Collections Service, Newcastle University Robinson Library Special Collections and Tyne & Wear Archives.
The outcomes of the Project have included:
A resource disc for public use at the four partner
organisations.
The establishment of a group to enable the Project volunteers and
others to continue to undertake work on the resources. Additional
material will be added to the resource disc.
A series of talks by members of the volunteer team to local and
family history societies around the North East.
'Remembering Slavery 2007. A brief guide to the Archive Mapping
and Research Project' written by John Charlton, one of the
volunteers and Secretary of the North East Labour History Society.
This was launched on Wednesday 3 October at the Lit & Phil. It is a
masterly distillation of a lengthy overview I compiled which is on
the resource disc. A third and final print run has just been
undertaken, so there are a few more copies available from the Lit &
Phil Society:
library@litandphil.org.uk ; 0191 232 0192. A PDF file of the
text can be accessed through the PDF & E Papers menu button.
My talk 'Slavery & Abolition on Tyneside and the North East' on 24
October at the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Literary & Philosophical Society
is viewable as a PDF file through the PDF & E Papers menu button.
A series of essays is being prepared for inclusion in this year's
issue of the Journal of the North East Labour History Society.
A book is being written by John Charlton.
Dorset’s Hidden Histories
Late last year I provided information and suggestions for research to the Black History in Dorset Project. The project was run by Development Education in Dorset (DEED) and the research was carried out by the British-Ghanaian poet and historian Louisa Adjoa Parker. 'Dorset's Hidden Histories' is the published outcome of Louisa's exploration of 400 years of the presence of black people in Dorset, Dorset and the slave trade and Dorset’s slave-owning families. These families included the Draxs, Halletts, Willetts, Pinneys, Burridges and Calcrafts. Back people in the County included the 11 year old George Foulah Macauie, Henry Panzo and Andrew Bogle. Robert Wedderburn was imprisoned in Dorchester prison for sedition and blasphemy. Abolitionists with Dorset connections included Thomas Fowell Buxton, the Parliamentary abolition leader after Wilberforce, member of a Weymouth family and it’s MP from 1818 to 1823. James Stephens and Rev James Angell James were both born in Poole. Thomas Lewis Johnson, a freed Virginia slave, missionary and writer lived in Bournemouth in the 1890s. Black entertainers performed in the County. There is information on black soldiers in the Second World War and ‘brown babies’, with an interview with one of them John Stockley. The publication also contains personal reflections by Kim Squirrel and Louisa herself, both mixed heritage women living in Dorset and three of Louisa’s poems. This discussion of the Draxs reminds us that slave plantation owners in the West Indies were often landowners in many parts of Britain. The Draxs had estates in Dorset, Kent, London and Yorkshire as well as Barbados. It is important that these cross British linkages are pieced together from such local studies. Louisa has acknowledged the help I gave her with information and suggestions to follow up at the beginning of the DEED ‘Black History in Dorset’ project, which this booklet forms part of. The booklet is published by DEED (Development Education in Dorset), 174 Bournemouth Rd, Parkstone, Poole, Dorset, BH14 9HY. ISBN 978-0-9557589-0-4. £8.95. info@deed.org.uk , www.deed.org.uk ).
Louisa's description of Dorset’s slave trade past can be seen on
BBC Dorset’s website:
www.bbc.co.uk/dorset/content/articles/2007/02/28/slavery_overview_feature.shtml.
Dorset’s Lyme Regis Museum has an exhibition on Ethnic Minorities in
Dorset Past and Present, which can be seen on its website:
www.lymeregismuseum.co.uk/ethnic_Minorities_1.htm
Lambeth 1807. A local history of the Abolition
This is an account by Steve Martin of the abolition of the slave trade from a local perspective: Clapham. While the story of William Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect is well-known, Steve looks at some of the complex links between these key players in the abolition movement and their slave-owning neighbours. He also examines the individual histories of some of the African boys who attended the African Academy at Clapham and uncovers some extraordinary and powerful links between West Africa, the Caribbean and Lambeth that still hold meaning today. In particular Steve looks at the pro-slavery Hibberts and the abolitionist Thorntons. George Hibbert became Chairman of the West India Dock Company, whose development of the West India Docks forms a key part of the Museum of Dockland’s exhibition on London, sugar and slavery. Steve has acknowledged my help. Published by Lambeth Archives it is available free from Lambeth Archives and Libraries, though I am sure that they will want to charge for post and packing: archives@lambeth.gov.uk . Since its publication Steve, Jon Newman (Lambeth Archives) and I have been discovering more information about Lambeth’s links with Britain’s slave economy.
Equiano Project Exhibition and Book
There are close links between the struggle for democracy in Britain and the campaign against slavery. Olaudah Equiano was the major black voice against slavery in the last quarter of the 18th Century, and a supporter of the political reform London Corresponding Society. He was the friend of Thomas Hardy, the Society’s leading figure who was put on trial for treason in 1792. Equiano attended the trial.
On Friday September 29 2007 Ann and I went to the Birmingham
Museum and Art Gallery for the launch of the Equiano Exhibition, a
collaboration between the Council and the Equiano Society. It was a
first rate exhibition which ended on 13 January 2008. Published to
accompany the Exhibition is a book of essays ‘Equiano: Enslavement,
Resistance, Abolition’ this book provides new insights into
enslavement, abolition, and the black presence in Britain in the
18thC. It investigates Equiano and his legacy, African British
writers, the role of women activists in the abolition movement, and
the connections between Birmingham, enslavement and abolition.
Edited by Arthur Torrington, Rita McLean, Victoria Osborne and Ian
Grosvenor with a foreword by Lord Morris of Handsworth with essays
by Hakim Adi, Bishop Joe Aldred, Joan Anim-Addo, Vincent Carretta,
Andy Green, Angelina Osborne, Clare Parsons, Arthur Torrington,
Robin Walker, James Walvin and Helena Woodard. ISBN 9780709302575.
Published by The Equiano Society and Birmingham Museums & Art
Gallery on the subscription system, as had Equiano's own
'Interesting Narrative'; I was pleased to be a subscriber. Essay
contributors include: Robin Walker on Africa before Atlantic
Enslavement; Dr Hakim Adi on African Resistance to Enslavement;
Professor Clare Midgley on Women against Enslavement; Professor
Vincent Carretta on Olaudah Equiano, the Writer; Professor James
Walvin on Equiano and his times; Dr Andy Green on Birmingham,
Slavery and Abolition; Clare Parsons on The Equiano Exhibition;
Professor Helena Woodard on Black British 18th Century Writers; Dr
Joe Aldred on Equiano’s Religious Journey; Angelina Osborne on
Joanna Vassa; and Arthur Torrington on Remembering Olaudah Equiano.
If you would like to be one of the subscribers, please email Arthur
Torrington of the Equiano Society on The Exhibition and the book
form part of the Equiano Project, the initiative of the Equiano
Society led by Arthur Torrington.
www.equiano.org ;
arthurtorrington@HOTMAIL.COM
After Abolition
Among the large number of books published for the Bicentenary of was Marika Sherwood’s ‘After Abolition - Britain and the Slave Trade Since 1807’. I B Tauris the publisher explains that Marika ‘demonstrates that Britain continued to contribute to the slave trade well after 1807, even into the twentieth century. Drawing on government documents and contemporary reports as well as published sources, she describes how slavery remained very much a part of British investment, commerce and empire, especially in funding and supplying goods for the trade in slaves and in the use of slave-grown produce. The financial world of the City in London also depended on slavery, which - directly and indirectly - provided employment for millions of people. ‘After Abolition’ examines some of the causes and repercussions of continued British involvement in slavery and describes many of the apparently respectable villains, as well as the heroes, connected with the trade - at all levels of society. It contains important revelations about a darker side of British history, previously unexplored, which will provoke real questions about Britain's perceptions of its past.’ ISBN 1845113659. Hardback. £19.50
Slavery Records Should be Free – Please Sign Petition – Deadline 4 May
Last year a UK company placed online colonial records of 3m Africans relating to their enslavement. The publicity gave the impression that the service was free. It is not. This is seen by many involved in the history of slavery and abolition as a corporate attempt to cash in on the increased interest during the Bicentenary year. Many of us are also concerned also that there seems to be an increasing trend for public records to be only available on restricted on-line access. A petition has been started calling for these documents to be free to view with all records being made public so the history can be known by all. The petition can be seen at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/freeaccess/ . As at 28 January there have been 2,989 signatures. The closing date for signing is 4 May.
National abolition of slavery memorial
Several members of BASA whom I know are on the Committee of the Memorial 2007 group campaigning for a permanent memorial in London to remember enslaved Africans and their descendants. Further details can be found on www.memorial2007.org.uk
Page updated February 2008