Abolitionist

Clarkson’s Calling

A quiet academic destined for a promising and steady career in the church experiences a Damascene moment when he considers the contents of his winning essay and concludes he has no other choice than to form “a resolution from which he dare not resist”. The history of the abolition of the slave trade is bound in that moment.

Close to the docks in Bristol city centre there is a small pub called the Seven Stars – after the constellation better known as The Plough or the Big Dipper – tucked away behind the well-known live music venue, The Fleece. You could easily miss it, but outside there is a blue plaque dedicated to Thomas Clarkson (1775-80) and his objective of collecting first-hand accounts from seamen involved with the slave trade, often found in this and other local hostelries.

A short while ago I was inspired to go to Juliet Gilkes Romero’s new play for the RSC at Stratford after reading a review in The Guardian. The play’s double entendre title, The Whip, cleverly conjures both the lash used to drive slaves and simultaneously, the member appointed by a political party to enforce party discipline and to secure the attendance of party members at important sessions. The latter in this case being Alexander Boyd, Chief Whip of the Whig Party at the time the Anti-Slavery Act was passed by Parliament in 1833.

The review mentioned the extraordinary fact that the Treasury had announced, by Tweet, just two years ago, that the compensation paid by British taxpayers to slave owners had been finally paid off in 2015. In somewhat flippant prose the tweet announced: “Here’s today’s surprising #FridayFact. Millions of you As a Bristolian I am acutely aware that the city’s history has a darker side. Recently, to mark anti-slavery day, an unofficial ‘guerrilla’ art exhibit was laid out at the foot of the statue of Edward Colston, MP, merchant, philanthropist and slave trader, that sits in the city centre, close to the concert hall still bearing his name. 100 ceramic figures were lined up below him to resemble the cargoes of slaves packed into ships en route for the Caribbean and North America.

This subversive artwork, the blue plaque at the Seven Stars and Romero’s play conspired to awaken my interest in the life of Thomas Clarkson and what he learned and witnessed in my home town 233 years ago.

I probably have little need to remind Old Paulines of Clarkson’s career trajectory. But for those, like me, who may have little detailed knowledge; here are some basics.

Clarkson was born on 28th March 1760, the son of Rev John Clarkson who was headmaster of the local free grammar school in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. Thomas was admitted to St Paul’s in October 1775 at the age of 15. His High Master was Dr Richard Roberts, who had a reputation for “only coming to life when plying the cane”. Clarkson managed to survive or avoid Roberts’

helped end the slave trade through your taxes. Did you know? In 1833, Britain used £20 million, 40% of its national budget to ‘buy freedom for all slaves in the Empire’. The amount of money borrowed for the Slavery Act was so large that it wasn’t paid off until 2015. Which means that living British citizens helped pay to end the slave trade.” The tweet was roundly attacked and was removed shortly after publication online.

So… a pat on the back for us good tax-paying Brits? Romero’s play, enriched with deep research and peopled with characters from all sides of the slavery story, male and female, unveils another not-so-virtuous narrative. There is unfettered greed on the part of slaveowners, including prominent MPs of the day such as Gladstone, bargaining up payback in return for their support of the bill. There are twisted tales of supposed negro naivety and incompetence used to enforce a further seven years of non-paid apprenticeship on the ‘freed’ slaves which rapidly takes the shine off any idea that the compensation signed off slavery at a stroke, or that ‘owners’ got that it was an immoral trade. That it took us a further 182 years to pay off (equivalent to £15billion in today’s money), thereby including taxes paid by descendants of slaves during that time, must have been the Treasury’s closestheld secret till a minion was lost for something to put out as that ‘FridayFact’.

attacks and gained himself a place at St John’s College, Cambridge in 1779, having won both a Gower and a Pauline Exhibition worth some £60 per annum. He gained his BA in 1783 with a First in Mathematics. He was ordained as a Deacon but never proceeded to priest’s orders.

It was while at Cambridge in 1784 that Clarkson won the Latin essay for middle bachelors. No one had yet won two consecutive essay prizes at the university, but Clarkson was determined to do so. Whilst reading for his MA, Clarkson entered the competition for senior bachelors on a question set by the then Vice-Chancellor, Dr Peter Peckard: Anne liceat invitos in servitutem dare? (Is it lawful to make slaves of others against their will?). Peckard was an advocate of civil and religious liberty, believing ‘the heaviest judgement of Almighty God’ would ‘come down on the slave trade’. He had also been enraged by reports, published in 1783, of slaves being thrown overboard from the ship Zong, whose captain had sought insurance pay-outs for their ‘loss’.

Clarkson only had two months to overcome his profound ignorance of the essay subject. His primary sources were the papers of a dead friend who had worked in the slave trade and the eye witness accounts of slavery from officers who had served in the West Indies during the American war, including from his brother John, then a naval lieutenant. He also chanced upon a new edition of Anthony Benezet’s Some Historical Accounts of Guinea, with an enquiry Into the Rise and Progress of the Slave Trade, published by a recentlyformed Quaker committee devoted to exposing the evils of the trade.

During his preparatory work Clarkson wrote: “It was but one gloomy subject from morning to night. In the daytime I was uneasy, in the night I had little rest. I sometimes never closed my eyelids for

“Our own moral condition must have been necessarily improved by the change”

q Thomas Clarkson by Carl Fredrik von Breda Oil on canvas, 1788 (National Portrait Gallery 235)

grief.” It later became his hope that what had started as a trial for academic reputation would transform into a work that “might be useful to injured Africa.” At the conclusion of his essay, written in Latin, he was summoned back to Cambridge to read it, to “generous applause in the Senate House”.

As Clarkson rode back to London he described being in a state of agitation, choosing at times to dismount and walk for a while before climbing back in the saddle. Above Wadesmill in Hertfordshire he remarked: “I sat down disconsolate on the turf by the roadside and held my horse. If the contents of the essay were true, it was time some person should see these calamities to the end.” In 1785 Clarkson expanded and translated his essay into English for the general public, something he was nervous of doing for fear of exposure to criticism. It was published simultaneously in Britain and in America.

Over the next few years Clarkson covered some 35,000 miles on horseback while researching the realities of the

“I began now to tremble, for the first time, at the arduous task I had undertaken”

slave trade, beginning in the Port of London, and continuing on to Liverpool and Bristol. He also travelled to revolutionary France to seek support. On reaching the West Country port he noted, “It filled me, almost directly, with a melancholy for which I could not account. I began now to tremble, for the first time, at the arduous task I had undertaken, of attempting to subvert one of the branches of the commerce of the great place which was now before me.”

Clarkson found people willing to talk at first but rapidly ran into walls of silence as news of his mission spread. Later, his life was threatened in Liverpool when he narrowly escaped the attentions of a gang intending to throw him off the pier.

But having befriended Mr Thompson, the landlord of the Seven Stars in Bristol, he started to make progress. Through this association he began to build up a picture of how many crew members perished in the trade, and who had been inveigled against their will to join ships. This would prove to be a compelling part of his anti-slave trade rhetoric. Similarly, his collection of African artefacts would help to convince public opinion of the civilised, cultured nature of the people being forced into servitude and the possibility of other, more lucrative trades that could be followed, such as in wood, honey and leatherwork.

Influential Quaker groups gave Clarkson unrelenting support and direction, leading him to set up the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade and ultimately a meeting with William Wilberforce, an independent MP for Yorkshire, a man he could eventually count on to bring an anti-slavery bill before Parliament, and who recognised Clarkson’s book as decisive in steeling his resolve, eventually leading to the Slave Trade Act of 1807.

In his preface to the book The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the Slave Trade, published in 1808, as well as stating that the Bill had not gone far enough, he stated: “I scarcely knew of any subject, the contemplation of which is more pleasing than that of the correction or of the removal of any of the acknowledged evils of life; for how we rejoice to think the sufferings of our fellow-creatures have been thus, in any instance, relieved, we must rejoice equally to think that our own moral condition must have been necessarily improved by the change.”

It would be a further 26 years before slavery would be abolished throughout the British Empire by the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, and a further five before full emancipation in 1838. But Clarkson remained a pillar of reform throughout. Referring to his sense of calling at a speech delivered at Exeter Hall in 1840 he said, “I have often indulged in the belief that this feeling might have come from God. To him therefore, and not to such a creature as myself, you are to attribute all the honour and all the glory.”

Postscript St Paul’s School has proudly embraced Clarkson’s name and has sought to emulate some of his selfless qualities since his death in 1846. In 1962, the Clarkson Society was founded with a remit to promote social service activities and assist the Borough Welfare Association by visiting old and lonely people living in Hammersmith. A series of speakers visited the Society including Mr Tony Benn MP in May 1963, who spoke to over 100 boys about the problems then facing the nation, including the ban on black people driving Bristol buses, which eventually led to the passing of the first Race Relations Act of 1965, making racial discrimination unlawful.

On the wall outside the library today you will find a poster promoting the Clarkson Award. The award is made to the pupil “who has consistently demonstrated traits and attitudes the School deems exemplary, including but not limited to exceptional leadership, bravery, support of others and commitment to voluntary service and/or charity work.” The Clarkson legacy lives on.

The School’s rare books archive contains a number of Clarkson first editions. Most notably it holds a first edition copy of The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (2 Volumes, 1808), which features the iconic diagram of the Brooke’s slave ship. It also has a handwritten letter by him, written in 1813, which includes some of his personal thoughts on Quakerism to a friend. Clarkson’s obituary ‘beetle’ is currently hanging in the Kayton library as do a couple of engravings of him. My thanks to Ginny Dawe-Woodings who kindly provided access to the archive’s collection.

 Simon Bishop (1962-65)

p Thomas Clarkson Engraving, 1847 from a painting by S Lane