BLACK PEOPLE and SLAVERY in LONDON

Black Roman soldiers.

With the opening  up of trade with WEST AFRICS, Black servants and entertainers arrived in England. In small numbers but acsufficiently disturbing presence for the issue of a  PROCLAMATION by QEI , in 1601, stating her discontent for the “great number of negras and black moored which are crept into this realm”. And she ordered the banishment of all black people… an order of little effect, as they continued to live and work here.

When Britain was deeply involved in the TRIANGULAR SLAVE TRADE  (mid 17th to late 18th centuries) the number of Black settlers became significant. That TRIANGULAR TRADE gave a substantial boost to English port cities, and was an important element in the development of the INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.

Slave servants of returning colonial traders, plantation owners, army officers, and government officers made up most the contingent. 
Some free Blacks, lived as well here. Some  were seamen from WEST AFRICS, others had previously been slaves, who had bought their freedom or run away from their owners here or in the Americas. They were servants, seamen, labourers and craftsmen, although all too often they were people reduced to beggary through lack of employment.

In London, along the Thames river front of the EAST END was where, the majority of them, lived. London’s first Harlem.

Predominantly male, the community is unlikely to have been more than 10.000 strong in the whole of Britain. An the majority, in London. 
And they must have had an active social life, if we judge from a newspaper account of 1764: black servants supped, drank and entertained themselves, with music and dancing, at at inn in FLEET ST, till 4am. And no whites were allowed…

The legal status of slavery in Britain was never clearly defined. In practice, slavery of Whites was forbidden, and free Blacks could not be enslaved, but Black people who came to England as slaves, were generally considered to be bound to their owners.

Althought it was not a widespread practice, buying and selling in England was possible. At the Royal Exchange, in coffee houses in the City, in ships berthed in the Thames and at inns throughout the capital.

Case of GEORGE COFFEE HOUSE, CHANCERY LANE (“apply at the bar”)

If they were caught they were shipped to the invariably more barbaric  ruelties of slavery in the PLANTATIONS of the Americas. This was a powerful deterrent to any would be runaway.

Case of “Capt.Thos. Mitchel’s Negro”, living in GRIFFITH ST., SHADWELL

Slavery was disapproved of by many Britons, particularly by the poor, who saw it as a crueller variation of the treatment they themselves suffered at the hands. The poor often helped runaway slaves.

A slave who had deserted his master could not be taken by force to be sold abroad.

A “BALL OF BKACKS” in celebration  of the court decision took place in a Westminster Inn.

From then on the legal enforcement of slavery became almost impossible and, by thec1790s, most slaves had made themselves free simply by leaving their owners.

In the heart of the City of London, lies the site of a former bookshop that played a pivotal role in the history of the transatlantic slave trade. On 22 May 1787, 12 men met in the upper room of the Quaker bookshop and print shop at 2 George Yard to discuss how to put an end to the enslavement of African people to the Americas.

This day marked the start of the abolitionist movement in Britain.

The SOCIETY FOR ABOLITION was established by twelve men; including individuals who later became prominent campaigners, such as PHILIP SANSOM, Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp. As Anglicans they were able to be more influential in Parliament than the more numerous Quaker founding members - given Non-conformists were not allowed to hold positions of power.

Those QUAKERS were

John Barton (1755–1789);

William Dillwyn (1743–1824);

George Harrison (1747–1827);

Samuel Hoare Jr (1751–1825);

Joseph Hooper (1732–1789);

John Lloyd;

Joseph Woods Sr (1738–1812);

James Phillips (1745–1799); and

Richard Phillips^[1]

The society worked to educate the public about the abuses of the slavetrade and achieved the abolition of the international slave trade when the British Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act 1807, at which time the society ceased its activities.

Clapham had a key role in bringing the slave trade to an end (CLAPHAM SECT). But, Clapham residents WERE INVOLVED, in that trade, be as costumers, be as suppliers.

Affluent London merchants acquired houses here, in Clapham, since the 1600s. Mostly PURITANS, connected with the Americas (VIRGINIA and WEST INDIES). They imported sugar and tobacco. They exported  provisions and slaves.

JOHN BRETT and RICHARD CRANLEY helped start the slave trade.  Their views of slaves, we learn them from their wills.

Iron was needed to pay for slaves. It was sourced from Sweden. URBAN HALL held a top post in the ROYAL AFRICA COMPANY. He had been a factor in STOCKHOLM. His neighbour was JOHN COOKE.
ANTHONY TOURNAY exported £4.000 worth of iron to Africa, supliendo IRON BILBOES, used to,SHACKLE the slaves during their transhipment.

Another resident kept a slave servant who ran away twice…THE POST BOY advertised for his  return, offering a reward for his capture…

WILLIAM VASSAL owned plantations in JAMAICA. He had been expelled from BOSTON after US independence. He lived close to WILBERFORCE, and, in his letters, referred to him and his abolitionist stance.

GEORGE HIBBERT was the leader of the pro-slavery lobby, giving evidence in Parliament. He was an Agent from Jamaica, the Chairman of the Society of WEST INDIAN MERCHANTS, and closely involved with the construction of the WEST INDIA DOCKS, where nowadays you can visit the LONDON MUSEUM sited on the “SUGAR QUAY”.

He lived in CLAPHAM COMMON NORTH SIDE.

Thus,  not everyone shared the views of the CLAPHAM SECT.

The other side of the political battle, the pro-slavery lobby understood that slavery was critical to the national financial, economic interest.  Their arguments were, as well, sophisticated and, sometimes, in the ascendancy.

HIBBERT, trader and owner of slaves, was the most significant figure. He was the ANT-WILBERFORCE, in Parliament and in the newspapers. A brilliant tactician and a skilled propagandist.

On SUNDAYS he and his family occupied their pews of HOLY TRINITY CHURCH.

The majority of slave owners lived in the Caribbean. Thus, the workings of slavery were concealed from the public. After abolition of slavery, in 1834, the families who made huge fortunes covered the incriminating chapters of their history, calling themselves descendants of planters,  meaning W.I. merchants.

HIBBERT was an early proponent of a mechanism that offered  Britain a way out: a COMPENSATION for LOSE of PROPERTY. CLARKSON, a firebrand, responded mockingly: “compensation is due…from you to Africa” (he could not accept than a human being could hold the property of another human being).
Here was the dilemma they faced: they had to accept, finally, that slaves WERE PROPERTY (and that, up  to then, slavery was JUST). After the ABOLITION ACT of 1833, that compromise was accepted, and the government had to pay the bill. The largest payout in  British history: £20 million, that is in nowadays money, £16billion (and the British state has not fully paid that bill UNTIL 2015!!!).

Plus a system of apprenticeship of 6 more years, for slaves who worked in the fields, or of 4 years, for those who worked in the domestic service.

With compensation though a secret was unveiled: who were the owners. In order to claim they had to register themselves and identify the number of slaves the6bhad owned. A taboo had been broken: Britain had 46.000 slave owners. Including the ancestors of GEORGE GILBERT SCOTT (and GILES, of course), of GEORGE ORWELL, of GRAHAM GREEN…

Many ordinary slave owners were middle or lower middle class, and they tried to persuade the commissioners to increase the valuation….

1791. A week before he died, JOHN WESLEY, after having read OLAUDAH EQUIANO’s tract, wrote to WILLIAM WILBERFORCE about his own struggles with slavery and trade of slaves: he needed divine power, to confront such an execrable villainy, which represented an scandal of religion, of England and  of the human nature. Although he considered that it was difficult to stop he gave him all his encouragement. The CLAPHAM SECT was not yet a self-conscious group, it had not come into existence.

2 months later, the FIRST PARLIAMENTARY MOTION was defeated. 16/years later WILBERFORCE would succeed…

CLAPHAM  became a key location. A far reaching, international, endeavour, would emerge from here.

Between 1792 and 1815 a group of Anglicans and Evangelists prepared themselves to make common cause with FREE-THINKING RADICALS.

JOHN STEPHEN, in his 1844 ESSAY, coined that term -SECT-  which they would rather not recognise.  Instead they did it,  with the derisory term of “SAINTS”.

1562. SIR JOHN HOPKINS makes his living of capturing Portuguese ships, crossing the Atlantic, and apprehending the slaves the6bwere carrying .

Over the next 2 cent the trade expanded, thanks to the sugar revolution. By the 1770s 84% of the slaves were working in the Jamaican  and Barbadian sugar plantations.

Liverpool, London and  Bristol were the main slaving ports (107, 58,  20 voyages).

In 1789 WILBERFORCE estimated that Britain had transported 38.000 slaves.
By 1807 2’3 mil. AFRICANS had been transported in Br.ships.

After UTRECHT (1713) Britain had a virtual monopoly supplying the WEST INDIES with slaves.

Traders left Britain with woollens, cotton goods, trinkets and knickknacks, guns and gunpowder… and sold to the AFRICAN chiefs, through coastal middlemen,  brockers, who ended supplying the British with slaves (people apprehended in their warfare).

Then came the MIDDLE PASSAGE. The ships, now laden with Africans, sailed for weeks or months, heading for the West Indies, or to Mainland America, Southern N.AMERICAN colonies, and Spanish and Portuguese territories.

Those ships would return laden with American goods: sugar, cotton, timber, tobacco, rhum…

UKAWSAW GRONNIOSAW, first publicly recognised African in England, having been sold as a slave, explained in his autobiography the negotiations between Afr. and Eur. He, himself, was exchanged by 2 yards of CHECK, a length of fabric highly prized in Africa.

Liverpool merchants rejected a shipment of textile because they were not of the right colour, for the African slave traders of OLD CALABAR.

Long term social and economic o relationships provided with experience and knowledge on how to trade.

African economies were not  monetised. They functioned through barter: colourful textiles, made in Europe or India, were their favourites. Guns and weaponry, from Denmark, they used them for rituals and ceremonial, as symbols of power. Iron from Sweden and Belgium, served to make agricultural tools. Cowrie shells and beds, from  Maldives, were decorative and served s currencies. Brazilian tobacco, gold dust, rum were supplied by the Portuguese. French and Dutch contributed with alcohols, used in rituals.

Once the relationships of trust with Europeans were well established the African trading partners would sent their children to Europe, to acquire languages and cultures.

European merchants settled in Africa, marrying into local families, creating thus an Euro-African elite.

Gifts were exchanged between captains and brokers. Free members of their own community were offered by brokers as pawns in exchange of merchandises received on credit. Those pawns were never slaved, African traders would never accept that for people of their own kin, and there would be retaliation.

Crammed with 400 to 900 slaves, chained in pairs to plank beds, packed and surrounded by their own excrements, vomit, blood… Up to 45% of the human cargo would die during the crossing (and the death rate amongs seamen was very height, as THOMAS CLARKSON had calculated it around the 20%, added to the 25% of desertions, discharges or unaccounted.

OLAUDAH EQUIANO describes, in his tract, a nightmare experience.

WESLEY’s warning to WW was:  you are going to face a fierce opposition. Slavery and the trade had become institutionalised.

CLAPHAITES decided to face the challenge but in a 2 step way: first, had to end with the trade. Then, they would fight for full EMANCIPATION.

In the 18th c.  Britain was In the hands  of a cultured, magnificent, but DISSOLUTE ARISTOCRACY.

On the other side, the poor were downtrodden, illiterate, sodden with gin, given to a vicious living, a to brutal past times.

Gambling, drunkenness (causing 1/8 of deaths),  political corruption, child neglect, press ganging, prostitution…

This was the LOW STATE of things. The morals of the nation, in an appalling state… all the Reformation times more PURITAN ideals had been squandered.

British society was prejudiced by the theory of POLYGENESIS, that is, the existence of different races, created separately. For VOLTAIRE “THE NEGRO” is a different species of men, of an inferior understanding, and not able of great applicatio or of association of ideas. For KANT  Black people,had no feelings, no understanding, above the trivial, no high mental capabilities…

And, as British society did not have first Whand conga with slavery, its horrors were unknown. Nobody knew, as JAMES STEPHEN knew, the miscarriages of justice, suffered by slaves, or that they were condemned to be roasted alive.  Or, nobody could be sickened by the violence sufre y slaves, as ZACHARY MACAULEY did, when working, as a 17 years old in a Jamaican sugar estate.

THOMAS CLARKSON, as a 25 y.old CAMBRIDGE student, was set an essay about the lawfulness to enslave the unconsenting. He did some research, and he became appalled…he felt uneasy, he lost rest, when, on his way back to London, reflected on the need to end those calamities.

Slavery had become the economic powerhouse for wealthy dynasties, owners of vasts estates. And they were very well represented in Parliament.

The Church… well, the Archbishop of Canterbury owned 710 acres of sugar plantations. And 200+ slaves.

Slavery was seen, by the establishment, integral to their well-being and security. And those seamen serving  on the slave ships, would make future Royal Navy recruits. Think the DUKE OF CLARENCE and ADMIRAL JARVIS.

And the FRENCH REVOLUTION. In France, King, nobility and church were, from 1789, no anymore sacred. That motto, LIBERTÉ, ÉGALITÉ, FRATERNITÉ, that looked dangerous to the British. Improving the lot of, let say, the slaves, that would incite revolt.

The uprising of ST.DOMINIQUE by slaves resulted in the emergence of HAITI as the first free black nation  in 1804.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE of ENGLAND MANSFIELD’s  pronounciation: as soon a slave sets foot in EnglIsh soil HE/SHE ECOMES FREE.

The captain of the slave ship ZONG orders to throw overboard 133 sickly slaves. As they were still alive, they were CARGO, and their loss, compensated (£30 per slave,  nowadays £2.000).

MANSFIELD’s opinion was that it was as if horses had been thrown 

1783. First Petition against slave trade, by Quakers

1785. TH.CLARKSON prizewinning essay: “ON THE TRADE OF THE HUMAN SPECIES”

1787. A committee was established, formed mostly by Quakers, but G.SHARP and Th.CLARKSON were part of it.

JOHN NEWTON’s “THOUGHTS”, sent to MPs.

1788. A committee on TRADE and PLANTATION was instrumental to begin an enquiry. LORD RODNET was a witness: he had never see a slave being flogged!. Other witnesses were: JAMES RAMSAY, and members of the TESTON CIRCLE -the  MIDDLETONS, ELIZABETH BOUVERIE. John NEWTON.

THOMAS CLARKSON rode 1600 miles to find witnesses related with shipping. He saw his Iife threatened but he managed to bring before the committee a few objects: a thumbscrew,  a punishment collar, chains, shackles, a knotted rope’s end (for beating), instruments of force feeding.

1789.WW led the CAMPAIGN in Parliament. His first speech, of 3 and a half hours, was in 1789. He eloquently contradicted witnesses stating how well fitted were the slaves’ living quarters, how good was the food they were given, how perfumed were their washing facilities, how delightful was the entertainment they enjoyed (they were forced to dance, they sang songs of lamentation).

The Commons pleaded ignorance and playing for time, adjourned to gather more evidence.  Next debate would be in 1791.

1791. A new abolition motion defeated. A new setback. But, there was across the country public agitation for abolition.

A full massive publicity campaign takes place: petitions, sermons, pamphlets, newspaper articles, poems…

But WW and associates started to become persuaded that winning the moral argument was not enough. They set out to demonstrate the INEXPEDIENCY of the slave trade (I.e. the high mortality of sailors, the inefficiency of the MIDDLE PASSAGE, the long term implications of enslaving Africans).

This need to gather fresh evidence galvanised the CLAPHAM SECT.

This was not a club, an organised group, a sect… there was no membership, no invitation to join… and they never used that name themselves.

The editor of the EDINBURGH TEVIEW, SIR JAMES STEPHENused the phrase inadvertently and…he liked it. It stuck!.

A head or leader… WW, and then his friends sharing his staunch Christian motives for his reform work, and becoming engaged in one or more of those political and social reforms.

They are mostly remembered for the ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE, and its culmination, the ABOLITION OF SLAVERY in the  BRITISH EMPIRE, but, through  the Christian faith, the accomplishment of works, the spread of the Gospel and wanting to make a better world they campaigned for the protection os Sunday, for prison reform, for Parliament reform, for schools and missions, for the prevention of cruelty to animals

By April 1792, an unprecedented 519 petitions of abolition were received by the H.Com.

Th.CLARKSON called for a SUGAR and RUM BOYCOTT. I became widespread: 300.000   Britons stopped using W.I. sugar.

The same TC published that famous DIAGRAM of the slave ship BROOKES, where how tight the slaves were packet inside. That was a sensational and, for the 18th.c., an innovative way : a visual aid helping understand an aspect of slave trade.

In Parliament, the pro-slavery lobby resisted,  but realised that their arguments were being trumped. In 1792, a suggestion by HENRY DUNDAS of a gradual abolition on the horizon was accepted. A date was set for 1796 but West Indians envisaged a postponement, due to the FRENCH REVOLUTION and the outbreak of war. A series of defeats in Parliament followed.

In 1794, a breakthrough: a proposed restriction of supply of slaves to foreign countries who in the Commons.But it was defeated in the Lords.

The 1796 Abolition bill was defeated when part of the Abolitionist MPs preferred attending an OPERA performance to a vote in PARLIAMENT.

In 1797, PM PITT was in bad health,Britain was wagging war, the debt was escalating.

In 1800, war and bad harvests…

However, the CS continued to meet at WW house, OLD PALACE YARD. Outside, the nation was being persuaded and the mood was changing. Abolition was not anymore identified as sedition. And the new input for IRISH MPs (after the 1801 Irish incorporation to the union) had no sympathy for the slave trade.

1804. New abolition bill introduced. It won the day, but it was blocked by the Lords.

1806. PM PITT died.  New PM, GRENVILLE, and Foreign Secretary, CH FOX. An abolitionist cabinet.

The FOREIGN SLAVE TRADE ACT  banned the transportation of slaves to foreign territories. That was only step away from stopping trade completely. 
1807.Finally the Bill won the Lords support. A few months later, the Commons (283 ag.16]. ROYAL ASSENT, 25 March.

Perseverance against the lords, while contending for truth.

An initiative of the CS to prove that African could become prosperous and Christian,  ade of SL, in 1808, the first Crown Colony in Africa.

Credited to ZACHARY MACAULEY, who became governor. He ended worn out and returned in poor health.

EVANGELICALS, other Christians or people profoundly influenced by Christianity.  CLARKSON was a Quaker. And he was there before WW.

Those Evangelicals, who  were a group of linked families,  were intellectual Christians, and were moved not only by humanitarian motives: England had to be spared from God’s judgement for that execrable villainy, it had to be blessed, the Gospel should prosper in it.

ZACH.MACAULEY, when meeting with a slave trader, asked him to read the Bible, admonishing him of  his punishment in the day of the judgement.

This was the closing years of the 18th c. when a CHRISTIAN AWAKENING took place. When Wesley exhorted preaching the Gospel. When it was argued that slaving people was inconsistent with loving God and  and loving each other.

Nine of the twelve members of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade were Quakers. The Quaker Church strongly opposed the slave trade in Britain and America. In 1783, the London Society of Friends sent a petition against the slave trade to the British Parliament.

Working-class people in Britain also played a key role in calling for abolition. Despite benefiting from economic links to the slave trade, many workers in the port cities of Liverpool and Bristol signed petitions that were presented to Parliament. Over 500 petitions, with a combined total of around 390,000 signatures, were submitted in support of Wilberforce’s abolition bill in 1792.

What about slaves, and Africans… was this not a liberation movement?. More recent, revisionist currents put more stress in the role of FORMER SLAVES.

And it is true that ENSLAVED people found ways to demonstrate their resistance. The successful revolts by enslaved people in Barbados, Jamaica and Demerara shocked the British government. They knew that if enslaved people were not emancipated large scale rebellions would continue.

What about African chiefs?.

Some say that current traditional African rulers, whose ancestors collaborated with Arabs and European slave traders, should follow the British and the Americans (2006 TONY BLAIR, “crime against humanity”, “deep sorrow” , USA senate) and say sorry.

According to the Civil Rights Congress of  Nigeria White people are not the only to blame:  Africans  raided, captured, kidnapped, fellow defenceless Africans and sold them onto bondage, and that was part of the triangular slave trade.

African Human Rights Heritage (ACCRA,GHANA) agrees.

In 1998 Ugandan Pres. MUSEVINI recognised this fact.

Some chiefs have accepted responsibility and sought atonement visiting Liverpool or the US plantations.

However, is rather the diaspora that has set this recognisable a priority, not ordinary Africans.

Is it apology or acknowledgement what is sough?

Two years later after that initial meeting Phillips published one of the most important books of the movement, the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano. ‘The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano’, in which Equiano detailed his early life and the horrors of slavery, was one of the earliest books by a Black African writer to be published.

Equiano rose to prominence in the late 18^th century as the leading Black campaigner for the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. He was a prominent member of the 'Sons of Africa', a group of 12 Black men who campaigned for abolition.

Born around 1757 in modern-day Ghana. Aged 13, he was captured and enslaved on the island of Grenada. In 1772, Cugoano was brought to Britain, baptised, and given his freedom. He worked as a servant for an artist who painted portraits of the wealthiest members of Georgian society. He met the Prince of Wales, who later became King George VI. There is a portrait, believed to be of Cugoano, showing him with two English painters, Richard and Maria Cosway. Cugoano became a prominent member of the Sons of Africa group, demanding a total abolition of the slave trade.

Phillis Wheatley was captured in West Africa and enslaved in Boston, North America. Wheatley was a talented poet. Unable to find a publisher in America, she travelled to London, where her account of the Middle Passage became a bestseller and contributed to the abolitionist campaign. Following her emancipation in 1775, she returned to America and got married. Wheatley continued to write poems, but she lived a life of poverty, and died at the age of 31.

Despite the abolition of slave trading by Britain and other countries from 1807 onwards, illegal trading continued for a further 60 years. About a quarter of all Africans who were enslaved between 1500 and 1870 were transported across the Atlantic in the years after 1807. Much of this illegal trade was to the sugar plantations of Cuba and Brazil.

From 1815 to 1865, the British Royal Navy undertook antislavery patrols off the West African coast, seizing hundreds of vessels. Britain was forced to pay compensation for seized ships and to encourage countries such as Spain and Portugal to abolish slaving.

Although humanitarian considerations were important, economic interests were also at stake. Cuba and Brazil were competitors to British West Indian sugar production. Merchants developing the palm oil trade with West Africa, who were largely based in Liverpool, also feared illegal slaving would damage their interests.

The slave trade had been abolished in 1807, but existing slavery remained and Buxton joined in the campaign to abolish it. In 1823, he helped to found the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (later the Anti-Slavery Society). In May 1823, Buxton introduced in the House of Commons a resolution condemning the state of slavery as "repugnant to the principles of the British constitution and of the Christian religion", and called for its gradual abolition "throughout the British colonies". He also pressured the government to send dispatches to the colonies to improve the treatment of slaves.^[10]

Buxton took over as leader of the abolition movement in the British House of Commons after William Wilberforce retired in 1825. The petition he presented to the House of Commons bore 187,000 signatures. This had been partly organised by Priscilla Buxton in 1833; she and Amelia Opie were the first two signatories.

The sculpture commemorates the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1807 and is a collaboration between sculptor Michael Visocchi and poet Lemn Sissay, the words being an extract from his poem 'The Gilt of Cain'. It was unveiled by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 2008.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH

 HISTORIC ENGLAND