Campaigners from history:
thomas clarkson

Thomas Clarkson
Credit: © Anti-Slavery International

Thomas Clarkson was pivotal to the campaign in Britain to end the slave trade and slavery.

He was born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire on 28 March 1760, the son of a curate at the local parish. He went to St John's College, Cambridge after which he was expected to follow his father into the priesthood. Although he was ordained a deacon, events shaped his future and his place in history.

In 1784, he won a Cambridge Latin essay contest that was to change his life. The question: “Is it right to enslave men against their will?”

As he researched the subject he became immersed in the world of slavery and was appalled by what he found. “It was but one gloomy subject from morning to night .... I sometimes never closed my eyelids for grief,” he wrote.

On his way back to London from Cambridge, he found himself consumed by the subject. “I sat down disconsolate .... If the contents of the essay were true some person should see these calamities to the end”. A monument marks the spot above Wadesmill in Hertfordshire.

It was a year before he decided he was the person to do this, and having come to that decision he dedicated the rest of his life to the cause.

Clarkson's first act was to translate and expand his essay. In 1786, he took it to James Phillips, a printer and bookseller in London, who had already published anti-slavery tracts. He printed and sold the essay which proved popular and marked a turning point for British abolition.

Through Phillips he met other abolitionists, including Granville Sharp, and learned what they had been doing to further the cause. He decided to focus on removing the legal basis for the slave trade using public action to help achieve this. Clarkson was convinced that once the British public was informed of the true horrors of the slave trade and of slaves' treatment in the colonies, their anger could be translated into action in Parliament.

This led to Clarkson and William Wilberforce's most famous early meeting in 1787. Clarkson asked Bennet Langton, who was well-known in British society, to arrange a dinner so he could ask Wilberforce to champion the cause in Parliament. By the dinner's end, Wilberforce agreed. From then on they worked closely together.

On 22 May that year, the movement progressed when Clarkson, Sharp and 10 others met to form a committee with the express purpose of ending the slave trade as a first step towards total emancipation. Clarkson and Sharp were chosen to be its secretary and president respectively. They named themselves the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade.

Clarkson was determined to gather proof of slavery's brutality for his books and pamphlets and as evidence for Wilberforce to use in Parliament. Over the following seven years he travelled 35,000 miles on horseback across Britain, including the major slave ports of Bristol and Liverpool; sometimes at risk to his life.

Through interviews with sailors who had worked on slave ships he was able to challenge the pro-slavery propaganda that the transatlantic voyage was comfortable for slaves and that they received all they needed. Clarkson showed the reality was quite different, and that conditions were so bad, that even the survival rate among Britain's sailors was poor. His remodelled image of the slave ship the Brookes, loaded with 482 slaves, was produced as posters in 1789. They were widely distributed to a shocked public.

Wherever he went he spoke to as many people as possible and helped inspire 1,200 groups working against the slave trade. He also regularly corresponded with 400 people to help create a movement against the slave trade, and organised 519 petitions to Parliament in 1792, encouraging 300,000 people to boycott sugar and its products due to its being produced using slave labour.

Not surprisingly, he became very ill and in 1793 had to stop campaigning for several years. During this time he married and went to live in the Lake District.

After repeated setbacks, the campaign gained strength in 1804, and finally, in 1807, Parliament passed The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. Clarkson carried on his work, writing books and pamphlets and corresponding with abolitionists around the world.

With the success of the fight against the slave trade, Clarkson and his fellow abolitionists turned their attention to ending slavery. Once again, he rode across the country to raise awareness and in 1833 the Emancipation Act was passed. Despite the victory, the struggle had not ended. The Act provided a stop-gap measure called apprenticeship. In reality, this was slavery by another name. In 1838, Clarkson sent a petition to Parliament calling for an end to this system by 1 August that year. It was signed by over 500,000 people and the system was outlawed on that day 1838.

A year later the abolition campaign was expanded and the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (as Anti-Slavery International was then known) was formed on 17 April 1839, to abolish slavery throughout the world. Clarkson was elected its first president.

One of the Society's first acts was to sponsor a general convention on slavery in London. Clarkson was given a standing tribute from the 5,000 delegates and observers from nine countries who filled the Freemasons' Hall on 12 June 1840. He called for all to: “Take courage, be not dismayed, go on, persevere to the last, [ahead lies the elimination] of slavery from the whole world”. His message is still relevant today.

Thomas Clarkson died on 26 September 1846 in Playford, Suffolk aged 86. To mark the 150th Anniversary of his death, a stone memorial to his memory was unveiled in Westminster Abbey just below the statue of William Wilberforce. Its inscription reads: “A Friend to Slaves”.