Abolition, Now part 1
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Over the next few episodes, we will be picking up the historical trail of the abolition of the British slave trade.

Most people know the basics of this moment. Josiah Wedgwood made some pottery. William Wilberforce made some speeches. John Newton wrote Amazing Grace. And boom! Britain's narrative arc of national moral redemption was complete and slavery was abolished. Or at least, that's what we're told. I'm Moya Lothian-McLean, a journalist on the journey to discover the truth about Britain's slaving history. This is Human Resources.

Hello, Human Resources listeners. This is Renee Richardson, producer and co-creator of the Human Resources podcast. I'm popping in to let you know that even though the podcast has ended, Arisa Lumba, who was a researcher on the podcast, and I have written a new book called Human Resources, Slavery and the Making of Modern Britain in 39 Institutions, People, Places and Things. And just like the podcast, the book...

takes modern Britain items and traces their roots back to slavery. We're introducing new topics that weren't quite covered in the podcast, like accounting, the Church of England, the colour indigo, denim blue jeans, sugar, Lloyds of London. But we also revisit some topics from the podcast and go a little further, like the Bank of England, chocolate and the Green King Brewery, which was in our pubs episode.

We'd love for you to support the book and get a copy. I hope you enjoy it. It's for all ages. And just as the podcast focused on accessibility and making this history accessible, the book does the same. And we hope it encourages conversations between different generations and helps people get a step into this history and encourages more research and more reading on this subject. Thank you.

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My name is Diana Payton. I'm a historian of the Caribbean. I focus especially on Atlantic slavery and also on the aftermath of Atlantic slavery.

When it comes to the story of Britain and abolition, I wanted to start with the fundamentals. Who, what, when and where? I began by asking Diana what time period we're referring to when we talk about the abolition movement. I think we often confuse two phases of the abolitionist movement. So the first phase is really focused mainly on the question of the abolition of the slave trade and

And that begins, you get kind of hints of it in the mid 18th century. It really gets going from the late 1770s and 1780s and then is successful in 1807 in terms of the abolition of the slave trade. And I think lots of people think that was the end of the story of slavery in the British Empire.

But actually slavery continued for another 30 years and the abolitionist movement in Britain kind of dies down after 1807 for a while and then re-emerges in the 1820s to fight for the end of slavery itself.

And the Abolition Act, which ended slavery, is passed in 1833. But that only ended slavery in a slow, drawn-out way. It instituted this temporary transitional situation called apprenticeship, which was supposed to end in 1840 and actually ended in 1838. So the real end of slavery in most of the British Empire is 1838 onwards.

Although even then, the Abolition Act didn't apply to India, where there were still people living in slavery. Outside of historians, I think the broad perception of the abolition movement is that it was achieved via parliamentary leaders like William Wilberforce. I think traditionally, abolition as a movement, people have thought of as a few parliamentary leaders, people particularly like William Wilberforce, who is from...

probably the best known abolitionist, or Thomas Clarkson, who was also a really important political leader. And there's been a really intense concentration on those few male white leaders of the movement, but it was actually a much more broad coalition and alliance than that.

Who are some of the groups that made up the Abolitionist Coalition? White women were really important as part of the abolitionist movement. And some of the most radical abolitionists were people like Elizabeth Hayrick, for instance, who was from Leicester and wrote an amazing pamphlet published in 1824, which demanded immediate emancipation. There were white

working class people involved in the abolitionist movement as well as the political leaders. There were groups really in every

town and city and even rural areas in Britain who were people who were signing petitions or organising public meetings, organising pressure on MPs, on elections and so on. And there were black abolitionists as well, right from the start of the movement, in fact. I think another thing I would want to emphasise is that enslaved people fought

fought against slavery right from the start. Now, I don't think you can divorce the abolitionist movement as a political movement in Britain from the fighting against slavery that people who were enslaved on slave ships and in the colonies were undertaking. And I mean, you can see that very clearly in the fact that when the abolitionist movement re-emerges in the 1820s, one of the things that it's responding to is the mass

uprisings by enslaved people that had taken place recently, in particular in Demerara, in what is today Guyana, in 1823. And Elizabeth Hayrick, who I mentioned before, actually writes really powerfully about the importance of that rebellion and how what it shows is that British for

forces will only be able to maintain slavery with increasing force and violence and that that is unacceptable and immoral and unjust. So there's that interaction that's always going on between what's happening in the colonies and what's happening in Britain. What did those uprisings by the enslaved look like?

What we're talking about really is the everyday struggle against slavery. And that at the most intense, that means armed uprisings. The one in Demerara, an even bigger one in Jamaica in 1831, which had a kind of direct impact on the passing of the 1833 Abolition Act.

earlier in Barbados, lots of rebellion in Jamaica. So those are the kind of, if you like, the tip of the iceberg of enslaved people's anti-slavery actions. There's lots of everyday violence

fighting of various kinds, people just leaving the plantations, the sugar estates or wherever they're located to try and establish themselves as free people, sometimes through the activities of the maroons, who are groups of

formerly enslaved people who have established themselves as free people and in Jamaica they made a treaty with the British in the 1730s. That's a whole complicated story by the early 19th century. There are struggles against the worst aspects of slavery so there are lots of actions which in some ways look quite like labour actions so we have quite a

quite a few examples when, for instance, a new manager might come into an estate and change the conditions of work or of everyday life and be particularly cruel or violent. And enslaved people frequently banded together and just refused to work in those circumstances. And they were actually often quite successful because

because the owners of the estates who were often distanced, they wanted to make sure that things were running smoothly. And there are examples where an overseer or a manager might end up being fired because he in fact was unsuccessful in managing the estates. Now in those situations, the enslaved people aren't explicitly saying we want an end to slavery here. That's not a kind of politically achievable

thing, but I think it makes sense to see that kind of action as part of a broader abolitionist movement because it's about

changing the circumstances of everyday life in a way that would ultimately make slavery unviable. And so I think if we kind of expand the way we think about what we mean when we're talking about abolitionism, or perhaps better put, anti-slavery action or anti-slavery politics, then I think that allows us to see those kinds of everyday fights by enslaved men and women as part of that broader movement.

That is a very vital framing of abolitionism. Not just a campaign run by elite political leaders in Britain, but a grassroots, ongoing resistance by the enslaved in these plantation colonies. What did these uprisings look like? How were they organised in the first place? Obviously each one is different in its own way, but if we take the example of the 1831 rebellion in Jamaica, we

We know that there was a network of organisers who worked together over quite a long period of months to create links across different estates, different sugar estates in the western part of Jamaica. So the

main leader was a man named Samuel Sharp, who's now a Jamaican national hero. And he was a deacon in the Baptist church. So sometimes this event is referred to as the Baptist war. So there was a network of congregations from the 1820s

that were associated with British missionaries, Baptist and Methodist missionaries, but actually really, I think, were very self-organized. It's a mistake to see them as kind of directed by these white missionaries who turn up and sort of are in charge of everything. There's very few missionaries, and there are lots of people like Sharp who had these leadership roles, deacons and daddies or leaders in the church. So that provided a space for people to meet

And the markets also provided a space for people to meet. There's quite a lot of movement around areas within Jamaica and within other colonies. So that allows for organization. The other important context is that there had to seem to be some kind of realistic possibility of success.

And in 1831, that context is produced by the fact that there are debates going on in Parliament about reforming the system of slavery. And those are being reported in newspapers, which are published in Jamaica.

And Sharp was able to read, some others who were able to read, and they would read aloud the newspapers to each other. So there's information being shared as a result. What information are those missionaries and newspapers bringing?

There's a kind of rumour situation that gets going where in 1831, it seems like a lot of people thought that they either were about to be freed or that the British government had in fact said they were going to be freed and the planters were illegally continuing to hold people in slavery. So...

There's a sense that people thought that the might of the British military state might not actually be mobilized against them and therefore that they would have a chance of success, that they might only be fighting against the local Jamaican ruling elite, ruling class.

So I think that in order to get people to do something which is terrifying and very dangerous, you have to create a sense of solidarity and you have to create a sense of possibility of success. And religion is also important for creating that sense of solidarity, both Christianity but also

African-derived forms of religiosity. There's a lot of evidence of people taking oaths, for instance, that commit them to one another and that drew on African forms of religious practice to create kind of bonds of solidarity. In fact,

The British Imperial State did very much suppress these rebellions when they took place. And in Jamaica in 1831 and then into early 1832, the revolt involves tens of thousands of enslaved people across western Jamaica.

And very quickly, once it gets going, the Jamaican colonial government gets involved in suppressing it. They call out, first of all, the militia. There's a local militia which is made up of basically all the white men in the area and they're armed. So they're the kind of initial response. But then there's also warships are sent around to Montego Bay in northwest Jamaica, which is the major area.

town of that region and troops from those warships are then sent to suppress the rebels and there's a huge amount of violence both people being shot and killed in the fields and then others are arrested and tried in a court martial process so martial law is imposed court marshals take place

and hundreds of people were executed, mostly in Montego Bay, including Sam Sharp in the aftermath of that event in 1831. Some others were also sentenced to other kinds of punishments. A few ended up in Australia as transportees, convict transportees, which is another really interesting story of the connection between the Caribbean and Australia.

So we see black Africans resisting slavery in the colonies. What about black abolitionists who work transatlantically? Whose names should be on our lips? If you want to think about individuals in Britain, then from the 18th century, we talk about Oloda Equiano and Otoba Kaguano, who were both really important people in getting the abolitionist movement going. They both published really important books.

partly autobiographical, but also particularly Kagoano making this really cogent case against slavery. And one of the things that's really powerful about them and particularly Kagoano is that at a period where

White abolitionists almost exclusively were calling for the end of the slave trade but envisaging that slavery itself would continue for many, many years. Kaguana calls for the end of slavery in 1787 in a book called Thoughts and Sentiments and it's a really powerful book. So that's the early period and then

And then in the early 19th century, a very interesting man called Robert Wedderburn, who was born in Jamaica to an enslaved woman. His father is Scottish and he, at quite an early point in his life, comes to Britain and he becomes affiliated with the Spencean movement, which are the followers of Thomas Spence.

Thomas Spence was a radical from Newcastle, Pontine, and he and his followers argued that there should be no private property in land. And the Redderburn was a Spencean, he was a follower of Thomas Spence. He's very much a radical from the British side of things, as well as from the Caribbean side of things. And he's arguing for the abolition of slavery, but he also argues that enslaved people should not give up their land.

and that they should, that freedom on its own isn't sufficient, that people need land as well as freedom, which is an argument that no other abolitionists really, or very few would make. For most of them, they're focused on personal freedom. But the idea of challenging property rights is beyond what the abolitionist movement generally considered kind of its remit. So he's a really interesting man, complicated man who's

sort of fluctuate over time, the arguments he made changed over time. He also, very interestingly, went and directly challenged his father who,

lived just outside Edinburgh and then wrote about that so he turned up on the doorstep in Musselburgh just outside Edinburgh saying no I'm your son you should acknowledge me you should recompense me effectively for the wrongs that were done to me and to my family so he writes about the cruelty experienced by his mother and his grandmother so Wedderburn is very interesting and then

later towards the end of slavery, two really important individuals, Mary Prince and James Williams. James Williams is a name I haven't come across before. What's his story? So James Williams was in the 1830s during apprenticeship. He was a young man, a teenager really. And he

lived in St. Anne Parish in Jamaica and got his freedom and then came to England with a leading abolitionist, Joseph Sturge, a leading Quaker abolitionist and

And his experiences during the apprenticeship period were absolutely horrific. He was repeatedly sent to the local prison where he experienced repeated floggings, physical beatings, violence. He was...

Imprisoned and punished for trying to get the food that he needed, for standing up against the bad treatment of other apprentices in the place where he lived.

And he was also a witness to incredibly harsh treatment of lots of other enslaved people. And he told that story. The important thing about Williams is that he makes the experiences of apprenticeship visible to the British public at a time when it was hard to get that story across.

Let's explain apprenticeship. It was introduced in 1834 after the Emancipation Act of 1833. And essentially, it was a weaning off period between slavery and freedom, wasn't it? So apprenticeship...

meant that people were nominally free, but they still had to stay in the same place that they had previously been enslaved and they had to work for the people who had claimed ownership over them. And if they didn't work, they could be punished, not directly on the whim of the apprentice holder, but the

a whole set of magistrates were created whose job it was to enforce the work of these newly created apprentices. So you could be whipped if you were male, if you committed an offence against the apprenticeship law, or you could be sent to prison. Prisons were very violent places where, in particular, they had these...

really forms of torture called the Treadwheel, which James Williams wrote about and talked about, and which became a kind of scandal in the 1830s. The Treadwheel was

a big wooden wheel or cylinder that people had to stand on and would turn as you stepped. And you would be bound by the wrist to a bar above it, and then people would have to turn it. It was kind of invented with the idea that it would be a humane form of hard labour. That was the idea, that it was the kind of not physical violence of the use of the whip.

It was a kind of industrial type, modern seeming form of punishment. In practice, what happened was that people's feet slipped off. So people would end up kind of dangling from the wrists.

with their lower legs being bashed over and over again by this wheel that was rotating. And people would be flogged and whipped while they were on the wheel. So it's a really horrendous punishment. It's a kind of example of a modernizing intervention that is supposed to be humane, but it actually ends up being at least as bad, probably worse than the thing it was intended to replace.

This treadwheel, the name and repetitive nature of the movement involved is really reminiscent of the modern treadmill that people used to exercise. Are they linked? The treadwheel stroke treadmill, and the two terms are used the same, as a punitive device.

It was invented in England in the 1810s. And you do find it in some British prisons in the 1820s. And then it circulates out to the Caribbean. I don't know when the exercise device is invented, but it is effectively the same thing. This idea that you maybe it's more like a stair climber that you have to keep stepping up, up, up, up, up.

because there's a wheel that's turning around. And if you don't keep stepping up and up and up, then you'll fall. Yeah, there's something kind of grotesque about the fact that this device that was invented to punish people has become something that we choose to use for our own self-improvement and our own self-discipline, if you like. But yeah, there is a connection there. Wow.

There's a very striking, direct, metaphorical legacy there about a device used in penal and plantation colonies that has almost become a way to signal leisure time and freedom in the present. Yes, going to the gym can be a form of self-punishment, but it's about self-optimisation. The treadmill is a symbol of making us fitter, stronger, more conventionally sized. It's a luxury item.

and it's used by people with free time. But its origins are as a torture-cum-labour device in prisons and plantations. In some ways, that's a bit of a symbol of the apprenticeship system as a whole, which was imagined as a kind of transitional step between slavery and freedom, but actually in many ways, because it kind of concentrated the relationship between the people who had been slaves and the people who had been masters, because the masters...

no longer had any kind of long-term expectation of maintaining control over the people they had once owned, it unleashed this incredible hostility and anger on the part of the people who had just lost their property or were expecting to lose their property. And so many of them were really vindictive during this period.

They were really quick to prosecute, to use the magistrates. They wanted to get the last drop of labour, uncompensated labour, out of enslaved people that they possibly could. So any kind of softenings of the system that might have been achieved by the struggle of enslaved people over the years, like, for instance, women who had young children not being required to go to the fields, which was...

to some extent, the case by the 1820s and early 1830s, those kinds of changes were reversed. And women who had been not doing fieldwork were forced into the fields. So apprenticeship was a very, very violent and conflictual system. And James Williams, his story was a kind of very personal expose of all the things that were wrong with apprenticeships.

Human Resources was written by me, Moira Lothie-McLean. Our editor and producer is Renee Richardson. Our researchers are Dr. Alison Bennett and Arisa Lumba. Production assistant is Rory Boyle. Sound design by Ben Yolovitz. This is a Broccoli Production, part of the Sony Podcast Network.