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November 26, 2006

Thomas Clarkson

Thanks for the photo, Rufus!
December 13, 2005

How did the real hero of the anti-slavery movement get airbrushed out of history?
By Isabel Wolf for UK's Daily Mail Newspaper
March 23, 2007

On one of his many investigative visits to Liverpool, then the world's largest slave ship port, Thomas Clarkson stopped at the end of a pier with rage in his heart.

Surveying the dozens of slave ships anchored in the harbour and watching the small boats riding out the heavy gale, his thoughts
burned with the sheer inhumanity of life aboard those creaking hulks.

Suddenly, he turned and saw eight or nine burly seamen making towards him. But as he tried to walk away, the gang encircled him, pinning his arms against his sides. Realising their lethal purpose and the watery death that awaited him at their hands, Clarkson struggled to free himself.

"I darted forward," he wrote afterwards. "One of them, against whom I pushed myself, fell down. Their ranks were broken and I escaped, not without blows, amidst their imprecations and abuse."

The year was 1787, and for Clarkson, who was amassing evidence against the slave trade, attempts on his life were not uncommon, especially in the ports. On his many fact-finding trips, he surreptitiously boarded ships, and went into the taverns and custom houses to interview seamen and ships' surgeons about the squalid conditions in which the slaves were held.

His activities made him a hate figure - with his unusual height and red hair making him instantly recognisable - but he continued his work with ferocious zeal.

Quite simply, Thomas Clarkson was one of the greatest men in British history. Which makes it all the more remarkable that today his name, sadly, rings so few bells.

This Sunday's bicentenary of the abolition of the British slave trade has focused on William Wilberforce. Most of the publicity - and the new film Amazing Grace - promotes the myth that Wilberforce was anti-slavery's driving force. But the abolitionists' prime mover, its powerhouse, was Thomas Clarkson.

In his time, Clarkson was a man of colossal reputation. To the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, he was 'a moral steam engine' and a 'giant with one idea'. Indeed, he was the only abolitionist to devote his life to the cause of anti-slavery.

Yet thanks to a terrible injustice, his part in the abolition movement was deliberately airbrushed from history to enable Wilberforce to seize the glory.

His achievements are all the more remarkable when you learn that he stumbled on his life's calling almost by chance.

Born in 1760, Clarkson had seemed destined for the Church. But while studying at Cambridge University, he entered a Latin essay competition, the subject of which had to be: Is it lawful to make slaves of others against their will?

Though it was designed to test his Classics skills, that essay was to change his life. Clarkson had known little about the subject until, during his research, he read a book about slavery by an American Quaker, Anthony Benezet.

"In this precious book, I found almost all I wanted," Clarkson later wrote. And what he found shocked him. "It was one gloomy subject from morning to night. I sometimes never closed my eyelids for grief."

Clarkson's resulting essay was full of passion as well as rationality. It conjured scenes of violence and desolation in Africa, of kidnapped slaves chained hand and foot; of men and women dying in dark, fetid ships' holds, ravaged by dysentery and nausea.

Clarkson had expected the competition to be no more than 'an innocent contest for literary honour', but by the time he had finished, it had become a moral crusade.

Riding back to London from Cambridge, after he had won first prize for his essay, Clarkson dismounted from his horse and sat down by the roadside. If the contents of his writings were true, he reflected, then 'someone should see these calamities to their end'.

That moment was a landmark on the path to the modern conception of universal human rights.

Though the anti-slavery movement had generated little public interest, within a few years Clarkson would turn it into the foremost political issue of the day. He accomplished this through sheer determination, augmented by a genius for organisation, and through daringly imaginative publicity.

Clarkson knew that Parliament would never abolish slavery without massive public pressure, since the trade was as important to the economy then as the oil industry is to Britain today.

The ports of Liverpool, Bristol and London were largely built on slavery. There were huge vested interests in the profits the trade
generated, from the enormous personal fortunes built up by the plantation owners, right down to the brothels and boarding houses that served the ships' crews.

So Clarkson planned a national campaign. He translated his essay into English and had it circulated widely. But what he needed was a figurehead, a legislative spokesman who could drive the issue forward in Parliament. To that end, he singled out William Wilberforce, a young MP known for his interest in moral issues.

Clarkson besieged Wilberforce. He left a copy of his essay at his London home and lobbied him vigorously, offering a well-orchestrated plan of action and a nucleus of supporters drawn largely from Quaker circles.

Critically, he knew that Wilberforce's political career would not suffer if he took up the cause, since his home constituency, Hull, had no involvement in the slave trade.

In May 1787, Wilberforce, encouraged by his friend and mentor William Pitt the Younger, capitulated to Clarkson's persistence. It was the start of a friendship that was to endure for almost 50 years.

Wilberforce became a powerful Parliamentary spokesman on antislavery, but it was Clarkson who got him the facts and eyewitness stories that gave substance and urgency to his speeches.

By the end of a five-month tour of the nation's docks, Clarkson had collected the names of more than 20,000 sailors who had served on slave ships and acquired first-hand accounts of the squalor and brutality on board.

He learned that as many British seamen perished on each voyage across the Atlantic as Africans (about 20 per cent) since they succumbed to the same diseases that took hold in the squalid conditions.

Crucially, this enabled him to argue that slavery was not just immoral, it was uneconomic - an argument the Establishment was far more likely to take heed of.

And as he toured the country, Clarkson drew together disparate groups of abolitionist believers to create a national protest movement.

At inns and in private drawing rooms, he described the ghastly day-to-day conditions on the ships. Mixing showmanship with righteous zeal, he demonstrated to his audiences the hideous apparatus of the 'man-merchants' - the traders who profited from inhumanity.

In Liverpool, he had bought manacles, leg-irons, whips, thumbscrews and a speculum orbis, a vice used to wrench open the jaws of slaves who refused to eat. By the end of that first tour, petitions were pouring into Parliament, giving Wilberforce the ammunition he needed. Manchester's petition alone had 11,000 names on it, more than a fifth of the city's population at the time.

Clarkson's conviction never wavered, despite the threats of those who wished to silence him. During a campaign that would last for more than 20 years, he travelled an astonishing 100,000 miles up and down the country, alone and on horseback. As he described it: "I lived in hope that every day's labour would furnish me with that knowledge which would bring this evil nearer to its end."

Alongside his collection of torture instruments, Clarkson also carried a small wooden box filled with beautiful African artefacts to disprove the prevailing theory that black Africans were culturally inferior to white Europeans, and also to prove that trade with Africa was a viable alternative to slavery.

He also distributed widely a cross-section diagram of a slave ship, the Brookes, showing the hideous reality of 482 shackled slaves crammed into the hold. Known as The Print, the diagram was one of the most effective pieces of propaganda ever produced and came to hang in many homes. But Clarkson had other devices, too.

In 1788, Josiah Wedgwood, a Quaker and a member of the Abolition Committee, offered Clarkson and his colleagues a porcelain pendant depicting a slave in chains with the inscription: 'Am I not a man and a brother?'

Recognising the publicity value of this motif, Clarkson encouraged women, who could not vote, to show their solidarity with the cause by wearing brooches and bracelets with the same design. He handed these out at public meetings, drily observing that, for once, fashion was being used to promote justice.

In a similarly radical innovation, he distributed William Fox's pamphlet advocating a boycott - one of the first - of West Indian
sugar that had been grown on plantations which used slave labour.

Thanks to Clarkson's combination of dogged determination and visionary daring, Wilberforce's anti-slave trade Bill became an Act of Parliament on March 25, 1807. The vote was carried and a dark chapter in our island story brought to a close.

But Clarkson didn't rest there. Together with Wilberforce, he began a campaign to have slavery banned throughout the Empire - a goal that was finally achieved in 1833.

In August of that year, Wilberforce died of a flu-related illness. And it is at this point that Clarkson's rightful place in history was
snatched from him.

Five years after Wilberforce's death, his sons, Robert and Samuel (a bishop, no less), published a five-volume biography of their father, A Life Of William Wilberforce. Clarkson, by then 78 and half blind, read the book with astonishment and dismay.

Robert and Samuel, to whom he had lent letters and books to aid the research for their biography, suggested that far from originating the abolition campaign, Clarkson had been nothing more than a hired hand or paid agent who ran errands for their father.

Wherever possible, the brothers had ignored him; where they could not ignore him, they disparaged him and utterly diminished his role as the principal force in the abolitionist movement. They even refused to include any of the many affectionate and respectful references to Clarkson in their father's correspondence.

What had motivated them to make such an attack? '"I think they were shocked when they were doing their research to discover that their father, whom they idolised, was not, as they had always believed, anti-slavery's prime mover," says Clarkson's biographer, Ellen Gibson Wilson. "They had been very young and had no idea that Wilberforce was simply one important part of a very effective team. This hurt them terribly, so they determined to credit their father far beyond anything he would ever have claimed."

The only consolation for Clarkson was that when the book came out, there was a public outcry that he had not received due recognition. In a conspicuous display of solidarity, he was awarded the Freedom of the City of London. Humbled by the response, Wilberforce's sons eventually apologised in private to Clarkson and admitted that "too jealous a regard for what we thought our father's fame led us into a tone of writing which we now acknowledge was practically unjust".

Magnanimous to the last, Clarkson told them that he harboured no unfriendly feelings towards them, which seems remarkable considering that the apology was never made public, nor did Robert and Samuel correct in later editions the inaccuracies and innuendos that the book contained.

Thirty thousand copies of the Wilberforce book were sold, and it later became an authoritative source for historians.

As a result, the myth prevailed that William Wilberforce had abolished the slave trade almost singlehanded. Clarkson, an outstanding man, had been not just eclipsed but lost to history.

If this month's bicentenary serves any purpose, then, it should be toreinstate Clarkson to his rightful place as one of the greatest of British heroes - an ordinary man who achieved truly extraordinary things.
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The New York Times
.......Among the more valuable players is Rufus Sewell as Thomas Clarkson, a reformer whose passion seems to tip into zealotry when he speaks about the French Revolution; you half expect him to pull on some wellies so he can wade through the blue blood about to spill over the Place de la Concorde.
Amazing Grace - Movies - Review - New York Times

The Atlanta Jounal-Constitution
....and Rufus Sewell as an abolitionist preacher. Sewell playing a good guy — now there's a miracle.
Welcome to AccessAtlanta! AccessAtlanta

TheTimes Online
March 11, 2007
.....Rufus Sewell plays the fiery radical Thomas Clarkson, who in 1787 spent five months touring English ports and compiling evidence of the cruelties of the slave trade......Sewell almost missed out because he was intent on playing Clarkson, and Apted initially wanted him to be one of the villains. “I said, ‘In that case, I’m not interested,’” Sewell recalls. “It was an intensely frosty moment. I was only interested in Clarkson, because of the stand he took.” Sewell returned for a separate audition and was hired. “It is the first time I’ve managed to change anyone’s mind,” he says. “That’s an indication of how much I wanted it.”
Abolition man-Arts & Entertainment-Film-TimesOnline

Thomas Clarkson played by Rufus Sewell

Meet Thomas Clarkson

Thomas Clarkson was a man of deep conviction who devoted his life to battling the Atlantic slave trade. In Amazing Grace, Clarkson and several others active in abolition come to visit Wilberforce for the first time at Wilberforce's house in Wimbledon, in 1782. In the film, Wilberforce hosts a dinner for his guests, but the meal is interrupted suddenly when Clarkson hoists a heavy carpet bag onto the dining room table and take out several of the brutal devices used on slaves. To Wilberforce's horror, Clarkson demonstrates their use, then concludes his demonstration by offering a direct challenge to Wilberforce to take action against the evils of the slave trade. In 1787, Thomas Clarkson, along with Josiah Wedgewood and members of the Quaker Church, helped establish the Committee for Abolition of the African Slave Trade. Clarkson then joined William Wilberforce in fighting to abolish slavery. Clarkson collected testimony from men who had worked on slave ships, also to be used as evidence before Parliament.

About Rufus Sewell

Rufus Sewell has successfully tackled a variety of roles in film, theatre and television. He came to public attention starring in award-winning television adaptation of Middlemarch in 1994, having studied at London Central School of Speech and Drama.

His London theatre debut, in Making It Better, gained him the Best Newcomer Award� at Evening Standard Theatre Awards, and he was nominated for an Olivier Award� for his role in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. On Broadway, he made his debut in Brian Friel's Translations, and was awarded the Broadway Theatre Award�. In 2006 he took a leading role in Tom Stoppard's latest play Rock 'n Roll at the Royal Court Theatre.

Recent television credits include his much lauded leading role in Charles II: the Power and the Passion, directed by Joe Wright, and The Taming of the Shrew, where he co-starred as Petruchio, alongside Shirley Henderson as Kate.

His recent film credits include Kevin Reynold's Tristan and Isolde, Martin Campbell's blockbuster The Legend of Zorro, Nancy Meyer's romantic comedy The Holiday, with Kate Winslett and Cameron Diaz, and The Illusionist, directed by Neil Burger and co-starring Ed Norton.

The National Ledger
Patricia Heaton Mulls New Series, Hugh Jackman Goes Dark for Role
By Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith
Dec 27, 2005

Emmy-winning "Everybody Loves Raymond" actress Patricia Heaton says she's in the midst of planning her return to episodic television -- but it won't be anytime soon..........

She says there are two projects upcoming from Four Boys Films. "My husband directed a documentary called 'The Bituminous Cool Queens of Pennsylvania.' Bituminous is soft coal, and we followed a friend of mine back for the 50th anniversary of the Bituminous Coal Pageant. My friend was the Coal Queen back in 1972. It's Dave's homage to small-town America."

As for the second project, she says, "We're producing a movie with Walden Media called 'Amazing Grace' about William Wilberforce. He was the Abraham Lincoln of England, and it's about his life involved with the slave trade there. Michael Apted is directing it, and its got Rufus Sewell, Michael Gambon, Ioan Gruffud and Albert Finney, so it's a wonderful cast."
http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_27262334.shtml

December 22, 2005
Herts and Essex News Online
Mercury, UK

Church Rufus
The Legend of Zorro star Rufus Sewell was in Widford's church filming Amazing Grace — and a statue of the man he plays stands just a few miles away.The actor was with the makers of Narnia films to shoot a movie about anti- slave trade campaigner William Wilberforce. Sewell plays Thomas Clarkson, who founded the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade after a visit to Wadesmill on his way to London. It was there that he had a spiritual experience which he described as "a direct revelation from God ordering me to devote my life to abolishing the trade". On that spot in Wadesmill, a monument to Clarkson was erected in 1879.
As the Mercury exclusively reported last week, Balls Park in Hertford has also been used as a location for the major motion picture. Fantastic Four actor Ioan Gruffudd plays Wilberforce and the movie also stars Albert Finney and Michael Gambon.
It will be released at the end of 2006 or early in 2007 to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery.
http://www.hertsessexnews.co.uk/news/mercury/hertfordshire_mercury/2005/12/22/church%20rufus.lpf

October 9, 2005
Rufus's role in "Amazing Grace" will be that of Thomas Clarkson, who was co-sponsor of The Society For the Abolition of The Slave Trade.

Thomas Clarkson was born in Wisbech in 1760. He was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, and was afterwards ordained as a deacon.

In 1785 Cambridge University held an essay competition with the title: "Is it rights to make men slaves against their wills?" Clarkson had not considered the matter before but after carrying out considerable research on the subject submitted his essay. Clarkson won first prize and was asked to read his essay to the University Senate. On his way home to London he had a spiritual experience. He later described how he had "a direct revelation from God ordering me to devote my life to abolishing the trade."

Clarkson contacted Granville Sharp, who had already started a campaign to end the slave-trade. In 1787 Clarkson and Sharp formed the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Of the twelve members on the committee, nine were Quakers. Influential figures such as John Wesley and Josiah Wedgwood gave their support to the campaign. Later they persuaded William Wilberforce, the MP for Hull, to be their spokesman in the House of Commons.

Thomas Clarkson was given the responsibility of collecting information to support the abolition of the slave trade. This included interviewing 20,000 sailors and obtaining equipment used on the slave-ships such as iron handcuffs, leg-shackles, thumb screws, instruments for forcing open slave's jaws and branding irons. In 1787 he published his pamphlet, A Summary View of the Slave Trade and of the Probable Consequences of Its Abolition. Clarkson was a brilliant writer and Jane Austin, who completely disagreed with his views on slavery, was so impressed with his writing style that she claimed after reading one of his books that she was "in love with its author".

After the passing of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807 Clarkson published his book History of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade. Clarkson was not satisfied with the measures passed by Parliament and joined with Thomas Fowell Buxton to form the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery. However, Clarkson had to wait until 1833 before Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act that gave all slaves in the British Empire their freedom.

Thomas Clarkson retired to Ipswich, Suffolk, where he died on 26th September, 1846.

October 7, 2005
"Read an article this morning about a new film based on the life of William Wilberforce, who battled for the abolition of the slave trade. William is played by Ioan Gruffudd (hurrah for the Welsh), and I'll get to the point! also stars Rufus, as well as Albert Finney and Michael Gambon. Filming is starting soon, some of it in Westminster Abbey."
special thanks to Sian for breaking this news!!

Historic Figures
BBC.co.uk
William Wilberforce (1759 - 1833)

Portrait showing William Wilberforce
William Wilberforce

Hailed as a 'Renewer of Society', William Wilberforce was the conscience of Parliament. His great goal was the abolition of the slave trade and of slavery. Wilberforce's early years in Yorkshire held few hints of the man he was to become. Sickly and a poor student, his one skill seemed to be oratory. In his teens, Wilberforce, by now independently wealthy, pursued his pleasures. His years at St John's College, Cambridge, later filled him with "unfeigned remorse" that he had not studied more and harder. Yet it was at Cambridge that Wilberforce began a lasting and important friendship with the former prime minister, William Pitt the Younger. In 1780 Wilberforce was elected to the House of Commons from Hull and from Hull and Yorkshire in 1784. It was also in 1784 that Wilberforce became an Evangelical Christian, a step that changed his life and behaviour completely.
A meeting in 1787 with dedicated abolitionist Thomas Clarkson was to alter the social fabric of the British Empire and, in time, the western world. For 18 years, from 1788 onwards, Wilberforce - with Pitt's support - annually introduced anti-slavery motions in Parliament. But Wilberforce and his supporters had only limited success against the planters in the colonies who relied on slaves for cheap labour. It was not until 1807 that Parliament abolished slavery and it was not until August 1833 - a month after Wilberforce's death - that the slave trade was abolished throughout the Empire. (Thirty years were to pass before President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves in the United States.)

Wilberforce's other efforts to 'renew society' included the organisation of the Society for the Suppression of Vice in 1802. He also worked with the reformer, Hannah More, in the Association for the Better Observance of Sunday; its goal was to provide all children with regular education in reading, personal hygiene and religion. It is appropriate that Wilberforce is buried near his friend, Pitt the Younger, in Westminster Abbey.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/wilberforce_william.shtml

William Wilberforce, the son of a wealthy merchant, was born in Hull in 1759. William's father died when he was young and for a time was brought up by an uncle and aunt. William came under the influence of his aunt, who was a strong supporter of John Wesley and the Methodist movement. Disturbed by these developments, Mrs. Wilberforce brought her son back to the family home.

At seventeen Wilberforce was sent to St. John's College, Cambridge. Wilberforce was shocked by the behaviour of his fellow students and later wrote: "I was introduced on the very first night of my arrival to as licentious a set of men as can well be conceived. They drank hard, and their conversation was even worse than their lives." One of Wilberforce's friends at university was William Pitt, who was later to become Britain's youngest ever Prime Minister.

William Wilberforce decided on a career in politics and soon after leaving university at the age of twenty, he decided to become a candidate in the forthcoming parliamentary election in Hull. His opponent was Lord Rockingham, a rich and powerful member of the nobility, and Wilberforce had to spend nearly �9,000 to become elected. In the House of Commons Wilberforce supported the the Tory government led by William Pitt.

In 1784 Wilberforce became converted to Evangelical Christianity. He joined the Clapham Set, a group of evangelical members of the Anglican Church, centered around John Venn, rector of Clapham Church in London. As a result of this conversion, Wilberforce became interested in social reform and was eventually approached by Lady Middleton, to use his power as an MP to bring an end to the slave trade.

Society of Friends in Britain had been campaigning against the slave trade for many years. They had presented a petition to Parliament in 1783 and in 1787 had helped form the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Of the twelve members on the committee nine were Quakers. As a member of the evangelical movement, Wilberforce was sympathetic to Mrs. Middleton's request. In his letter of reply, Wilberforce wrote: "I feel the great importance of the subject and I think myself unequal to the task allotted to me." Despite these doubts, Wilberforce agreed to Mrs. Middleton's request, but soon afterwards, he became very ill and it was not until 12th May, 1789, that he made his first speech against the slave trade.

Wilberforce, along with Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp, was now seen as one of the leaders of the anti-slave trade movement. Most of Wilberforce's Tory colleagues in the House of Commons were opposed to any restrictions on the slave trade and at first he had to rely on the support of Whigs such as Charles Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, William Grenville and Henry Brougham. When William Wilberforce presented his first bill to abolish the slave trade in 1791 it was easily defeated by 163 votes to 88.

Wilberforce refused to be beaten and in 1805 the House of Commons passed a bill to that made it unlawful for any British subject to transport slaves, but the measure was blocked by the House of Lords.

In February 1806, Lord Grenville formed a Whig administration. Grenville and his Foreign Secretary, Charles Fox, were strong opponents of the slave trade. Fox and Wilberforce led the campaign in the House of Commons, whereas Grenville, had the task of persuading the House of Lords to accept the measure.

Greenville made a passionate speech where he argued that the trade was "contrary to the principles of justice, humanity and sound policy" and criticised fellow members for "not having abolished the trade long ago". When the vote was taken the Abolition of the Slave Trade bill was passed in the House of Lords by 41 votes to 20. In the House of Commons it was carried by 114 to 15 and it become law on 25th March, 1807.

British captains who were caught continuing the trade were fined �100 for every slave found on board. However, this law did not stop the British slave trade. If slave-ships were in danger of being captured by the British navy, captains often reduced the fines they had to pay by ordering the slaves to be thrown into the sea.

Some people involved in the anti-slave trade campaign such as Thomas Fowell Buxton, argued that the only way to end the suffering of the slaves was to make slavery illegal. Wilberforce disagreed, he believed that at this time slaves were not ready to be granted their freedom. He pointed out in a pamphlet that he wrote in 1807 that: "It would be wrong to emancipate (the slaves). To grant freedom to them immediately, would be to insure not only their masters' ruin, but their own. They must (first) be trained and educated for freedom."

In 1823 Thomas Fowell Buxton formed the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery. Buxton eventually persuaded Wilberforce to join his campaign but as he had retired from the House of Commons in 1825, he did not play an important part in persuading Parliament to bring an end to slavery.

William Wilberforce died on 29th July, 1833. One month later, Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act that gave all slaves in the British Empire their freedom.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/REwilberforce.htm