Manchester Cathedral and the Challenging Hate Forum are marking Thomas Clarkson Day on Thursday 26 October from 2.30-4pm.
On 28 October 1787, Thomas Clarkson gave a speech to a packed audience in Manchester Cathedral to mobilise opposition to the transatlantic slave trade in the city for the first time.
Clarkson was among the foremost British campaigners against both slavery and the slave trade and was one of the twelve men who formed the Committee for Abolition of the African Slave Trade and took on the role of fact-finder, and for the next two years rode around the country gathering evidence against the trade,passing his evidence to the Abolition Committee, who arranged for the campaign to be taken to parliament where William Wilberforce was leading the effort to outlaw the trade
The visit to Manchester was seen as a watershed for the campaign and added much weight to the formation of a number of anti-slavery organisations in Manchester, including the Anti-Slavery Society Union, the Constitutional Society, the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, the Emancipation Society and the Manchester Union.
Indeed the Manchester Anti-Slavery Committee organised a petition in support of Wilberforce, calling for the abolition of the slave trade; a monumental drive for a petition against the slave trade collected over 10,500 names: roughly one in five Mancunians.
The initial Parliamentary Campaign did not go well, and Clarkson’s efforts would result in him suffering a physical breakdown brought on by overwork. Completely burned-out, and having spent most of his money, he was forced to retire from the campaign in 1794
Clarkson though would return to the committee in 1803 and four years later,parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of abolition of the slave trade.
In 1808 he wrote the comprehensive History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade. This book provides the historian with much of the detail of the abolition campaign, and is an important record of the movement.
