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Thomas Clarkson

Thomas Clarkson was absolutely central to the anti-slavery movement. He helped put together the first, crucial meeting of the interdenominational abolition committee in London in 1787, and worked for more than half a century after that against the slave trade and slavery.

As the committee's travelling organiser, he covered, he estimated, some 35,000 miles by horseback during the first seven or eight years after 1787, ceaselessly travelling throughout England, Scotland and Wales. He organised local committees, gathered, as he put it, 'whole Coaches full of Seamen' who would testify about the slave trade before parliament, and wrote and edited a long stream of books, leaflets and pamphlets on the subject, which he distributed on the road.

Although an ardent political radical as a young man, he nonetheless worked easily with colleagues and politicians who were far more conservative. When, after a long hiatus, the movement revived in the few years before the slave trade ban passed in 1807, Clarkson again travelled the country organising.

When the campaign came back to life once more in 1823-1824, this time pushing for the emancipation of all Africans enslaved by the British, he again went on the road for more than a year, this time travelling by stagecoach. By that time he was often recruiting the children or grandchildren of those he had first organised many years before.

This painting shows Clarkson and his famous box of woods, spices, cloth and other 'African productions' which he took around the country with him to demonstrate that Britain could trade profitably with Africa in something other than human beings.