Abolition

Is the commemoration of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807 a black history event or something that helps us unpack the roots of a unique capital city like London?  Kurt Barling looks at one family’s story which threw up an unexpected forebear; a revolutionary son of a slave who played an important role in London’s political history.

The genealogical search for family roots can often throw up some surprises.  Indeed why bother if it doesn’t throw up something interesting?  When Brian Wedderburn retired and decided he wanted to map out the family tree, he started by wanting to put flesh on the bare bones of the family folklore of lost fortunes.  Someone it had been said had stolen an ancestor’s invention for weights and measures.  

Once you start looking it can easily become an obsession and every conversation can turn to the search for relevant roots.   There is much in the associations of the family name. 

It was one such exchange at the primary school sports day of his youngest son that gave Brian a huge lead into something unusual about his family’s past.   Another parent pointed out another Wedderburn at the event, presuming it to be his mother and the grandmother to his children.

Intrigued he approached the lady and initially discovered the namesake was not a relative.  Or so he thought.   In fact following up that first chance meeting, Brian soon discovered that he was in fact distantly related.  If you believe in distant cousins that’s what they were.   Five generations earlier their respective ancestors had been siblings.   A reminder that from one many can follow!

revolutionary

Even more startlingly Brian discovered that both lines of the family were descended from Robert Wedderburn.    A man of some revolutionary distinction, Robert Wedderburn was born around 1762 in Jamaica. 

He was the illegitimate son of James Wedderburn, a plantation owner and slave-dealer, and one of his African slaves named Rosanna.  James in turn was the son of a supporter of Bonnie Prince Charlie, who was hung drawn and quartered for his loyalty to the Prince.  James and his brother left Scotland to avoid a similar fate.  Jamaica in the West Indies was still at that point the Jewel in the Imperial Crown and a natural place to seek a new fortune.

It is one of the curious things about slavery that those seeking to remove themselves from the political oppression at home visited such oppression on others.  

There is still some dispute over Robert’s lineage.  The legitimate side of the Wedderburn family not entirely satisfied that Robert Wedderburn was one of their own.   Robert disputed this very publicly in the press once he arrived in England and had his claim rejected by the man he said was his father and was now re-installed in Scotland.

Robert arrived in London in his late teens in 1778 and found himself inhabiting the “rookeries” where many dispossessed but free black people eked out a living.  It was a time when the most noted African abolitionist and Londoner Olaudah Equiano also landed in the capital and the abolitionist cause was gaining ground through the work of Granville Sharpe and Thomas Clarkson.

Robert lived in London in revolutionary times; the American Revolution continued apace after the declaration of independence in 1776; revolution in Europe led by the French Jacobins in 1789 threatened to overwhelm England.

activists

The mixed-raced revolutionary soon became associated with the Spenceans, political disciples of Thomas Spence who were effectively Jacobin underground revolutionaries. He also used his powers of oratory as a preacher to powerful effect.  We know this because the alehouses of London like the Fleece in Windmill Street and the Swan in New Street were hotbeds of debate on conditions of the poor. 

These beer halls and eventually Wedderburn’s own Unitarian chapel in Hopkins Street, Soho, were also full of government spies whose records remain in the Public Records Office at Kew.  These accounts give a clear picture of the terror felt by the government of the day.

Robert Wedderburn is credited as being among the first activist to make a political link between the poor of London and the slaves of the West Indies.  He identified their common enemy as the corrupt state that emanated from the mother of all parliaments.   He not only flirted with treason but embraced it.

He was sent to Dorchester Prison in May 1820 for sedition, only narrowly escaping the gallows for a plot to kill the Cabinet in the spring of 1820.   By then the government had outlawed these and other radical political groups after the Peterloo Massacre (where soldiers killed 7 protestors and injured several hundred) had shown how volatile public opinion was on the issue of political reform.

Whilst in Dorchester Prison, Wedderburn was visited by William Wilberforce the abolitionist MP.   It was he who is reputed to have persuaded him to use his influence and rhetorical skill to boost the abolitionist cause.  

The resulting pamphlet, “The Horrors of Slavery”, published in 1824 did much to seal Wedderburn’s place in the annals of anti-slavery.   Published and widely circulated from Smithfield and Holborn stalls and bookshops it became a powerful testimony of the need to take the next step on from the abolition of the slave trade to the abolition of the institution of slavery altogether.

black britons

It is much forgotten that the anti-slavery movement in London counted on the supported of ordinary people.  It was this, the first mass political movement, fuelled by boycotts of sugar and rum amongst other West Indian produce, which gave the parliamentary lobby the legitimacy to call for abolition.

This history is part of London’s hidden story.   Back in the present most Londoners including ex-accountant Brian Wedderburn are unfamiliar with London’s cosmopolitan past.   This is often seen as part of the history of Black Britons, but Brian who’s family story this is, is White.

Curiously the lady Brian Wedderburn had met at the school some years ago was married to Professor Lord Wedderburn QC of Charlton.   The same colourful family history had only been revealed to Lord Wedderburn late in life but he maintains that knowing one illustrious ancestor was a black revolutionary has made him revisit his own identity.

Now an Independent Peer Lord Weddurburn had his roots in the labour movement and found it pleasing to discover that his forebear had stood tall amongst revolutionaries Londoners. 

London’s history is a story of many peoples.  It is also a story of a hidden pluralism in political discourse.  Robert Wedderburn was not preaching to a Black constituency; rather he was leading those he believed to be “unfree”.  

The Wedderburn story illustrates how perhaps by re-imagining our past on the occasion of the bi-centenary we may understand our diverse present more clearly.