Background Information: Campaign Tactics

Consumer Boycotts
Petitions
Campaign Posters
Local groups and newsletters
Mottos, symbols and logos
The arts and popular culture in abolition
Presenting the abolitionist case
Understanding the counter arguments
Women and campaigning
The role of black activists in Britain

1. Consumer Boycotts

A ‘sugar nipper’ was used in the 18th century to cut off small pieces of sugar from large sugar loaves. Britain had become very dependent on sugar, particularly for sweetening tea but the sugar trade was made possible by slave labour on plantations in the Caribbean. Some of the most inhuman treatment experienced by enslaved people took place on these plantations. One of the main tasks of the abolition movement was to make the public aware of this cruelty. By boycotting certain plantation-produced goods such as sugar people across Britain showed their support for abolition and challenged the slave labour system.

Consumer boycotts were very important in the campaign to end slavery. The abolition movement proved that people could have an impact on world events by being active in their own towns.

2. Petitions

Meetings during the abolition campaign brought large numbers of people together to show they disagreed with slavery. This strengh of opinion had to be communicated to the Government and to do this the abolitionists used the tactic of asking people to sign petitions. For example, when anti-slavery campaigner Thomas Clarkson travelled to Manchester he found many supporters who wanted to sign a petition even though Manchester’s wealth was supported by selling goods to slave ships. In 1788 a Manchester group collected ten thousand names on a petition. Petitions from all over the country helped to change public opinion and put pressure on the government to change the law. In 1792, 519 petitions were sent to Parliament to support William Wilberforce’s proposed abolition bill.

This type of campaigning gave hundreds of thousands of people the opportunity to protest against slavery. Today we also depend on large numbers of people to sign or email petitions to show government that a cause is backed up by public opinion.

3. Campaign Posters

The Brooks was a slave ship built in Liverpool in the 1780-81. It was built for its first owner, Joseph Brooks junior but continued to be used in the slave trade by other owners until 1804. In 1788, a plan of the deck of the ship showing enslaved people on it was published by abolitionist committees in Plymouth and Bristol. Thomas Clarkson, the leading abolition campaigner requested the publisher James Phillips to draw a more detailed set of plans in 1789. It illustrated the overcrowding which was legal. This drawing was used by the abolition movement to help their cause and copied many times over the years. It became the first political poster that was produced in large numbers.

Using powerful images on posters and billboards is a common campaigning tactic today.

4. Local groups and newsletters

Many things which people today take for granted when they begin a campaign, were relatively new ideas in the 18th century. For example, starting a committee to campaign to change the law was not common. Groups who lobbied for change were often religious organisations or tradesmen. Starting a committee to campaign on a human rights issue such as slavery was entirely new.

The idea of forming local groups also began when Thomas Clarkson suggested in each place he visited that people set up their own local abolition committees and start their own petitions. The main committee - The Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade - was well organised and printed, over time, hundreds of copies of a document called, “A Letter to our Friends in the Country, to inform them of the state of the Business”. This could have been an early form of newsletter communicating the message of the main committee to activists throughout the country.

5. Mottos, symbols and logos

When Josiah Wedgwood, the famous Staffordshire pottery designer and manufacturer, joined the abolition movement he brought to it a good eye for publicity. He was someone who arranged to have his vases appear in paintings by well-known artists, long before the phrase ‘product placement’ was coined. Wedgwood commissioned one of his craftsmen to design this image with the motto, ‘Am I not a Man and a Brother?’ It appeared on all sorts of everyday items such as crockery, snuffboxes, jewellery and cufflinks and gave the campaign an easily recognisable identity.

Producing branded everyday items was a way of reaching people who may not have been able to campaign in other ways. Women could not take part in the debates or vote and it was thought unladylike for them to attend meetings or protest in public. However, they could show their anti-slavery views by wearing or using the branded items, such as this one. Many of the abolition items were bought by women. 10% of the financial support for the anti-slavery movement came from women.

6. The arts and popular culture in abolition

The arts and culture in Britain could not be separated from slavery. The profits made from the transatlantic slave trade funded a lot of the art and architecture in the 18th century. It paid for many buildings. Paintings and portraits by famous artists such as Hogarth and Gainsborough were commissioned by wealthy slave-owning families. Slavery also provided the money to buy art works from abroad. The legacies of slavery can be seen in museums, stately homes and public buildings today.

Arts and culture were also used to promote the abolitionist cause. Anti-slavery views were expressed in official campaign material and in poems, artworks, literature and other creative artefacts, such as in this woolwork picture.

7. Presenting the abolitionist case

One of the key problems for the abolitionist movement was making a case for the fact that the enslaved were people who were being treated like property. Account books listed slaves as goods and cargo. The abolition movement needed to change British people’s view so that slaves could be rightfully seen as human beings. The motto ‘Am I not a Man and a Brother?’ was written to help make people see the truth.

However, the abolitionists did not necessarily see the enslaved as equals. The general view at the time, and for a long time after, was that different people possessed different sorts of humanity. As well as the enslaved, it was believed that women were a lower form of human being. British middle-class women were not seen as having the same kind of intelligence as men.

8. Understanding the counter arguments

Thomas Clarkson, one of the key members of the Abolition Committee, travelled to the cities and ports of England to collect evidence about the transatlantic slave trade. He realised that to make the arguments against slavery people had to understand the trade in detail. Cities such as Liverpool benefitted from the slave trade and in the early 18th century it is estimated that £17 million came into the city in a year. Across the country the slave trade produced so much wealth that it added up to the whole of the money made in the IT industry today. He found it hard to convince the people making money to give up the trade. To build a campaign the abolitionists needed to deal with the arguments for slavery.

This cartoon is suggesting that the abolition of slavery would have a negative effect on the working people in Britain. The aim of the cartoon was to make people think about their own wellbeing and the wealth that Britain would lose if they ended slavery and not to be concerned that it may depend on the ill treatment and enslavement of other people

9. Women and campaigning

Women who campaigned for abolition were not able to play the same sort of role in the movement as men because they did not have political rights. They could not vote, or even sign petitions – only adult male signatures were accepted. MP William Wilberforce felt women were unsuited to organising meetings and collecting names for petitions.

Women anti-slavery activists refused to accept these attitudes and the activities they developed for the abolition played a major role in bringing the end of slavery. Often they were more outspoken and demanded freedom for slaves and not just the end of the trade. By 1831 there were over 40 established women’s anti-slavery groups. The campaigning tactics they used for abolition and the skills they learnt helped to create the women’s movement . Women began to fight for the vote and to stop being treated like second-class citizens.

10. The role of black activists in Britain

Olaudah Equiano published his book called The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa. It played an important role in educating people about the real facts about slavery. The abolitionists did not pay attention to the life experiences of the many former slaves living in London who could have told them more about slavery. They knew Olaudah Equiano and other former slaves but did not invite them to speak about abolition.

In 1787 Ottobah Cugoanoan a former slave published a book called Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species and Mary Prince published her autobiography called The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave in 1831. The public showed interest in listening to accounts by former slaves and many spoke at public meetings. Equiano was the first person to tell anti-slavery activist Granville Sharp about the Zong. The Zong was a slave ship that set sail from Africa in 1781. On the journey 133 enslaved people were thrown overboard so the ship owners could claim insurance for lost ‘cargo’. Because this case was so shocking many people helped support the abolitionist cause once they heard about it.