Abolition 07: the story of slavery at Hackney museum

This year is the two hundred year anniversary of a key event in world history, when Britain became the first country to abolish the slave trade. Laura Oliver went to see Hackney Museum's commemoration of "the African holocaust".

Visitors to Abolition ‘07 are greeted by a simple, impassioned statement, made by the African abolitionist Ottobah Cugoano in 1787, starting: “The whole business of slavery is an evil of the first magnitude.”

Born in 1757 in what is now Ghana, Cugoano was kidnapped and sold to British merchants at the age of 13. Shipped as a slave to the West Indies, he was eventually brought to England and became a servant to the court artist Richard Cosway. Particularly intelligent and well-read, he gradually attracted the attention of members of his master’s social circle, such as the poet William Blake, himself an influential abolitionist. It was unusual for people of such a standing to listen so closely to a man of his heritage.

Cugoano also had a prominent role in the Sons of Africa, a group who delivered regular polemics against the slave trade to London’s newspapers. Their letters were much discussed by the English political class.

Tragically, Cugoano died six years before the Abolition Act he so tirelessly campaigned for was passed. By then, however, his 1787 magnum opus, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, had long become essential reading for abolitionists.

Remarkable as Cugoano’s story is, it is matched by several others plucked from across the diverse, heroic abolitionist movement by the curators at Hackney Museum. In crafting Abolition ‘07, they have cleverly combined a broad educational brush, perfect for the coming droves of Hackney school children, with a spattering of individual significance likely to be unknown to adult visitors.

Through this dual narrative, they tell a story of utmost importance in whatever year. The story of how the British Empire’s colonisation of the New World depended on the shameful enslavement of millions of Africans torn from their homeland and treated as animals.

With so many human themes – motherhood, national pride, loving relationships – it is regrettable that an anniversary seems required for due attention to be paid to this part of history. Whatever conservative ideologues plead, Britain’s part in this torrid trade has gone omitted from school curricula for too long.

None the less, recent murmurings of government recognition of what went on, changes proposed for history teaching in schools, and events such as this exhibition, are a start.

The facts must be told, not least because slavery’s importance to the Industrial Revolution is often overstated. Not that it remotely excuses the practice, but the profits of the slave trade made up no more than five per cent of Britain's national income at the time of the great leap.

For historical as much as moral reasons, therefore, Abolition ’07 is a must-see. Seven huge pine panels make up the exhibition’s first part, packed bravely by the curators with large amounts of detailed text. They tell the timeline of the trade, brutal tales of oppression and beatings on ships, and resistance by groups of Caribbean slaves.
Two cabinets of period artefacts, such as replica masks, shackles and whips offer a vivid compliment to the exhaustive written information. Two fat digests of slave ownership receipts give a stark reminder of the sheer number of people involved in what African scholars call the Maafa, or holocaust.

But it is at its end that the exhibition offers a fascinating and truly original angle to local people. A list of prominent local abolitionists gives an inspiring insight to the work of great men now buried in Stoke Newington and Abney Park Cemetery. Between 1750 and 1850, we are told, Hackney was “a centre of nonconformist activity” with numerous chapels, meeting houses and theological colleges providing a “hotbed of radical thinking”.

Whilst the story told by Abolition ’07 speaks for itself, its centrepiece art display by Ghanaian artist Godfried Donkor is a welcome addition and may serve to attract crowds for whom the exhibition might not otherwise be a pull. His scenes of colonial and native life are backed by lists of stock indexes, reproduced from the Financial Times.
While Donkor’s message is brutal and direct, his art, like the rest of Abolition ’07, tells a simple truth in a humble voice. Everyone in Hackney could learn a little by giving it a listen.