In 1824, Elizabeth Heyrick’s most influential pamphlet appeared, with its call for ‘Immediate, not gradual abolition’ of West Indian slavery. It was sold by the bookseller John Hatchard, already established in Piccadilly in London. The pamphlet had a considerable impact in both Britain and the United States, running into new editions and selling in the many thousands of copies. It was crucial in helping to shift the terms of the debate on the abolition of slavery from a position content to let the institution gradually die out of its own accord to one that summoned up decisive action to bring it to an end. In 1831, the Anti-Slavery Society, the principal organiser of the abolitionist cause in Parliament, moved to abandon its gradualist stance in favour of the immediate emancipation of slaves. Government confirmation of this shift in policy came in the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act. Elizabeth Heyrick’s call was eventually heeded.
Her Christian faith led her to cast the debate on slavery within a moral and religious framework; to oppose it was a ‘sacred duty’ to be conducted as a ‘holy war’. For her, conscience, rather than ‘sordid interests’, should dictate the abolitionists’ resistance, and the campaign should proceed under divine patronage rather than under worldly leadership. An immediate end to the wrongs of slavery would be a purifying act for the British government and people. Yet she was sufficiently conversant with the world to know how to forward her cause through strongly worded arguments against those impeding action. Isobel Grundy points to her ‘grasp of power systems and of pressure-group politics, and her forceful analysis of the interdependence of social evils’ (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, entry on Heyrick [née Coltman], Elizabeth (1769-1831), by Isobel Grundy, 2004/2010). Elizabeth’s analysis of the factors blocking progress in her day was acute. It is also timeless in its relevance to modern political dealings. The sources of opposition to the anti-slavery movement and of foot-dragging in addressing the evil of slavery – vested interests, profit-seeking, indifference, prevarication – can be recognised as similar sources of resistance to problem-solving in our own century.
Elizabeth Heyrick’s pamphlet picks out three categories of offenders: the plantation owners, the gradualists among the abolitionists, and Parliament itself. The first group, the slave owners, she regards as culprits who have enjoyed for too long ‘the gains of oppression’. To defend their position and defer the emancipation of slaves, she claims, they use arguments such as that the moment for abolition is not ‘convenient’, that a slave, if freed too suddenly, would not be ‘in a condition to make a right use of his freedom’, and that abolition would lead to disorder among slaves who had been freed and even to bloodshed between black and white. The slaveholders’ hope, she argues, is to drag out discussion of the issue to the point that abolitionist fervour gives way to indifference. She picks up the theme of compensation already being voiced by plantation owners fearful of being thwarted over abolition, arguing that compensation is due, rather, to those who have suffered enslavement. Yet it was the slave owners who were compensated in both the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 and in the subsequent Slavery Compensation Act of 1837. ‘Compensation’ has now yielded to ‘reparation’ for former acts of enslavement, and it is that issue which features so largely in today’s debates.
Almost as discredited, in Elizabeth Heyrick’s eyes, as the slaveholders are the gradualists within the abolition movement. Their position and tactics benefit only the plantation owners, who have managed to deceive them with their ‘wily artifice’ of delay. They have given too much consideration to the slave owners’ interests, have proceeded with too much caution and timidity and tried too hard to disarm the opposition. They have argued that emancipation should be so gradual that only a future generation should benefit from it. The result, Elizabeth avers, has been a campaign ‘languidly and partially performed’. Petitions to Parliament have led to nothing. Parliamentary measures have been spurned by colonial legislators (there is a parallel with today’s disregard of, for example, the resolutions of international bodies). ‘Why petition Parliament at all?’ Elizabeth exclaims, in an echo of the impatience of some of today’s campaigners.
Beyond Parliament, Elizabeth takes aim also at the general British public. She launches her pamphlet with a charge against them that they are complicit in perpetuating the bondage of West Indian slaves through the purchase of these slaves’ sugar products. Through a decision to abstain from such products (for which East India sugar could be substituted), she argues, a small action, if taken up by many, could become effective. She urges her readers to combine their individual resolutions in joint exertion in a boycott. In 1824, she matched her words with actions when she initiated a sugar boycott in Leicester alongside fellow women activists. In this, Elizabeth was picking up on similar action mounted some thirty years previously in Britain in support of the earlier campaign in the 1790s against the trade in slaves (abolished for the British empire in 1807). Boycott as a political and economic tool has become well known in the modern era. Here we see it both urged and practised over 200 years ago.
Her readers’ preference for eye-catching causes over longstanding campaigns also comes under scrutiny when she reproaches them with being readier to support Greek independence from Turkish rule than the emancipation of British slaves. (The Greek war of independence, fought 1821-1829, received official and popular support in Britain.) It’s still an element in what we choose to give our attention to and for what reasons.
Even though exact comparisons cannot be drawn between the issues confronting Elizabeth Heyrick and her fellow activists and those preoccupying us today, and tactics and terminology differ, Elizabeth’s intensity of passion and refusal to temper her criticisms can be matched by modern campaigners – one need only think of those protesting over climate change. For Elizabeth, the rightness of a cause – here the ‘liberation of eight hundred thousand of our fellow creatures’ from slavery – was sufficient. If she were alive today, she’d recognise the arguments and responses she deplored in her time and have words to protest about them.
Elizabeth Heyrick fought for justice without hesitation—now it’s our turn. Join the campaign to honour her legacy and drive change today.
