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Between the Crescent and the Town Bridge stands the elegant and graceful memorial to the man who is probably Wisbech's most eminent citizen. Thomas Clarkson, son of the Headmaster of Wisbech Grammar School, devoted the greater part of his adult life to procuring the abolition of slavery. He was fired by his writing of a prize essay at St John's College, Cambridge, on "Is it right to make slaves of others against their will ?"
As he went on to discover something of the true extent of this evil in society, it was on the way to London, near Ware, that he had a 'Damascus Road' experience. This led to a determination to see 'these calamities to the end', instead of becoming a clergyman as he had intended. He succeeded in turning the Abolition Campaign into one of the major issues of the day. In this he managed to enlist the help of William Wilberforce who, as an MP, became the movement's champion in Parliament. Clarkson pioneered the technique of investigative journalism, tirelessly travelling to all the major seaports, especially Bristol and Liverpool, to acquire first-hand evidence for presentation to Parliament on the horrors of the slave trade. He organised local committees to raise funds, canvas and collect petitions to present to Parliament. He encouraged the boycott of sugar and other slave-produced goods.
Success came only slowly, but in 1807 the slave trade in this country was abolished. Then, in his declining years at Playford Hall, near Ipswich, Clarkson continued to fight for slavery to be outlawed in the British Colonies (1833), and in the United States, where the fight was still on at the time of Clarkson's death in 1846.
Clarkson could not have achieved this success without the help of Wilberforce, his indispensable collaborator in Parliament. But Wilberforce would probably never have started on this path if it had not been for Clarkson with his single-minded devotion to this cause.
In 1881, Clarkson's appreciative birthplace paid for the erection of this fine monument by Sir George Gilbert Scott, brother of the Rev John Scott, Vicar of St Peter's. Sir George had previously designed both the Martyrs' Memorial in Oxford and the Albert Memorial, but unhappily he died before the monument was completed.
The memorial includes a more than life-size statue of Clarkson, looking towards the town of Wisbech which he loved. Below it are bas-reliefs of Granville Sharp and William Wilberforce, his fellow-workers, on two of the sides. On a third is 'The Supplicant', a chained Negro in supplicatory attitude and the inscription 'Remember them that are in bonds'. This was derived from the Wedgewood cameo designed by Hackwood.
As so often happens with great causes, slavery went out at the front door, but has come in again at the back. Anti-slavery International needs support today as much as Clarkson's work did in the nineteenth century. In 1996, Wisbech people succeeded at last, in placing a memorial to Clarkson in Westminster Abbey . Many of us will also remember the St Peter's Rose Fair of that year in which the long chancel of that church was made to represent a slave ship. A sad but splendid sight.
