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The Axe Laid to the Root
The Story of Robert Wedderburn
by
Martin Hoyles
price:
UK pounds £8.99
US dollars $16.00
120 pp paperback
ISBN 1-870518-98-5
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Robert Wedderburn was one of the key campaigners
against slavery at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
He was born in 1762 in Jamaica of a Scottish father and a Jamaican mother.
At the age of sixteen he went to sea and ended up in England, where he
became a tailor and eventually joined a radical political group called the
Spenceans. Wedderburn became famous for the revolutionary rhetoric with
which he entertained and educated the crowds at Hopkins Street Chapel. He
campaigned for equality in England, the land to be restored to the people,
and freedom for the slaves in the West Indies.
Much of the Black experience in Britain, however, has been hidden from
history. This book will help rectify the situation in an entertaining and
informative way. It tells the story of Wedderburn's childhood in Jamaica and
his experience of slavery, his conversion to Methodism in England and then
his commitment to radical politics, which landed him in prison for two
years. The Home Secretary called him a 'notorious firebrand' and his oratory
was so powerful that he was put on the Government's secret list of 33
leading reformers.
Martin Hoyles lectures in Communication
Studies at the University of East London. Previously he taught English for
ten years in Newham secondary schools. He has edited books on literacy and
on childhood, and has written several books on the history of gardening.
With his wife, Asher, Martin wrote Remember Me: Achievements of Mixed
Race People, Past and Present (Hansib, 1999) and Moving Voices: Black
Performance Poetry (Hansib, 2002). They have a daughter called Rosa,
born in Ipswich in 1995. |
