As Waterford Wedgwood goes bust and its obituaries written, it’s worth noting its contribution to an area for where it gets little credit: outlawing the slave trade. Much rot is spoken about the abolition campaign, mainly due to the vanity of MPs who like to portray it as the result of a parliamentary initiative. Rather, it was a grassroot social movement – in many ways a viral campaign which owes much the marketing genius of Josiah Wedgwood, the company’s founder, who joined the anti-slave trade campaigners in 1790.
He had a genius for what is today called product placement. He’d find ways of getting his vases into famous paintings, for example, and figured he could deploy the same techniques in a political campaign. He came up with the anti-slavery logo shown above: a picture of a chained African with the inscription “am I not a man and a brother?” It was everywhere, from hats to the stamps used to seal wax on envelopes. As Thomas Clarkson wrote:
“Ladies wore them in bracelets, and others had them fitted up in an ornamental manner as pins for their hair. At length the taste for wearing them became general, and thus fashion, which usually confines itself to worthless things, was seen for once in the honourable office of promoting the cause of justice, humanity and freedom.”
So Wedgwood’s design was a precursor of today’s ribbon or wristband. Symbols such as Wedgwood’s give potency to a grassroots campaign, and make it even more contagious. Wilberforce was recruited by Clarkson as the political frontman of the campaign, but when his law eventually passed it was – like most good things – not a result of political leadership. As the Edinburgh Review put it, “the sense of the nation has pressed abolition upon our political rulers”. That the slave trade was abolished was due to social pressure; a revulsion to the truth of slavery as revealed to the masses by pioneering campaigning techniques. It’s an incredible story – and one where the name of Josiah Wedgwood deserves a place.
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