“With ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable.”
Today the Church of England remembers the anti-slavery campaigners William Wilberforce, Olaudah Equiano and Thomas Clarkson. Here in the Diocese of Salisbury we might like to add Thomas Foxwell-Buxton, MP for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis between 1818 and 1837.In 1823 Foxwell-Buxton established the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade. In the following year he succeeded Wilberforce as leader of the anti-slavery group in Parliament, continuing the campaign which led to the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833 which freed all enslaved people across the British Empire.
Foxwell-Buxton was born into a wealthy family in Essex in 1786, went to Trinity College in Dublin – graduating with distinction – and was introduced to the Society of Friends by his mother. His childhood holidays were spent at his grandmother’s home in Wyke Regis, Weymouth. His Quaker links deepened as he married Hannah Gurney, and became involved the prison reform campaign led by her sister, Elizabeth Fry. He also supported the campaign of the London Weavers who were losing income because of new factories and a speech he gave raised £43,369 for their benevolent fund.
Ships from Poole, Weymouth, and Lyme Regis, had been involved in the slave trade so it is striking that the electorate of Weymouth voted for and re-elected as their representative a man who was the leading abolitionist in Parliament. He was an independent MP, ‘I care but little about party politics. I vote as I like… but I feel the greatest interest on subjects such as the Slave Trade, the condition of the poor, prisons, and Criminal Law: to these I devote myself, and should be quite content never to give another vote upon a party question.’
He died in 1845 at the age of 58, still campaigning for improvements for the lives of Africans and for the rights of Aboriginal people in Australia even after he retired from Parliament.
A resource pack aimed at primary schools is available on the website of the Thomas Foxwell-Buxton Society: http://www.thomasfowellbuxton.org.uk/schoolspack.html
Colin Brady 