Year: 2023

During the Spring of 2024, Dr. Tom Thorpe, the guide for the Anti Slavery Belfast Tour, is offering an intriguing ten-week course as part of the Queen’s University Belfast Open Learning Programme. This course delves into Belfast’s historical connection with the international transatlantic slave trade and its pivotal role as a hub of abolitionist activism. The curriculum begins by examining how Belfast’s merchant classes were actively engaged in trade with slave plantations in the West Indies during the mid-18th century. It then shifts focus to the 1790s when the city…

On Monday, we celebrated the legacy of a remarkable man whose life’s journey inspires us all. Frederick Douglass, the iconic anti-slavery campaigner, has been immortalized in a stunning statue unveiled in Belfast, a city he held close to his heart. Born into the chains of slavery, Douglass defied all odds and escaped to freedom in 1838. His indomitable spirit led him to become a prominent leader of the abolitionist movement in America, where his eloquence in speeches and writings ignited a flame of change that spread far and wide. In…

The ASB tour is thrilled that a statue of the anti-slavery abolitionist and campaigner, Frederick Douglass, will be unveiled on 31st July 2023 in Rosemary Street. The ASB tour reveals the story of Belfast’s involvement in this shameful transatlantic trade and the inspiring role of anti-slavery campaigners, brought to life by local historians and trained tour guides, Dr Tom Thorpe and Mark Doherty. The ASB tour has been informing locals and tourists about Belfast’s involvement in slavery and anti-slavery since February this year. Dr Tom Thorpe said: “Belfast is the…

In 1845, FREDERICK DOUGLASS, a ‘fugitive slave’ came to Ireland Belfast to promote his memoir and campaign for the abolition of slavery in the USA.Upon learning from James Stanfield, president of the Belfast Anti-Slavery Society, that the Free Presbyterian Church in Scotland was accepting money from fellow churches in America slave states, Douglass demanded they ‘Send back the money.’To learn more about slavery in Belfast, to learn more, book the ANTI SLAVERY BELFAST TOUR!

The NORTHERN STAR newspaper was published in Belfast from 1792 to 1795. It had strong United Irishmen sympathies and was strongly abolitionist. It declared that ‘every individual, as far as he consumes sugar products, becomes accessory to the guilt [of slavery].”To learn more about slavery in Belfast, to learn more, book the ANTI SLAVERY BELFAST TOUR!

Irish Nationalist and MP, DANIEL O’CONNELL, known as the ‘Liberator’ for his campaign to introduce Catholic emancipation, declared in London in the 1830s that he ‘was an abolitionist. I am for speedy, immediate, abolition. I enter into no compromise with slavery.’ He had a massive impact on the slavery movement in Ireland.To learn more about slavery in Belfast, to learn more, book the ANTI SLAVERY BELFAST TOUR!

Watchmaker and United Irishman THOMAS MCCABE in 1786 stopped Waddell Cunningham’s proposal for a Belfast Slave Ship Company.He warned anyone who supported the venture ‘May God eternally damn the soul of the man who subscribes the first guinea.’ To learn more about slavery in Belfast, book an ANTI SLAVERY TOUR!To learn more about slavery in Belfast, to learn more, book the ANTI SLAVERY BELFAST TOUR!

An advertisement in the BELFAST NEWSLETTER on 19 OCTOBER 1765 gave a reward of three guineas for the capture of a ‘Runaway from John Cawden, Princes Street, Belfast. A young negro manservant named John Moore…Straight and well made has two remarkably broad teeth in upper jaw.”To learn more about slavery in Belfast, to learn more, book the ANTI SLAVERY BELFAST TOUR!

He came to promote his memoir and campaign for the abolition of slavery in the USA.He said about his visit that “… behold the change … Instead of the bright blue sky of America, I am covered with the soft grey fog of the Emerald Isle. I breathe, and Lo! The chattel becomes a man.”To learn more, book the ANTI SLAVERY BELFAST TOUR! They are held on each Sat from 10.30 at the Big Fish from 11.2.23 to 25.3.23.

In the later part of the 18th century, Belfast United Irishman and abolitionist THOMAS RUSSELL would ‘not taste anything with sugar in it’ as sugar was grown, harvested, processed and refined using slave labour.To learn more about slavery in Belfast, book an ANTI SLAVERY TOUR! They are held on each Sat from 10.30 at the Big Fish from 11.2.23 to 25.3.23. To learn more, book the ANTI SLAVERY BELFAST TOUR!

Mark out in a wet Belfast doing another Anti Slavery Belfast tour. For more information see www.antislaverybelfast.com

In 1791, former OLAUDAH EQUIANO visited Belfast. He came to promote the 4th edition of his memoir.He recalled ‘in May 1791, I sailed from Liverpool to Dublin where I was very kindly received, and from thence to Cork, and then travelled over many counties in Ireland. I was everywhere exceedingly well treated, by persons of all ranks”.To learn more about his visit and Belfast’s connections to slavery, book an ANTI SLAVERY TOUR! They are held on each Sat from 10.30 at the Big Fish from 11.2.23 to 25.3.23. To learn…

The Society of Friends, or Quakers, began lobbying for abolition in the 1780s. They were very well coordinated on both sides of the Atlantic and played a central role in many imaginative initiatives that lead to the eradication of slavery in Britain and the US. Learn more about Quaker Abolitionists in Ireland on this special walking tour of Belfast. To learn more, book the ANTI SLAVERY BELFAST TOUR!

This photograph (above) c.1840, was taken after Douglass escaped slavery. A few years later, Ireland would be his first destination when he came to Europe. He would visit Belfast on multiple occasions, and would later become a friend and advisor to President Lincoln.Learn more on an enlightening walking tour, book the ANTI SLAVERY BELFAST TOUR!

“I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times in my life ; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at night. She was hired by a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve miles from my home. She made her journeys to see me in the night, travelling the whole distance on foot, after the performance of her day’s work. She was a field hand, and a whipping is the penalty of not being in the field at sunrise,…

Out again in town with Lyn from England and Janet from Belfast looking at Belfast’s slavery past. Great weather and we got into the board room at the Poor House where former slave Equiano spoke in 1791. For more info, follow the web page for dates.

The mausoleums of the families of Waddell Cunningham & Thomas Greg. In the later half of the 1700s, these two men operated very successful shipping companies in New York and the Caribbean. Both owned sugar plantations on the island of Dominica, and hence were slave owners. Belfast played a role in the international slave trade and its abolition, to learn more, book the ANTI SLAVERY BELFAST TOUR!

Come on our tour and learn some amazing stories about how people escaped slavery  book the ANTI SLAVERY BELFAST TOUR!

January 2023 marks the bicentenary of the formation in England of the organisation now known as Anti-Slavery International. It is the oldest international human rights organisation in the world.Slavery had been outlawed in the British Empire in 1833, but it was imperfectly enforced and it still existed in other countires, most notably the US. Committed, highly motivated and well organised abolitionists on both sides of the Atlantic realised that strength lay in coordinated action, and this led to the 1840 International Anti-Slavery Convention, held for 11 days in London. 500…

Drew was born in Limerick in 1800 and studied at Trinity College Dublin. He was ordained as a priest in the Church of Ireland and served as a curate in Antrim and later as the first incumbent of Christ Church in Belfast.Drew built over 20 low-church style churches and schools in the area and was a fervent member of the Orange Order and a Tory. He opposed Catholic emancipation and high-church Anglicanism, and refused to accept the 1841 census that showed Catholics as the largest denomination in Ireland.He founded the…