The children's war on slavery

They boycotted sugar, signed petitions and played abolitionist board games. Ryan Hanley and Kathryn Gleadle introduce the young people who took a stand against the slave trade in Georgian Britain

- Ryan Hanley and Kathryn Gleadle

Young boys can be notoriously untidy – dirty, even. So perhaps it should have come as no surprise to Shropshire diarist Katherine Plymley when, in 1792, she noticed that her seven-year-old nephew Panton’s shoes were “looking very brown”. What raised her eyebrows was the reason, discovered by questioning the servants, why he’d refused to have his shoes shined. He had heard that the polish contained sugar produced on plantations worked by enslaved people. Panton’s scruffiness wasn’t due to indolence or carelessness, but – as he saw it – a moral stand against slavery. And he was far from alone among his peers.

Long before Greta Thunberg first raised her head above the climate change parapet, children and younger teenagers were being heralded as moral champions in mass movements for a better future. Notably, during the campaigns for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade, children were applauded by many not just as participants but as leaders. But was this just window-dressing by canny abolitionists, keen to shame adults into taking more meaningful action? Were children only acting in accordance with the wishes of their parents? Or were young people truly influential anti-slavery activists in their own right?