Robert Wedderburn: Anti-racist solidarity and the life of Britain’s most radical Black abolitionist

Dr Ryan Hanley explores the extraordinary life of charismatic British-Jamaican radical preacher, abolitionist and writer, Robert Wedderburn, asking what it can teach us about solidarity and resistance in today’s increasingly unstable world.

Born in 1762 in Jamaica, and raised by an Obeah-woman in the aftermath of the largest uprising of enslaved people in Jamaican history, Robert Wedderburn was a born rebel. When Britain teetered on the brink of revolution in the early nineteenth century, he rose through the ranks of London’s insurgent working-class underworld to become Britain’s most radical and charismatic anti-slavery activist, openly calling for the enslaved and exploited wage labourers to rise up together and claim their liberty.

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Dr Ryan Hanley is Senior Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Exeter and a 2024/5 Visiting Fellow in History at Mansfield College. His books include Beyond Slavery and Abolition: Black British Writing, c.1770-1830 (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Robert Wedderburn: British Insurrectionary, Jamaican Abolitionist (Yale University Press, 2025).