From East Tytherton to Northern Ireland
#LINKSLEGACY400

Br Livingstone Thompson, Br Nigel Pocock and the African and Caribbean Support Organisation Northern Ireland have been active in a series of events in Northern Ireland commemorating the transatlantic slave trade.

About thirty years ago I founded Vision Training & Research, the name based on the Proverb: 'Without a vision, the people perish'. This non-profit 'social venture' started by providing theological training mainly to the African and African-Caribbean community, but owes an enormous debt to the Rev Freddie Roberson, an African American pastor and trainer, with whom I worked for nearly ten years. Freddie was an inspiration and was instrumental in laying the essential foundations of all that followed, including those issues surrounding slavery. Since that time, Vision Training has evolved into a research and project development organisation, although it still provides some teaching materials, exhibitions and lectures in a wide range of related fields.

In 2007 the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade (not slavery) was celebrated (if that is the right word). Working together with Dr Clifford and Mrs Monica Hill, a project was set up to sail a replica of the notorious slaver, Zong (from which 133 Africans were thrown overboard as useless, but living, chattel, in order to claim insurance) up the Thames, under Tower Bridge, and to be moored by the old Sugar Wharf, for three weeks. In terms of visitors and impact, this was a huge success. Visitors from far beyond London came just for the day, or part of the day, to visit the ship and its exhibition. Many were very distressed, as well they might be; but it was not the intention to re-traumatise people, but to engage in a way that played a part in social change and healing. Politicians were also impacted, as was the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone and Lord Hugh Thomas (the historian of slavery) who gave an address on board the ship.

This project was the first seeds of what then grew into the Christian charity, the Movement for Justice and Reconciliation (MJR), concerned to address both the legacy of slavery, and its concomitant other side, industrial exploitation.

In the meantime, also in 2007, I was working in East Tytherton, where the Moravian burial ground was little more than a field. At least half of the gravestones where either entirely or partially below ground, and weeds abounded. There was a powerful suspicion that there could be a strong connection with slavery - and so it proved! Indeed, the finds were of national importance. Four sisters, Ann, Sarah, Eliza and Alicia Briggs, Leonora Casey Carr (all from Antigua), and Harriet Maynard (from Surinam) were directly connected to slavery, Leonora indeed still legally being a slave when she first arrived in England. As a result of these researches the East Tytherton Heritage Project was set up (as a sub-project of Vision Training, which funds it). This is now working towards establishing an annual lecture and art exhibition to commemorate Leonora and Harriet, and we were very grateful to Professor Alan Rice for giving the inaugural presentation (with Jean-Jacques Vrij from Amsterdam and the Surinam Genealogical Society booked for 2020).

Then, in September 2017, along came Marsha Deans, a Jamaican living in Northern Ireland, to visit the East Tytherton Heritage Open Day. Working together with Br Livingstone Thompson and others, the Links Legacy 400 commemoration project was being set up in Belfast, specifically to address the general denial that Ireland had anything to do with slavery. Sadly, the opposite is all too true.

Parallel to this, I was advising the MJR as its senior researcher and as a trustee, on a freshly designed exhibition, expertly put together by brother and sister team, Lucy and Barney Heywood, of Bristol (descendants of the slave traders the Heywood brothers, and a still-active subsequent baronetcy). MJR have worked together with Links Legacy, Marsha and Livingstone, to put this exhibition on in the best and most prestigious exhibition venue in Belfast, the new Titanic Centre. From small seeds, amazing things have been achieved - yet this is only the smallest of small seeds of the story to be told!

Br Nigel Pocock

East Tytherton