The end of slavery and the hidden cost to YOU
What inspired you to write The Whip? Was there one “eureka” moment? Or a series of events that fired your imagination
The idea for the play evolved after I was invited to a ‘Day of Provocation’ at the RSC, four years ago. It was my first introduction to the company and the challenge, hosted by Erica Whyman (RSC deputy artistic director) and playwright Mark Ravenhill was to debate ‘‘the unsayable, the unthinkable and inexplicable’’. Social activists including Giles Fraser, Darryl Cunningham and Lucy Mangan were our guests. The result was a no holds barred and uncensored discussion about race, religion, capitalism and war. Questions were asked like Who benefits from pictures of dead refugee children? Who cares if we bomb Syria? Is money morally neutral? What is the morality of debt? I came away determined to create a piece of theatre which could reflect what I had learned through the experience. That’s how the idea for The Whip was born.
One stand-out “eureka” moment arrived in 2018, when HM Treasury announced on its Twitter-feed that the multi-billion slavery compensation bill had finally been paid off by British tax-payers in February 2015. Most Britons, including myself, had no idea we had been paying for one of the biggest taxpayer debts in UK history over 182 years later. There was a social media backlash over the glib nature of the tweet, which was subsequently deleted. I am a descendant of colonial slavery, so the row added further urgency and some fire to my creative process.
The 1833 Slavery Abolition Act formally freed some 800,000 Caribbean slaves who were then the legal property of Britain’s slave owners. What is less well known is that the same Act contained a provision for the financial compensation of the owners of those slaves, by the British taxpayer, for the loss of their “property”. I had to turn to some detective work to investigate this further and so hit online archives and read books on slave ownership, including one on the extraordinary life of runaway slave and abolitionist Mary Prince. I particularly enjoyed the House of Commons Library, established in 1818. Staff furnished me with copies of Hansard (the edited record of what was said in the Commons) from 18331834. I also discovered several select committee reports and read extensively about the contemporaneous 1832 Reform Act which changed the British electoral system and about child labour in British cotton mills and the 1833 Factory Bill debated to address it. All of this feeds into The Whip’s creative cauldron.
How has your own heritage impacted upon your decision to tell this particular story? Does your family have links to the trans-Atlantic slave trade? How aware of this heritage were you before embarking on this project?
I have always loved history. But not as a result of school. I will never forget the casual five minutes my history class devoted to the transatlantic slave trade and the infamous print of slaves packed like sardines in the hull of a slave ship. There was no discussion, no context and as the only black girl in the class I felt powerfully angered by the disregard.
Fortunately, it is a subject that’s always been respectfully discussed within my family. I belong to the African diaspora. My forefathers were taken as slaves to British Guyana, Barbados and Trinidad. My father, born in the 1930s, knew his great grandmother, who lived to 100 years old. She was born just after abolition and carried, through oral tradition, stories of bravery and survival that her parents were forced to endure. So, it is with great pride that I have written The Whip and that it will be staged at RSC.
Are all the characters historically factual, or have you had to change some people or their actions for a contemporary audience to understand their motivations?
My mission as a playwright is always to unravel what has lain untold and buried for political expediency. I am confident that contemporary audiences will embrace the way the drama reveals the handprint of the past on the present. Fights in the play about race and class are uncomfortable but reflect the cultural reality of life in 1833.
My characters are inspired by historical figures, like the then Home Secretary Lord Melbourne, slaves like Francis Barber who worked for the writer and critic Samuel Johnson, and Mary Prince who became the first black woman to present a petition to the British government in 1829, arguing for the basic human rights of slaves. Other characters like Lord Boyd reflect the nascent function of a Whip in 19th century parliamentary politics. Characters like Horatia represent the ideals and combative wit of early 19th century female political activists such as Anne Knight and Susanna Inge. So, I am definitely seeking to restore a historical record of forgotten events in British history.
Did you visit the key settings in the play? Did you find that a helpful part of the research process? Do you feel those places have changed for the better, or not over the years?
I mainly spent time visiting the
Palace of Westminster. It sounds grand. It is. Our Parliament represents the model of democratic government followed by many countries throughout the world and is the end product of over 800 years of evolution. It’s a powerful history which inspired me to write The Whip. Has Parliament changed for the better? Time will tell, but it is currently a flaming, hot topic following the prorogation of the House of Commons and the ensuing impasse over Brexit which led to demands for new political reform and the first December General Election since 1910. Currently MPs are swimming through unchartered waters in much the same way that MPs were doing during the Emancipation debate where the final compensation settlement – 40 per cent of the then average annual income, and according to The Guardian newspaper, the modern equivalent of £300 billion – could bankrupt the country.
By contrast, in America, the Northern states were reluctant to pay compensation to southern slave owners. The issue was repeatedly raised in Congress. The eventual result was the Civil War 1861-1865, in which over 600,000 people died. The carnage serves to remind us that while not perfect, British politicians compromised and agreed upon a ‘revolutionary’ resolution.
Juliet Gilkes Romero’s provocative new play, The Whip, tells the story of the lead up to the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, which made slavery illegal throughout the British Empire but which depended on a pay-off to the slave owners, the cost of which took nearly two centuries to clear
The Whip runs in the Swan Theatre at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon between February 1 and March 21. Rsc.org.uk/the-whip 01789 331111