A book celebrating the life of the anti-slavery campaigner Robert Wedderburn (pictured)is being launched with a day conference in Black History Month, which starts today. Wedderburn was born in 1762 in Jamaica of a Scottish father and a Jamaican mother, went to sea at 16 and ended up in England, where he became a tailor and eventually joined a radical political group called the Spenceans. Martin Hoyles’s The Axe Laid to the Root: the story of Robert Wedderburn (Hansib Publications) is at the centre of a day of lectures, debate and performance poetry at the Museum in Docklands on October 16. Tickets pound;20 (pound;10 concessions) for the full day (10am-5pm); bookings and more details on 0870 444 3855.