The year 1789 is not usually thought of as a turning point in English politics, certainly not when you compare it with what was taking place across the Channel, but it is arguable that the abolition of the slave trade two hundred years ago could not have happened when it did without a speech made by William Wilberforce in May of that revolutionary year. A soft-voiced MP from Hull, Wilberforce spoke for nearly four hours, condemning the ‘horrid trade’ ‘founded in iniquity’ that shamed ‘the whole parliament of Great Britain’. He began with a reserve typical of the Enlightenment, hoping to ‘guard both myself and the House from entering into the subject with any sort of passion … I ask only for their cool and impartial reason.” But he had grasped the truth well enough to know: “We are all guilty-we ought all to plead guilty, and not to exculpate ourselves by throwing the blame on others…”
Wilberforce described the lives of slaves-the beatings, the torture, the endless degradation-in unsettling detail. Afterwards, it was no longer possible for any MP to claim ignorance of England’s unconscionable misrule in its Caribbean colonies. The speech forced Parliament to confront the full horror of the slave trade, and to begin thinking about the slow and unpopular tasks of abolition and emancipation. Edmund Burke, himself one of the great orators of the age, said Wilberforce’s speech was worthy of Demosthenes.
Great men are out of fashion in modern historiography, usually with good reason. Wilberforce certainly relied on other abolitionists, particularly the pioneering Thomas Clarkson, to make his case. He was willing to forgo his petition when it seemed that France’s revolutionary fervour might take hold in Britain’s colonies. And, for all its power, his speech changed nothing for eighteen long years-emancipation would take almost as long again. It is also true that much of what he argued for could not have come about without the heroic struggle of the slaves themselves. Many historians also tend to ignore the bravery of the former slaves who exposed the barbaric conditions on slaveships and plantations at great personal risk. A stirring speech in Westminster does not seem quite so impressive once you read CLR James’s magnificent account of the life of Toussaint L’Ouverture in Black Jacobins.
Moreover, abolition was not as altruistic as some would have us believe. There was a contemporary acceptance of the slave trade that far exceeds our often rather benign view of English society. In Capitalism and Slavery, Eric Williams wrote: ‘Slavery existed under the very eyes of eighteenth century Englishmen. An English coin, the guinea, rare though it was and is, had its origin in the trade to Africa. A Westminster goldsmith made silver padlocks for Blacks and dogs. Busts of blackamoors and elephants, emblematical of the slave trade, adorned the Liverpool Town Hall. The insignia and equipment of the slave traders were boldly exhibited for sale in the shops and advertised in the press.’
Williams had little time for the canonization of Wilberforce and wrote that compared to men like Clarkson who ‘personified’ all the best in the humanitarianism of the age’, Wilberforce ‘with his effeminate face appears small in stature. There is a certain smugness about the man, his life, his religion. As a leader, he was inept, addicted to moderation, compromise and delay.” But Williams did concede that Wilberforce ‘was a persuasive and eloquent speaker, with a melodious voice which earned him the sobriquet of ‘the nightingale of the house.’
It is easy, then, to deflate the myth of Wilberforce, to hedge him in with the qualifications of modern knowledge and to allow him only a supporting role in drama of abolition and emancipation. We can ascribe his success to the economic problems of the slave trade, to evangelical lobbying, or to the much wider sense of liberty which took root after the French Revolution. These may be true in part, but they can never explain why this resolute man rose to make his speech in the first place, nor how he managed to keep on forcing the issue through many years of political manoeuvring by the slave interest, years of great self-doubt, ill health and frustration. Faced with similar odds, how many of us would have persisted?
Moral challenges await the Wilberforces of our day (child labour, debt bondage, human trafficking, torture…), but only small groups in any developed country seriously consider the untelevised suffering of strangers. No more than a handful of us ever make the effort to learn about the wrongs of the world and to urge public action in the name of justice. Depressingly, the last few years have also shown that even public anger is not enough to deter a few wilful politicians from pursuing foolish wars and false crusades. The nightmare in Iraq alone will probably last for the rest of this low, dishonest decade. Seen in this context, Wilberforce’s failings seem very human, and his achievement all the more remarkable.
“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one,” wrote Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations. William Wilberforce would have understood.
