Was 'the man who ended slavery' so amazing?

Published on Wednesday 14 March 2007 01:34

PERSONALLY, I blame John Prescott, although Melvyn Bragg and William Hague have a lot to answer for too. Thanks in part to the two Labour stalwarts and the former Tory leader, this year should confirm the creation of a new hero, a towering figure whose magnificence is just starting to break over us like a wave.

Ladies and gentlemen, get ready to hear an awful lot about William Wilberforce, who will probably be referred to in the same breath as "the man who ended slavery in Britain" or something equally laudable. Films (Amazing Grace opens next week), books (including one by Hague) and documentaries (Bragg has already broadcast one on Radio Four) will shortly combine to take the idea of Wilberforce as a moral paragon and generally ram it down your throat. So, as a public service, allow me to offer the smallest pinch of salt to make the meal a little more palatable.

William Wilberforce was a remarkable man. Like Prescott, he was an MP for Hull. Less like Prescott, he was both a devout Christian and a speaker of surpassing eloquence. On 12 May, 1789, the 30-year-old Wilberforce addressed the House of Commons for a little over four hours, a speech now credited with bringing about the 1807 Slave Trade Act. Great Commons speeches rival the best stage dramas, and the signs are that Amazing Grace will do justice to Wilberforce's performance that day. But I fear our enjoyable celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the 1807 Act risk concealing more complicated truths.

Arguably, Wilberforce was simply the front-man for a campaign inspired and led by others, a parliamentary PR man able to articulate the case largely by dint of his privileged birth. That may be an over-harsh judgment, but it is an incontestable fact that the victories now attributed almost exclusively to Wilberforce were actually the work of many, some of whom were labouring long before him.

Public opinion was partly prepared for abolition by the eloquent writings of Olaudah Equiano, a former slave living freely in Britain, and one of the few black voices from the time that can still be heard. He was helped by Granville Sharp, a true English eccentric who was fighting for the legal rights of slaves when Wilberforce was six years old. And Josiah Wedgewood, the iconic potter, even pre-empted today's charity wristbands by producing popular brooches bearing the legend "Am I not a man and brother?"

But perhaps the most important and least-remembered was Thomas Clarkson, the freelance Anglican priest who spent 50 years criss-crossing Britain to build up devastating proof of the barbarity of the slave trade, cast-iron evidence that was the spine of Wilberforce's oratory. Coleridge called Clarkson "a veritable moral steam engine" driving the abolitionist cause, yet today his name has none of the recognition enjoyed by Wilberforce. That is probably no accident: there is evidence that the Wilberforce family later tampered with diaries and other records to diminish Clarkson's importance to the anti-slavery movement and move Wilberforce's first involvement with the cause back in time.

Oh, and one other thought: in our impatience to congratulate Wilberforce and ourselves, we're marking the wrong anniversary: 1807 only abolished the trade in slaves, not their possession. It only became illegal to own slaves anywhere in the British Empire in 1833, when Wilberforce was dead but Clarkson was still steaming on. Wilberforce's boosters argue that the first vote was more significant because it led to the second, but which mattered more to the poor wretches under the lash?

Canonising Wilberforce makes it just a little too easy for us to feel a little too good about ourselves and our history. Now, there is a strong argument to be made that we should take a more positive and sophisticated view of large tracts of British history, especially the history of Empire. But just as the horrible, horrible Braveheart wrought all sorts of harm on Scotland's idea of itself (I know of no other country in Europe save Serbia that celebrates its military defeats and hallows the death of its heroes), then I fear Amazing Grace and the rest of the Wilberforce fanfare could just trigger a bout of national self-congratulation and self-satisfaction, historical chauvinism that does us little credit and could blind us to other examples of those outside Britain who also worked to end slavery.

What about Anthony Benezet, the Philadelphia Quaker who was writing pamphlets against slavery as early as 1759, the year of Wilberforce's birth? Or even Toussaint Louverture, the black general who effectively ended slavery on Haiti in the 1790s by leading a revolutionary army against the occupying forces of Spain and - yes, you guessed - Britain?

Yet there is another, better reason for seeking the clay in Wilberforce's feet. Thomas Carlyle's insistence that history is nothing but the biography of great men has long since fallen from favour among historians, but popular culture and politics alike are still susceptible to the idea that a single individual's talent, willpower or fortune can tip the balance and determine the fate of millions of others. The worst decisions of our current government have come about at least in part because of the belief that Tony Blair was just such a "great man", above the questions or doubts of his mortal Cabinet colleagues or of parliament. One need not be a cynic to suspect that the Prime Minister is using his last months in office to reinforce that perception, bolting down his "legacy" and raising an intriguing question: will the year 2203 be marked by the 200th anniversary of the start of Middle East emancipation?

There will always be heroes and there always should be: like William Wilberforce, some of us are better, braver, stronger and wiser than others, and no amount of intellectual nuance or historical subtlety can obscure that fact. But not even the best should be spared from questions and criticism. Beware demigods, in history and the present.