| Today is: |
|
Thursday, 29 July
Friday, 30 July
Saturday, 31 July
Bicentenary of the Abolition Of Slavery Act 1807
Each year there are events which truly deserve ongoing note and consideration as they mark momentous occasions in history.
In 2007, the world celebrates the Bicentenary of the Abolition of Slavery Act 1807 – one of the first pieces of modern Human Rights legislation.
Events commemorating this occasion are centred on the city of Kingston Upon Hull in Yorkshire, England – the birthplace of William Wilberforce, MP for the city for many years, and one of the principle driving forces behind the abolitionist movement.
Over the years there have been many momentous occasions which have been celebrated with rather lavish ceremonies and festivities.
One significant anniversary will take place in 2007 – the bicentenary of the passing of the Abolition of Slavery Act 1807.
Although there are celebrations and commemorations planned around the world, nowhere will the depth of feeling and of pride be more evident than in the city of Kingston Upon Hull in Yorkshire, England.
As a child, the author of this piece knew a lot about slavery and racial intolerance for a number of reasons. Firstly, I had an American uncle who came from a traditional Southern family who had less than a little time for anyone who did not fall into his WASP mentality. The fact that I had a "coloured" dentist filled him with thoughts of horror.
Secondly, there is not a single child who has been educated in Hull that does not know that the end of slavery, in modern terms, was down to efforts of a few men, one of whom was William Wilberforce, whose links with Hull remain to this day.
William Wilberforce, Driving Force behind the Abolition of Slavery
William Wilberforce came not only to influence human rights in the UK but also to make a lasting impression across the whole of humankind.
He was born the son of a wealthy merchant in Hull in 1759. William's father died when he was young and for a time he was brought up by an uncle and aunt before returning to live with his mother.
At the age of seventeen, Wilberforce was sent to St John's College, Cambridge where he was shocked by the behaviour of his fellow students and later wrote: "I was introduced on the very first night of my arrival to as licentious a set of men as can well be conceived. They drank hard, and their conversation was even worse than their lives."One of Wilberforce's closest friends at Cambridge was William Pitt, who later became Britain's youngest ever Prime Minister. Wilberforce decided on a career in politics whilst at university and later opted to become a candidate in the forthcoming parliamentary election in his hometown of Hull. His opponent was a rich and powerful man, Lord Rockingham. Wilberforce had to spend nearly £9,000 to become elected to the (House of) Commons where he supported the Tory government led by his old friend William Pitt – Pitt The Younger.
Wilberforce himself became the youngest member of the House of Commons when he became MP for Hull aged 21. It’s said that, as a young backbencher, he was known as the 'Nightingale of the House of Commons' because he had such a distinctive and melodious speaking and singing voice. He and Pitt were said to be the political celebrities of the 1780s - their charm, wit and status made them sought after guests in up-market drawing rooms and social circles.
In 1784 Wilberforce became converted to evangelical Christianity and he joined what was commonly known as the Clapham Sect (or Set), a group of evangelical members of the Anglican community, which was centred around John Venn, rector of Clapham Church in London. As a result of this conversion, Wilberforce became interested in social reform and was eventually approached by Lady Middleton, who asked him to use his power as an MP to bring an end to the slave trade. Wilberforce was sympathetic to this approach, although he felt the task should be taken up by someone of greater influence and status. However, he was persuaded and eventually made his first anti-slavery speech in Parliament on 12th May 1789.
The abolitionist Thomas Clarkson had an enormous influence on Wilberforce. He and others were campaigning for an end to the trade in which British ships were carrying black slaves from Africa, in terrible conditions, to the West Indies as goods to be bought and sold. Wilberforce was persuaded to lobby for the abolition of the slave trade, and for 18 years he regularly introduced anti-slavery motions in Parliament.
William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp were soon seen as the leaders of the anti-slave trade movement. However, most of Wilberforce's Tory colleagues in the Commons were opposed to any restrictions on the slave trade and at first he had to rely on the support of Whigs such as Charles Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, William Grenville and Henry Brougham. Wilberforce’s first Bill to abolish the slave trade in 1791 was easily defeated - by 163 votes to 88.
Wilberforce refused to be beaten, and in 1805 the Commons passed a Bill that made it unlawful for any British subject to transport slaves, but the measure was blocked by the House of Lords.
Following the death of Pitt The Younger in his second term as Prime Minister, Lord Grenville formed a Whig administration in 1806. Grenville and his Foreign Secretary, Charles Fox, were strong opponents of the slave trade and old allies on the campaign to end the practice. Fox and Wilberforce led the campaign in the Commons, and Grenville took upon himself the task of persuading the House of Lords to accept the measure.
Grenville made a passionate speech where he argued that the trade was "contrary to the principles of justice, humanity and sound policy" and criticised fellow members for "not having abolished the trade long ago". When the vote was taken, the Abolition of the Slave Trade Bill was passed in the Lords by 41 votes to 20. In the House of Commons the Bill was carried by 114 to 15 and became Law on 25th March, 1807.
One immediate result was the establishment of the British West Africa Squadron (Royal Navy) to suppress slave trading. In the longer term, by 1865, nearly 150,000 people had been freed by their anti-slavery operations. British sea captains who were caught continuing the trade were fined £100 for every slave found on board their ships. However, this law did not stop the British slave trade from continuing. When slave-ships were in danger of being captured by British naval vessels their captains often reduced the fines they had to pay by having some, if not all, of the slaves thrown overboard into the sea.
To stop this and other practices, many people involved in the anti-slave trade campaign, including Thomas Fowell Buxton, argued that the only way to end the suffering of the slaves was to make all aspects of the trade illegal.
Wilberforce at this point in time disagreed, as he believed that slaves were not ready to be granted their freedom. He pointed out in a pamphlet that he wrote in 1807 that: "It would be wrong to emancipate (the slaves). To grant freedom to them immediately would be to insure not only their masters' ruin, but their own. They must (first) be trained and educated for freedom."
In 1823 Buxton formed the Society For The Mitigation And Gradual Abolition Of Slavery and soon afterwards persuaded Wilberforce to join his campaign, but as he had retired from the Commons in 1825, he did not play an important part in persuading Parliament to bring an end to slavery.
William Wilberforce died on 29th July, 1833. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. One month earlier, Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act which gave all slaves in the British Empire their freedom.
Wilberforce, on his death-bed, was informed of the passing of the Act in the nick of time. The main terms of the Act were: all slaves under the age of six were to be freed immediately; slaves over the age of six were to remain as part slave and part free for a further four years. In that time they would have to be paid a wage for the work they did in the quarter of the week when they were "free"; the government was to provide £20 million in compensation to the slave-owners who had lost their "property."
The Beginning of the End of Slavery
In the West Indies the economic results of the Act were little short of disastrous. The Caribbean islands depended on the sugar trade, which in turn depended on slave labour. Ultimately, the plantation owners were unable to make the West Indies the thriving centres of trade which they had been in the eighteenth century. However, a moral victory had been won and the 1833 Act marked the beginning of the end of slavery in the New World.
The British government paid handsome compensation to many of the slave owners. The amount that the plantation owners received depended on the number of slaves that they had. For example, the Bishop of Exeter's 665 slaves resulted in him receiving £12,700.
The magnitude of Wilberforce’s achievements cannot be over-emphasised. For over four hundred years, from the mid-fifteenth century, Europeans had enslaved millions of Africans through the transatlantic slave trade. It is thought that over 12 million Africans were transported on slave ships and that 25% of them - over three million – died before reaching their intended destination. The voyage across the Atlantic generally took between six and eight weeks. Conditions were appalling in the packed and unhealthy ship holds. Uprisings or mutinies were not uncommon, and were violently suppressed.
Ships from all over Europe, but principally Britain, took goods to West and Central Africa where they were traded for African people. Most of the enslaved Africans were captured in battle or were kidnapped, but some were sold for debt or as a punishment. The captives were frog-marched to the coast, often enduring journeys lasting weeks in shackles and chains. British ships made an estimated 11,000 slaving voyages with Liverpool, London and Bristol accounting for 95 per cent of these voyages.
By the mid 18th century, British slave ships were carrying 50,000 slaves a year across the Atlantic. Royal Navy records show that it was said that a slave ship could be smelled some 10 miles downwind.
The goods sold and traded in Africa were often substandard. The term "Brummagen Ware" described the shoddy goods especially made in Birmingham as the offerings in this trade.
In the Americas (the Caribbean islands, Southern United States and the central American colonies), the captive Africans were sold into slavery to work on plantations, in mines and in a variety of skilled and unskilled tasks. Owners treated them with brutality and with disregard for their lives. The ships came back to Europe laden with goods which helped support a growing economy.
Wilberforce, Clarkson and others may have had major problems persuading Parliament, over many years, that slavery was inhuman and unnecessary, but there is ample evidence that they had much greater popular support then they enjoyed in the corridors of power. There is ample evidence of petitions, marches and church services calling for the practice to be stopped.
If one is to think of a modern-day equivalent, it can only be the mass grass-roots movement of tens of thousands that joined the campaign to abolish apartheid in South Africa - people of courage and principle, who chose to make their voices heard when it might have been unpopular to do so.
Slavery did not disappear overnight. Following the 1833 Act, there was a period of up to five years in some places whereby slaves became indentured ‘apprentices’ pending their freedom.
France did not emancipate the slaves in their colonies for a further 10 years, and it was 1865 before slavery was abolished in all United States territories, and then only after a bloody Civil War. There were slaves in Brazil until 1888 – a full 50 years after the last vestiges of legal slavery were banished from the British Empire.
Worldwide Celebration of Emancipation
2007 will not be the only time that the Emancipation of Slaves will be celebrated. Indeed, there is a long history of the deeds of Wilberforce and others being recognised.
To this day, various places countries mark the occasion in differing ways on differing dates in their calendars. These include the United States, the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Of course, the country of Liberia was created to provide a homeland for freeborn and formerly enslaved African-Americans. Freetown, the capital and largest city in Sierra Leone was established by and for freed slaves. (Since 1982, Freetown and Kingston Upon Hull have enjoyed a mutually beneficial "twinning" arrangement cemented around their mutual respect for William Wilberforce).
Such has been Wilberforce’s "presence" in Hull, that the city is taking the lead in the celebrations, throughout 2007, of this landmark in human rights.
At a cost of some £1.6million, Wilberforce’s birthplace and home (which has been a Museum for many years) has been totally refurbished and equipped with state-of-the-art interactive displays, ready for the "Wilberforce 2007" celebrations. The grand re-opening coincides with the date of the original passing of the 1807 Act – 25th March.
Hull already has an enviable record in the field of Human Rights. Amongst the Freemen of the City are Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu. The newly established Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation (WISE) on Hull’s High Street is run by the University of Hull. WISE is the world’s first institute dedicated to researching the history of slavery, and will also pursue research into modern human rights issues. Hull was also the first council in Britain to sign up to the world human rights organisation Amnesty International.
In July 2007, the shores of the Humber will be teeming with activity as it hosts The Wilberforce Cup - a spectacular warm-up race to the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race 2007/8.
Hull is also home to the annual Wilberforce Lectures, which are delivered by leading international figures. In 2007, four specially commissioned Wilberforce Lectures will highlight freedom, democracy and human rights.
On 25th March, after the re-opening of Wilberforce House Museum, the Prime Minister of Barbados, the Right Hon. Owen Arthur, will deliver one of the Wilberforce lectures.
Hull Museums have a wide variety of projects planned for 2007, from family events to workshops, craft events and talks. Wilberforce’s former school, Hull Grammar School, is now also a museum – the Hands On History Museum - in South Church Side, opposite Holy Trinity Church in the very centre of the old city area.
And if that isn’t enough, among the many other events are the annual jazz, beer and literature festivals, the new heritage trail called Walking with Wilberforce and the Two Weekends dance festival.
Throughout 2007, the people of Hull and visitors to the area will be asked – just as Wilberforce did in 1807 - to add their support to the Fight for Freedom campaign - a petition that lobbies to eradicate modern day slavery.
A new film promoting the abolition cause
Probably the most significant event, in global terms, is the release of a new, full-length, feature film "Amazing Grace" which may well become a "blockbuster" in the cinemas.
Amazing Grace, based on the life of antislavery pioneer William Wilberforce, is directed by Michael Apted (The World is Not Enough, Coal Miner’s Daughter) from an original screenplay written by Academy Award® nominee Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things).
Ioan Gruffudd plays Wilberforce, who, as a Member of Parliament, navigated the world of 18th Century backroom politics to end the slave trade in the British Empire. Albert Finney plays John Newton, a confidante of Wilberforce who inspires him to pursue a life of service to humanity. Benedict Cumberbatch is William Pitt the Younger, England’s youngest ever Prime Minister at the age of 24, who encourages his friend Wilberforce to take up the fight to outlaw slavery and supports him in his struggles in Parliament.
Romola Garai plays Barbara Spooner, a beautiful and headstrong young woman who shares Wilberforce’s passion for reform, and who becomes his wife after a whirlwind courtship. Youssou N’Dour is Olaudah Equiano. Born in Africa and sent as a slave to the Colonies, Equiano bought his freedom and made his home in London, where he wrote a best-selling account of his life and became a leading figure in the fight to end the slavery of his fellow countrymen.
Still a long way to go
Modern-day human rights campaigners point out that Wilberforce’s work is far from over.
It’s estimated that there are more than 27 million slaves in the world today - and that includes people in forced labour, women and girls trafficked for work in the sex industry, and children kidnapped and brutalised to be used as soldiers.
If you're looking for a way to commemorate this event, you might be interested in this article: Commemorations with Cross Stitch
| ©2007 Anon. All rights reserved. | Back to top |
Events Calendar
Universal Calendar
sitemap
links
Add URL
DISCLOSURE:
We support this site using affiliate marketing as a way to earn revenue. All the ads, and many of the links mentioning other products, services, or websites are special links that earn us a commission when you use or pay for their product/service.
Please do not use our site if this alarms you.
