Further thoughts on the end of the slave trade
It has been impossible to ignore the issue of the slave trade this week. It seemed that every time you switch on the radio, there is either a programme running about it, or adverts for a forthcoming programme. You open a newspaper, and the same applies. It was also the subject for the first question to all four candidates in the Copeland primary.
I thought I knew a fair amount about the slave trade and the battles which eventually resulted in its abolition, but I have found out more than a few things which were a surprise to me. Some information was new to me, some of the things I thought I knew were not so; other things I had believed were broadly right but I found on looking into them more deeply that the truth was much more complex than I had realised.
The point on which I had, until yesterday evening, been most seriously misinformed was the political allegiance of the MP and campaigner against slavery, William Wilberforce. I had read in several different newspaper articles over the past couple of years that Wilberforce was a Tory MP and up to and including yesterday I repeated this statement in good faith. On reading a contrary statement yesterday evening I checked for myself, and found that although Wilberforce was a very close personal friend of the Tory prime minister, Pitt the Younger, he was in fact an independent.
Wilberforce was the son of a very wealthy merchant, and used his father's wealth to buy the parliamentary seat in Hull for the then princely sum of £9000. How ironic that the main parliamentary campaigner for one of the two most important reforms of the early 19th century, the end of the slave trade, should himself have been the a classic example of the abuse which was ended by the other (the great voting reform bill.)
This was also a lesson to me of the truth of something else I said yesterday; I repeated the old Bruce Forsythe joke that at the top of all newspapers is the date, and this is the only thing you can be certain of in any of them. Many a true word is spoken in jest, but I had not expected the joke to be proved true so quickly!
I thought I knew a fair amount about the slave trade and the battles which eventually resulted in its abolition, but I have found out more than a few things which were a surprise to me. Some information was new to me, some of the things I thought I knew were not so; other things I had believed were broadly right but I found on looking into them more deeply that the truth was much more complex than I had realised.
The point on which I had, until yesterday evening, been most seriously misinformed was the political allegiance of the MP and campaigner against slavery, William Wilberforce. I had read in several different newspaper articles over the past couple of years that Wilberforce was a Tory MP and up to and including yesterday I repeated this statement in good faith. On reading a contrary statement yesterday evening I checked for myself, and found that although Wilberforce was a very close personal friend of the Tory prime minister, Pitt the Younger, he was in fact an independent.
Wilberforce was the son of a very wealthy merchant, and used his father's wealth to buy the parliamentary seat in Hull for the then princely sum of £9000. How ironic that the main parliamentary campaigner for one of the two most important reforms of the early 19th century, the end of the slave trade, should himself have been the a classic example of the abuse which was ended by the other (the great voting reform bill.)
This was also a lesson to me of the truth of something else I said yesterday; I repeated the old Bruce Forsythe joke that at the top of all newspapers is the date, and this is the only thing you can be certain of in any of them. Many a true word is spoken in jest, but I had not expected the joke to be proved true so quickly!
Comments
The point I was trying to make, which also works the other way around, is the extraordinary extent to which people at that time who were great reformers on one issue were often arch reactionaries on others.
Some of the people who were liberal reformers on other issues supported the slave trade; some who were increadibly reactionary by the standards of our time on other issues supported the campaign for a total ban on slavery. The manner in which Wilberforce originally came into parliament was an illustration of the point.