Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce, national hero or national vanity?

Michael Apted’s Amazing Grace purports to be an account of the trials and tribulations of William Wilberforce as he sought from the period 1789 to 1807 to pass legislation in the British Parliament for the abolition of the slave trade. Wilberforce’s campaign against the slave trade is part of British national mythology or ‘national vanity’, as CLR James puts it.

Yes, Britain, from 1640 to 1807, dominated the slave trade; yes, the First British Empire – concentrated in the Americas – was built on slavery; yes, the industrial revolution was financed by chattel slavery; yes, British cities (London, Liverpool, Bristol), boomed as a result of the trade; but all these sins are redeemed by the fact that it was a Briton – Wilberforce – who ended the trade and it was the British Navy – the West Africa squadron – that enforced the ban. The inscription on Wilberforce’s gravestone in Westminster Abbey reads: ‘His name will ever be specially identified with those exertions which, by the blessing of God, removed from England the guilt of the African slave trade.’

Amazing Grace doesn’t challenge this narrative. In fact, it seeks to reinforce it, which makes for poor drama. Not only is it tiring and tiresome to watch such a one-dimensional portrait of a man, whose personal and political flaws were legion; but the view of Wilberforce as the man who abolished slavery has for a while been challenged.

In his discussion of the San Domingue slave rebellion (1792-1805) that led not only to the emancipation of the island’s slaves but the end of colonial rule, Paul Foot stresses the role rebellious slaves played in their own liberation and ridicules the role of Wilberforce in the abolition of the slave trade.

‘Who abolished slavery? And in a great roar the answer will come back, William Wilberforce abolished slavery. One of the most heroic and greatest feats in the history of Great Britain is that this grand old Christian gentlemen and Tory MP, from Hull, somehow, struggling himself from factory to factory, which he owned and treated the workers there like slaves, somehow, himself, by prodigious effort and enormous amount of prayer managed to abolish one of the great obscenities in the whole history of the human race.’

Wilberforce was motivated by – and widely mocked for his – Evangelical Christianity in his campaign to end the slave trade. He and his cohorts were disparagingly referred to as The Saints. Wilberforce regarded slavery not as a political but as a moral issue. For him, the conditions in which slaves were transported from Africa to the New World and, then, the conditions in which they lived and worked, were wicked and degrading, an affront to Christian values; but there was no effort to go beyond moral outrage and penetrate into the political and economic roots of a system reliant on the brutal exploitation and repression of one set of humans for the benefit of another set.

Thus, in one of the most politically turbulent and radical periods in British history – the ideas of the American and French revolutions, the social and economic turmoil that resulted from the wars against France (1792-1815) and culminated in the Peterloo Massacre (1819) and the Cato Street conspiracy (1820) – Wilberforce was a Church and Crown reactionary, a staunch defender of the establishment against those who sought to challenge it or even overthrow it.

Wilberforce’s detractors also point to the fact that the same Christian values that informed his anti-slave trade crusade also inspired his campaign against permissive Georgian manners and ushered in the moral repression and hypocrisy associated with Victorian society. Wilberforce was, along with Dr John Bowdler, the inspiration behind the Society for the Suppression for Vice and Encouragement of Religion.

For E.P. Thompson, Wilberforce’s moral zeal was in reality a means to detach the poor and working classes from baleful Jacobin influences.

By getting the working classes to read the Bible and not Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man, Wilberforce hoped that the poor would realise ‘that their more lowly path has been allotted to them by the hand of God; that it is their part faithfully to discharge its duties and contentedly to bear its inconveniences; that the present state of things is very short; that the objects, about which worldly men conflict so eagerly, are not worth the contest.’

A more discerning reader of the time’s history would also object to Amazing Grace’s depiction of William Pitt – whose close personal and political friendship that went back to Cambridge University days (the two men are buried side by side in Westminster Abbey) – as a man equally committed to the abolition of the slave trade.

Is this the same William Pitt who, as prime minister in 1793, amid the chaos of the French revolution and slave revolt on San Domingue (Haiti), catastrophically sought to conquer the island – the wealthiest colony in the world – for the British Empire, a plan that involved reinstating the slave regime that its victims had just overthrown, which would have the added advantage of sending a message to the slaves in the British West Indies not to seek emancipation?

Paul Foot argues that Wilberforce did not support the slave revolt in Haiti and disparaged its leader, Toussaint Louverture; while for CLR James, Wilberforce’s campaign to end the slave trade had less to do with moral righteousness and more to do with British economic and geopolitical interests.

Thus, James argues, having failed to seize France’s West Indian colonies by force, Pitt decided that the best way to undermine and challenge the French Empire in the Caribbean was by depriving the colonies of their workforce, the slaves which Britain merchants were largely responsible for supplying, and for this task Pitt turned to his old friend, William Wilberforce who, James says ironically, ‘had a great reputation, all the humanity, justice, stain on national character, etc, etc’ to serve the imperial purpose.

Paul Foot explains the Haitian revolution

In this talk on Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian revolution (1791-1804), Paul Foot starts by tackling the British national myth that William Wilberforce abolished slavery. Instead, taking the lead from CLR James’ Black Jacobins, Foot argues that the slaves, through their own efforts, emancipated themselves, making the slave revolt in Haiti one of the most important events in the history of the world.

Foot presents a history of Hispaniola from the Spanish conquest, the extermination of the original inhabitants, the importation of slaves, the division of the island’s spoils between France and Spain, the French half’s elevation by 1789 to the richest place on earth – two-thirds of all France’s trade was provided by the production of sugar, coffee, cotton, indigo from San Domingue (as the French part of Hispaniola was called). This vast wealth was dependent on slavery – the population of the island was 30,000 whites, 40,000 mulattos and 500,000 African slaves.

Apart from resentment at the sadistic treatment meted out to the slave class, two other things challenged this state of affairs, Foot says. The Enlightenment and the French revolution. Inspired by new thinking and new political possibilities, the slaves of San Domingue turned on their masters in 1791. With help from British arms from Jamaica, the whites were able to put down the disorganised rebels; but not before a brilliant leader of the slave army had emerged: Toussaint Louverture.

Louverture’s initial strategy in confronting French colonial rule was to ally with Spain, which controlled the other half of Hispaniola. (The Spanish, of course, thought they could use the slaves to oust the French from San Domingue before taking over the whole island themselves).

By 1794, Foot says, as the French revolution morphed so did Louverture’s strategy, deciding that Jacobin France and not imperial Spain was the best way to secure an end to slavery on San Domingue. At the National Convention, a motion was passed that abolished slavery in all French territories. Thus, an alliance was formed between revolutionary France and the San Domingue slave army.

Apart from political and ideological alignment, another reason Louverture pivoted towards France, Foot argues, was fear of British ambitions on the island. Not only was prime minister William Pitt concerned that the San Domingue slave revolt would spread to Britain’s own West Indian slave colonies, but he also sensed an opportunity to seize French colonies in the region and transfer their wealth to Britain.

Foot then goes on to detail the British expedition (1794-98) – the biggest ever to leave British shores – to San Domingue, to crush the slave rebels and snatch the colony from France. During this war, Foot says, the campaign to abolish slavery in Britain dried up as the prospect of gaining the riches of San Domingue trumped moral indignation at the root of that wealth, slave labour.

The defeat of the British – with 80,000 casualties – brought no respite to San Domingue’s slave rebels. In France, the revolution was transforming again, this time shedding its radical, Jacobin form and turning into a more conservative regime that sought to end the influence of Toussaint’s slave rebels in San Domingue.

A new bloody conflict erupted on San Domingue, lasting until 1801, as mulattos – backed by France’s governor on the island, Thomas Hedouville – fought the black rebels for control of the island. Once again, Louverture’s army was victorious. The peace was short-lived, however. With the emergence of Napoleon, France fully resumed its imperialist ambitions, one of the first of which was to crush the San Domingue slave rebels, restore metropolitan control over the island and reintroduce a slave regime.

In 1802 as the French expeditionary force got ready to sail for San Domingue, Bonaparte declared: ‘Everything must be prepared for the restoration of slavery. This is not only the opinion of the metropolis but also the view of England and other European powers.’

Just as the British were humiliated by Toussaint’s slave army, so were the French; but not before Louverture had been captured and deported to France, where he was left to rot in jail, dying in 1803 from pneumonia.

The French hoped that removing their leader would end the resistance of the slave army, but not for the first time they underestimated the rebels. Other leaders, such as Dessalines and Christophe, more ruthless than Louverture, emerged to continue the war against the French, who were finally driven off the island by the end of 1803, with Haiti declaring independence on 1 January 1804.