FORCE to reckon with

With a strong urge to abolish slave trade, William Wilberforce fought for the cause of slaves all his life.

A GIANT: When expounding his beliefs.

O ne of the turning events in the history of the world was the end of slave trade, said the historian G.M. Trevelyan. It happened in different countries at different times. In England, the name most associated with the battle against slavery is William Wilberforce.

In the late 1700s, when Wilberforce was a teenager, English traders raided the African coast, captured about 40,000 Africans a year, shipped them across the Atlantic and sold them into slavery in the Caribbean. This was a lucrative business. So, a veritable war had to be waged by Abolitionists for decades, to wean them from this despicable practice of treating human beings like livestock.

Making strides

The only son of a wealthy merchant, Wilberforce was born in 1769, in Hull, and educated at St. John’s College, Cambridge. In college, he became friends with the country’s future Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger. At 21, he became a Member of the Parliament (MP) and later represented Yorkshire. English abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, had a great influence on him and historians refer to their friendship as one of history’s great partnerships.

Wilberforce’s involvement in abolition rose from a desire to put his Christian principles into action and to serve God in public life. It was said, that though in appearance he looked like a hunchback, when he mounted the platform, his eloquence transformed him into a giant. In 1789, he introduced 12 resolutions against slave trade and gave what many newspapers at the time considered among the most eloquent speeches ever delivered in the Commons. Though slave trade was abolished in 1807, it did not spell freedom for those who were already slaves.

Called the Prime Minister of a cabinet of philanthropists, he was supporting 69 philanthropic causes at one time. A great social reformer, he started the Society for the Suppression of Vice. He fought on behalf of chimney sweeps, single mothers, orphans and juvenile delinquents. With Hannah More, a reformer, he worked for the Association for the Better Observance of Sunday — the goal was to provide children with regular education, personal hygiene and religion. He was closely associated with the Royal Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Wilberforce declined a peerage and resigned his seat in Parliament in 1825. Poor health plagued him all his life. He was a doting father to his six children by Barbara Spooner whom he married after a whirlwind romance. Wilberforce died in 1833, three days after he heard that the Bill to free all slaves in the British Empire was passed.