Slavery

My Lords, I speak as an historian of the slave trade, but I should sayfirst what a pleasure it is to take part again in adebate initiated by my noble friend Lady Cox, whose persistence, insistence and determination have been an inspiration to many of us for a long time.It is a pleasure also to follow my noble friend Lord Wedderburn, the story of whose ancestor I am sure all your Lordships will have found very interesting and moving. I make one correction to the historical references to Wilberforce and the struggle in the House of Commons against the slave trade, because we should be accurate. We are Members of the upper House, and it was in the upper House that the Bill for the abolition of the slave trade was introduced by the then Prime Minister, Lord Grenville, who was a determined opponent of the slave trade for all of his life. Noble Lords may think that the House of Commons would inevitably have introduced a Bill of that nature sooner or later. That is no doubt true, but it was here that it happened; it was here, on 2 January 1807, that Lord Grenville introduced his Bill. The 200th anniversary will therefore fall before we meet again in this House. On that occasion, some very interesting things were said. For example, the Lord Chancellor, the great Lord Erskine, said: "““It is our duty to God and to our country, which is the morning star of enlightened Europe and whose boast and glory is to grant liberty and life and administer humanity and justice to all nations, to remedy this evil””." The Prime Minister, Lord Grenville, offered this cautious reflection: "““Can we flatter ourselves that the mischief which the slave trade has created will not be remembered for many ages, to our reproach?””" It is probable that his reflection was justified, since the part which Britain played in the slave trade has been remembered. However, it is very important in the commemoration of the abolition that we remember the abolition first and foremost. We should recognise it to be an important event, not because it brought an end to the slave trade there and then, but because it marked the beginning of the end, as we thought it to be in the 19th century. The passing of the Act led to the beginning of six years of what the then Foreign Secretary referred to in 1997 as an ethical foreign policy. That comparison was made in this House by the late Lord Gilmour, the former head of the Foreign Office—not the noble Lord, Lord Gilmour of Craigmillar, who I am glad to say is still with us. He saw it as a precedent for an ethical foreign policy. That foreign policy was very ambitious and was carried out in an interesting manner. There were subventions. There were bribes to African kings and noblemen. There was the use of naval power and espionage; for example, the harbourmaster of Rio was for a time a British agent and was paid substantially. There was also diplomacy, conducted with high-handed insistence by Lord Castlereagh and the Duke of Wellington at the Congress of Vienna. All that activity allowed us to make an end of the Atlantic slave trade by the 1860s. Lord Palmerston reflected that the abolition of the slave trade to Brazil was the one thing that he was really proud of when looking back on his life. When in the course of next year the celebrations are taking place to commemorate the end of the slave trade in 1807, let us recall, or urge the Government to recall, one or two things that are sometimes forgotten. First, we should remember the role of this House. Secondly, we should remember the 60 years of ethical foreign policy, even though—although perhaps I should simply say ““though””, because ““even though”” is not quite the right antithesis to my sentence—it led in some cases to the establishment of colonies and imperial dominions, of which Lagos is a very good example. Thirdly, I ask the Government to insist on the point that it marked the beginning of the end to slavery itself. We have heard from noble Lords who have spoken very eloquently on how it survives, but in the 18th century there was no suggestion that slavery or the slave trade would be abolished. It required a real effort of propaganda and political will to carry it through. The fourth point is something that we may take for granted but is none the less important. In 1807, when the Bill was introduced, a good deal of slave trading was going on in Liverpool, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool said. The slave trade continued in London and Bristol. But when we had abolished the slave trade by law, it came to an end there and then, and people in Liverpool and elsewhere who had been involved in slave trafficking turned immediately to other commerce, such as palm oil. No British citizen was condemned for slave trading after that, although that was not the case in some other European countries, such as France, Portugal and Spain, which we were not always immediately successful in persuading to follow our good example. These historical recollections should inform us and we should recall that the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 was one of the finest achievements in British parliamentary life.