Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade

The hon. Gentleman has managed to put that on record without my needing to stagger into the controversy. William Wilberforce approached the abolition of the slave trade—and, indeed, many other matters—in a far more evangelical way than the Church of England at that time. He took up the cause and made it a Christian cause, but it was the Quakers and evangelicals in general, rather than the established Church, who helped to set him on that path, so the hon. Gentleman’s point is valid. The 1807 Act’s Second Reading was carried 200 years ago here in this House—or just around the corner in St. Stephen’s chapel, which was then the House. In the early hours of a cold February morning the Commons voted to end the practice of trading in human beings, and as the Members rose as a body to salute William Wilberforce he bowed his head and quietly wept. For him, the passing of the Act was the outcome of a 20-year parliamentary struggle. Almost every year for two decades he had introduced similar proposals in the Commons, only for them to be rejected because of powerful economic and political opposition, or to be thwarted because of war or hostility to the French revolution and social upheaval.