Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade

I, too, should like to congratulate the Government on the way in which they have led the commemoration, and I congratulate the Deputy Prime Minister directly on the tone and content of his speech, as well as the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague). My role is partly to shadow the Deputy Prime Minister, and I am the third Yorkshireman in our Front-Bench group. I was brought up by the Quakers, so I was immersed at an early age in the arguments that we have heard today. Essentially, I should like to build on the arguments of the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) who, in a powerful and effective contribution, said many of the things that I had planned to say. The commemoration is important, because it provides an opportunity, which we must not miss, to understand British history properly. There is a comforting view of the history of the slave trade—I suspect that most people in the country subscribe to it to some extent—that goes roughly as follows: of course, the slave trade was a terrible episode, but it was a long time ago. Many countries were involved and Britain was no worse than anywhere else. Slavery was at the periphery of our society, but it was all redeemed by the abolitionist movement, so we should not feel too badly about it. That view of history is simply wrong, for the reasons given by the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington. Several points that she made should be emphasised. First, slavery was not peripheral: it was at the heart of the British economy for well over a century, as the great historian, Eric Williams, who subsequently became Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, described in detail. He was the first person to analyse the economics of the slave trade and the triangular movement between west Africa, Europe and the Caribbean, showing how that led to the accumulation of capital, which formed the basis of investment in early industrialisation. The slave trade was, as the hon. Lady eloquently said, at the centre, not at the periphery of the British economy. It was something in which all parts of British society were implicated—it was not just a few roughneck captains and the odd aristocrat who had plantations in the Caribbean—and it was the basis of the prosperity of the Church and, one should add, of the royal family. The hon. Lady mentioned Members of Parliament, but she understated her case, because in 1720, it was recorded that 420—not 40—Members of the House of Commons invested in the South Sea company, which was the main financial vehicle for investment in the slave trade. As the hon. Lady said—and this is important—there was not a wonderful moment of enlightenment when Britain was suddenly converted to the abolition of slavery. Tellingly, the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks made reference—and he has written brilliantly on the subject—to the first and greatest Prime Minister in the Conservative tradition, William Pitt. May I allude to perhaps the greatest Prime Minister in the Liberal tradition—W. E. Gladstone, behind whom there is a rather unfortunate history that is not widely known? It is not just that he entered the House as a Tory—I do not think that that meant a great deal in those days—but that his maiden speech was a passionate defence of slavery. He made that speech 25 years after the abolition of the slave trade, because his family owned plantations, and he believed that he should justify that practice. That is how he began his political life—it was not just a personal idiosyncrasy but a reflection of the view among much of the British establishment that although the slave trade was sordid, we had got rid of it, and there was nothing inherently wrong in owning slaves and profiting from them. It therefore took a great deal of time finally to eradicate slavery. My final point about its history was made eloquently by the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington. It was not just liberal white abolitionists who were involved in the movement against the slave trade, as black slaves contributed enormously to their own emancipation. There were slave uprisings, and freed black slaves in Britain such as Equiano agitated and contributed to the movement. The hon. Lady missed one small detail in the story, as a key factor that provoked the uprisings in the Caribbean was the French revolution. It is often forgotten that some of the French revolutionaries were black and, for the first time, the French revolution promoted the concept that all men—women were not included at that time—were equal, which was a devastating concept to unleash on a slave society. It was only when Napoleon—who, among his less attractive attributes, was a virulent racist—re-imposed authority that the slave uprisings were finally brought under control. That was a key stage, and it was the black revolutionaries who did much to create the climate of opinion leading to abolition.