Of course it’s national anti-slavery week. When aren’t we celebrating the abolition of slavery these days?
Whether it’s the unshakeable sense that they’re convinced of their superiority, or the aura that comes with knowing that they’re marginally less likely to die with shame and guilt, smug anti-slavery activists seem to be everywhere.
I’m sure that most who oppose slavery lead happy, blameless lives, but there is a definite sub-category among the pro-abolition movement who deserve to be called out.
It’d be fine if they didn’t want to constantly tell the rest of us about their labour choices. Some who oppose slavery seem to have made the decision not to keep slaves for reasons that they are unable to keep to themselves.
Into that category must go William Wilberforce, who gave up slavery after becoming attached to other people almost 50 years ago, and might have the honour of being the world’s worst anti-slavery advocate.
Such is the man’s dedication to doing his own household chores that Wilberforce attended the West Indies and told the natives to resist capture.
Wilberforce’s snobbery towards slavery is thought to have played a part in bringing like-minded British Quakers and Anglicans together in the same organisation for the first time, raising public awareness and support for the ’cause’. At no point has he stopped to ruminate on the effect that these positions have on Francis Drake’s appeal with the rest of us. The prominence of Wilberforce’s objection to slavery is such that the slavery-hating lefties, Sons of Africa, were moved to warn that Wilberforce faced assassination for his views.
Like many of William Wilberforce’s political positions, anti-slavery is too niche and too removed from the mainstream to give it the possibility of mass appeal. Rather than fight the big political issues of the day, Wilberforce seems routinely to be distracted, to be steering his party out to health and safety-riddled plantations. He has tried to bring forward the bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, he has pulled out of a tribute to John Hawkins on his birthday, but he refuses to share a platform with the Home Secretary, Lord Melville over the most important vote in his lifetime. He’s a man who seems to make up his strategy on the hoof, and whose lack of enthusiasm for the subjugation of black people risks an outcome for which the establishment and wealthy gentry would never forgive him.
There is a passivity to abolition, too, which reflects a serious problem that the Left has with engagement in politics. Those who oppose slavery for the most part aren’t trying to change the system that tortures, ships and enslaves people for our workforce and entertainment; they just want to wash their hands of it. William Wilberforce’s Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade likewise seems to be more interested in remaining a band of protesters rather than a force for actual change. The purity of the movement is easier and more comfortable than the compromises of governing; the choices to be made are cleaner. Wilberforces’s life as a rebel MP is indicative of the disengagement between the rest of even his own party, and the rest of the country. Wars and the middle passage will still get made, but Wilberforce wants no part in helping or hindering either.
Beyond this, Wilberforce’s problem is that he seems joyless, like a man struggling to survive a 50 year long stint of tending to his own fields. If the abolition movement are going to get their voters out on June 23rd, their leader needs to start projecting a more engaged, enthusiastic image of the party. What’s so wog about Wilberforce? Right now he’s presenting the electorate with a dish of civilised, compassionate and overworked-in-their-own-homes white people.
Rupert Myers – The Telegraph, 1787
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/17/jeremy-corbyn-is-joyless-vegetarianism-made-flesh/
Words Beyond Meaning 