Re-Marika's posting:
Wilberforce's reactionary attitudes with his support
for the Pitt repressive measures from 1794 are well-known in working class
histories of the period We know that the anti-slavery movement went
into downturn. As far as I am aware we do not know to what
extent there was a severe rift for a while between abolitionists who
supported his repressive line and those who were against. Clarkson went
into 'retirement'. Charles Grey feared he might be arrested under the Sedition
and Treason Acts. I do not know whether Anti-Slavery Societies had to register
under the Friendly Socieites Act that came in the same period to exercise
state control over mainly working class organisations. Clearly the lapse of
time meant that despite such fundamental differences within the
anti-slavery alliance the two groups could work together again:
1806-7; 1815. An analysis of the post-Peterloo Massacre reactions among
abolitionists would be instructive. Joint working again from the early
1820s. However the new repressions from 1832 (e.g. Poor Law) did mean that the
radical working class movement saw abolitionist employers as hyocritical. What
is interesting is that key leaders in the Governments in 1807 and 1832/3
were those who had opposed the repressions. Working class radical agitation
contributed to the passage of the Reform Act of 1832, which despite its severe
limitations, made it possible for more abolitionist MPs to be elected and
achieve the majority for the Emancipation Act in 1833.
As Michael Craton argued in his 'Slave Culture, Resistance
and Emancipation' essay (1982) 'The freeing of the British slagves in 1838, in
common with the ending of the British trade in slaves thirty years earlier,
could only be achieved by parliamentary decree. Parliament did not act until a
majorty of its members had been convinced that slavery, was, at the same time,
morally evil, economically, inefficient and politiclaly unwise. Yet the outcome
would certainly have been delayed and different had the planters been able to
convince Parliament that the slaves they owned wree all humanely managed,
contented and efficient. Instead, through the evidence of day-to-day resistance
and the major risings of 1816, 1823 and 1831-2, it became gradually apparent
that British West Indian slaves could never be ruled without intolerable
repression and would never be contented or make efficient workers while slavery
lasted.'
Of course Wilberforce was not saint; we have to
assess him warts and all, including his tactical ineptitude in the
Commons. It would be unhistorical to deny that he played an important
role.
Sean
