OUT OF SLAVERY
LEGACIES OF WEST INDIAN SLAVERY
Lectures and conference papers given during the
William Wilberforce 150th anniversary celebrations
at the University of Hull, July 1983
OUT OF SLAVERY
Abolition and After
Edited by Jack Hayward
ABOLITION AND ITS AFTERMATH
The Historical Context 17901916
Edited by David Richardson
DUAL LEGACIES IN THE CONTEMPORARY CARIBBEAN
Continuing Aspects of British and French Dominion
Edited by Paul Sutton
THE CARIBBEAN IN EUROPE
Aspects of the West Indian Experience in Britain,
France and The Netherlands
Edited by Colin Brock
OUT OF SLAVERY
Abolition and After
Edited by
JACK HAYWARD
Professor of Politics
University of Hull
First published 1985 in Great Britain by
FRANK CASS & CO. LTD.
Gainsborough House, Gainsborough Road,
London, E11 1RS, England
and in the United States of America by
FRANK CASS & CO. LTD.
c/o Biblio Distribution Centre
81 Adams Drive, P.O. Box 327, Totowa, N.J. 07511
Copyright 1985 Frank Cass & Co. Ltd.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Out of slavery: abolition and after.
1. SlaveryGreat BritainAnti-slavery
movements
I. Hayward, J.E.S.
322.440941 HT1163
ISBN 0714632600
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Frank Cass and Company Limited.
Typeset by Williams Graphics, Abergele, Clwyd
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
A. Wheaton & Co. Ltd., Exeter
To
Sir Roy Marshall,
Vice-Chancellor,
University of Hull,
19791985
Formerly Vice-Chancellor,
University of the West Indies,
19691974
CONTENTS
| Lord Wilberforce |
| Jack Hayward |
| Orlando Patterson |
| James Walvin |
| Fiona Spiers |
| Ian Bradley |
| Howard Temperley |
| Michael Craton |
| Lloyd Best |
| Shridath S. Ramphal |
| Lord Scarman |
CONTRIBUTORS
Lloyd Best, United Nations Project Co-ordinator in the Central African Republic, economist and formerly Leader of the Opposition in the Senate of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago
Ian Bradley, teacher and journalist, formerly on The Times
Michael Craton, Professor of History, University of Waterloo, Ontario
Jack Hayward, Professor of Politics, University of Hull
Orlando Patterson, Professor of Sociology, University of Harvard
Shridath S. Ramphal, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth
Leslie Scarman, Lord of Appeal in Ordinary
Fiona Spiers, Co-editor of William Wilberforce Editorial Project
Howard Temperley, Professor of American History, University of East Anglia
James Walvin, Reader in History, University of York
PREFACE
Dr Fiona Spiers at the start of her lecture well reminds us that anniversary celebrations provide a useful focus and fulfil a need among scholars to concentrate on a series of related problems and to take stock of current trends in research. The death of William Wilberforce on 29 July 1833 and the passing in that year of the Act of Parliament abolishing slavery in the British colonies were commemorated with enthusiasm in 1933, the centenary year. The University of Hull took the view that 1983 the sesquicentenary should not be regarded as merely the same event fifty years on. The background from which we now look at the history of the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century has radically changed. We have passed through the period of decolonisation; we are well advanced in the period of widened recognition of Human Rights; the economic and social consequences of what was done, and left undone, by the Abolitionists and Emancipators and of the situations which they faced are being newly revealed.
All these changes seemed to call for a reappraisal on broad lines of the problems of slavery and freedom from slavery as they can now be seen and of the contribution and personality of the Abolitionists, particularly of their leader and spokesman William Wilberforce. We have urgent new questions to ask to which we seek answers relevant to our time. The University of Hull, which through its present Vice-Chancellor, Sir Roy Marshall, has strong links with the West Indies, felt qualified to attempt this reappraisal and, through an initiative taken by its Department of Politics led by Professor Jack Hayward, it commissioned these lectures as a coherent piece of research.
The lectures cover a wide field. They attempt to consider the institution of slavery as it existed in the early nineteenth century; the forces making for its survival, as well as the forces, social and economic, making for its disappearance; the part played by West Indian slaves in the emancipation campaign; the aftermath of slavery and the substitution by law of freedom in the West Indian colonies; the stresses in West Indian society created by this substitution and their consequences in the modern age. They probe and test the validity of arguments that by the end of the eighteenth century the slave trade and the institution of slavery were already under overwhelming pressures, social and economic, which would have brought them to an end independently of the Abolitionist movement; that the latter at most accelerated and may even have retarded reform; that abolition was brought about by capitalist attack, or alternatively by the movement towards worker equality following the Industrial Revolution; that the policy of the British government in forcing emancipation on the colonies was shortsighted and niggardly.
These lectures also examine the record of the Abolitionists and evaluate the techniques and arguments used in their campaign. They discuss in depth the personality of Wilberforce, that remarkable, complex, exposed character. Was he a saint or a hypocrite? Was he truly a believer in freedom? Was he a competent parliamentary leader? How does he stand in relation to other contemporary issues? Are there inconsistencies in his attitudes, and if so how are these to be explained? On all these and on many other important issues, the reader must make up his/her own mind.
This particular reader believes that in the end, across all the tangled web of human imperfection, there is justification for regarding the movement which culminated in 1833 as one of the great movements forward of humanity and for maintaining Wilberforce mythical and humanly imperfect a figure as in some respects he may be upon the pedestal on which history has set him. Whatever view each reader may ultimately take, it is safe to say that these lectures provide a fascinating study of the kinds of forces and arguments, moral and material by which human beings are moved.
One final remark. If, as we all believe, celebrations are to have more than a festival character or charismatic significance, the two final lectures, by Lord Scarman and Sir Shridath Ramphal, point to the vast contemporary problems which need to be met by a renewal of the spirit and faith which so strongly moved those who realised the reforms of 1807 to 1833. Injustice and inhumanity tend to leave, long after their apparent removal, a legacy equal in scale, if different in character, for which later generations have to pay. The Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, in his wide ranging and sympathetic survey of the trauma of his own country, concludes with an appeal for a fresh, convinced and principled crusade against those forms of inhumanity and deprivation which, as our consciences tell us, are so unworthy of the post-abolition age.
