For more than 20 years Wilberforce persisted in bringing before Parliament a Bill to outlaw the slave trade. Even as a schoolboy he had hated the cruelties of slavery and had written a letter of protest to a Yorkshire newspaper from Pocklington Grammar School.
Commitment to Abolish Slavery
Soon after his fresh experience of God in 1885 Wilberforce made a commitment that he would work tirelessly for the abolition of slavery and for a change in the moral values of the nation. These were his twin objectives.
Social Conditions
Wilberforce kept his promise and throughout his life he campaigned on behalf of the poor and the powerless. It was the early days of the Industrial Revolution, at time of considerable social upheaval when human rights were unheeded. Children as young as six years old worked down the mines and in the factories and mills. They often died through accidents with primitive machinery and the lack of safety regulations.
Child Abuse
Children regularly worked 12 or even 14 hours a day. It took 40 years of campaigning for Parliament finally to act to restrict the working hours of children to 10 hours a day! This was often known as 'white slavery' in Britain. But even more terrible conditions of slavery existed in the British colonies in the West Indies where slaves had no rights or freedoms.
Cruelty
The slaves were subjected to indescribable cruelty from the moment they were captured in their African villages and forced to walk in chain gangs, sometimes hundreds of miles, to the west coast of Africa where they were sold to European slavers. They were then herded aboard wooden sailing ships, manacled in pairs by their feet and hands, and packed tightly into the lower decks of slave ships to be transported across the Atlantic to a life of slavery on the sugar plantations of Barbados, Jamaica and other Caribbean islands.
Factual Evidence
Wilberforce had the support of a small but dedicated research team - Thomas Clarkson, James Stephen, Granville Sharp and Zachary Macaulay all supplied him with factual information and vivid accounts of the horrors of the slave trade. Wilberforce, who was a brilliant orator and a popular Member of Parliament for York, made good use of the information in speeches in the House of Commons, but many of the MPs owned estates in the West Indies, or owed their wealth to the slave trade.
Faith in God
It was only his faith in God that gave Wilberforce the strength to persist year after year with his campaign. He was so convinced that God had told him to abolish the slave trade that no amount of opposition could stop him. In the end his faith was vindicated although it took 20 years of lobbying Parliament and campaigning throughout the country.
Vested Interests
In 1805 when Wilberforce had once again lost an Abolition Bill, Mr Hansel, the clerk to the House of Commons said to him, 'Mr Wilberforce, you ought not to expect to carry a measure of this kind.... you and I have seen enough of life to know that people are not induced to act upon what affects their interests by any abstract arguments.'
Confidence
Wilberforce replied, 'Mr Hansel, I do expect to carry it, and what is more, I feel assured I shall carry it speedily. I have observed the gradual change which has been going on in men's minds for some time past, and though the measure may be delayed for a year or two, yet I am convinced that before long it will be accomplished.' Two days after that conversation with the Clerk of the House of Commons Wilberforce wrote the following in his personal diary dated 3 March 1805 -
'O Lord, I trust the grief I felt on the defeat of my Bill proceeded from sympathy with the wretched victims, whose sufferings are ever before me... put an end to this atrocious and unparalleled wickedness.
Victory at Last
On 23rd of February 1807 the House of Commons, for the last time, debated the abolition of the slave trade which Wilberforce had brought to Parliament year after year for 20 years. Announcing the result of the vote, (283 for, and only 16 against) the Solicitor General contrasted Napoleon, the Emperor of France in all his greatness, with the honour of Wilberforce who 'would this day lay his head upon his pillow and remember that the slave trade was no more'. The whole House suddenly burst into applause. The first great object of Wilberforce's life had been achieved.