Abolition's 'Amazing' hero

WILLIAM WILBERFORCE is not a household name. Unless you are a student of British history or are aware of Ohio's Wilberforce University, the first private African-American college in the United States, you are not likely to be familiar with the British member of Parliament who led a more than 30-year struggle to abolish slavery and the slave trade.

This may change with the nationwide release Friday of the movie "Amazing Grace." Starring Ioan Gruffudd (pronounced Yo-wahn Griffith) in the title role, the film is directed by Michael Apted ("Coal Miner's Daughter," "The World Is Not Enough," "49 Up") and features an esteemed cast - including Albert Finney, Michael Gambon, Rufus Sewell, Ciaran Hinds and African singer Youssou N'Dour - as real characters from history.

Even Gruffudd, who grew up in Wales, admitted in a recent phone interview that "I was sort of ignorant that Wilberforce was the reason why the slave trade act came into fruition. I was educated myself by reading the script."

But, added the actor - probably best known to American audiences for his starring role as Reed Richards, aka Mr. Fantastic, in "Fantastic Four" and as Horatio Hornblower in a series of imported TV movies - "I'm sure [the film] will be educating a whole new generation."

The subject is the effort by British abolitionists from the late 1780s through the first decades of the 19th century to persuade the British public to end slavery in the British Empire. For tactical reasons, they decided to first attack the slave trade and then take on slavery itself.

Wilberforce, the son of a wealthy merchant, was already known as a brilliant orator and deeply pious man when radical abolitionist Thomas Clarkson (Sewell), a former African slave named Oloudah Equiano (N'Dour) and others approached him about leading the fight in the House of Commons. According to the movie, Wilberforce was encouraged by his good friend, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger (played by Benedict Cumberbatch), and his minister, John Newton (Albert Finney), a former slave-ship captain who had renounced slavery - and who wrote the hymn "Amazing Grace."

Some powerful members of Parliament claimed that the end of the slave trade would mean the ruin of the British shipping industry, on which much of the British economy was based, while others saw nothing wrong with slavery. To change public opinion, Wilberforce and his colleagues engaged in an unprecedented campaign of speechmaking, leading tours of slave ships to show the horrendous conditions, circulating petitions, and holding rallies.

Despite the years following the French Revolution, when reform in general was impeded as British politics turned more reactionary and repressive, by 1807 the tide had turned. In that year, Parliament overwhelmingly passed Wilberforce's bill to abolish the slave trade, and the king gave his assent a month later. But Parliament did not vote to abolish slavery within the empire until 1833.

"Amazing Grace" tells a story of courage and commitment that could resonate today. And since Feb. 23, 2007, turns out to be the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade, the British government, led by Prime Minister Tony Blair, is heading celebrations.

In the next few months, there will be lectures, conferences, museum exhibits, special church services, the issuing of a commemorative coin and stamps, and at least five BBC documentaries.

Blair has called the anniversary "a chance for all of us to increase our understanding of the heritage we share, celebrate the richness of our diversity and increase our determination to shape the world with the values we share."

Adam Hochschild, author of "Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight To Free an Empire's Slaves," helped place "Amazing Grace" and all this activity in context.

"A lot of the impetus," he said, "is coming from the fact that Britain is a multicultural society and this is something that can be celebrated in a way that seems to give credit to Britain as well as being of importance to black Britons."

(According to the 2001 census, the most recent year for which data are available, minorities make up about 8 percent of Britain's population, primarily black people descended from Africa and the Caribbean, Asians descended from India and Pakistan, and those of mixed ethnicity.)

Hochschild views "Amazing Grace" as "an extremely well-made and well-acted movie. . . . But as a political representation of what happened, I think it seriously distorts the picture."

Hochschild and some in Britain's black community say the film and bicentennial are, in Hochschild's words, "in the grand tradition of making Wilberforce the sole hero." Indeed, a long legacy of books cite Wilberforce as "the man who freed the slaves."

Even today, Christopher Hudson, in London's Daily Mail, has written that Wilberforce "was almost single-handedly responsible for the abolition of the brutal trade." And the John Templeton Foundation has funded the creation of a documentary film "to make William Wilberforce a household name again, as he was 200 years ago."

Few wish to denigrate Wilberforce's work or deny him credit. However, British critics of what is derisively being referred to as "Wilberfest"say the movie and bicentennial omit crucial things.

First, said Hochschild, the movie only alludes to "the enormously popular and at times almost unruly popular movement [against slavery], which erupted with great suddenness in early 1788. It caught on everywhere like wildfire."

Yet, other than a scene in "Amazing Grace" in which Wilberforce in Parliament unfurls an anti-slave trade petition signed by more than 300,000 people, the mass movement is ignored.

"The other thing," said Hochschild, "is the role of the slave rebellions in the West Indies, which is referred to just in passing. . . . People were beginning to realize that part of slavery was putting down slave rebellions, and that was very costly to British lives."

"It was our ancestors who defeated slavery," said Darcus Howe, referring to himself as a descendent of slaves, wrote in the New Statesman. *