May 22 : An epic anniversary in history....

Today happens to be the 219th anniversary of the beginning of a relatively unknown, yet awe-inspiring event in the annals of civil history and public power to make change for the better.

In the present time of seeming inertia and inability for frustrated citizens to make much impact on government conditions this is a particularly instructive story. There is a little known and truly inspiring aspect of the tragic history of slavery that with our Amero-centric bias, is often overlooked. Forget the example of the United States, which despite its ideals and intentions to promote freedom first had to split in half, and then fight a Civil War just to get rid of slavery, then suffer for almost precisely another century to get rid of the last of its legal legacies. In many ways, this is rightly a discouraging precedent. On the other hand, Great Britain's slavery had already ended in in the 1830's, and without a civil war.

It is how the British Empire's abolition movement began that is truly inspiring and encouraging to any who feel there is no ability to spark change for the better or to reform the entrenched mindsets of politicians owned by lobbyists. A recent book, "Dark Ages America" by Morris Berman(to be reviewed soon) goes so far as to say that the `levers of change' in America, if not the West, are effectively gone and moribund. In effect, implying that there is little the common person of moderate means can do any more. This is not the American ethos, and is fundamentally defeatist, no matter how convincing. And it need not come to be.

When set against such a projection, the tale of how slavery was brought to a halt in the British Empire is positively enthralling and brings new heart. It is all the sadder that the Civil War and Reconstruction here, are the commonly known models, and that this epic chapter in the West is neglected. On May 22, 1787, twelve men gathered in a London book store and print ship at 2 George Yard for roundtable. In many ways, the anti-slavery crusade was born there, though there were many already existing strands of thought on this, and there was tacit consent intellectually that slavery was barbarous and un-Christian, but seen as an economic linchpin at the time. One Thomas Clarkson was the principal organizer, and the movement would attract men such as William Wilberforce, whose evangelical convictions and missionary work toward India would give him strong perspective and leverage in the movement, Olaudah Equiano a former slave who would hand down harrowing eyewitness accounts of how it was to be one, and John Newton, the former slaver who wrote "Amazing Grace" and who also wrote of a slave captain's side of the story and how came to see it immoral.

The renowned de Tocqueville was to write of this movement later, but unlike the subject of some of his more celebrated writings, most Americans remain unaware of this other and more encouraging example of how injustices could come to be abolished. With India currently setting out on the difficult path of enfranchisement of its lowest caste, the lessons of 1787 apply to all cultures, for discrimination and institutionalized inequality was, and is, a worldwide phenomenon and not just a creation of of the age of Imperialism.

De Tocqueville said of the series of events unleashed by their meeting and efforts "was absolutely without precedent...If you pore over the histories of all peoples, I doubt that you will find anything more extraordinary." Its easy to forget that just over two centuries ago, well over three quarters of the world's people were in bondage of one kind or another, slaves in America, Europe, Ottoman Empire, Africa, serfdom in the Russian areas, peasants in debt bondage in China, etc, etc. Of importance here, is the terrible irony that in 1787, "freedom, not slavery, was the peculiar institution"! Yet the swiftness with which it died is an encouraging signal -- by the end of the 1800s it was outlawed almost everywhere, and the anti-slavery movement had achieved its goal in "little more than one lifetime".

In the process of their goal, they pioneered many of the tools of activists or conscience-raiser groups in use today, like posters, and even mass mailings, let alone boycotts and legal proceedings. Like many ills, a lot of the slave trade had actually depended on public ignorance of just how brutal and inhumane the conditions were, and what the real price being paid for certain luxuries was (the parallel today might be the diamond mines of South Africa or the tennis shoes made in Indonesian sweat shops) . Only five years after they began the movement, 300,000 Britons were refusing to eat the sugar that came from the slave trade in lieu of that which didn't, and the House of Commons has passed laws banning the slave trade. But the House of Lords initially voted down this bill, being comprised of the aristocracy backed by the powerful pro-slave interests; the analogs of the plantation owners and pro-slavery politicians of the ante-bellum South portions of the North and Midwest who in America dragged the country into armed confrontation over this when faced with the abolitionist movement.

But the cause refused to fade, and only gained moral and political headway, and though there were were uprisings and outbreaks of violence and upheaval, for the most part, the transformation came by public process. Thus, a half-century later, a slavers whip and chains were formally buried in a Jamaican churchyard in a ceremony for the last (William Knibb) of the `printing shop crusaders' who was still alive and had lived to see that day! The date was July 31, 1838 and there was even a plaque buried saying "Colonial Slavery, died July 31st, 1838, aged 276 years".

Slavery in the British Empire officially ended at midnight on August 1, 1838. Unfortunately, it still persisted in the United States. For a host of reasons, America proved finally unable to end the `peculiar institution' peaceably and by due process of legislation, and would have to fight a Civil War to end it and then a civil rights movement a century afterward. Slavery and institutional underclass structures also continued to persist beyond 1840 in different forms in the rest of the world: in Russia, most of Africa, and in the Islamic world. In fact, in the Islamic world, it still exists today in the ongoing tragedy of Sudan, elsewhere. In India, it is in the process of being confronted. But in 1838, "in the largest empire on earth, it was ended."

In many ways, this may have been one of the finer moments of Western Civilization's capacity to reform and improve itself, without resort to mass revolution and bloodshed. It is timely to recall this encouraging example as we confront the divisions and disarray of the present and feel that little can be done.

- Anthony

(The most recent book about this is now in trade paperback: "Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the fight to free an Empire's slaves" by Adam Hochschild, Mariner Books 2006).
ISBN 0618619070