William Wilberforce – ten things you need to know before next year

1. He became England’s youngest ever MP. Aged 21 he was elected MP for his native Hull. During an election campaign he was pelted with a snowball as he tried to pacify a mob from a bedroom window in the opulent family home. Today the city is twinned with Freetown, Sierra Leone, which Wilberforce helped to found as a colony for free Africans.
2. His childhood vicar wrote Amazing Grace. His Methodist aunt introduced him to John Newton, a slave-trader-turned-cleric. William spent two spiritually seminal years with an uncle and aunt in Wimbledon after his dad died. But his mum called him back up north, worried about the influences on him.
3. He became a playboy second only to William Pitt, learning the finer points of gambling and drinking with the future prime minister at Cambridge University. An about-turn came later on a holiday to the south of France, when he felt touched by ‘the unspeakable mercies of my God and Saviour’. Now an MP, he quickly sobered up, applying himself to improving conditions for factory workers.
4. He had a defining moment (while chatting to William Pitt) under a tree near Croydon. William Pitt, now prime minister, persuaded him to read an exposé of the slave trade. Merchants denied accounts of overcrowding, sickness and sub-human misery on ships, spinning yarns of comfortable journeys to new and exciting lives.
5. He rendered Nelson 'armless. Admiral Nelson didn’t like ‘the damnable doctrines of Wilberforce and his hypocritical allies’. Wilberforce was assaulted outside the Houses of Parliament and faced death threats. Later Nelson’s Column in London’s Trafalgar Square would be built more than third taller than the almost identical Wilberforce Memorial in Hull. But slavery-wise, victory had been Wilberforce’s.
6. He was the best-selling author of ‘Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes in This Country Contrasted with Real Christianity’. It was reprinted five times in six months and translated into French, Italian, Dutch and German. And it’s one of the longest titles you’ll find on Amazon.
7. He had a nervous breakdown at 37. Getting the Abolition Bill through Parliament was hard graft despite his endless, eloquent speeches. Wilberforce’s poor health was not helped by Parliament defeating his Bill 20 times in 30 years. John Newton likened his fight against the slavers to the biblical story of Daniel in the lions’ den. The reformer and preacher John Wesley was also supportive. He urged him, ‘Go on, in the name of God.’
8. He got Josiah Wedgwood to design an anti-slavery brooch. Here was the top pottery designer of his day creating a brooch with a black figure in chains and the line ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’ It became a must have. Wedgwood also sent a few to an appreciative Benjamin Franklin. A founding father of the US of A, Franklin became a keen supporter. Wilberforce also commissioned the poet William Cowper to write verse exposing the slave trade.
9. He thought Clapham was really cool. He was part of a group of wealthy evangelicals called the Clapham Sect and nicknamed ‘The Saints’. They campaigned for Abolition alongside remarkable former slaves such as Olaudah Equiano, Ottobah Cugoano and Ignatius Sancho. They also helped to reform the penal system, and founded of the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Church Missionary Society. Oh, and Wilberforce co-founded the RSPCA.
10. He was cheered in the House of Commons – illegally. On February 23, 1807, the House of Commons debated abolition – again. This time speech after speech praised Wilberforce. The House of Commons gave him a loud standing ovation, even though applause is forbidden there. Wilberforce bowed his head and wept with emotion. That night MPs voted to abolish the slave trade by a vote of 283 to 16.Prime Minister Lord Grenville described Wilberforce’s victory in 1807 as ‘a measure… for which his memory will be blessed by millions yet unborn.’ On 25 March 1807 the act became law. But Wilberforce hadn’t finished: he needed to secure the release of slaves throughout the British Empire. After another 16 years’ work he lived to see this second act passed – and died three days later.

Bonus fact
Couldn’t leave this one out: ‘Wilberforce’ was the name given to the cat at 10, Downing Street from 1973 to 1987. It served as chief mouser under four British Prime Ministers: Edward Heath, Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher.