While the 200th anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act is definitely worth celebrating, we’re not there yet. Rich Cline reports...
Throughout the new film Amazing Grace, we see William Wilberforce on the verge of giving up in his quest to stop the worldwide slave trade. Driven by his evangelical beliefs, he tenaciously hangs in there for two full decades, battling corporate greed and government inaction. And in the end, he has to literally trick his fellow MPs into abolishing the slave trade.
The story is a powerful one, leading up to the historic vote on 25 March 1807. But it’s impossible to watch the film without understanding that little has changed in the past two centuries. Actually, it’s worse now.
According to the International Labour Organisation, there are at least 12.5 million slaves on earth today (compared to 11 million in 1807). And other issues also demand a tenacious Christian response: injustice, persecution, debt, warmongering, climate change.
The slave trade
In the early 1700s the British Empire was the world leader in the slave trade, using a triangular route to carry European goods to Africa, where they were traded for slaves who were then transported to America. The fruits of slave labour - mainly sugar and cotton - were then brought back to Europe. In other words, slavery was the backbone of the entire Empire.
But Christians had a problem with this, believing that all men are created equal in the image of God. It certainly bothered William Wilberforce, an outspoken evangelical who struggled with a big decision: whether to join the clergy or remain in Parliament alongside his good friend William Pitt (who later became Britain’s youngest ever Prime Minister).
In 1787, Wilberforce finally agreed to take on the anti-slavery cause. Since he was neither part of the Government nor the opposition, he was in the perfect position to introduce more controversial legislation. But the other MPs weren’t buying it, arguing that stopping the slave trade would have a calamitous effect on the economy.
On the streets, though, Christians and many others joined the cause. It was the first major grass-roots campaign in British political history, as people signed petitions, wore bracelets and badges, and refused to use slave-produced sugar in their tea.
Even so, it took another 20 years for the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act to pass, requiring some extremely tricky political wrangling along the way. And a champion who refused to back down.
A political Christian
The filmmakers behind Amazing Grace (which opens nationwide on 23 March) carefully researched Wilberforce’s life. “This is a great moment in British history, and I wanted to make a film that showed how heroic and relevant politics can be,” says director Michael Apted, the veteran filmmaker behind such disparate projects as the 7 Up series (now looking at its subjects at age 49) and the Bond movie The World Is Not Enough.
“Wilberforce had a very strong moral drive, based on his religious beliefs,” he says, “but he moved in the real world and could form alliances with people he didn’t totally approve of, in order to get closer to his goal. He proved that although he was driven by a divine purpose to rid the world of this evil slave trade, to execute this mission he needed to be strong, worldly, smart and political - a combination of Christian visionary and skilled politician.”
Screenwriter Stephen Knight, who also wrote the immigration drama Dirty Pretty Things, admires Wilberforce’s tenacity: “He was a single-minded man who kept pursuing his goal and plucked success from the jaws of defeat. To most people at the time, the idea of abolishing the slave trace was ludicrous - like someone today suggesting that we abandon the internal combustion engine right now. At the same time, he was an eccentric. He had a house full of sick animals, and could never bring himself to fire any of his staff, so that by the time he was 50 he had a houseful of old servants, many of whom did nothing.”
In the film, as in history, Wilberforce surrounds himself with a scruffy bunch of earthy Christian activists. These were not respectable figures; they didn’t play by the rules of polite society. One of these was his mentor John Newton, who amassed a fortune as a slave trader until his dramatic conversion at age 45. “He later suffered a crisis of conscience and left the sea to enter the Church,” says Albert Finney, who plays Newton in the film. “There he remained and wrote over 200 hymns, including Amazing Grace.”
Another of Wilberforce’s colleagues was the shady minister Thomas Clarkson. Rufus Sewell plays him in the film, and describes him as a religious man who “hung out with the wrong types, because they would give him proof of the iniquities of the trade.”
Sewell observes, “People who do good are not necessarily all totally clean-cut and wholesome. The abolitionists were a very mixed bunch of individuals. This is a film about real human beings doing something good.
The legacy
The message of Wilberforce’s life is clear. Inaction is not an option; sympathy is not enough. Wilberforce knew that there must be protection under the law, and that as a Christian he had to stand up for justice, even if he was the only one.
Today we face the terrible legacy of exploiting the planet for commercial gain - economic oppression, racial intolerance, political chaos. But there are still champions standing up for what is right.
Churches Together in England is marking the anniversary of abolition with Set All Free, a campaign that aims remember the past and apply its lessons to tackle the legacies of trans-Atlantic slavery and its modern-day equivalents. Through education and awareness projects, Set All Free will use the arts, education, churches and networking.
Despite the fact that slavery is banned in most countries where it is practised, and prohibited by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the slave trade is flourishing throughout the world right now. Women from Eastern Europe are bonded into prostitution, children are trafficked between West African countries, and men are forced to work as slaves on South American agricultural estates. Contemporary slavery takes various forms and affects people regardless of age, sex or race.
Cecilia Flores-Oebanda was born into poverty in the Visayas, in central Philippines. As a child labourer, selling fish and scavenging, Cecilia started organising young people and agricultural workers. As a teenager, she began to demand rights and democracy at the height of the Marcos dictatorship, joining an insurgency movement against the regime, which led to her being imprisoned with her husband for four years.
During this time she had two of her children, who remained with her in the detention centre. After her release, she moved to Manila and began working on behalf of marginalised migrant workers. In 1991 Cecilia started Visayan Forum, working for the rights of hidden and vulnerable groups such as child domestic workers and trafficked women and children.
The organisation now has six regional offices and seven project areas at strategic locations around the highways and ports of the Philippines. Cecilia recognises the clear links between domestic work and human trafficking, as many cleaners and nannies migrate from rural areas to the cities and are vulnerable to traffickers. As well as selling children and women into domestic work, traffickers deceive women and girls into believing they will be employed as domestic workers, and then force them into prostitution.
Visayan Forum has developed partnerships with the ports authority and the coastguard to intercept boats carrying potential trafficking victims from the outlying islands to Manila or overseas to countries such as Japan or one of the Gulf States. Visayan Forum then gives them temporary shelter in their halfway houses and supports them in pursuing criminal cases and, where appropriate, in being returned home. Cecilia and her team are also lobbying their government for domestic workers’ rights.
Unlocking freedom
The Alliance is part of the global coalition Stop The Traffik, which is working to educate the public and challenge governments to action. At the heart of the campaign is the Global Declaration Card, and thousands of these cards, signed worldwide, will be delivered to the United Nations to pressurise governments to change their policies.
The initiative climaxes on Freedom Day, 25 March, celebrating the anniversary of the end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and taking on the challenge to work towards freedom from people trafficking today.
At the heart of Freedom Day will be tens of thousands of local events around the world organised by coalition members and supporters - non-government agencies, local charities, schools, businesses, clubs and faith groups. The idea is that each group should mark the day in a way appropriate to the locality, and Stop The Traffik is providing guide packs to organisers (see web address below).
One major event is the premiere of Cargo on 31 March in Hull City Hall. Acclaimed singer-songwriter Paul Field uses words, music, dance and images to tell the story of the abolitionists and to raise awareness of contemporary slavery and its links with poverty and unfair trade. Subtitled “The Fight for Freedom Past and Present”, the show will travel throughout the UK in 2007, challenging audiences to take a stand and make a difference.
Stop The Traffik encourages Christians to support anti-slavery projects in China, India, Cambodia, Philippines, Uganda, Haiti, Nepal, Estonia and Nigeria through fundraising events, awareness campaigns and political advocacy.
Stirring interest
These campaigns have already seen results, as people begin to recognise the wide range of issues involved in modern-day slavery. The film Amazing Grace tells a key part of this story, marking an important anniversary and bringing an historical relevance to the issue. It also stresses how important it is for evangelicals to take a stand on the issues.
And there are other films that address these themes, and can be powerful tools in stirring public interest. The Oscar-nominated Blood Diamond includes a main plot thread about a young boy kidnapped from his family and forced into becoming a soldier in West Africa. British documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield’s Ghosts centres on a Chinese immigrant who becomes trapped in England, working for low wages to pay off a huge debt to her traffickers. The pointed political comedy Fast Food Nation includes a plot strand about migrant workers smuggled across the Mexican-US border and exploited by “coyotes” in America. And German filmmaker Marco Kreuzpaintner’s Trade, starring Kevin Kline, tells a gruelling story of kidnapping set in the global human cargo network.
Christian groups are already using these films, as well as a large number of books published on the subject, to draw attention to the issues and take the challenge to government officials around the world. Inaction still isn’t an option; sympathy is still not enough. Two centuries after the slave trade was officially abolished, our work has only begun
Take it further...
Stop The Traffik: www.stopthetraffik.org
Churches Together: www.setallfree.net
Cargo: www.paulfield.com/cargo
Amazing Grace: www.amazinggracemovie.com
Today’s abolitionists: www.antislavery.org
