A book on the life of William Wilbeforce has been reissued to mark 200th anniversary of abolition of slave trade - and to coincide with the release of the new film, Amazing Grace
God’s Politician by Garth Lean
Reviewed by Michael Smith
Garth Lean’s book, reissued by Darton, Longman and Todd, is probably the best light introduction to the life of William Wilberforce.
In 174 pages, he tells the moving and gripping story of Wilberforce's 20-year campaign in parliament to abolish the slave trade. Its abolition, 200 years ago this March, 2007, was a turning point in the affairs of the world. It cut across all the vested economic and political interests of the age.
It was one of the most shameful periods of British and European imperial history. African slaves were treated as "goods and chattels"; the captain of the slave ship Zong threw 132 slaves overboard after 60 had died of disease on board; and in Jamaica slaves outnumbered whites by 16 to one.
The profits from such exploitation were huge, the deaths were appalling and the numbers of slaves shipped across the Atlantic were vast: an estimated three million by Britain alone.
Abolition might never have happened if Wilberforce had not undergone a profound Christian conversion. He was the rising star in the political firmament and the close friend of the Prime Minister, William Pitt. He could have become Prime Minister himself.
Instead, he felt that God had laid on him two great tasks: the abolition of slavery and the 'reformation of manners', or morals, in British public life, which was rife with corruption and sleaze.
Wilberforce knew that in undertaking such a calling he was sacrificing the top political job: those who conspired against him would see to that.
Lean tells how Wilberforce came to his new conviction and the people who influenced him, including the former slave ship captain John Newton who, after his own conversion, was to write the hymn Amazing Grace.
Wilberforce would never had done it alone, and Lean's book—first published in 1980 and just reissued in an attractive edition—tells of the 'Clapham saints', in parliament and churches, and including former slaves, who worked together strategically.
In his foreword, Jim Wallis, the author of God's Politics and President of Sojourners/Call to Renewal in Washington DC, writes that "Wilberforce profoundly changed the political and social climate of his time." He hopes that Lean's book "will inspire this generation of Christians to reunite faith and social justice in our time".
The book is published to coincide with the release of the new film, Amazing Grace, about the life of Wilberforce, starring Ioan Gruffudd, Albert Finney, Michael Gambon and Youssou N'Dour.
And what are the equivalent issues for today? Wallis says that "Today a new generation of evangelical students and pastors is coming of age. Their concerns are the slavery of poverty, sex trafficking, the environment, human rights, genocide in Dafur, and the ethics of war and peace."
At the book's relaunch, Geoffrey Lean, the author's son, who is the Environment Editor of the Independent on Sunday, said that the Jubilee 2000 debt relief campaigners were the inheritors of the Wilberforce spirit. And that sleaze was not unknown in British politics today.
He might have added that saving the planet from global warming, which challenges our lifestyles and in which everyone can play their part, is also in the Wilberforce tradition. Like the abolition of slavery, it cuts across vested political and economic interests. The selfishness of Western consumerism and the gap between the world's rich and poor are certainly unsustainable. As Al Gore writes in An Inconvenient Truth, the climate crisis is "a moral and spiritual challenge".
God's Politician, by Garth Lean Darton, Longman and Todd, 2007 £10.95; ISBN: 0 232 52690 7
English