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William Wilberforce
Historical figureUnited Kingdom1759-1833

William Wilberforce

Parliamentary leader of the campaign against the slave trade · MP for Hull (1780-1784)

Evangelical Yorkshire MP who led the long parliamentary fight that ended the British slave trade in 1807, and who also campaigned for religious and moral reform at home.

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Profile on 12 axes5 of 12 documented
ECONOMYSTATESOCIETYWORLDOwnershipMarketsWelfareAuthoritySecurityStructureMoralityReligionTechnologyCultureTradeForeign
Where they stood

William Wilberforce, axis by axis

  1. 01OwnershipNo clear record
    PublicPrivate
  2. 02MarketsNo clear record
    PlannedFree
  3. 03WelfareNo clear record
    SharedSelf-reliant

    He was generous in charity and backed reform for factory workers and chimney sweeps, yet he opposed combinations of workers. The record is too mixed to score, and economic and foreign policy were not the center of his career.

  4. 04Authority+10
    DemocraticStrong leader

    He sat as an independent MP and favored limited parliamentary reform, but he feared radical and revolutionary movements. The score is near the middle.

  5. 05Security+50
    LibertyOrder

    He sided with the 1799 anti-union law and with the Six Acts limiting public meetings, and he resisted an inquiry into Peterloo. But he also wanted better prisons and fewer capital crimes. The score is toward order.

  6. 06StructureNo clear record
    LocalCentral
  7. 07Morality+85
    ProgressiveTraditional

    His aim was a national reform of manners and morals. That led to a 1787 royal proclamation against vice and to a society to suppress it, and he is scored strongly traditional.

  8. 08Religion+85
    SecularReligious
  9. 09TechnologyNo clear record
    EmbraceCaution
  10. 10Culture+30
    MulticulturalNational identity

    He opposed slavery and spoke against racial prejudice in British rule over India, but he also worked to send Christian missionaries there and condemned some Hindu practices. This gives a mild lean toward one national culture.

  11. 11TradeNo clear record
    GlobalProtected
  12. 12Foreign policyNo clear record
    CooperationStrength

7 axes have no clear record, so matching leaves them out.

Who was William Wilberforce?

William Wilberforce came from Hull, where his father was a rich merchant, and was born in 1759. His time at Cambridge brought a lasting friendship with the future prime minister William Pitt the Younger. Hull elected him to Parliament at 21, and in 1784 he took the larger seat of Yorkshire. An evangelical conversion in 1785 changed his aims. By 1787 he saw his calling as ending the slave trade and cleaning up the nation's morals. With Thomas Clarkson and the Clapham Sect he put forward a first abolition bill in 1791. Repeated defeats followed, and the Slave Trade Act only passed in 1807. He then supported full emancipation, gave up his seat in 1825 and died in July 1833, just after MPs approved ending slavery across most of the Empire.

Political views

  • He was the leading voice in the Commons against the British slave trade, which was outlawed by the 1807 Act.Source: bbc.co.uk
  • By 1823 he was calling slavery a national crime and saying that full emancipation was a moral duty.Source: en.wikipedia.org
  • He helped start moral reform groups, such as one to suppress vice and another to promote stricter observance of Sunday.Source: bbc.co.uk
  • He pushed to have Christian missionaries admitted to British India.Source: bbc.co.uk
  • In domestic politics he defended a 1799 law aimed at trade unions and accepted the Six Acts of 1819, which curbed public meetings.Source: en.wikipedia.org
  • He built public support through petitions, pamphlets and religious magazines, methods that later became routine in British politics.Source: ebsco.com

Legacy

The anti-slavery cause had no more famous voice in Parliament than Wilberforce, and he rests in Westminster Abbey. Admirers see an example of reform driven by faith. They add that he also backed better prisons, kinder treatment of animals and schools for the poor. Critics of his own time, among them William Cobbett and William Hazlitt, charged him with caring about enslaved people far away while backing the repression of workers and radicals in Britain. Some later historians, such as Eric Williams, held that economic change did more than moral campaigning to end the trade. His sons' biography has also been faulted for downplaying the role of Thomas Clarkson.

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William Wilberforce: questions

What is William Wilberforce famous for?

For about twenty years he led the fight in Parliament to end the British slave trade, which succeeded with the Slave Trade Act of 1807. Later he supported ending slavery itself, which Parliament voted for in 1833.

Was William Wilberforce a Whig or a Tory?

Neither, in a strict sense. He sat as an independent, first for Hull and later for Yorkshire. He was close to Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger and generally backed him.

Did Wilberforce support workers' rights?

Not in general. He argued for the 1799 law against trade unions and approved the Six Acts. He did support some reforms, such as for factory workers and chimney sweeps.

Sources