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Brian Griffiths, William Hague and Peter Lilley on William Wilberforce
February 2001
by Brian Griffiths, William Hague and Peter Lilley
given at Various
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The full texts of the CCF's annual Wilberforce Address can be accessed by clicking the links at the bottom of this page. On this page we have taken extracts from the addresses by Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach (2000), William Hague (1998) and Peter Lilley (1997) that refer directly to the life and example of William Wilberforce. These extracts are printed below in chronological order.
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Peter Lilley on William Wilberforce: October 1997
I accepted your invitation above all because this lecture is dedicated to William Wilberforce. The name evoked potent memories from my early childhood which for years have lain dormant although, I hope, seminal. Most summers, my parents would take me for a walk across the common a few miles from our home, ending at the Wilberforce Oak. There my father would tell me that beneath this tree the young William Pitt had persuaded another young man called William Wilberforce to devote himself to the abolition of the slave trade. It made a deep impression upon me:
· That two young men could set themselves such a noble ambition;
· That such a vile institution as slavery should ever have existed;
· That, as my father explained, slavery had defaced every civilisation that ever existed, but at least we could proudly claim to be the first to have abolished it.
Wilberforce's life is certainly an inspiring story with potent lessons for today:
· First, that faith and ideas are more powerful than numbers; one man's faith could mobilise a whole nation's conscience. As the Old Testament says, "One can chase a thousand. Two can put to flight ten thousand."
· Second, that a belief in human liberty should be fundamental to our whole vision of the world, and is deeply rooted in Christian principles.
· And, third, that freedom is not just about achieving economic prosperity, as those on the right sometimes seem to suggest (though it clearly is the most effective system). Still less is freedom a luxury that can only be granted once basic material needs have been catered for, as the left often argue. Far from taking a patronising view that slaves would not be able to cope with liberty, Wilberforce believed the underdog needs liberty more than anyone else.
Joshua Wedgwood produced a wonderful 'tract' in pottery for the abolitionist cause. It shows a negro slave holding up his manacled hands, surrounded by the words, "Am I not a Man and Brother?". Shatter those chains and the black man is every bit the equal of his white brother. The true value of freedom is that it unites the human family in dignity.
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William Hague on William Wilberforce: November 1998
While it would be wrong to claim Wilberforce exclusively for the Conservative Party, he was a man of conservative instincts with a profound reverence for the institutions of this country, especially for Parliament.
He was a man of whom we can genuinely say that he changed the course of human history and did so for the better. He was a formidable politician and, perhaps you will allow me to say, a great Yorkshireman, born in Hull and Member of Parliament for that city and later for the county itself.
William Pitt said of Wilberforce that he possessed 'the greatest natural eloquence of all the men I ever knew'. Gladstone recalled his 'silvery tones' in old age. Wilberforce could more than hold his own in debate, whether in the House of Commons or on the most rumbustuous election hustings in Yorkshire.
He did not cut an imposing figure but could use eloquence, tact and withering sarcasm to tremendous effect. James Boswell, who stood in driving rain to hear Wilberforce speak in Castle Yard in York in 1784, wrote that he 'saw what seemed a mere shrimp mount upon the table; but as I listened, he grew, and grew, until the shrimp became a whale'.
His career has an epic quality: his friendship with Pitt, his conversion to evangelical Christianity, his relentless dedication to the abolition of the slave trade and slavery, regardless of the powerful vested interests ranged against him, or of the toll on his personal health. Long years of unsuccessful campaigning eventually bore fruit in the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and there is a sense of poetic fulfilment about his death in 1833, just three days after the Emancipation Bill had finally passed through the House of Commons.
Though Wilberforce never held office in a government and though he had left the House of Commons more than eight years before his death, both Lords and Commons suspended business for his funeral. The Lord Chancellor and the Speaker were among his pallbearers. It was a tribute both to his achievements themselves and to the fact that Wilberforce, more than any other man in his generation, exemplified in his life how to translate a religious calling into political action.
After his conversion Wilberforce actually considered quitting politics for the Church, but after intense reflection he came to believe that God had a clear purpose for him. 'My walk,' he said, 'is a public one. My business is in the world; and I must mix in the assemblies of men, or quit the post which Providence seems to have assigned me'.
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Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach on William Wilberforce: November 2000
William Wilberforce stands out in British history as one of the great social reformers of the nineteenth century. Although he is associated in the public mind with the campaigns to abolish the slave trade and then slavery itself, he took up many other causes, such as penal reform, medical aid for the poor, education for the deaf, restrictions on the use of child labour, an improvement in the conditions of the Poor Law and the reform of morals. Such was the respect in which he was held that when he died, both Houses of Parliament suspended business to enable members to attend his funeral, and among the pallbearers were the Speaker and the Lord Chancellor.
The memorial to him in Westminster Abbey states that in an age and country where there were many great and good men, he was among the foremost of those who fixed the character of his times, not simply because of his high and various talents, his warm benevolence and his universal candour, but also because of the abiding eloquence of a Christian life. At the age of twenty six he experienced a religious conversion, which influenced his life and thinking, and especially his approach to politics, which from that time on was taken up with a commitment to remedy injustice, to help the poor and to strengthen moral standards.
He was a member of the House of Commons for nearly fifty years, though he stood as an independent and not as a Tory because he believed that the concept of party was divisive. Despite his rejection of a party label he was a close friend and supporter of the Prime Minister William Pitt, and his views on most political issues would have put him firmly in the camp of someone whom today we would call a conservative.
Related links
Tim Montgomerie, CCF Director, on William Wilberforce
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