Slavery Abolition Act

The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 ( 3 & 4 Will. 4. c. 73) was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which abolished slavery in the British Empire by way of compensated emancipation. The act was legislated by Whig Prime Minister Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey's reforming administration, and it was enacted by ordering the British government to purchase the freedom of all slaves in the British Empire, and by outlawing the further practice of slavery in the British Empire. The act was repealed in 1998 as a part of a broader restructuring of English statute law, though slavery remains abolished.

Background

In May 1772, Lord Mansfield's judgment in the ''Somerset'' case emancipated a slave who had been brought to England from Boston in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, and thus helped launch the movement to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire. The case ruled that slavery had no legal status in England as it had no common law or statutory law basis, and as such someone could not legally be a slave in England. However, many campaigners, including Granville Sharp, took the view that the ''ratio decidendi'' of the ''Somerset'' case meant that slavery was unsupported by law within England and that no ownership could be exercised on slaves entering English or Scottish soil. Ignatius Sancho, who in 1774 became the first known person of African descent to vote in a British general election, wrote a letter in 1778 that opens in praise of Britain for its "freedom, and for the many blessings I enjoy in it", before criticizing the actions towards his black brethren in parts of the Empire such as the West Indies.

Campaigns

By 1783, an anti-slavery movement to abolish the slave trade throughout the Empire had begun among the British public, with the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade being established in 1787. The Wedgwood anti-slavery medallion by Josiah Wedgwood, was, according to the BBC, "the most famous image of a black person in all of 18th-century art". Fellow abolitionist Thomas Clarkson wrote: "Of the ladies several wore them in bracelets, and others had them fitted up in an ornamental manner as pins for their hair. At length, the taste for wearing them became general; and thus fashion, which usually confines itself to worthless things, was seen for once in the honourable office of promoting the cause of justice, humanity and freedom."

Spurred by an incident involving Chloe Cooley, a slave woman brought to Canada by an American loyalist, the Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, tabled the Act Against Slavery in 1793. Passed by the local Legislative Assembly, it was the first legislation to outlaw the slave trade in a part of the British Empire. By the late 18th century, Britain was simultaneously the largest slave trader and centre of the largest abolitionist movement. William Wilberforce had written in his diary in 1787 that his great purpose in life was to suppress the slave trade before waging a 20-year fight on the industry.

Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act 1807 ( 47 Geo. 3 Sess. 1. c. 36), which outlawed the international slave trade, but not slavery itself. The legislation was timed to coincide with the expected Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves by the United States, Britain's chief rival in maritime commerce. This legislation imposed fines that did little to deter slave trade participants. Abolitionist Henry Brougham realised that trading had continued, and as a new MP successfully introduced the Slave Trade Felony Act 1811 ( 51 Geo. 3. c. 23) which at last made the overseas slave trade a felony throughout the empire. The Royal Navy established the West Africa Squadron to suppress the Atlantic slave trade by patrolling the coast of West Africa. It did suppress the slave trade, but did not stop it entirely. Between 1808 and 1860, the West Africa Squadron captured 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans. They resettled many in Jamaica and the Bahamas. Britain also used its influence to coerce other countries to agree to treaties to end their slave trade and allow the Royal Navy to seize their slave ships.

Between 1807 and 1823, abolitionists showed little interest in abolishing slavery itself. Eric Williams presented economic data in ''Capitalism and Slavery'' to show that the slave trade itself generated only small profits compared to the much more lucrative sugar plantations of the Caribbean, and therefore slavery continued to thrive on those estates. However, from 1823 the British Caribbean sugar industry went into terminal decline, and the British parliament no longer felt they needed to protect the economic interests of the West Indian sugar planters.

In 1823, the Anti-Slavery Society was founded in London. Members included Joseph Sturge, Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce, Henry Brougham, Thomas Fowell Buxton, Elizabeth Heyrick, Mary Lloyd, Jane Smeal, Elizabeth Pease, and Anne Knight. Jamaican mixed-race campaigners such as Louis Celeste Lecesne and Richard Hill were also members of the Anti-Slavery Society.

During the Christmas holiday of 1831, a large-scale slave revolt in Jamaica, known as the Baptist War, broke out. It was organised originally as a peaceful strike by the Baptist minister Samuel Sharpe. The rebellion was suppressed by the militia of the Jamaican plantocracy and the British garrison ten days later in early 1832. Because of the loss of property and life in the 1831 rebellion, the British Parliament held two inquiries. The results of these inquiries contributed greatly to the abolition of slavery with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.

Up until then, sugar planters from rich British islands such as the Colony of Jamaica and Barbados were able to buy rotten and pocket boroughs, and they were able to form a body of resistance to moves to abolish slavery itself. This West India Lobby, which later evolved into the West India Committee, purchased enough seats to be able to resist the overtures of abolitionists. However, the Reform Act 1832 swept away their rotten borough seats, clearing the way for a majority of members of the House of Commons to push through a law to abolish slavery itself throughout the British Empire.

The act

The act passed its second reading in the House of Commons unopposed on 22 July 1833, just a week before William Wilberforce died. It received royal assent a month later, on 28 August, and came into force the following year, on 1 August 1834. In practical terms, only slaves below the age of six were freed in the colonies. Former slaves over the age of six were redesignated as "apprentices", and their servitude was gradually abolished in two stages: the first set of apprenticeships came to an end on 1 August 1838, while the final apprenticeships were scheduled to cease on 1 August 1840. The act specifically excluded "the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company, or to the Island of Ceylon, or to the Island of Saint Helena." The exceptions were eliminated in 1843 with the Indian Slavery Act, 1843.

Payments to slave owners

The act provided for compensation to slave-owners, but not to slaves. The amount of money to be spent on the payments was set at "the Sum of Twenty Million Pounds Sterling". Under the terms of the act, the British government raised £20 million to pay out for the loss of the slaves as business assets to the registered owners of the freed slaves. In 1833, £20 million amounted to 40% of the Treasury's annual income or approximately 5% of British GDP at the time. To finance the payments, the British government took on a £15 million loan, finalised on 3 August 1835, with banker Nathan Mayer Rothschild and his brother-in-law Moses Montefiore; £5 million was paid out directly in government stock, worth £1.5 billion in present day.

There have been claims the money was not paid back by the British taxpayers until 2015, however this claim is based on a technicality as to how the British Government financed their debt though undated gilts. According to the Treasury the 1837 slave debts were subsumed into a consolidated 4% loan issued in 1927 (maturing in 1957 or after). It was only when the British government modernised the gilt portfolio in 2015 by redeeming all remaining undated gilts was there complete certainty that the debt was extinguished. The long gap between this money being borrowed and certainty of repayment was due to the type of financial instrument that was used, rather than the amount of money borrowed. Regardless, this does not contradict the fact that, in practical terms, taxpayer's money serviced the debt originated from the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.

Half of the money went to slave-owning families in the Caribbean and Africa, while the other half went to absentee owners living in Britain. The names listed in the returns for slave owner payments show that ownership was spread over many hundreds of British families, many of them (though not all) of high social standing. For example, Henry Phillpotts (then the Bishop of Exeter), with three others (as trustees and executors of the will of John Ward, 1st Earl of Dudley), was paid £12,700 for 665 slaves in the West Indies, whilst Henry Lascelles, 2nd Earl of Harewood received £26,309 for 2,554 slaves on six plantations. The majority of men and women who were paid under the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 are listed in a Parliamentary Return, entitled Slavery Abolition Act, which is an account of all moneys awarded by the Commissioners of Slave Compensation in the ''Parliamentary Papers'' 1837–8 (215) vol. 48.

A successor organisation to the Anti-Slavery Society was formed in London in 1839, the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which worked to outlaw slavery worldwide. The world's oldest international human rights organisation, it continues today as Anti-Slavery International.Anti-Slavery International
UNESCO. Retrieved 12 October 2011.

In popular culture

Ava DuVernay was commissioned by the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture to create a film which debuted at the museum's opening on 24 September 2016. This film, ''28 August: A Day in the Life of a People'', tells of six significant events in African-American history that happened on the same date, 28 August. Events depicted include (among others) William IV's royal assent to the Slavery Abolition Act.

''Amazing Grace'' is a 2006 British-American biographical drama film directed by Michael Apted, about the campaign against the slave trade in the British Empire, led by William Wilberforce, who was responsible for steering anti-slave trade legislation through the British parliament. The title is a reference to the 1772 hymn "Amazing Grace". The film also recounts the experiences of John Newton as a crewman on a slave ship and subsequent religious conversion, which inspired his writing of the poem later used in the hymn. Newton is portrayed as a major influence on Wilberforce and the abolition movement.

The act is referenced in the 2010 novel '' The Long Song'' by British author Andrea Levy and in the 2018 BBC television adaptation of the same name. The novel and television series tell the story of a slave in colonial Jamaica who lives through the period of slavery abolition in the British West Indies.

See also

* 1926 Slavery Convention,
* Act Against Slavery
* Blockade of Africa
* Brussels Conference Act of 1890
* Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery
* Compensated emancipation
* Indian Slavery Act, 1843
* Slave Trade Acts
* Slavery in Britain
* Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
* Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom

Notes

References

Further reading

* Drescher, Seymour. ''Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery'' (2009)
* Hinks, Peter, and John McKivigan, eds. ''Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition'' (2 vol. 2006)
* Huzzey, Richard. ''Freedom Burning: Anti-Slavery and Empire in Victorian Britain''. (Cornell University Press, 2012) 303pp.
* Washington, Jon-Michael. "Ending the Slave Trade and Slavery in the British Empire: An Explanatory Case Study Utilizing Qualitative Methodology and Stratification and Class Theories." (2012 NCUR) (2013)
online

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External links

Legacies of British slave-ownership
is a database of the Parliamentary return of people who made claims for compensation under this act

{{Authority control

United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 1833
Repealed United Kingdom Acts of Parliament
Abolitionism in the United Kingdom
Slavery legislation
Slave trade legislation
August 1833
Black British history
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey