Not just William ; Wilberforce has traditionally been given much of the credit for the abolition of slavery, but a new biography points out that many other activists - and the slaves themselves - also played a part: [1ST Edition]

William Wilberforce

By William Hague

Harper Press [pound]25

William Hague's biography of his fellow Yorkshireman, William Wilberforce, arrives a little too late to join in with all the commemorations of the bicentenary, back in February, of Britain's abolition of its Atlantic slave trade in 1807. Perhaps this is just as well. The focus of many of the commemorative events this spring seems to have tried deliberately to avoid being labelled as a "Wilberfest", and in so doing has moved beyond the traditional concentration on Wilberforce as the prime advocate of abolition in Parliament to wider consideration of the part played by many other hardworking activists for the cause.

The decisive role of the Quakers, and of individuals such as Elizabeth Heyrick, who argued for speedier tactics to bring about abolition in place of the gradualism of the Westminster approach, and who grasped the importance of pressure-group politics, especially among women, are now properly given their due. And, of course, the revolts of the slaves themselves, most of all the massive, bloody but successful 1791 uprising in Haiti led by "the black Napoleon" Toussaint L'Ouverture, were for a long time patron- isingly overlooked by white historians, but are increasingly regarded as having hastened not only the abolition of the slave trade, but to have also brought about the end, within the British Empire, of slavery itself, in 1833, as Wilberforce lay dying.

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