Review of Amazing Grace

official website
Christianity Today bio of William Wilberforce

I don't know how faithful the movie is to history, but even if it isn't inspiring (and I think it is, but only to a point), it is clean and family-friendly. Are any of his speeches extant? It would be nice if some of those were actually used in the movie, but I don't know if they were.

The changes in fashion style seemed to be historically correct, at least. If Wilberforce had a "fine singing voice," perhaps they should have replaced Ioan Gruffudd's voice with a dub. When I was watching the movie, I did not think of his Horatio Hornblower too much--only for certain poses and facial expressions.

Because of his friendship with William Wilberforce, I'd like to read more about William Pitt the Younger. As far as I know, the ending is made-up--if the act of Parliament that is shown is the Abolition of Slavery Act. This act was not passed only in 1833, when Wilberforce was already on his death-bed.


Mr. Peter Linebaugh calls the movie a self-congratulatory whitewash. Two criticisms:

The two historical faults with the movie are first it does not show us that the English abolitionist movement owed its beginning, its thrust, and its ending to the activity of the slaves themselves. The second fault is that it does not consider the historical proposition that the abolition of the slave trade could only succeed at the moment in economic development when other sources of exploitation became available to English capital, namely, the working class in England. Now, those are themes of tragedy.

So the movie did not show the origins of the British abolitionist movement. It's focused on William Wilberforce and what he did in order to bring about legislation banning slavery. It does acknowledge that there were others working for abolition. But was slavery rendered obsolete by cheap labor pool at home? As far as I know, slaves were involved in the production of sugar in overseas territories, not in the U.K. -- so how is the article making a valid criticism? There doesn't seem to be a direct connection between the two. Mr. Linebaugh does not defend the second point. Who replaced the slaves in the territories? Who did the work there? Freed slaves? Or was the labor pool in the UK used to do this work instead, with the raw materials being shipped to the UK? (Unlikely since sugar cane would have spoiled during the voyage back?) Perhaps that is what happened, but an assertion that this was the case would have made his argument complete, and it needed to have been said. Perhaps the freed slaves were exploited.

However, according to one website:

In the West Indies the economic results of the Act were disastrous. The islands depended on the sugar trade which in turn depended on slave labour. Ultimately, the planters were unable to make the West Indies the thriving centres of trade which they had been in the eighteenth century.

So it is not at all clear to me that the second point is defensible.

Mr. Linebaugh does point out that slavery was a means of financing Empire-building:

What passes for 'the civilization of the west', to use the traditional but absurd phrase, is the direct result of the unpaid labors of millions of African proletarians, a fact so fundamental that it is the beginning of all modern history as Franz Fanon taught us long ago, and hence of our understanding of the world. The movie reduces this fact to the sugar cube. However, this historical premise of modernity applied to all European wealth and treasure because wealth in one form quickly turned to other forms by the alchemy of trade and money. Thus that sugar and rum, that tobacco and coffee, the staple products of the slave's labor on plantations, was transmuted into the infrastructure - the bricks and mortar, the bridges and roads, the ports and factories of the industrial revolution, and these in turn were represented by stocks and bonds, by paper and debentures, and the chits of the gambling table.

I don't have a problem with this claim. And who would deny that workers in industrial Britain were not exploited? But it underscores the difficulty of changing British society, and rather than supporting his criticism of Wilberforce, it excuses Wilbeforce's inability to accomplish more. Mr. Linebaugh writes:

The name of William Wilberforce became a by-word for liberation in the Caribbean islands thousands of miles away, but at home in industrial Yorkshire his name was a synonym for prudery and political repression. Say his name with a West Indian intonation - William Wilberfarce.

So Mr. Linebaugh prefers that Wilberforce would have been more like Thomas Clarkson [wiki] (played by Rufus Sewell in the movie)? In the movie Clarkson was very much enamored with revolution and what it had accomplished in America, and enthusiastic about rumblings in France--he was dedicated to a more egalitarian society and improving the lot of workers as well as slaves. One of the Mps even calls him a Jacobin. Wilberforce cautioned him, since this was dangerous talk and Wilberforce was loyal to the King as a legitimate authority. Later, after the excesses of the French Revolution (what's a little blood, if it's all in the name of a more perfect justice?), one should not be surprised if the ruling powers in the United Kingdom were suspicious of the working classes, and would have used its military to suppress any uprising.

I do not know if the real Clarkson was as concerned as the movie Clarkson with the poor and the working classes in the UK; still, the movie does offer a justification for what Peter Linebaugh calls "political repression." Perhaps Mr. Linebaugh is a Marxist who is impatient for justice and reform; he might also be anti-Christian. What he needs to understand is the necessity of political prudence for those trying to bring about lasting change in a given society. Mr. Linebaugh dimisses gradual change as an excuse by the powers that be to do nothing. No doubt he would not be sympathetic to the inability of Christians to end slavery in the Roman Empire quickly. But that would only show that he does not understand human limitations, and nothing is more dangerous than an unrealistic political idealist, as the history of the 20th century shows.

What could have been done to help the poor and the workers in 19th ce Britain? After all, their situation had worsened ever since the landgrabs made by Henry VIII and the "nobility."

And then there is the criticism of Wilberforce's prudery and advocacy of a strict sexual morality.

As the head of Society for the Suppression of Vice he opposed stage dancers, ballad singers, gingerbread fairs, nude swimming, and favored imprisonment for adultery. In 1802 alone the Society clocked 623 prosecutions for Sabbath-breaking.

How terrible! Trying to reform the mores of English society. Now perhaps sexual vices may not be as important as injustice--but what could have been done about a bad economic-political system? Especially within Parliament, with all the forces that would have been arrayed against any such move. Eventually some laws were passed, were they not? But that would not be enough for a Marxist. They would not be enough for a Christian, either, but a good Christian recognizes his limitations.

The movie shows that the Quakers and certain Christian preachers (Evangelical?) were active in opposing slavery. But were they working to convert their neighbors to Christianity? Or were they more like "liberal Protestants" working only to bring about changes in conformity with a "social Gospel" (or "social justice" as certain Catholics understand the program)? Wilberforce was (probably) a devout Christian, but did he understand that he needed to convert his neighbors in order to bring about real change? Or did he instead think that his vocation as a politician was to work for justice and the common good, in so far as it was possible for him to do so, even if his program of reform appears to us now to be just band-aid solutions? The only lasting solution to Empire and an unjust economic system is metanoia... not violent revolution as a Marxist (or Peter Linebaugh) would hold. (Even if that revolution is successful, and there is no indication that it would have been in 19th ce Britain.)