It is hard to improve the world even when it should be obvious that the world needs to improve. When things look bad it may be helpful to look at history to observe people fighting injustices that most of us can, thankfully, only imagine. Campaigners in history saw plenty of occasions when it seemed like success would be elusive, but the world we see is immeasurable better thanks to the efforts of many people we will never know the names of. Social change will always face setbacks. When these happen, it is important not to think that the world can’t get better. Any delay is a tragedy but that doesn’t mean that things won’t get better if people continue to work on it.
Ending Slavery
Adam Hochschild wrote a fascinating history of the British anti-slavery movement of the late 18th and early 19th century. Of course, these people were very different to us. Still, you can see ways they resemble us. There were great organizers who proved vital to keeping the movement going. There was the slightly strange man who probably seemed wildly eccentric but on the big picture question he was 100% right. There was the man who had the thought that someone should do something about slavery before he realized that it had better be him. There was the figurehead who had the right religion, good connections, and high social status. He got much of the credit for the success, rather than the (often unnamed) free men, women, and religious non-conformists. Is that fair? Not really but who cares as long as it happened?
Businesspeople were heavily involved in the campaign to end slavery. The famous pendant below is from Josiah Wedgwood. (You can still buy Wedgwood items. I’ve really have liked the aesthetic and so wouldn’t advise it). A major tool in the struggle against slavery was a boycott of West Indian (Caribbean) sugar which was harvested by enslaved people. This industry boycott was vital to progress in this historical example. Of course, this means any suggestion that business getting involved in social issues is completely new, something invented by the woke 21st century, is obviously pretty bizarre.
Gradualism Versus Dramatic Change
A major tactical challenge comes in what to aim for first. The debate was whether to push for an end to slavery or an end to the slave trade. Ending the trade, the thinking went, would lead to the eventual abolition of slavery. To be fair to the campaigners they all seem to have seen ending the slave trade as merely a practical step first step. It they could have they would have got more but they initially were pragmatic and went to stop the slave trade. In the end they achieved their initial goal, even this was completely against the expectations of most.
Setting intermediate goals can seem odd when the case is a moral one. You wouldn’t feel comfortable banning only some forms of murder as an intermediary step. As such, banning the slave trade while leaving slavery is morally uncomfortable. Gradualism can be effective though — it is after all better to make steps on the road than never getting going. Still gradualism can risk shooting too low and even seeming pretty absurd. In the early 19th century, there was “The Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Dominions”. It does feel that if you have gradual in the title when abolishing the hideous crime of slavery you perhaps aren’t aiming high enough.
Social Change Will Always Face Setbacks
One of the most important lessons is that the battle against slavery wasn’t a straight line of success. After the US gained independence (1783) there was radicalism in the air in Britain. Public opinion turned sharply in favor of abolition in the late 1780s/early 1790s. It seemed like success would be delivered soon.
Then it all went wrong. The French Revolution turned scary to the people of property who made laws in the UK. The French proclaimed an end to slavery and made the British anti-slavery movement seem a bit treacherous. The state turned against anyone advocating for change. The full apparatus of the state was used to stifle dissent, and repression was the order of the day. In the late 1790s it seemed like nothing would ever change.
Things Could Only Get Better
Then it changed again. France under Napoleon decided liberty wasn’t its thing anymore. Haiti gained its independence from France, taking away the argument that their French rivals would just fill the British shoes if Britain abolished their slave trade. The anti-slavery movement bounced back. It channeled patriotism to ban foreign slave ships in 1806, and by 1807 the British slave trade was over. (As was the US international slave trade just a year later). What had seemed completely impossible in the scary days of the mid 1790s, abolishing the slave trade, was achieved in just a decade.
Strangely those who had opposed the ban flipped and became supporters. If the British West India interests (slavers) couldn’t trade slaves, then they were determined that neither could their competitors from France and other nations.
Having fought the abolitionists bitterly for two decades, the West India [pro-slavery] interests now also lobbied hard for enforcement of the ban.
Hochschild (2006)
It Looked Like It Couldn’t Happen Until It Did
Abolishing slavery in British dominions took another generation (and some unpleasant compromises) but the campaigners succeeded quicker than most could have imagined in the 1780s.
The lesson: Social change will always face setbacks. If a cause is right then temporary setbacks are a tragedy, but they shouldn’t stop the work. Sometimes things can improve surprisingly quickly when times look bleak.
Read: Adam Hochschild (2006) Bury The Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves, Harper Collins Publishers
