SHINING A BRIGHT LIGHT ON SLAVERY

02-11-2009

Cllr Mullaney, Stephanie Hightower and Cllr Hendricks and at the unveiling of the John Bright statue.

Last week, a statute was unveiled to former Birmingham MP John Bright, who gives his name to slightly sleazy street in the city centre. But as Councillor Martin Mullaney reveals, he was also the man who persuaded Abraham Lincoln to abolish slavery.

On 23rd October, a statue to John Bright MP was unveiled inside Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. The statue was jointly unveiled by Councillor Ernie Hendricks who campaigned for this statue to be put back on display; Bill Cash MP whose great grandfather was a first cousin of John Bright and Stephanie Hightower, President of the USA athletics and field team.

John Bright was admired by President Abraham Lincoln. Indeed Lincoln described John Bright as “the friend of our country, and of freedom everywhere”. It was John Bright who stopped Britain from supporting the Confederates in the US Civil War and his letters to US Senator Charles Sumner were regularly read out to Lincoln. It was through this correspondence, that John Bright persuaded Lincoln to support freedom for all slaves across the USA which resulted in the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862.

With John Bright’s close links to the USA, it was therefore only appropriate that a representative of the USA helped unveil this statue in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

John Bright was the Liberal MP for Birmingham from 1858 until his death in 1889. Prior to 1858, he had been MP for Manchester.

This statue was original unveiled in 1888 and an exact replica exists in the Parliament, London. After decades of being in a Council storage facility, this it has now being restored and cleaned ready for the 200th anniversary of the birth of John Bright in 2011. It is back in its original position in the Museum at the top of the main stairs.

John Bright MP is recognised as one of the three greatest orators in the mid-Victorian period. The other two being Gladstone and Disraeli. In fact, John Bright came up with the term “England, the mother of Parliaments”.

He was a principled reforming politician who campaigned for peace, equality and free trade

John Bight’s achievements are many.

• He was the first Quaker to be made a Cabinet Minister
• He successfully campaigned for the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. The Corn Laws artificially inflated the price of bread, which the poor could ill afford. This repeal immediately improved the standard of living for ordinary people.
• He unsuccessfully campaigned in 1854 against Britain’s involvement in the Crimean War which it is estimated cost the lives of 500,000 soldiers. John Bright MP principled stand cost him his Manchester parliamentary seat, BUT it contributed to Britain staying out of numerous continental wars between 1859 and 1871.
• He successfully campaigned against Britain recognising and supporting the Confederate states in the US Civil War. Many politicians wanted to back the Confederates, so as to protect Britain’s cotton supply and to prevent a powerful united USA. John Bright MP opposed supporting the Confederates, since he wanted slavery abolished in the USA and the Confederates wanted to continue slavery.
• He successfully campaigned to extend the vote to skilled working men in towns. In the middle of the 19th Century only a limited number of men (and no women) had the vote. John Bright wanted all men to vote because only in this way did he feel that we would get a government which was responsive to the needs and wishes of the people. The result was the Reform Act of 1867 passed by Disraeli which gave the vote to skilled working men in the towns.
• He successfully campaigned for Land Reform in Ireland with the Land Act (1870). The act included ‘Bright clauses’ which allowed the Treasury to help tenants to purchase land from absentee landlords. The Act also introduced protection to tenants from eviction.
• He successfully campaigned for the disestablishment of the Anglican protestant Irish Church in the Irish Church Bill (1869). Prior to this, all Irish citizens had to pay a tax, or tithe, to support the Irish Church, even though the overwhelming majority were not members. The payment of this tithe led to much resent and a number of violent uprisings. The Irish Church Bill disestablished the Irish Church and ended the paying of the tithe.
• He resigned as Duchy of Lanchester in 1882, in protest at the Royal Navy bombardment of Alexandria, Egypt.

Returning to John Bright’s friendship with President Abraham Lincoln. When President Lincoln was assassinated, on his body was found a newspaper article about the presidency by John Bright. In Lincoln’s study were two paintings, one of which was a portrait of John Bright. Today, just inside the main entrance of the White House is a bust of John Bright, which was found by Jackie Kennedy in the 1960s in the basement and put back on display.

John Bright never corresponded direct with Abraham Lincoln. Instead John’s letters to US Senator Charles Sumner were widely read across the US Senate, including by Lincoln. It was through this correspondence that John Bright persuaded Lincoln to make the abolition of slavery across the entire USA a central platform of the Civil War.

When the Civil War began, Lincoln’s stance was that slavery could continue in the Confederate states, but any new states would be slavery free. Indeed, Lincoln prohibited his Generals from freeing slaves in captured states. In 1861, Lincoln sacked Major General John C. Frémont, the commander of the Union Army in St. Louis, for freeing slaves in captured terriorities.

It was John Bright who persuaded President Lincoln to harden his stance on abolishing slavery. On 22nd September 1862, eighteen months into the War, Lincoln announced his Emancipation Proclamation, where every slave in the USA would be freed as of 1st January 1863.

John Bright was a hero in the Unionist states and this is shown in the following paragraph from Harpers Weekly, a US political magazine, on 22nd March 1862:

“JOHN BRIGHT VERSUS JOHN BULL

It is not surprising that the name of John Bright, whenever it was mentioned at the great meeting at the Cooper Institute on Washington’s birthday, was hailed with a tumult of applause. Thoughout our difficulties of the last year John Bright has been one of the few men in England who has truly saw and frankly stated te scope of this rebellion. When Great Britain flamed into rage at the Trent affair, John Bright laid his finger upon the arm of John Bull, and begged that old person not to make himself ridiculous by losing his temper in advance of the occasion, but to wait and hear whether an insult was intended, or whether it was an accident.”

The Trent Affair was a diplomatic incident between the Union states and Britain, which resulted in British forces mobilising on the Canadian border ready for an attack on the Union states. History shows that john Bright successfully calmed the hawks in London.

John Bright was not perfect. He did support giving the vote to women. Neither did he support Home Rule for Ireland, instead believing in reform in Ireland. He also believed that trade unions prevented free trade.

I believe that John Bright should be forgiven for these faults. These views were common in his time. John Bright should be remembered as the man who pushed forward the boundaries of progressive politics: gving the vote to working men; making campaigning for peace acceptable and most importantly contributing to the freeing millions of black slaves in the USA.

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