Thread by @garius

Orders of/in Council are in the news. HISTORY THREAD TIME!

Meet James Stephen and Spencer Perceval, the playboy and the evangelist, the ODDEST political friends ever.

And the chaps who worked out how to ban slavery WITHOUT Parliament approval. It would cost one of them his life

First: 'Orders'?

Short version: They are a way for the Government to pass stuff that Parliament either has no established authority over (remember this. It's important) or isn't seen as worth Parliamentary time to consider.

'In's require the Monarch to sign. 'Of's don't.

Second: Can they be used to dodge the Benn Act?

Nope. It's just another attempt to find the one cool trick to beat Parliament. Government by Reddit thread. SC would rule against it in a second.

Smarter mind than me below.

We clear? Good. Fun history now

https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1177495043550019584

~~~ wobbly lines ~~~

Welcome to 1800s Britain. When politics was largely the reserve of the landed gentry, there were no real laws to protect poor people and you could do virtually anything if you were rich. Including owning other people.

There's a reason Rees-Mogg likes it.

As the 1700s end and the 1800s begin, thoughts on that last bit (slavery) have FINALLY begun to change in Britain.

The problem is that slavery is a HUGE industry. Think Big Tobacco and Pharma combined. And if you're rich or important, you're probably involved in it somehow.

Enter William Wilberforce. You'll have heard of him. An evangelical Anglican he is vocally opposed to slavery and FINALLY that belief starts to take hold in 'high' society as Wilberforce works to build concerted political opposition to the trade.

Wilberforce even starts introducing Bills to ban it in Parliament. But they all fail. Because Slavery is WAY too much of an entrenched interest. Even MPs privately opposed to it won't vote to ban it. This includes the PM, Pitt the Younger.

Enter Stephen and Perceval

James Stephen is a brilliant, flamboyant lawyer from Stoke Newington (East London represent!) with a chequered past

He did time in debtor's prison with his dad, attempted escape and admitted he became a lawyer because he thought it would make him money and impress girls.

Indeed this is partly how he becomes an abolitionist. He starts attending meetings and giving speeches as an attempt to seduce his best friend's girlfriend. It works. He gets her pregnant. The fallout from this lead to his wife Anna attempting suicide.

Let me be VERY clear: James is NOT a nice man at this point in his life. The victims of that are the women in his life. Worse, this is not uncommon for the time, something that is tragically overlooked in a lot of stories of 'great men'. Remember that whenever you read them.

Luckily, in James' case, Anna's suicide attempt shocks him into changing his ways. The devious, flamboyant, partying-hard lawyer remains but the womaniser goes.

11 years witnessing horror in the West Indies as a government lawyer turns his abolitionism into a burning zeal too.

Because this is brutal truth of slavery at the time, and Wilberforce knows it. You cannot unsee its horror:

“You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.”

And that's exactly how Wilberforce converts Spencer Perceval to the cause.

Perceval is the EXACT opposite of Stephen. An arch-conservative pro-establishment lawyer and MP. He loathes excess, Catholics and liberalism. He hates adultery and those who do it.

In fact he hates adultery/public excess SO MUCH that he LITERALLY takes the Prince Regent to court and blackmails him to make him stop treating Princess Caroline like shit in public. And gets away with it. Because he's that good a lawyer.

And yeah, it's THAT Prince Regent.

But Perceval is a man of contrasts. He loves his wife and children more than anything in the world. He believes passionately in fairness, honesty and the importance of justice.

He's also an evangelical Anglican. That's how he meets Wilberforce, who then opens his eyes to slavery

And this is how Stephen and Perceval form an unlikely friendship. They don't LIKE each other. Stephens thinks Perceval is a dull prude, Perceval thinks Stephens is a dandy, but they recognise each other's talent and their shared cause.

And they tell Wilbs he's doing it wrong.

Stephen and Perceval spot that slavery's backers have the money and the influence to block a full ban. So instead they focus on trying to find ways to start cracking away at slavery, rather than taking it head on.

And they find one: the new Crown Colony of British Guiana.

In 1803 Britain takes over Dutch Guiana during the Napoleonic wars. Perceval is now Attorney General and he is involved in sorting out the paperwork. He spots a handy opportunity. Until it gets a legislature, it will be a CROWN colony.

Stephen and Perceval concoct a plan

They spot that the rules around Crown colonies are distinctly fuzzy. Indeed Stephen would go on to be one of the guys who sorted that out for the government.

RIGHT NOW though, it meant it was down to the King/PM to set the rules there. It just needed an Order in Council.

So Perceval (with Wilberforce's backing) goes to the Prime Minister, Pitt the Younger and suggests they simply ban the import of slaves to British Guiana via an Order in Council.

Pitt, a closet abolitionist, sees that this avoids a big public debate and agrees.

And just like that, the first major legislative blow against slavery in Britain is struck. To the fury of wealthy plantation owners who had been hoping to shift their operations there from Jamaica, the import of slaves to British Guiana is stopped.

This doesn't end slavery in the colony, but it's a critical win at a critical time, and the long path to banning slavery begins in earnest, with Stephen and Perceval the deft, legal knives doing the dirty work in courts and Parliament.

In 1807 the Slave Trade Act passes. Perceval works behind the scenes to get it past the Lords. Stephen and Perceval continue to work to give it teeth. They create the legal cover for the Navy to police it. Then in 1809 Perceval becomes Prime Minister.

And the gloves come off.

Perceval and Stephen fall back on the Orders in Council trick again. In 1807 a set had been issued to ban neutral trade with France because of the war. The pair spot they can use these to target British slave ships that have now found a convenient country to reflag to: The USA.

The expanded Orders provoke outrage in the slave towns and cities of Britain. Notably Liverpool. Until now, they'd been able to carry on largely as before but under a different flag. Now the Royal Navy could stop them, and Perceval expanded the West Africa Squadron to do so.

It outrages the US as well.

You know the War of 1812? The one where the USA proudly went to war to stop the Royal Navy checking/seizing its merchant ships and cargo?

That cargo was often human.

Tends to make me feel a bit better about us burning down the White House.

Perceval, however, did not live to see the War he had effectively started kick off.

On 11 May 1811 a man walked into Parliament, up to Perceval and shot him through the heart.

Perceval bled to death on a table in the House of Commons. He left behind a wife and twelve children.

Spencer Perceval remains the only British Prime Minister ever to be assassinated.

The evidence suggests that if not outright orchestrated by Liverpool slavers, the assassin was assisted and encouraged by them to do so.

Stephen continued to dedicate his own life to anti-slavery work after the death of Perceval.

He became Director of the Africa Institution for the Registration of Slaves and continued to close out legal loop holes as the slave industry found them.

He remained critical to the fight to end slavery completely and an outspoken critic of the slave industry. He was instrumental in the fight to finally pass the full Abolition Act in 1833.

Stephen didn't see it pass though. He died in October 1832.

As a final note, I always find it surprising that this bizarre pair who came up with a creative way to start ending slavery aren't better remembered.

Stephen is buried in St Mary's, Stoke Newington. Perceval is in St Lukes, Charlton.

If you're in the area, stop by and say hello

As usual, if you enjoyed this then you can buy me a coffee (let's be honest, it's friday so it'll be a beer) here:

ko-fi.com/garius

My non-Twitter history writing is here (including more on the forgotten contradiction that is Perceval):

medium.com/@garius