I saw Amazing Grace last night, and unlike Che, I wasn't disappointed.
For those who don't know, Amazing Grace is the story of the great abolitionist William Wilberforce and his struggle to ban the slave trade. This threatened not just the economic order - at the time Britian's wealth (and that of many of its elite) was based on sugar, which was in turn based on slavery - it also threatened the political order as well: against the backdrop of the American and French revolutions, all this talk of equality and brotherhood sounded dangerously revolutionary. Naturally, Wilberforce was accused of sedition - but he won in the end with the passage of the Slave Trade Act 1807 which banned British merchants from carrying slaves. The movie ends here, but the story doesn't - that Act was followed by a declaration from the British that slave trading was tantamount to piracy, which became the basis for the ban on slavery as a fundamental principle of international law. And it was followed 25 years later by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which finally outlawed slavery in the British Empire.
It's a very moving story, and one well worth seeing. Though it might be difficult - in Palmerston North at least it is often booked out.
Meanwhile, I'll take the opportunity to remind people about TradeAid's campaign to ban the import of goods produced with slave labour. You can sign their petition online here, or download a PDF version to share with your friends here. There's also a petition organised by a blogger asking 60 minutes to investigate child slavery in the chocolate industry, which you can sign here [PDF].
