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Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

You can add the Scottish example to the other list of years I'd already given, there was no sense of the US genuinely "leading" on that when I'd already said 1772 and 1799 — the point was simply that the 1807 act was also not much of a sign of genuine leadership.

The UK government was basically forced to do what it did thanks to campaigns against slavery, not because the politicians themselves were fully on board with it; and even more recently, despite how "we ended slavery" has become as much part of the national identity as "The" Magna Carta, the conversation about the Edward Colston statue in Bristol wasn't as one-sided as the conversation about the Jimmy Saville statue:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Edward_Colston

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> The UK government was basically forced

Forced? You clearly don't know the history.

It was a long campaign but the moral argument had won broad support in the population and parliament. It was literally the UK government trying to get this passed. Prime Minister William Pitt was an abolitionist as was his successor William Grenville that passed this bill. This specific bill was passed by a near unanimous majority.

Earlier bills under Pitt had passed the commons but fallen in the more conservative Lords claiming to protect "the national interest". I believe the strategies that helped tip the balance was salami-slicing to just abolish trade rather then total abolition while arguing that continued trade would lead to slave rebellions as had been seen in French colonies thus it needed to be stopped not just out of moral necessity but national interest too.

You seem intent on corrupting history to do what? Attack some straw-man concoction of British national identity? Stop it.

> I believe the strategies that helped tip the balance was salami-slicing to just abolish trade rather then total abolition while arguing that continued trade would lead to slave rebellions as had been seen in French colonies thus it needed to be stopped not just out of moral necessity but national interest too.

Y'see, I count that as "the bare minimum done because they were forced to not because they wanted to".

Knowing that if you don't, it's going to be expensive is part of "being forced to". Getting around to it only when there's overwhelming pressure in one direction rather than 50%+1 is "dragging your feet".

The margin of what passed is on the one hand, the fact that it was only peaceameal — as demonstrated by literally all the other years on that list — is the other side of that coin.

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