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Production
- Kenneth Dodds Director
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Bill Cameron-Johnson Screenwriter, Illustrator
- Louise Spooner Composer
- Production company
- MRA Productions
At the end of the eighteenth century, a small group of men and women from diverse walks of life are drawn together by a common aim: to change public opinion in England and cause Parliament to end the African slave trade. There is an admiral, a playwright, an ex-slave, a Cambridge graduate, a former slaver captain and William Wilberforce himself — playboy and closest friend of Prime Minister Pitt.
The story describes Wilberforce's 'great change' in heart and outlook which launches him on his lifelong battle — not only to end the trade, but slavery itself, as well as opposing corruption in government and inhumanity in prisons and factories. In his own time he was called the 'conscience of England'.
Of all the things achieved by Wilberforce and his colleagues, the one act of ending slavery alone was, says G M Trevelyan the historian, "one of the turning points in the history of the world".
