It is the first time in ages that we have had reason to thank John Prescott. Yesterday the Government held a debate on William Wilberforce and the abolition of slavery 200 years ago. It was opened by Mr Prescott, who read his speech with the painful concentration of someone who has practised it over and over to get the emphasis just right.

He was listened to respectfully. The Deputy Prime Minister does not look so well these days. His teeth are still hurting him and at times he falters. But this was important to him. He is an MP from Hull, as was Wilberforce, and he has been determined to mark this anniversary with both style and substance.

This he achieved, though almost by accident. For across from him sat William Hague. Mr Hague is a very busy (if bald) bee. In addition to being Shadow Foreign Secretary, he also shadows the Deputy Prime Minister. Outside the Commons, of course, he is a much fêted biographer and orator. And his latest work, though not yet published, is on the life of William Wilberforce.

It was, thus, only by perfect coincidence that he spoke from the dispatch box yesterday. If Mr Prescott had not opened, then Mr Hague could not have followed. It is a rare thing in the Commons for expertise, history and oratory to find common cause. Plus, and I am sorry to be so venal, I could not help but note that, in the real world, Mr Hague is paid £10,000 to £15,000 per speech. On most occasions, no one outside the Commons would pay a penny to hear what was said in it. Not this time.

He painted a sinister picture of the economy of the times, with men, women and children being traded on a vast scale. “At one stage William Pitt when he was Prime Minister said that he thought that 80 per cent of the overseas income of Britain was derived from our West Indian colonies.” Some of this was directly from the slave trade, but most of the money came from the enormously profitable sugar plantations.

The abolitionist campaign seems almost inconceivable now. “There was no film. There was no documentary of anything that was happening. There were no photographs of anything. So the campaigners had to establish facts that had never been nailed down and come up with statistics that had never been assembled and then persuade people of something that was true even though other people were prepared to say the opposite was true.” Antislave pamphlets were widely read. An autobiography by a former slave, Olaudah Equiano, became a bestseller. He provided this rare account of slave ship conditions: “The closeness of the place and the heat of the climate added to the number on the ship being so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. The shrieks of the women and the groans of the dying rendered it a scene of horror almost inconceivable.”

Thomas Clarkson, an indispensable ally of Wilberforce, covered 35,000 miles in seven years, literally taking shackles to the people. The women of Britain boycotted West Indian sugar and, at one point, convinced 25 per cent of the country to join them.

British people, once convinced, acted en masse. “Petitions, signed by men and women with no vote and thus no method of lobbying parliament, flowed from all corners of the country, including one measuring seven metres long from the inhabitants of Manchester.”

It makes for fantastic history but I couldn’t help but wonder if such a thing could happen today.

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