The abolition of slavery is often told as the story of one man (Wilberforce) but the reality was more complicated. Many groups - including enslaved people themselves - made it happen.

Moral arguments

Quakers were the first organised group to call slavery a sin, as early as the 1760s. Christians, especially evangelicals, joined them. In 1787, the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded in London.

Eyewitness evidence

The autobiographies of freed slaves like Olaudah Equiano (1789) and Mary Prince (1831) sold thousands of copies, putting Black voices into the heart of the British debate. Thomas Clarkson spent years collecting tools of slavery (chains, branding irons, thumbscrews) and the testimony of sailors to use as evidence.

Resistance from enslaved people

The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) showed that enslaved people would not be enslaved forever. Samuel Sharpe's Baptist War in Jamaica (1831) shocked Britain and pushed Parliament to act.

Economic and political

By 1800, British industry was growing and some thinkers (like Adam Smith) argued free labour was more productive. The 1832 Reform Act gave more middle-class men the vote - many of them anti-slavery campaigners.

The two Acts

1807 Slave Trade Act - banned trading.
1833 Slavery Abolition Act - banned slavery itself. Around 800,000 enslaved people were freed. But the law also paid £20 million in compensation - not to the enslaved, but to the slave-owners. British taxpayers only finished paying off the debt in 2015.

Year 8 Power & Protest

Why Slavery was Abolished