Slavery in Britain His conversion to Evangelical Christianity in 1784 played a key role in interesting him in this social reform. William Wilberforce's Slave Trade Act 1807 abolished the slave trade in the British Empire. It was not until the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 that the institution finally was abolished, but on a gradual basis. Since land owners in the British West Indies were losing their unpaid labourers, they received compensation totaling £20 million. The Royal Navy established the West Africa Squadron (or Preventative Squadron) at substantial expense in 1808 after Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act of 1807. The squadron's task was
Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003 not the objective of the earliest organised British movements. The Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, which established the "Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade" in Britain in 1787, campaigned for an end to the Transatlantic slave trade from Western Africa to the New World, which Britain dominated. Much later, the Anti-Slavery Society became the everyday name of 2 different British organizations. The first was the 1823 "Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions" (Slavery Abolition Act 1833), and the second, the 1839 "The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society" -