Paula E. Dumas, in her study of the history of the British pro-slavery movement, draws a distinction between anti-abolitionist and pro-slavery positions: "Anti-abolition arguments in this period focused on defects in the abolitionist platform, emphasising the illegal, illogical, inhumane, or pro-French nature of their aims. Proslavery arguments, on the other hand, positively promoted slavery and the slave trade". Dumas notes that pro-slavery (as opposed to anti-abolitionist) positions largely disappeared from the British parliament after the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. However, other authors do not so clearly draw such a distinction and include what Dumas calls anti-abolitionism in the topic of proslavery. Dumas traces the beginning of organised British pro-slavery movement to 1787, when the London Society of West India Planters and Merchants formed a subcommittee to organise opposition to abolitionism.