Introduction
William Wilberforce (1759-1833), anti-slavery campaigner
William Wilberforce ©
Outline
William Wilberforce campaigned for the abolition of the British slave trade. He was an MP, a Christian writer and a social reformer.
In 1789, following his conversion to Christianity, Wilberforce became the voice in Parliament of the Abolition Movement; joining campaigners such as the Quakers, Thomas Clarkson and the former enslaved African Olaudah Equiano. For Wilberforce the slave trade was a sin for which Britain had to repent or be damned.
It would take twenty years to end the British trade in enslaved people and almost thirty more before slavery itself became illegal.
