Did You Know?

Oldest Anti-Slavery Organisation

Annals Britannica, the British History website maintained by Tom Bliss records that The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society was founded in London in 1839. It promoted efforts to fight slavery in Africa and other parts of the world. Now known as Anti- Slavery International, the Society still campaigns to end slavery throughout the world and is the world's oldest international human rights organisation.

Thomas Clarkson, anti-slavery campaigner

Thomas Clarkson, who had worked indefatigably to end the transatlantic slave trade and slavery in the British Empire, was the keynote speaker at its first conference held in London in 1840. He was the last survivor of the men who led the movement to abolish the transatlantic slave trade in the later eighteenth century; thanks to their efforts, the British Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act in 1807 and banned slavery throughout the British Empire in 1834. Clarkson died in 1846 aged 86.