Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade

Yes. Being only part way through my historical analysis, I wanted to come to Haiti—in a moment, in fact. I want to reiterate a point that has already been mentioned. The enlightened determination and actions of abolitionists had to shine out against a far darker backdrop. The course of slavery winds a long route throughout history, and when we consider events before 1807—the Deputy Prime Minister mentioned this—it is with deep regret that we have to acknowledge an era in which the sale of men, women and children was carried out lawfully on behalf of this country, and on such a vast scale that it became a large and lucrative commercial enterprise. No wonder Wilberforce cried out, in his speech in the Commons in 1791:"““Never, never will we desist till we have wiped away this scandal from the Christian name, released ourselves from the load of guilt, under which we at present labour, and extinguished every trace of this bloody traffic, of which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times, will scarce believe that it has been suffered to exist so long a disgrace and dishonour to this country.””" Those are words that we need to remember in the present day, as the Deputy Prime Minister said, in the case of modern slavery, to which I shall also return in a moment.