by Alan Lester
As the UK celebrates its role in the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, it’s important to recognise that Britain’s humanitarianism was ultimately cut from the same cloth as imperial expansion. Britain’s Anti-Slavery Day should remind us that – despite the country’s abolition of the slave trade in 1807 – the global trafficking and enslavement of people is still very much with us. When the country celebrated the bicentenary of its abolition of the slave trade in 2007 the government explicitly linked the celebration with reminders of the continuing problem of slavery and human trafficking.
