The push for abolition had begun in 1783 when the Quakers presented an anti-slavery petition to Parliament. It took another 24 years before the Bill to abolish the trade in 1807 received its royal assent on March 25.

Finally the trade in slaves by British merchants was illegal as from May 1 – so the last slave ship to legally leave a British port set sail 24 hours earlier on April 30, 1807.

Abolition took so long to come to fruition because there was so much opposition. Many thought it unpatriotic to jeopardise British trade and industry - Wilberforce was portrayed as a non-conformist religious fanatic, meddling in affairs he didn’t understand.

There was fear about the effect that any hindrance to the lucrative slave trade would have on all the major ports around Britain, particularly London, Bristol and Liverpool.

Small industry and manufacturing businesses were engaged in supplying goods for export and exchange in the African trade. Copper and iron goods, firearms, cloth, fur hats and cowrie shell ornaments were all being made for this purpose. Someone had to make branding irons, leg irons and chains and someone’s livelihood depended upon them being in demand.

In much the same way today, it is difficult to see where the fault lies and to see the bigger picture in issues of international trade.

Much of the remembrance and celebration in 2007 focused on the issues of modern day slavery. It is a sad fact that we need to reacquaint ourselves with the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade in order to see parallels with today’s problems of human trafficking, child prostitution and gang masters. It is estimated that one million humans are trafficked across international borders each year, many are children and the majority end up in some form of sexual exploitation. It is worth remembering that a recent estimate on the number of Africans taken into slavery is a 12 million: mostly by Europeans and mostly in the 100 years before the abolition of the slave trade in 1807.