Another person who wanted to abolish slavery was the politician William Wilberforce. William Wilberforce was a Quaker who fought court cases for black people and who worked with Thomas Clarkson for a while. William went to parliament and made anti-slavery speeches. His speeches were probably one of the reasons why the parliament made slavery illegal.
White working class people also helped to abolish slavery. Like in 1788 over 10,000 people signed petitions saying that slavery should be made illegal, and in 1814 over 1 and a half million people had signed it. The white working class’ views were just as important as anybody else’s. They signed this petition so that their views would be heard. There were huge meetings where people spoke about slavery.
Another important contribution was made by Olaudah Equiano who had been a slave. He was educated, he knew how to read and write so he went around England telling people about his life and how he was badly treated as a slave, he wrote a book on his life which also turned people against slavery. Olaudah became a lawyer and helped Granville Sharp beat the Zong case. He fought a lot of cases on slavery and won quite a few.
In St. Domingue the slaves took action themselves by rebelling against their owners. The slaves set the sugar plantations on fire and threatened their owners. Word had got out that slaves were rebelling and some slave owners were worried incase their slaves heard about it and did the same. As a result of this some slave owners started to kill their slaves. 100 slaves were shot and 300 were hanged in 1831.
There were also economic reasons why slavery came to an end. For example, in 1771 Barbados imported 2728 slaves and in 1772 no slaves were imported. Lots of plantations were closed down because people could get cheaper sugar from Cuba and Brazil. The demand for slaves slowly fell and people didn’t buy as many slaves.
In 1807 buying and selling slaves was made illegal by the British Parliament, but it was only in 1833 that owning a slave was banned. I think that there was no main reason why slavery was abolished but I think that the actions of the slaves had quite a big influence on the abolition and so did the white working class. I think this was a mixed decision and that everyone played their part to abolish the slave trade.