Christians Mark Anniversary of Slave Trade Abolition

Christians up and down the country marked 200 years since the abolition of the slave trade over the weekend while highlighting the challenge to fight modern forms of slavery prevalent in the world today like child labour and human trafficking.

|PIC1|On Saturday, more than 3,000 people took part in the Walk of Witness through London, led by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, as well as other church leaders.

On Sunday, 'Freedom Day', BBC Radio 3's Evensong broadcast came from Portsmouth Cathedral in acknowledgement of the city's role in the slave trade, while the Bishop of Portsmouth, the Rt Rev Kenneth Stevenson, still recovering from leukaemia, broadcast a slave trade-focused sermon from home.

In Gosport, college chaplains took it in turns to be locked in a cage for an hour at a time outside St Vincent College last Friday to highlight the issue of modern day slavery among students.

In Scotland, meanwhile, Communities Minister Rhona Brankin MSP joined a walk in Musselburgh organised by Action of Churches Together in Scotland (ACTS) to pay tribute to Robert Wedderburn, the son of Rosanna, a black Jamaican slave, and James Wedderburn, her Scottish master. Robert Wedderburn later became a prominent anti-slavery campaigner in England.

"200 years on from the passing of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, we should remember the vital contribution they (Scots) made," said Ms Brankin.

Edinburgh council leader Ewan Aitken, meanwhile, said in a speech at St John's Church that the slave trade was "one of the most inhuman enterprises in history".

"I speak as leader of the City of Edinburgh Council but also as a Christian minister, I am ashamed that the clergy and the church in Britain made significant profits from plantations in the West Indies during the slave era," he said.

"The involvement of the church serves to illustrate just how institutionalised, and widely accepted, slavery was."

The events over the weekend signalled a call to the Government to act on modern day equivalents to the slave trade, including child labour and sex trafficking.

Canon Nick Ralph, social responsibility adviser for Portsmouth Diocese, said: "In considering the social progress that has been made since those events 200 years ago, and the place the Church had in confronting that injustice, it's important to recognise that slavery still continues to be a modern problem.

"People continue to be exploited and enslaved in a variety of ways, such as though child labour or sex trafficking. It happens here today, and there is evidence of women being trafficked through Portsmouth ferry port."

Mr Aitken added that slavery was "still a dark stain on our world".

Services and events also paid tribute to the contribution of William Wilberforce, a leading abolitionist in the anti-slave trade movement. His Christian faith was a key motive in running his 20-year campaign to bring the slave trade to an end.