Anti-Slavery Society

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The Anti-Slavery Society was founded in Britain in 1823. Its official name was the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions.

A wide range of views emerged between members, broadly between those who insisted on the full working out of the gradual process of abolition and ameloiration (which had its successes), and the generally younger, more radical members, whose stern moral outlook regarded slavery as a mortal sin to be ended forthwith.

Following the Chartist example, the latter group sought a public campaign for new Parliamentary Act to outlaw slavery, rather than the gradualism of Whitehall. In 1831 George Stephen and Joseph Sturge formed a ginger group within the Anti-slavery Society, the Agency Committee, to campaign for this new Act of Parliament. This campaign led to the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, the compromises of which they disliked. The full working out of the Act took some years, and more vigouous pressure from the abolitionists and local movements; with slavery being eventually abolished throughout the British empire on 1st August 1838.

In response to this, some members though the work was over. However, in the following year (1839), the Agency Committee of the Anti-Slavery Society considered there was as much reason to continue as before. They re-formed the society as the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. The aim was to campaign against slavery world-wide. In 1990 the name was changed to Anti-Slavery International. In 1840 the society played host to the first World Anti-slavery Convention, with the largest overseas contingent coming from America. A painting at the National Portrait Gallery in London shows The 1840 Anti-Slavery Convention, identifying many of its key participants, and with Rev. Thomas Binney, the Archbishop of Nonconformity, leading the session. The painting includes delegates such as Elizabeth Fry, Samuel Gurney, William Allen, William Knibb, Thomas Clarkson, Elizabeth Pease, Anne Knight, Mrs Tredgold, Joseph Sturge, and M.L'Instant (from Haiti). However, the convention had been planned as an all-male convention and the female delegates, many from America, could not fully participate. Anne Knight was outraged and went on to form her own society.

There is also a modern Anti-Slavery Society which is an autonomous organisation, though allied to Anti-Slavery International and 'Free the Slaves'. It is composed of two entities: the American Anti-Slavery Society (a new organisation founded in 1995 with the same name as the old American Anti-Slavery Society founded in 1833 by William Lloyd Garrison) and the Australian Anti-Slavery Society.Its main functions are program partnerships to rescue children from slavery and provide social reintegration.