Slavery remembered

Press, 26 July 1984, Page 19

Slavery remembered

NZPA-AP London Descendants of slaves and abolitionists worshipped in a London church on July 17 to celebrate 150 years of the ending of slavery in Britain’s colonies. The Ven. Wilfred Wood, an Anglican clergyman, aged 48, whose ancestors were seized in West Africa and sold into slavery in Barbados in the seventeenth century, preached the sermon. He praised the anti-slav-ery pioneers as “men who acted not because of pressure but on the basis of principle.” Archdeacon Wood said the anti-slavery story would not be complete until modern Britain, which has nearly three million nonwhites, achieves equality of opportunity for all its people.

The actual anniversary is on August 1, when nearly one million slaves in 1834 were freed by an act of Parliament passed the previous year, nearly 900,000 of them in the West Indies. “The British Government raised the huge sum for those days of 20 million pounds to compensate the

slave-owners but the slaves got nothing,” said Mr Alan Whittaker, publicist for the anti-slavery society. The . society claims to be the world’s oldest human rights organisation and combats abuses outlawed by the United Nations as “practices similar to slavery,” mainly exploitative child labour.