It’s the Tablet’s lead article

In 1789, the year of the French Revolution, William Wilberforce started advocating the abolition of slavery. Results were long in coming, but he persevered – perhaps endowed with Yorkshire stubbornness – until in 1807 the Act of the Abolition of the Slave Trade was passed. This, for the British, brought an end to trading in slaves, but slavery as such was only outlawed by the Emancipation Act, which came into force in 1833 – just about at the time of Wilberforce’s death.

Yet slavery continued. It was in 1865 that a constitutional amendment prohibited slavery throughout the whole of the United States of America. In the next decade the practice was still rife in Africa, as explorers such as David Livingstone discovered. Archbishop, later to become Cardinal, Charles Lavigerie, the founder of the missionary society to which I belong, the Missionaries of Africa (White Fathers), was an avid reader of the accounts of the African explorers. He became an active promoter of the Anti-Slavery Campaign, travelling to different cities of Europe to arouse public opinion. He came to London in 1888, and on 31 July spoke in the Prince’s Hall (today known as the Albert Hall). In the course of his speech he mentioned his emotion at seeing Livingstone’s words, inscribed on his tomb in Westminster Abbey, describing slavery as "the open sore of the world". He also referred to the inspiration he drew from the pioneering efforts of William Wilberforce in the struggle to have slavery abolished.

Lavigerie’s missionaries in Africa set up refuges and orphanages for former slaves and even created Christian villages especially for those who could no longer be reunited with their families. But while Lavigerie’s campaigning efforts helped to increase awareness of the problem, he was unable to bring about any concerted action. Today, classical slavery still exists in such places as northern Nigeria, Sudan and Mauritania, and there is a modern form as well: the crime of trafficking in persons.

and subject of a book review:

Thank goodness we vanquished slavery. Except, alas, we didn’t. Reports of appalling human bondage occasionally claw their way into the news, but behind such headlines there are countless neglected stories of people dragging their fellow men into servitude. Slavery is still part of the fabric of human society. Remarkable organisations confront this devastating fact every day. The rest of us usually cling to the cosy assumption that slavery is a relic of the past. This year, we should all celebrate the bicentenary of the British slave trade’s demise, but we should not pat ourselves on the back for being ever-so-morally-evolved. We should just think ourselves lucky to be living in a time and place when slavery is reviled.

More:

A related article from the Catholic Herald:

Mary had been flown to London by a rich Malawian family who offered her the chance of a holiday. But when she arrived, the family took away her passport and the few possessions she had brought with her.
For three months she was treated like a slave. She cooked and cleaned for £10 a week, and lived in the garage rather than the main part of the house.

She was not allowed to eat with the family, or even eat the same food. After she had prepared a Western meal for everyone else – roast dinner, perhaps, with Brussel sprouts and Yorkshire pudding – she was to cook and eat maize, a typical meal for people in Malawi, on her own in the kitchen.
The family never allowed her contact with anyone from Malawi or with the outside world. The house in which she lived, in a suburb of south London, stood behind high walls. The only chance she had to see London was when they shuttled her between houses.

One afternoon, when Mary was left on her own in the house, she realised that a gate had been left unlocked, and decided to escape.

An exhibit that will be running through next week in London:

As Britain prepares to commemorate 200 years since the abolition of the slave trade, a new Panos exhibition at St Paul’s Cathedral reveals how human trafficking is a bitter reality for thousands of women, men and children in the UK today. Slave Britain artfully documents the ordinary lives and everyday locations caught up in trafficking and calls for an end to this illegal 21st century trade.