William Wilberforce

Wilberforce brought a bill against the slave trade before Parliament almost every year from 1791 and was beaten every time until 1807. The campaign around him — petitions, a sugar boycott, the testimony of freed people such as Olaudah Equiano — was among the first of its kind anywhere.

He was told on his deathbed that the bill abolishing slavery itself throughout the empire would pass. It did, three days after he died. He is buried in the north transept of Westminster Abbey.