£7.5 trillion

[zathras]

... Thats the amount Britain owes to Africans for the slave trade according to Channel 4

Does this mean that those countries which continued with the institution of slavery after Great Britain will pay a good deal more?

In 1772 William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield held that slavery had no basis in law. He famously wrote, "the air of England is too pure for a slave to breathe, and so everyone who breathes it becomes free. Everyone who comes to this island is entitled to the protection of English law, whatever oppression he may have suffered and whatever may be the colour of his skin." Essentially this ruling held that if slavery is prohibited in a jurisdiction, then any slave taken into that territory was free.

Britain passed the Abolition of Slave Trade Act in 1807, with Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. The Emancipation Proclamation (1862) by Lincoln only freed Slaves from those states which had seceeded from the Union. It was not until the end of the Civil War in 1865 that Slavery was abolished in the United States.

France could claim to abolish it first after the Haitian Revolution in 1794. But re-instated in 1802 and formally abolished it in 1848

Some of the dates when some countries abolished it follows;

Sweden: 1335 (but not until 1847 in the colony of St. Barth้lemy)
Haiti: 1791, due to a revolt among nearly half a million slaves
Gran Colombia (Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, and Venezuela): 1821, through a gradual emancipation plan
Chile: 1823
Mexico: 1829
United Kingdom: 1833, including all colonies
Denmark: 1848, including all colonies
The Netherlands: 1863, including all colonies
The United States: 1865, after the U.S. Civil War
Cuba: 1886
Brazil: 1888
China: 1910
Saudi Arabia: 1962

Slavery still exists in some parts of Africa. Concerted campaigns to rid the world of slavery are ongoing.

On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 4 states:

"No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms."

The point is that Britain was actually a fairly early entry in Abolishing Slavery. Arguably it could be said to the the first major economic power to do so entirely.

Note: A recent ILO report attacked the 'slavery' conditions of workers in Brazil but one wonders if these workers have terrible work conditions rather than being strictly speaking 'Slaves'.

[threaded]

Zathras: Actually slavery was abolished in the UK much earlier, the act you refer to made it illegal throughout the rest of the British Empire.

[EternalOptimist]

I am a wage slave and I demand my cut

[Rebecca Loos]

I am a slave to the rythm and I demand to be freed
(and £1m)

[zeitghost]

"I am a slave to the rythm "

Not the Vatican Roulette type of rhythm one trusts...