UK abolished slavery in 1833 by agreeing to pay slave owners for "loss of property" a sum of £20m (£300bn today), a transferral of wealth from taxpayers to slave owners so huge the debts incurred were only paid off in 2015. Almost all UK taxpayers have contributed to this bill. A note on "taxpayers": government spending isn’t financed by taxes but by issuing gilts/bonds. The tax and spend is economically misleading and politically the terrain of the right. You can tell because the “Taxpayers Alliance” have never complained about paying off slaveowners.