STATUTE LAW REVISION: SIXTEENTH ... - Law Commission

PART VIII
SLAVE TRADE ACTS
147 Summary
8.1 The United Kingdom is party to several international Conventions forbidding
slavery and the slave trade. Offences at common law, such as kidnapping and
false imprisonment, help give effect to these Conventions in the criminal law, but
statute law also plays a part. These statutes, the Slave Trade Acts of 1824, 1843
and 1873, and the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, contain many obsolete provisions.
The purpose of the proposed repeals is to eliminate what is obsolete while
leaving in place those provisions of the statutes which remain essential for the
fulfilment of the United Kingdom’s international obligations.
148 Historical background
8.1 The Slave Trade Act 1824 was the first Act to consolidate the considerable
number of Acts relating to the slave trade passed after 1806, which had
prohibited British subjects from dealing and trading in slaves or transporting
them, imposed fines for slaves sold or transported, forfeited British slave trade
ships to the Crown, made provision for bounties payable to naval officers and
seamen who recovered slaves and, in 1811, made slave trading a felony. 1 The
novel feature incorporated in the 1824 Act was to deem certain offences relating
to the slave trade a species of piracy, subject at that time to the death penalty, 2
which was intended to facilitate international co-operation in policing the slave
trade by the naval fleets of state parties to treaties outlawing the trade. The 1824
Act did not outlaw the status of slavery in British possessions; this had to await
the triumph of anti-slavery sentiment in the country under the leadership of
Wilberforce, which resulted in the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
8.2 As the major maritime power, the United Kingdom took the lead throughout the
nineteenth century in suppressing the slave trade by means of the power of
search on the open seas. A succession of bilateral treaties was concluded with
foreign states to enable this power to be exercised in relation to vessels of those
states; 3 these treaties provided for mutual rights of visit, search and detention of
suspected vessels, and for adjudication variously by the courts of the respective
countries or by “mixed courts” 4 established in, or in the possessions of, each
state. A separate Act of Parliament was passed in almost every case to give
effect to each Treaty and by 1836 5 the Acts had achieved an almost uniform
character. These Acts were later consolidated by the Slave Trade Act 1873.
Section 29 of the 1873 Act provided a mechanism which eliminated the need for
1 See 46 Geo.3 c.52 (1806), 47 Geo.3 Sess.1 c.36 (1807) and 51 Geo.3 c.23 (1811), all
repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act 1861.
2 See further para 8.10 and n.19.
3 See H H Wilson, Some Principal Aspects of British Efforts to Crush the African Slave
Trade, 1807-1929 44 AJIL (1950), p 505.
4 A mixed court consisted of an equal number of judges from the contracting parties and was
established specifically for the purpose of adjudicating on captured slave vessels and its
slaves and goods.
5 6 & 7 Will. c.6, Treaty with Spain.
92