Yorkshire Day is a yearly celebration on 1 August to promote the historic county of Yorkshire, England. It was celebrated by the Yorkshire Ridings Society in 1975, initially in Beverley, as "a protest movement against the local government re-organisation of 1974". On 1 August the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 was passed, during the British Empire in 1834. William Wilberforce, a Yorkshire MP, had campaigned for the emancipation.