A Modern Problem: Slavery in Britain

It happened in Bedfordshire, and to many residents, was inconceivable. In 2007, Britain marked the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, an enterprise that saw enormous wealth and cruelty produced in equal measures. But the vicious converges between exploited labour and exploited individuals persists. Economic inequalities, an overbearing sense of control over the vulnerable, all speak volumes on the persistence of slavery, even in Western countries.

As a report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation discussed in 2007, ‘With the growth of globalisation and migration, it has become clear that modern forms of slavery are growing in the UK’. It says much that slavery itself was only criminalised as a specific offence in April 2010, a situation that left police having to use other instruments to obtain convictions.

Few then, should be surprised about the latest revelations about the largest find of working slaves in recent British history – 24 individuals, British, Polish and Rumanian, living at Green Acres Caravan Park in Bedfordshire’s Leighton Buzzard.

Four men have been charged in what police are calling a ‘family-run organised crime’ syndicate, luring their quarry from soup kitchens, hostels and benefit offices. The rituals the syndicate purportedly subjected the men to were brutal – an intense work regime lasting twelve hours a day, the shaving of heads on arrival, confinement to horseboxes, dog kennels and soiled caravans. Some have lived for as long as fifteen years at the camp site. The duration of it has been such that brutality has been normalised.

The level of distress has been intense. The camp site itself is populated by Irish travellers and Romany Gypsies, groups who already feel the eye of the state all too keenly directed at them. Groups have stuck together. The margins between the communities have been strictly drawn.

Nine of the so-called ‘modern day slaves’ have shown little desire to cooperate with the police investigation. A few have expressed a desire to return to the site, claiming that the police themselves were heavy handed in their actions (The Independent, Sep 13). Empathy between the captive and captor is certainly not unusual, and high profile cases such as that of Jaycee Lee Dugard, who spent 18 years in captivity, or that of Patty Hearst’s time with the abducting Symbionese Liberal Army illustrate the point all too finely. For six days in August 1973, Jan-Erik Olsson and Clark Olofsson held four Stockholm bank employees hostage. When the hostages were released, their affection for their captors was brimming and rosy.

A few residents at Green Acres have also expressed disbelief, seeing little evidence of slavery at all. Where are the shackles, the whips, the barking traders? Resident Margaret Lee’s opinions are illustrative: ‘It’s rubbish, I don’t think it is slave labour, they do paid work. It is cash-in-hand.’ For Lee, people who are entitled ‘to go down to the local supermarket’ are hardly slaves, being able to leave ‘whenever they wanted’ (The Independent, Sep 13).

Labour agencies working in an international market lure workers from poorer countries with promises of the earth. The market is a thriving one. What is disturbing about the state of discussion on slavery is how legal channels are used to facilitate movement. Visa systems are being exploited; the desire for the quick and cheap buck is making agencies careless. The law, ever halting to catch up with social realities, remains in the background.

Binoy Kampmark was as Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.

© Scoop Media