It is estimated that there are 27 million slaves in the world today, 8.4m of them being children.

That is an enormous number of people. It is difficult to imagine. It is an abomination, it is a blight on the 21st Century.

And the UK is on exception. Anti-Slavery International estimate that at least 10,000 women and 3-4000 children have been trafficked into the UK for sexual purposes in the past decade. Please remember, that is not a vague estimate, that is an at least figure - at least 10,000 women and 3-4000 children. For the exploiters, this has proved a high gain, low risk crime. What it means to each of those individual victims is hard to imagine.

But to take the words from a recent anti trafficking campaign leaflet:
‘We have met people from countries all over the world. This is what happened to them when they arrived in this country:
• They were guarded at all times and could not go out on their own.
• They were forced to have unprotected or dangerous sex with strangers.
• They were threatened, beaten, raped or punished.
• They did not get paid for the work they did.
• They were not allowed to speak to other people or to make friends.
• They were told they would have to work until their debt was paid and their debt kept getting bigger, not smaller.
• They could not get medical services or help if they needed it.
• They could not get away because they had been forced to break the law and were afraid.
• Their families back home were threatened with violence or hurt.
It is hard to get away from a trafficker. Traffickers know how to make people feel vulnerable and afraid. They know how to keep people trapped in a situation. They are part of an organized network.’
And then this from a media account, 2006. ‘A heavily pregnant 16 year old has been abandoned on the streets of Sheffield. The woman, whose mother died when she was 14, was living on the streets of Nairobi before being trafficked by a woman who offered her domestic work in the UK. She was brought to England by boat and met by 2 men at a train station. The men took her to a house believed to be in the London area. Using violence and threats they forced her into prostitution, beating and raping her on a daily basis. Around 10 men a day paid to have sex with her.

Three months later, in December 2005 she became pregnant, but was still raped, beaten, and forced to continue in prostitution. When she became too heavily pregnant to continue, she was allowed out of the brothel for the first time and taken by car to Sheffield. She was dumped in the town centre, where a female passer-by directed her to council offices.’
Sheffield Star, July 2006:
www.thestar.co.uk/ViewArticle.aspx?SectionID=58&ArticleID=1617913
Consider for a moment the trauma suffered by that poor young woman and by thousands of women and children like her on the streets of the UK.
We will return to this area later, but now we want to highlight another form of exploitation. That of, for want of a better description, irregular migrant workers, those working in slave like conditions, - super exploited labour with no current legal route out of slavery.

There are estimated to be around 1.4m registered foreign workers in the UK, many of whom are exploited by the worst kind of employers. Estimates of illegal workers range from between 500,000 to 800,000. That is a huge number of people, and these, naturally are even more vulnerable to exploitation.

This migrant labour force is something we should celebrate on different levels:

- on one level because many young people in particular, are being offered a means out of the malaise they find themselves in their own countries
- on another because it shows that for all its faults, this country of ours is still perceived by many to be a welcoming land of opportunity
- and not least because the vast majority are filling vacancies that indigenous people so often refuse to take. This country needs migrant workers. That is one reason why they come.

It is fair to say that the agricultural economy in many regions would today be difficult to sustain without migrant workers. It’s quite some time since we heard of a British farmer committing suicide – just a few years ago it was a regular news item.

The service sector clearly is also benefiting greatly- hotels and catering, restaurants, takeaways, contract cleaning, laundry, etc. have become dependent on a cheap, flexible migrant workforce. And migrant workers are also the mainstay of many of our public services.

In April 2006 a report by the influential Ernst & Young Item Club, using the Treasury’s own models, revealed that migrant workers from Eastern Europe had helped keep inflation under control, had helped boost output, increase economic growth, raise tax revenue - to the tune of £300m in 2006, - and in so doing, had kept interest rates low and eased the pensions burden.

Such are the benefits to British industry, that the then Director General of the CBI, Sir Digby Jones, (now darling of Brown Labour) called in April 2005 for the Government to resist any thoughts of a cap on in-migration. Arguing that every 1% increase in immigration brought a 1.5% increase in national wealth.

He added: "If it was not for immigrant labour, especially in leisure, in tourism, in agriculture, in construction, then frankly many of our businesses would not have the workers we need."
The 2001 census showed a UK birth rate that had fallen below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman. As a result, 600,000 fewer young people will enter the workforce between 2010 and 2020. At the same time, the chancellor's targets for economic growth require 1.3 million people to join the workforce.
And, despite the media scaremongering, in-migrants are simply not claiming benefits. The official Accession Monitoring Report May 2004-June 2006 highlights the fact that the 600,000 migrants who arrived under the Workers Registration Scheme generated only 768 meaningful applications for income support and Jobseekers Allowance in those 2 years - that is 768 claims from 600,000 people - and by no means were all those claims accepted.

ALL of which begs the question, if these people are providing so much for the UK and taking so little out by way of benefits, why are they not better protected?

Because let’s be under no illusions here, there are some very nasty people out there who are making huge amounts of money by exploiting migrant workers in ways not seen in this country since Victorian times.

But let’s first look at who and the how.
These are primarily young people. 18 to mid 30s. They are thereby often too trusting and very vulnerable. Many of them are well qualified in their home countries.

So how do these vibrant, often well educated, migrant workers come to be enslaved in the UK?

It’s primarily through deception

- Most are from locations where opportunities for economic well being are minimal or nonexistent . They are enticed with tales of wonderful economic possibilities in the UK and recruited in their own countries through employment agencies and through adverts in newspapers by gang masters.

Legal migrants are often duped because they are shown details of the Accession State Worker Registration Scheme and The Seasonal Agricultural Workers' Scheme which give them a false sense of security – they are after all, govt, sanctioned schemes, yet they still ended up suffering appalling exploitation.

- Those offered contracts of employment in their own country have them replaced by much less favourable contracts upon arrival in the UK

- Illegals of course, have no contract other than their indebtedness for having been smuggled in.

So once they are here, what's to stop them just walking away?

Many are trapped by the Gangmaster taking their passport away, to forward to the Home Office for registration. In the three months or so that it takes to register, the migrant workers are entirely in the hands of the gangmaster. Because they can't prove who they are, they cannot open a bank account or get a National Insurance number - so nobody can pay them directly. So they have to work for the gangmaster who pays them in cash. Sometimes passports are never returned – they are sold on or used in fraud. So they are trapped.

Those who do insist that their passport is returned are often times sacked and lose their accommodation.

Secondly, many are already indebted upon arrival. They pay a non-returnable sign on fee. Figures of £600 and £800 are standard, but it can amount to thousands of pounds. Some arrive after having paid such large sums only to be told there is a similar signing on fee at this end too (which is actually illegal). They can pay off this new debt only through working. And they don't have the air fare home. So they are trapped.

The gangmasters then ensure that they earn insufficient monies to clear those debts. So for instance, migrants are deliberately laid off work for periods during which time they continue to live in gang master accommodation - thus accruing further debts. So they are trapped.

The gangmasters are very clever. Migrant workers are sometimes paid the minimum wage but that is then reduced by systematic irregular deductions – so fees for processing passports, fees for transport, for training, for sub-standard safety clothing, for bedding, for domestic waste removal. The list is endless. They also have bogus tax and NI contributions taken out of their wages – which it later transpires, have never reached the exchequer. It is common practice for migrant workers to be paid less than £50 for a 70 hour week.

In April a Lithuanian undercover reporter for the BBC worked 68 hours in 2 weeks for East Yorkshire firm FOCUS – for those 68 hours he received £47. There are huge profits to be made out of this exploitation - Mike Dickinson the Director of Focus lives in a detached house in one of the leafier parts of Humberside - bought in 2006 for £465,000

For illegal immigrants the situation is worse.
- Clearly they cannot secure legitimate work and the minimum wage.
- Freedom of association is often discouraged, – so they have no social life.
- Language difficulties, combined with this general isolation provides yet another form of control for gang masters.
- There are threats of violence to themselves & families back home
- There is actual violence, both physical and verbal abuse
- They cannot complain or turn to the authorities for fear of deportation

And please remember, that estimates of illegal migrant workers range from between 500,000 to 800,000. That is a huge pool of fearful, exploitable labour.

Alongside the deductions from wages are charges for outrageously priced multi occupancy accommodation also provided by the gangmaster / agency. It is standard practice that migrant workers cannot leave that accommodation without also losing their employment. That accommodation is often unsafe, appallingly overcrowded, with inadequate or only very basic amenities and sometimes migrants are targeted there for theft and mugging by criminal gangs.

Hot bedding is a common phenomenon in around the country, wherever migrant workers are to be found in numbers. We are talking up to 12 in a house - one shift out of bed, another shift jump in. Apart from the indignity of this there are health and sanitary considerations. Agencies can readily be found taking over £1000 profit per month from just one house – and they have many houses.

In the rural areas, voluntary agencies regularly come across 5 to 6 people living in a caravan meant for two. With no water or sanitation in the caravan. This was not an exception, these are common situations.

Working conditions are often appalling, sometimes dangerous (with inadequate safety procedures and inadequate training) Unsociable hours, are the norm. 12 and 16 hour shifts common, without overtime. Workers are sometimes called in to do double shifts at a moment’s notice. Workers who refuse to do so either have money deducted from wages already earned as a punishment. Or they are threatened with the sack, the loss of accommodation and even threatened with deportation.

The great majority of migrant workers simply do not access health and welfare services, and where they do try to do so they are systematically turned away from doctors and dental surgeries by reception staff who have neither the language skills, nor, it would appear, the inclination to book them in. Many portray their life as a constant struggle. This from a voluntary agency worker: “There are disputes on contracts, disputes on time worked, disputes on pay rates, disputes on deductions, disputes on all sorts of things. All too often people are simply not paid what they are owed and feel they have no redress – and we are sometimes talking hundreds of pounds here.”

- For the vast majority of migrant workers there is no job security. Being passed between various ‘middle men’ and having to take a string of low paid jobs around the country is the norm.

- And some agency workers experienced a constant undercurrent of sexual exploitation, some women become ‘concubines’ of their gangmasters or employers.

Even for the most hardy there is a feeling of helplessness, a loss of dignity and personal esteem.

There are many employment agencies utilising migrant workers - there are up to 10,000 gangmasters operating in the UK, according to police records may of them have serious criminal records. They sign up as many migrants as they can - they can have thousands on their books at any given time – but then to get the maximum out of them they send them wherever they are needed at a moment’s notice. So voluntary agencies come across migrant workers keeping their property in carrier bags. “Sometimes they work 2 weeks here, 2 weeks there, 2 weeks there.” They can be in Lincolnshire picking cabbages one day and in Cornwall picking flowers the next. This is a perfect mobile labour force for a deregulated economy.

Of course, not all employers are bad - There are good agencies and responsible employers who do recognise how hard the migrant workers work - they provide proper contracts, pay tax and NI, pay the minimum wage and above it - some even pay bonuses for good work. But the reward for their decency and honesty is unfortunately that they find themselves undercut by the corrupt agencies who clearly have much cheaper labour costs.

So to sum up: By means of initial and unexpected debts incurred, of systematic irregular deductions from wages, incomplete wages, sporadic employment patterns, tied accommodation, removal of passports, and threats to themselves and their families back home, combined with their often poor language skills and a lack of awareness of their rights, migrants are effectively enslaved. by being unable to leave and unable to clear their 'debt'. Migrants tell of enforced isolation, of not being allowed time off work to visit the doctors or other welfare services. Service providers, whether that be the police, or housing officials, or concerned voluntary agencies, do not have the outreach facilities to go out and find them and assist them.


So what are the possible Solutions? And who is to take them forward?
There is no one solution to these problems. And this is by no means a comprehensive list. The pressure and the dynamics for change are going to have to come from several directions simultaneously.

In the first instance, but be under no illusion that the British government have a direct responsibility to do this – and not simply on humanitarian grounds – because in many ways, the government itself is culpable.

There is a demand in the UK for cheap, mobile, flexible and exploitable labour. That demand has not arisen in a vacuum – it arose as a direct consequence of structural factors, of an economic environment where the market is king and de-regulation is seen as an end in itself. Of a deliberate programme of ‘managed migration so that the number of work permits issued to foreign born workers rose from 40,000 a year in the mid 1990s to over 200,000 a year in 2004. (*) Flynn, D. 2005, New borders, new management: The dilemmas of modern migration policies, in Ethnic and Racial Studies 28(3) pp 463-490; and May, Jon, Willis, Jane, et al, March 2006, The British State and London’s Migrant Division of Labour, Queen Mary University of London).


Then there was the de-regulation of the gangmasters in the 1990s, where regulation was replaced by meaningless voluntary codes.

And of course, the current Govt invited Accession state workers across without first ensuring the legal and social rights were in place to protect them

So yes, Central Government have a responsibility to act.

If we now look to six key areas:


1. Remove the bad agencies from the equation. Those withholding passports, those making unorthodox deductions from wages or deducting tax and insurance and then failing to pay it on to government, those providing overcrowded accommodation, etc. Prosecute them and close ‘em down

2. In the meantime, the Gangmasters, Licensing Authority needs to be adequately resourced. Currently it only covers agriculture, horticulture and shellfish. So those working on building sites and in factories, in the care industries, in takeaways are not yet protected - except by standard health and safety legislation. There is evidence that some gangmasters are deliberately moving all their workers from agriculture to the building trade. Curretnly approximately 75% of areas in which the gangmasters operate are not covered by the Act. Even in the areas covered, in agriculture, horticulture & shelfish, where farmers employ workers directly, they cannot be touched – only suppliers of labour can be held accountable. And in that 25% of areas it does cover, there is also a real scepticism that the Gangmaster’s Authority is being adequately resourced to cover the problem - particularly in huge rural areas. It has 11 compliance officers ( the ones that do the inspecting of businesses) for the whole of the UK. So for the North East there is just one compliance officer – that’s one person to cover Tyneside, Teesside, North Yorkshire and Humberside – one person to investigate every farm, every factory, every beach in those areas. One person.

Now if we compare that with the fact that it was announced in March that the Govt was releasing £30m to LA s to finance the recruitment of thousands of inspectors to ensure that people don’t smoke in public places. What does that tell you about the priority the government gives to tackling modern day slavery? And then consider that money can always be found for Trident, for the Olympics, for a war in Iraq.


The GLA has no undercover officers. It only responds to complaints from the public. Man of the migrant worker slaves are taken to caravan sites as soon as they arrive in the UK and are only allowed off those sites to work in the fields. They cannot report their own exploitation and instances of farmers shopping their gangmaster supplier are non-existent.

And so it goes on. There have been no successful prosecutions in the 3 years since the cocklepickers died at Morecambe Bay. The gangmasters must be quaking in their boots. As it stands, the GLA is little more than window dressing.


3. Bad landlords must be challenged in law.
Landlords with multiple properties should be licensed. Then if they fail to maintain decent conditions in their properties and prevent overcrowding, the license could be taken away, preventing them from operating. They could also be jailed. if inspectors made an example of one or two landlords in each region the rest would soon fall into line.

4. An amnesty for unregulated workers
Government should sign up to the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All migrant workers and the Members of their families…. and it should provide an Amnesty for the half a million plus unregistered workers.

To be an unregulated worker is to have no rights and no protection. The regularisation of the estimated 500,000 – 800,000 undocumented migrants – for want of a better word, an amnesty – should now be a policy priority. That would break the chain of bondage by removing much of the power of the exploiters. It would bring unregistered workers into the fold, enabling them to pay tax and national insurance like everyone else – and have the same rights and protections as everyone else.

Because if they don’t let’s please remind ourselves again that we are an ageing population, with a reducing birth rate and we need migrant workers.

At the moment everyone gains from that migration, but if migrant workers continue to be subject to the abuses of gangmasters, eventually they will start to go elsewhere. There are reports this week that the strawberry harvest is in danger of going unpicked this year because migrant workers are voting with their feet and simply refusing to work under the appalling conditions to which many have been subjected.

So it makes sound economic sense for the Treasury and for the wider economy, to protect unregistered migrant workers by offering them an amnesty. But it is also surely a moral responsibility of a government whose economy has benefited so much from migrant workers.

An amnesty for irregulars is now supported by the Strangers into Citizens campaign - their recent poll showed two thirds of the public to be behind a one-off amnesty. There is cross party support for it in the Commons, the Church of England, the Catholic Church and a plethora of other denominations have called for it, as have political commentators such as Poly Toynbee in the Guardian, and the editorial of the Independent newspaper. What is needed is the will power in Government to stand up to the racist scum who write for the Daily Mail, Daily Express, etc.

5. Central government needs to embrace a rights-based approach to international migration and ensure that basic human rights and welfare services are provided for these most vulnerable of people.

Which brings us back to that most pernicious form of slavery in the UK – trafficking for the sex trade. Here again we see the British government dragging its heels – it took 2 years of pressure from ASI, the Poppy Project and others, for Tony Blair to get around to ratifying the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings in January of this year.

However, word from the street suggests that although this provides certain protections for trafficked persons, for instance, a 30 day leave to remain in the country to receive support, emergency medical assistance, safe housing and legal advice, nonetheless, how trafficked people are treated very much depends upon how UK agencies comply with the letter of the Convention and what resources they have at their disposal to do so.

This doesn’t bade well considering the long seated culture of animosity amongst the police, immigration and asylum services towards those seen as prostitutes and illegal immigrants. Trafficked women, already in dread fear of both their traffickers and the immigration authorities, are routinely refused asylum, placed in detention centres alongside their traffickers, and deported straight back in to the hands of the traffickers who first violently punish them for having tried to escape their clutches or for being picked up in police and immigration swoops and then routinely re-trafficked them back on to the streets of the UK.

Clearly what is required is not simply the signing of a convention but a root and branch cultural change in key enforcement agencies. To-date no such process has been initiated.
As we outlined earlier, Anti-Slavery International estimate that at least 10,000 women and 3-4000 children have been trafficked into the UK for sexual purposes in the past decade. That is a huge well of misery that New Labour have done nothing to stem.

And finally, Name and shame the retailers. A recent one year investigation in Sussex by the Guardian revealed that Tesco, Sainsbury’s & Macdonald’s, were all using subcontracted labour who were subjected to appalling abuse by their gangmasters. (Guardian, Leader, 11.01.2005) Why are the supermarkets not being prosecuted for selling on produce obtained through illegal slavery? In the same way that people are prosecuted for receiving stolen goods.

Time and again the users of forced or exploited labour claim that they themselves are forced into this position by ruthless pressures from a very small number of powerful supermarkets driving the prices of suppliers down.

It is simply not credible to claim, as these supermarkets invariably do, that they are not aware of what is happening as a consequence of their own drive to reduce costs. It is now time for the Government to reduce and regulate the powers of the major supermarket chains in the food industry. There used to be a Monopolies Commission to prevent such concentrations of economic power.

Given the proximity of the supermarket chains and other big business retailers to New Labour and its policy advisers we very much doubt we’ll see that any day soon. But you can but hope.

Sadly, the general pattern is that the UK Government’s record on contemporary slavery has been at best inadequate, at worse, counterproductive. We have been sickened (if nto surprised) in recent months by some of the irrational, potentially inflammatory and frankly, downright disgraceful comments about migrant workers by Ministers John Reid, Margaret Hodge and Hazel Blears. (“they’re stealing our houses and welfare” etc). They should know better.

What we need is a government putting its money where its mouth is. They will not do that without pressure. And it will take a lot of pressure. But to paraphrase 18thC philosopher Edmund Burke: All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing.

So what can you do?

People power. In the 1780s one third of the city of Manchester signed the Quakers’ petition against slavery. William Wilberforce was the figurehead, he endured much hostility and several death threats - but he was the first to acknowledge that it was the signatures and testimonies of the general public that created the wave on which he rode to challenge the vested interests of the time.

So we can do the same. And please make no mistake, there are vested interests today who will fight us every inch of the way. So what can you do?

Well first, please inform yourselves.

Go on the internet and put modern slavery or contemporary slavery into Google. Visit the . Anti slavery International website. Visit the United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre website. Write to MPs about legalising unregistered migrant workers, about closing down bad landlords and about how badly resourced the gangmasters authority is.

Sign up to Strangers in to Citizens at www.strangersintocitizens.org.uk/
Join Anti-Slavery International at www.antislavery.org/
Join the Migrants Rights Network at www.migrantsrights.org.uk
Join Stop the Traffik at www.stopthetraffik.org/

Hold more public meetings.

Boycott produce – again, check stories on Guardian Unlimited on internet. We, as concerned agents, need to find the links between the products they sell and the exploitation behind them – and then we need to publicise them and encouraging consumer boycotts of the worst offenders.

Write to local newspapers.

E-mail or write the Gangmasters Authority to report any abuses you hear about to them. Their website is: www.gla.gov.uk/

And please don’t forget that this is not simply a UK problem. Find out who makes those t shirts and training shoes and what conditions they work under. We are the ones who provide the markets for cheap imported goods made with exploited child labour – in that very clear sense, if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem.

william ward, bristol, uk

To Les, Lavendon: Can you really be serious when you say: "Christian doctrine should also be given some of the credit for the 'lasting legacy of the abolitionists'"? Surely, you cannot possibly be unaware that slavery and the slave trade were in fact "justified" using the Bible, and that as Lincoln Crawford's insightful piece has noted, the Church (and some Bishops) were deeply complicit in that enterprise.

As for your casual and gratuitous slur on "political correctness," I wish you would acknowledge that it was political correctness that brought us the abolition of slavery and the slave trade, the granting of votes to women, anti-discrimination laws of all kinds, etc.

AKPAN, Canterbury/Kent,

Racism and slavery are two seperate things that have (or had) become intertwined. Some comments have pointed out that racism exists even where slavery was never an issue. They are right so far as it goes. Dr. Williams' thesis is also right, so far as it goes. The problem is that race was used as a rationalization by those who were economically dependant on slavery. They were not plagued by guilt over their inhumane treatment if they could consider their slaves to be somehow less than human. Race was that convenient excuse. The same thing always happens in wars, where the enemy is demonized, and therefore does not have to be treated humanely. (WW II homefront propaganda on both axis and allied sides provides many striking examples.) The problem here is that the particular attitude of racism, as used to rationalize slavery, has persisted. Even the abolitionists on both sides of the Atlantic did not want to mingle socially with the Africans who they wanted to free.

Bernhard Hoff, North Brunswick, NJ, USA