Speech to Annual General Meeting of Anti-Slavery International, 2015

It is an honour and a pleasure to be here once again at Anti-Slavery’s Annual General Meeting, which I think must be our 176th.

This past year in the UK much of the focus of our work has been on on the Modern Slavery Act, and the repercussions of that still occupy us. But it is worth remembering that when the government first published its draft bill it was straightforward criminal justice measure, and an underwhelming one at that. There was no mention of forced labour in business supply chains and nothing on victim protection, both ideas which the government was vocally contemptuous of at the outset. As a result of diligent work by Anti-Slavery staff with our allies in civil society and in parliament this was changed. But the positive measures that we and our allies pressed the government into including in that Act were but a portion of our achievements last year.

For example:

• we helped establish a new organisation exposing slavery and forced labour in Thailand, something for which Anti-Slavery has been very warmly recognised in the region;

• we were instrumental in the development of a law in Senegal providing the basis for State regulation of Qur’anic schools and prohibition of forced child begging;

• we expanded our Migrant Domestic Work Programme both to Bangladesh and India; and

• we published guidance for practitioners on trafficking for forced criminality.

This is a considerable breadth of achievement and the breadth of our work and ambition continues,

• ranging from our transparency in supply chains work emerging not only from our work on the Modern Slavery Act, but also from our continuing work to end child labour in cocoa supply chains in West Africa and from the light we helped shine on the slavery abuses in the Thai fishing industry; to

• our continuing work to help end bonded labour in India’s brick kilns, to

• our ongoing demonstrations in West Africa and Nepal of the importance of education as a means of breaking the transmission of slavery across generations.

These add to a body of achievements over the past five years that have included decisive contributions to changing national and international law, exposure of slavery across the world and empowerment of slavery affected communities.

I think it is worth reflecting upon this body of achievements, taken together, for a moment. First of all none of this would have been possible without the steadfast backing of the organisation by members and supporters over these years, and I would like to take the opportunity to convey my heartfelt thanks for this.

Second, as you will all be aware, these past five years have not been the easiest in Anti-Slavery’s history. Among other things this is because of the difficulties in the external environment, and because we have looked at a world in which millions of children, women and men are enslaved, we have found that unacceptable. So, rather than rest on our laurels, we have chosen to strive to do more to end it, something that brings with it more work, and increased struggle.

As our strategy makes plain, Anti-Slavery was founded to end slavery and we remain the vital organisation that is instrumental in doing that.

I recall when I was being interviewed for this job I mentioned how important I thought it was for poverty reduction that slavery should be eradicated. And this is an issue on which Anti-Slavery has been publicly campaigning since 2007. That it is now recognised as such in the Sustainable Development Goals is, I believe, a singular achievement and not one that would have been obtained without Anti-Slavery’s pressure through long years when we were a lone voice on the issue. As late as November 2013 I was being told by senior figures in some of the newer anti-slavery organisations that such a thing was unachievable.

And yet we achieved it.

Earlier this year I had the honour of being invited to speak at the annual gathering at Westminster Abbey in commemoration of Thomas Clarkson. It was a memorable occasion for me in that it brought together not just Clarkson’s relatives but also Buxtons and descendants of Wilberforce, with myself, and Reggie Norton and Klara Skrivankova representing Anti-Slavery.

It led me to reflect on the reasons we remember with warmth and admiration Clarkson, and Wilberforce, and Buxton, and Equiano, and Lincoln, and Morell, and Casement.

For example in the film The Ladykillers the filmmakers called the little old lady “Mrs Wilberforce” because they wanted the audience to understand that she represented the very best of British society.

But this belovedness was not always the case. The leaders in the struggle against slavery were hated by many in their day because of the choices they made to try to obtain a more just society: Clarkson’s life was threatened, Lincoln was assassinated; Morrell’s health was broken doing hard labour in prison; Casement was the last knight of the realm to be executed for high treason.

But the reason why we remember them still, the reason they were on the right side of history, is that they displayed that very rare quality of moral courage: they were prepared to stand alone in the face of the received political and economic wisdom and the prevailing social attitudes and pressures and put their names to the assertion that, “The world is unjust because humans have made it so. And if we make different moral and political choices, as we must do, that we can change that.”

Anti-Slavery continues to be that voice of moral courage in the contemporary world. That doesn’t always make us popular. It often demands hard choices and difficult decisions. But it is that moral courage that has led to the achievements that we have spoken of this evening and the ones that we will speak of in years to come.

Many of the vested interests who benefit from slavery across the world would love us to go away, or to acquiesce in the comforting myth that the only thing that is now needed to end slavery is for decent cops to lock up evil criminals.

But we cannot go away, we will not go away so long as slavery remains a blight on our human society because of the way humans with power have structured law and policy, nationally and internationally. We will continue to add our voice to those of our comrades across the world struggling to end slavery in their own countries and communities.

At the close of 2015 we can say we have forced the issue of slavery back onto the international development agenda. Now comes the hard part: turning that line in a UN document into a programme of international action.

So long as we endure our supporters and members can be confident that this is what we will be working for, no matter what obstacles are thrown in our path.

Manual scavengers in South Asia are Dalits enslaved to clean up other people’s shit

The issue of caste based discrimination is fundamental to the wider question of slavery eradication: it is technically true that anyone can be enslaved, particularly if they are caught up in the cataclysms of war. But that truism masks a more fundamental truth: that the weak who are subject to the prejudices of others are the ones who are vastly more at risk of enslavement: migrants in Western Europe and the Americas; women and children everywhere; Dalits and Adavasi in South Asia.

South Asian apartheid based on caste has provoked surprisingly little international fury over decades in comparison to the more infamous South African version. Both systems confer economic advantage to some based on the human rights abuses of millions of other human beings. But, in comparison to South African apartheid, the South Asian variety is considerably less renowned in significant part because it is less well understood. The ignorance of the rest of the world insulates it from the anger that it should provoke. And we in the North are rewarded for that ignorance with lucrative trade deals many involving forced labour using industries providing cheap goods and commodities to our high streets. For example it is still probable that everyone reading this in the global North is wearing at least one garment that has been tainted with the forced labour of Dalit and Adavasi girls and young women.

So it may be understandable why the bulk of citizens are ignorant of these issues and so have not raised their voices in protest at caste based apartheid in South Asia. But it is not excusable that development and anti-poverty organisations remain so circumspect. There are honourable exceptions of course such as Christian Aid and Action Aid, but the disinterest of the wider community is striking.

Brick kilns across northern India, Pakistan and Nepal enslave Dalit men, women and children to work in them

I would contend that the blissful ignorance of this issue that many anti-poverty and development organisations affect will prove less tolerable over the coming years. The Sustainable Development Goals, while not explicit on the issue of caste, are explicit in their recognition of the importance of inclusivity to achieve effective development and the need for slavery-eradication in order to obtain poverty reduction and a sustainable economy. National and international NGOs alike must recognise that both these Goals imply that poverty reduction is a political issue requiring fundamental changes in the contemporary status quo. As such they bump up against the prejudices and pretensions of the privileged, most significant the caste based prejudices of the elites of South Asia with the resultant consequences for hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people.

Unless we recognise these political dynamics at play in our contemporary world we will never grasp the sort of political pressures and processes that will be necessary to change the laws, policies and customs that are still used to subjugate others.

The Kafala system of the Arabian peninsula, which provides employers there the right to unilaterally change terms and conditions of employees, and prevents employees from changing employers or even returning home, is used to provide the legal basis for the enslavement of South Asian migrants. It positively rewards political elites who indulge their prejudices against South Asian migrant workers by enslaving them, including for the World Cup construction in Qatar. In South Asia itself the rule of law does not extend to hundreds of millions of Dalits and Adivasi and hence the powerful are able to enslave them with impunity.

Different political economic models are unappealing to the elites in these situations because they would involve treating those they disdain with decency and recognition of our common humanity.

So changing these political economies requires national and international political pressure. And yet Qatar and Dubai remain valued trading partners with Europe. And the United Kingdom so values its relationship with Saudi Arabia that it doesn’t allow its enthusiasm for the enslavement of migrant workers, its creation and sponsorship of DAESH, the Islamic State, its addiction to the decapitation of human beings, or its intent to crucify a child who protested in favour of democracy, to prevent it from supporting Saudi Arabia’s membership of the UN Human Rights Council. Though to be fair that is perhaps only the second most damaging thing the UK has done to the ideals of human rights and the principles of rule of law in recent years. Its declared intent to repudiate the Human Rights Act and the European Court of Human Rights brings an even more existential threat to the concept of international rule of law.

Furthermore the discussions of India’s permanent membership of the UN Security Council seems untroubled by that country’s high toleration of caste-based violence, its shortcomings in relation to rule of law, and its paltry efforts to end slavery within its own borders or for its citizens overseas.

Dr Ambedkar

Dr Ambedkar noted that “History shows us that where ethics and economics come in conflict, victory is always with economics. Vested interests have never been known to have willingly divested themselves unless there was sufficient force to compel them.”
International repudiation was fundamental in bringing political change in South Africa. And yet when the present-day counterparts of Verweod and Voster attend the assemblies of the international institutions that were founded to uphold the principles of human rights and rule of law they are greeted with a warm embrace rather than a cold shoulder.

Since the days of Sparta the privileged have conspired to keep power out of the hands of the helots. That process continues to this day.

But it won’t continue forever. The Irish playwright Brian Friel noted the inevitability of the mounting tide of resistance in his play Freedom of the City. In it a civil rights activist describes the process when ordinary people, the oppressed of a given society, decide enough is enough: “you know your children are caught in the same morass.[But] for the first time in your life you grumbled, and someone else grumbled, and someone else, and you heard each other, and became aware that there were hundreds, thousands, millions of us, all over the world, and in a vague groping way you were outraged.”

That process of outrage has already begun. The development community needs to decide which side it is on. Political leaders need to decide which side they are on. Technocratic responses to poverty, the attempt to transfer things to people who do not have things can never succeed if the reasons that people don’t have things in the first place is because they are prevented from having them by political systems constructed by the elites of their societies.

Instead hard political work is needed to confront the edifices of injustice that are meant to keep those on the bottom where those on top deign the should be. There is a need for a renewed focus on developing partnerships with civil society to empower alienated communities, conducting research and investigation to expose injustice and confront those responsible, begining dialogue and collaborations with trades unions, businesses as well as civil society that are necessary to shift power into the hands of those who have been excluded from power.

The struggle of the helots, the Dalits, the migrants, the outcasts continues. And, unless we properly understand that, irrespective of what we try to do or how we try to do it, we are fated to become part of that most accursed community in human history and society – the well-meaning.

Symposium on Forced Labour Research, Sheffield University

8 Oct 2015

I don’t think it will be a surprise to anyone that since I was asked to speak here I’ve been thinking a lot about the number 42.

42 is, as Douglas Adams reminded us, the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything.

It is an absurd notion, but Adams was getting at an important point with his tales of Deep Thought in the Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy. He was getting at that belief in large parts of the modern world that the only things that matter are the quantifiable ones. It’s part of the discourse that poverty reduction in general, and slavery eradication in particular, are technocratic challenges which merely require the rational thought of the clever and the largesse of the rich to fix.

But, of course most of the things that matter in life, the universe and everything cannot be quantified, or are things for which numbers are merely crude metaphors. How do you quantify love? Or the experience of watching a sunrise in the Ethiopian highlands or dolphins dancing off the coast of Angola? Or the pleasure of a fine wine and cake?

Or the level of contempt that one person can have for another human being that allows them to calmly contemplate working them to death?

Non-quantifiable questions about non-rational issues, are at the heart of the practice of slavery. In particular the questions of discrimination and the dehumanisation of other people are fundamental to slavery.

It is technically true that anyone can be enslaved, particularly if they are caught up in the cataclysms of war. But that truism masks a more fundamental truth: that the weak who are subject to the prejudices of others are the ones who are vastly more at risk of enslavement: Dalits and Adavasi in South Asia; migrants in Western Europe and the Americas; women and children everywhere.

So given the topic of this roundtable, my question is: how can one obtain insight into any of these issues with quantitative methods?

Of course there is a need to quantify the scale of slavery in the world, to help plan responses and assess progress. But knowing the numbers does not allow one to understand the reasons why people are enslaved nor how their enslavement may be ended.

Anyone who has done any reading in the social sciences will be aware of the sort of profound insight that quantitative methods can provide. But it needs particularly skilled and focused researchers gifted with exceptional acuity in the framing of questions. I suspect we may be some way off a sufficiently widespread understanding of the generalities of contemporary slavery and the specifics of its national and cultural manifestations before such research practice can come into its own.

So, as a general rule I would argue that, even though quantity has its own quality, increased qualitative research is more vitally required for the understanding of the root causes of slavery and the political and social remedies to the problems.

Qualitative and historical studies have shown us that effective anti-slavery action still requires the elimination of underlying discrimination practices and empowerment of those vulnerable to slavery. It has shown us the importance of provision of high quality and appropriate education to children vulnerable to slavery. It has shown us the importance of unionisation as a means to rebalance the power between exploited workers and employers. It has shown us how combinations of governmental cynicism and ineptitude contribute to the endangering of vulnerable workers both in their home countries and when they travel in search of decent work.

That is not to say the qualitative research is a silver bullet. In spite of much qualitative research, including that conducted by the Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group which Anti-Slavery leads, the British Conservative Government remains thoroughly convinced that the principle cause of slavery in the UK is evil organised criminal masterminds, and have proven remarkably resistant to the notions that their Overseas Domestic Worker visa, their lack of labour inspection within risky industries such as construction, and their police cuts have anything to do with the problem.

This brings me to another point. The ending of slavery is a political challenge. Or rather it is a bundle of national and international political challenges. And these political challenges bump up against the prejudices and pretensions of the privileged,, who since the days of Sparta have conspired to keep power out of the hands of the helots. Thus it is. Thus has it always been.

And, as with the British government’s notions of why there is slavery in the UK, these prejudices are deeply resistant to erosion by mere facts. Economic agency theory suggests that humans will always act to maximise their material benefit. But when Hamilton tried to establish a slavery-free economy in the US in the 1790s and when Lincoln tried compensated emancipation at the outset of his presidency, both failed to end slavery in spite of the economic benefits they promised to slave holders. The American Plantocracy were so wedded to their aristocratic privilege that their status gave them, they found it something that mere economic wealth could not compensate them for.

We see similar issues today when we carefully consider slavery across the world. In the Arabian peninsula the Kafala system provides the legal basis by which the elites can obtain economic benefit by indulging their prejudices against South Asian migrant workers by enslaving them. In South Asia the rule of law does not extend to the hundreds of millions of Dalits and Adivasi who live there and hence the powerful are able to enslave them with impunity. Different political economic models are unappealing to the elites in these situations because they would involve treating those they disdain with decency and recognition of our common humanity.

The increased complexity of the Sustainable Development Goals over the Millennium Goals, and their rooting in human rights standards hopefully will help us move on from that limited technocratic discourse.

This technocratic approach to slavery seems to me at the moment to be leading to a fixation upon a search for a menu of technical options which only require money to be plugged into in order to achieve change. Such an approach is chimeric. It can never replace the hard political work, the partnerships and community development, the research and investigations, the exposes and confrontations, the dialogue and collaborations, that is necessary to shift power into the hands of those who have been excluded from power.

In the end, I would suggest, that the visceral is as important as the rational: which side are you on? The struggle of the helots, the Dalits, the migrants, the outcasts continues. And, unless we properly understand that, irrespective of what we try to do or how we try to do it, we are fated to become part of that most accursed community in human history and society – the well-meaning.

It’s a considerable achievement that the Sustainable Development Goals now contain an explicit reference to slavery, forced and child labour.

The absence of this issue from the Millennium Development Goals was a travesty, and the consequences of that are highlighted by the number 5.5 million. 5.5 million is the ILO’s most recent estimate, made in 2012, of the number of children in slavery. It is the same as the ILO’s estimate of the number of children in slavery in 2005

In other words, in spite of all the real progress on poverty reduction and development, including a huge fall in the overall numbers of child labourers, during this period international development has completely passed by the millions of children and, for that matter, the tens of millions more adults in slavery across the world.

So the inclusion of slavery eradication in the Sustainable Development Goals is therefore highly significant. It is a recognition by the international community that it has until now comprehensively ignored some of the people in greatest poverty across the globe. But for this recognition to have practical meaning, it must be translated from a sentence in a United Nations pronouncement to a strategy that puts power into the hands of the excluded.

Because one thing that the struggle against slavery puts into the sharpest of focus is that poverty is not merely about a lack of things, but more fundamentally about a lack of power. This remains true in spite of some of the more recent philanthropic discourses on poverty which treat it not even as an economic issue but a technocratic one.

Slavery is one of the most political of development and poverty issues. Those who are enslaved are drawn from communities which are systematically excluded from power to enable their control by those who are more privileged. They include Dalits and Adivasi in South Asia, migrants in Europe, the Middle East, the Americas, South East Asia and West Africa, and children everywhere, .

Prejudice and discrimination against certain groups on arbitrary bases such as caste, ethnicity, gender and religion is still frequently used as a basis upon which the more powerful exclude the more vulnerable from the processes of development. By doing so those same mechanisms of social exclusion also render those discriminated against more vulnerable to slavery.

Development and humanitarian practitioners have barely even been aware of these dynamics and so have failed to address them. If those who call ourselves anti-slavery activists also ignore the fundamentally political nature of these challenges then we too will fail in the imperatives placed upon us by our mandates.

So this is where it gets difficult.

The majority of the underlying causes of slavery are profoundly political and fraught with contention by vested interests which are quite happy with the way the world currently is. Many new entrants to the struggle against slavery are content to see this struggle as merely a matter of locking up evil people by decent police. They are unconcerned with the altogether more contentious questions that underpin the reality of contemporary slavery, such as state-acquiescence in caste-based discrimination, the toleration of child marriage, undermining of rule of national and international law, the failure to establish safe migration routes for vulnerable workers seeking decent work, or the decriminalised international trade in slavery produced goods and services.

For example if the international community is serious in its efforts against slavery how can we continue to acquiesce in the ready access to international markets and warm inclusion to the international polity of Uzbekistan and Qatar, to name but two states, which, with differing degrees of cynicism, have effectively legalised slavery in within their borders.

Or, in spite of its recent casting of itself as a global leader against slavery it is unlikely that the UK has for a moment considered the potential impact that its naked disdain for the European Court of Human Rights will have on the rule of international law in general and as it relates to slavery in particular: that court has been vital since 2000 in forcing governments across Europe, including the UK, to properly respect the rights of victims of slavery. Any credible international struggle against slavery must therefore confront the British government on this, one of their most cherished political prejudices.

And, another political issue: should India be made a permanent member of the UN Security Council while its toleration of caste-based violence is so high, and its efforts to end slavery are so paltry?

So to advance Target 8.7 requires a new concentration of effort that draws in not only traditional ILO partners but also the entire development and humanitarian sector on this issue, recognising that tackling slavery is a fundamental political and development issue and one that is not solely the preserve of law enforcement professionals. Frequently, such as in the brick kilns and quarries of South Asia, it is openly practiced. Therefore there should be a requirement of every credible development and humanitarian agency to consider if they could contribute towards the reduction of slavery and child labour within every community with which they work. This may not always be possible. But asking the question, and considering carefully the dynamics of power and discrimination could lead to empowerment of some who would previously have been overlooked.

Second, there should be much more conscious focus by in development and humanitarian programmes on diminishing the vulnerability to slavery of those communities. For example, ensuring that the children, particularly the daughters, of brick kiln workers and manual scavengers in South Asia have access to proper education, could help break the transmission of slavery across generations. And ensuring that the curriculum promotes human rights, in particular those of girls, and toleration for all would help erode the prejudices that permit human beings to enslave and exploit others.

Aid programmes must work to advance the rule of law by building the capacity of the courts and law enforcement agencies, so that anti-slavery laws can be upheld rather than regarded as mere suggestions to the elites who continue to be able to exploit people with impunity.

Beyond the development and humanitarian sectors the issue of slavery must become a centrepiece of diplomacy, trade and migration policy. In particular there is a need for a clear recognition of the brutal reality that tied visas are de facto licences for trafficking across the world.

This Alliance is vital if we are to obtain progress on Target 8.7. But to do so we must tackle this issue directly, holding each other to account and not merely tinker at the edges with approaches which never confront many of the most powerful who maintain the systems of slavery.

 I spent five years during the Angolan Civil War working with colleagues to keep a quarter of a million war displaced people alive across the central highlands of that country.

Our work had no impact whatsoever on the underlying causes of those people’s displacement. The cause was the war which arose from a complex mix of a legacy of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Cold War geo-politics, regional rivalries, and local personalities, not least the extraordinary psychosis of Jonas Savimbi, the leader of the Angolan rebels. But while we could never have claimed to have contributed to bringing peace what we did ensured that more people survived the violence into its messy and corrupt aftermath in one of Africa’s most beautiful countries.

This is true for every war-related humanitarian emergency. The refugee crisis in the Mediterranean arises from similarly complex causes including the geo-politics of oil, a stupid and illegal invasion of Iraq, regional rivalries between Shia and Sunni, and the bitter lunacy of the DAESH partisans.

The resolution of this violence may take decades. Those involved in humanitarian response will merely try to stanch the bleeding, literally and figuratively, until some settlement can be reached which will end the civilian population displacements.

That is the truth of it in my experience: that effective responses to humanitarian crises must have immediate, medium and long term aspects addressing both the symptoms and causes of the crisis. It is also something that David Cameron should understand from the UK’s engagement with diverse emergency responses during his premiership.

And yet his statement on the 2 Sept did not put me in mind of a statesman wrestling with the complexities of a multi-national humanitarian disaster. Rather I was reminded of an observation, I think by Milan Kundera, that novelists tell the truth with lies and politicians tell lies with the truth. Cameron’s glib comment that, “I don’t think there is an answer that can be achieved simply by taking more and more refugees,” struck me as a stark example of Kundera’s insight.

Of course taking in refugees would no more solve the crisis in the Mediterranean than digging latrines in the displaced camps of Angola brought peace to that country. Giving refuge to desperate human beings has never and could never solve any underlying problem that has caused any war that has forced any population displacement anywhere in the world. That is not its purpose.

The purpose of giving asylum is to preserve people’s lives until the protracted process of ending war can be achieved and some measure of security established to allow civilians to return home. That should be something we understand as Europeans with our collective memory of the convulsions of the Second World War. Without such basic humanitarian measures the death toll of war and humanitarian crises would be much higher.

That is something that David Cameron should also know from that historical perspective as well as the humanitarian one. If he does not know this by now he should not be Prime Minister.

The proximity of the bloodshed of the Mediterranean to Europe imposes different responsibilities on the nations of Europe that are unlike our responsibilities in crises in other parts of the world. No amount of disingeniuity on the part of David Cameron or his fellow travellers changes that. The immediate challenges of this crisis require establishment of safe migration routes into Europe, a fair sharing of the responsibility for resettlement of refugees across the nations of Europe, and, as Germany has already done, suspension of the Dublin Agreement.

If Cameron and the UK government do not face up to the immediate term necessities of this refugee crisis then he may continue to congratulate himself on his clever manipulation of the facts and smooth media obfuscations. But history will be much more clear sighted. Its verdict, on his failure of moral courage at this moment of truth, will be damning.