With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: business and the struggle to end contemporary slavery

Posted on March 10, 2015 by aidanjmcquade

Speech to Westminster event on modern slavery bill and slavery in international supply chains

I would just like to say a few things:

First of all I think it is fair to say that the fact that there is a decent bill is a tribute to the work of all the parliamentarians involved who contributed considerable time and effort into moving this bill from its original and narrow law enforcement focus to something that gives greater recognition to the humanity of the victims of the crime and the need to look at what is happening in the supply chains of goods and labour both abroad and in the UK.

It’s a particular privilege to be beside Sir John Randall and Fiona McTaggart today and to have the opportunity to thank both of you for your efforts and those of many other people of moral courage and conviction in the Lords and the Commons who made this possible.

Anti-Slavery has been working on the challenges of ending forced labour in international supply chains for many years, and we have been working for over a year now with parliamentarians, civil society organisation, businesses and lawyers to improve many aspects of the Bill and I would also like to take the opportunity to recognise those involved in ensuring that there is a transparency in supply chains clause in this bill. That there is such a clause is a result of business, trade unions and NGO members of the Ethical Trading Initiative, putting pressure on the government to introduce such a measure to level the playing field of international trade between those who wish to trade more ethically and those who are not bothered.

In truth had businesses not added their voice to this demand there would still be nothing in the bill. Adam Smith believed that it was the duty of states to regulate businesses. Today I fear that too many politicians regard their responsibility towards business regulation as being to ask businesses how they wish to be regulated. Which is a more progressive position I suppose than that of the Department of Business which seems ideologically opposed to any sort of regulation.

So I think there is a hard truth in today’s world: that the voice of business carries vastly more weight with government than the voice of conscience.

As Spiderman teaches us: With that great power comes great responsibility. Because while slavery is sometimes an issue of organised crime it is more often an issue of the contemporary political economy. By that I mean it is an opportunistic crime practiced by unscrupulous people who see a chance to exploit others to their benefit as a result of constraints and enablements they discern in the law, regulation and custom by which we conduct employment, production and trade in the contemporary world.

One very real consequence of this political economy is that each of us in this room is probably wearing at least one garment tainted, at least in part, by slavery. Whether as a result of the use of state-sponsored forced labour of millions in the cotton harvests of Uzbekistan, or as a result of the enslavement of Dalit girls and young women in the spinning mills of Tamil Nadu in India, or some other aspect of forced labour, including child slavery, in the weaving, cutting, stitching or finishing of the garments that end up on our high streets.

Just to give one illustration of what that means in human terms: in the course of a piece of research into trafficking in garment manufacture in India Anti-Slavery spoke to the mother of one young 20 year old woman who worked in a cotton spinning mill there. She described visiting her daughter:

“I spoke to her in a room provided for visitors”, she said, “because visitors are not allowed to go inside the mill or hostel. My daughter told me that she was suffering with fever and vomiting often. …I met with the manager and requested him to give leave to my daughter because she was unwell. I told him that I would send my daughter back once she was better. But the manager refused saying that there was a shortage of workers therefore they cannot grant leave. He also assured me that they would take care of my daughter and asked me not to worry.”

A week later she received a message to say now she could collect her daughter. She was dead.

Now frequently when businesses are presented with evidence of slavery or other human rights abuses in supply chains their defence is “But we audit our supply chains!” Such ethical auditing has been going on for years now. So it is reasonable to come to some assessment of its effectiveness. And one of the things that is completely clear is that it has been wholly ineffectual in identification and protection of vulnerable workers, and wholly inadequate in bringing about any reform in the systems of production where forced labour and trafficking are so rife.

That should not be news to anyone because generally speaking the purpose of “ethical auditing” is to find nothing. And should some diligent journalist or non-governmental organisation ever expose the sort of exploitation that is routine in, for example, the supply of cheap garments to our high streets, there is no consequence for those businesses or for any business executives who have knowingly made decisions to source from slavery. Their goods are not excluded from European markets. The executives are not held criminally liable. I am not clear if the lack of extraterritoriality in clause 2 of the bill, the slavery offence, is deliberate in order to guard such executives further.

So the transparency in supply chain clause should not be seen as an end but as the beginning of a conversation on how we should seek anti-slavery reform of the contemporary political economy. But for such reform to happen will probably require business people such as yourselves to start the process. And I am encouraged to see a room full of businesses and investors – in fact, this may be the very first time such a large group of NGOs, businesses, investors and parliamentarians has come together to discuss modern slavery.

Investors in particular can begin to change the terms by which we conduct business by engaging on behalf of the ownership on how businesses are responding to the risks of forced labour and slavery in their supply chains. Business leaders can ask this question of themselves and of each other: Are you recognising the risks of slavery throughout supply chains and moving to credibly reduce those risks by ensuring basic protections of workers in those supply chains? Or do you find you are doing business with people who hide behind the comforting myths of ethical audits but in reality care little for the lives that are destroyed in far flung parts of the world because of their decisions?

Businesses must also, I think, begin to engage more systematically with government on these issues. John Ruggie, the author of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, pointed out that businesses have the duty to respect the rights of workers while governments have the duty to protect them. But I am sure that many folk who are in this room today will attest to the fact that it is very difficult to respect the rights of workers if the relevant governments are, either through incompetence or design, failing to protect those workers.

The expansion of globalisation means that the international law governing this new approach to doing business becomes increasingly vital.

The risks of forced labour in international supply chains are compounded because, to use a legal metaphor, there is a prima facie case, I believe, that a number of businesses, countries and regions of the world are basing their competitive advantage on the use of forced labour. Anti-Slavery International investigations in India have shown how the routinized used of the forced labour of girls and young women is now a central feature of garment production for northern hemisphere markets. Further investigations in Thailand have shown how forced labour is a significant feature of production for export markets, most notoriously perhaps in the fisheries that supply prawns to our supermarket shelves.

In both these countries the failure of international rule of law is compounded by a failure of national rule of law. For Dalits in India, for Lao, Burmese and Cambodian migrants in Thailand, the notion of equal protection before the law would be a laughable notion if the consequences of its absence were not so tragic. In India the courts are so overworked that it would take hundreds of years to clear the back log of cases in Delhi alone meaning that factories that use forced labour of vulnerable workers, such as those producing cotton garments in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, can act with virtual impunity. In Thailand, police describe migrant workers as walking ATMs, people to be harassed and extorted from not to be protected.

These are not just national issues. They are issues that should be of concern of British aid and diplomacy if Britain truly wishes to be an international anti-slavery leader. And they should be of concern to all of you if you have the slightest interest in doing business in these parts of the world.

Business must once again take a central role in leadership of the anti-slavery struggle. Businesses can begin with more rigorous investigations of supply chains with the intent to identifying and remedying problems that affect the rights of workers and communities rather than focusing primarily on managing risks to reputation and brand. Where the causes of slavery or other human rights abuses lie beyond the control of businesses, they are very well placed to pressure governments to do their job of protecting human rights.

Many of you will be aware of the challenges of forced labour in Thai fisheries. Anti-Slavery International is currently working with a range of UK retailers, many of whom are in the room today, on a unique pilot project to identify and address the risks of forced labour in supply chains and empower workers to access remedies. This work is very much about partnership between business and civil society, risk assessment and due diligence, rather than the traditional “audit” approach. At the same time, the work in Thailand highlights how governments are failing to protect workers in a range of industries and business can play a vital role in putting pressure on governments to act properly.

I regularly meet business and political leaders who are forthright in their opposition to the very principles of slavery. I am pleased to see that many of them have also recently begun to publicly show the depth of their moral courage by also seeking practical measures to end slavery. Many have added their voice to ours to send a strong message to the UK government on the importance of transparency in supply chains.

But all of us here have some measure of power to do more. As the Modern Slavery Bill reaches its very final stage next week, I would also like to encourage all of you in the room and especially those that represent business and investors to respond to the government consultation on supply chains. Your response will be key in ensuring that there is parity and coherence in reporting, that those businesses that lead the way will not be undermined by those who choose not to report or make minimal efforts to disclose.

I would also like to invite all of you to build on the collaboration across sectors and work further with civil society on addressing modern slavery.

We can turn away and hope somebody else we sort modern slavery out. Or instead we can grasp what opportunities present themselves to us and strive for reform and emancipation, and in the process help change a moment of history for vulnerable people across the world.

Comfort to the Enemy, and other Carl Webster stories, by Elmore Leonard

Posted on February 11, 2015 by aidanjmcquade

Comfort to the Enemy is a book of two short stories and a novella, all focussing on Leonard’s character Carlos Webster, United States Marshall, and star of another Leonard novel, The Hot Kid.

This book starts with a short story recounting Webster’s first encounter with hoodlums in his teens and ends with the novella, Comfort to the Enemy, in which he, sort of, investigates a killing at a German prisoner of war camp in Oklahoma.

Carl is a Western archetypal ideal: taciturn, polite, smart and extremely gifted in the art of violence. He is strikingly similar to another Leonard character of a later era, Raylan Givens, the marshall protagonist of the glorious television series Justified, though with an altogether more settled family life – one could never imagine Carl’s upright and sympathetic father Virgil ever trying to kill him – and a less fraught relationship with booze.

The two short stories, Showdown at Checotah, and Louly and Pretty Boy, and the novella Comfort to the Enemy, are lovely exemplars of Leonard’s spare and laconic storytelling style, gently compelling, funny and exciting by turns. Great stuff!

The Rise of Islamic State, by Patrick Cockburn

Posted on February 8, 2015 by aidanjmcquade

The Rise of Islamic State is a short book but an extremely important one. Cockburn, a veteran Middle East correspondent, lucidly describes how Islamic State has arisen as a concrete legacy of Bush and Blair’s inept and illegal invasion of Iraq. He also unpicks the political and military quagmire currently extant in that region.

Cockburn identifies Saudi Arabia as the primary source of financial support for Islamic State (DAESH) and its predecessor Al Qaeda, and the origin of its barbaric “jurisprudence”. However in the aftermath of 9/11, or indeed at any time subsequently it seems, rather than confront Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan with its murky ties to international terrorism, the Bush administration instead invaded Iraq, a country that, for all the brutality of Saddam had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

George W Bush, with his pal Prince Bandar bin Sultan, “godfather” of DAESH (Islamic State)

One can only imagine how Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the US, an instigator of the Iraq invasion and frequent house guest of George Bush, must have giggled to himself at how easily led the US was towards advancing Saudi Arabia’s brutal foreign policy without Saudi ever having to get its hands dirty. As head of Saudi intelligence subsequently, from 2012 to 2014, Bandar was the key individual responsible for backing DAESH against Shia and minorities in the region and so helping them become the potent military force they currently are.

Cockburn points out that while DAESH may not be loved by the Sunni population of Iraq, they are tolerated by them because the alternative, perhaps unbelievably to some, would be much worse for them. The bigoted, pro-Sunni extremism of DAESH Wahhabism is mirrored by the brutality and sectarianism of the Shia militias that the US and UK supported Iraqi government have been sponsoring.

Which brings us to the present: the Obama administration’s efforts seemed to be towards a detente with Iran as an element in not only a nuclear non-proliferation strategy but as one, along with support for the Kurds, against DAESH.

The desire of the US Congressional Republicans in collusion with Netanyahu to undermine a deal with Iran seems peculiar. However this is in keeping with the ineptitude and dysfunctionality of US Middle Eastern policy over the past 15 years, something made altogether more terrifying when the shallow but fevered imaginings of Donald Trump are brought to bear on the situation.

However one should also recognise that US policy towards the region now appears to have much in common with that of the UK. Both seem to value the possibility of profiting from the sales of arms to Saudi Arabia rather than actual regional security. In the end perhaps the US and UK will gain the same comfort as the gun store owner who at least has the satisfaction of knowing he sold the gun to the psychopath who murders him.

All too human: war and terrorism in the contemporary world

Posted on February 4, 2015 by aidanjmcquade

Picasso’s Guernica

In the aftermath of the recent spate of atrocities by Islamic fundamentalists it is probably worth focussing on a couple of points that have been obscured in the rush to condemnation.

First this sort of atrocity is nothing new in modern history. Ordinary Germans routinely massacred civilians in Eastern Poland during the Second World War. Much of the RAF bombing campaign on Germany during the same war was indiscriminate and killed thousands of old people, women and children. American troops in Vietnam regularly butchered Vietnamese civilians. Irish paramilitaries slaughtered both compatriots and British civilians alike. The last vestiges of the notion of Israeli “purity of arms” died in the slaughterhouse Prime Minister Netanyahu created in Gaza in the summer of 2014. In fact in the sweep of human history the idea of refraining from making war on civilians has been rather unpopular, and the wars emanating from, and waged in the contemporary Middle East are no exception.

The notion that Muslim atrocities are somehow qualitatively different and beyond the moral pale of what the Western world would contemplate is laughable, and must be even more laughable to those who, in recent years, have been on the receiving end of the violence of the West and its allies.

However it does seem plain that at this point in history there is a significant sub-culture within the European Muslim community which is alienated from the democratic ideals of wider European society, and within that, a smaller minority which is prepared to resort to violence and terrorism both in Europe and abroad as an expression of this alienation.

A lot of the focus in the aftermath of the most recent attacks has been on the need for European Muslim community leadership to combat this alienation. Such leadership has and will continue to have considerable potential to lead young people away from violence and towards more constructive roles for their community and wider society. But it is disingenuous to presume that the reason that young people are engaged in violence to the current extent is because of failures in the leadership of the Muslim community.

To presume this may be comforting to non-Muslims, as it implies that we have no responsibility for Muslim alienation. But it is not a response to the violence that will leave a single individual anywhere in the world any safer or more protected from random and brutal terrorism.

Goya’s Shootings of the third of May

Because, of course, alienation and terror on this scale never occurs in a vacuum. Just because the wider society is unaware of the narrative that is justifying that terrorism to its perpetrators does not mean that such a narrative does not exist. And just because the narrative may be filled with distortions and logical inconsistencies does not mean that it is any less compelling to its adherents.

What should be apparent to even the most myopic of observers is that the fundamentalist violence that we have witnessed in Europe over the past 10 years comes in the context of a much wider system of violence. And, as Patrick Cockburn has put it, “It is inevitable that sparks from these conflicts land in Western Europe and other parts of the world.”

For many in the West this cycle of violence started with the attacks on the World Trade Centre. However Muslim grievances predate that. For example the West’s acquiesce in an emerging system of Israeli imposed apartheid in Palestine or the horrific brutality of the wars in Algeria are both capable of providing alternative points of origin for a narrative in which 9/11 seems no less and no more justifiable than Dresden or Nagasaki. And the brutal conduct of the bloody fiasco in Iraq has sustained the flow of grievance.

European Muslims are likely to have similar reactions to injustices against Muslims in Gaza or elsewhere as Irish Americans had against British injustice in the North of Ireland. However the danger, from a contemporary point of view, is that the US wasn’t seen as being complicit in British injustice. Today Europe, in particular the UK, may be closely and ignominiously identified as being complicit in the bloody mess of Iraq and Israel’s violence against Palestinians.

In other words, distasteful as it may seem to some, the current spate of Islamic fundamentalist terror is a political problem. It is not an Islamic versus Western ‘clash of civilisations’, though some would like it to be portrayed as such: Netanyahu’s cynical elbowing to the front of a Parisian photocall with international leaders in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack was a physical assertion of this idea. He intended to convey to Europe and beyond that it has no choice but to stand alongside his militarism. Rather what we see is a set of wars of varying sizes and asymmetries that are born from fundamental human and therefore political issues of injustice, violence, alienation, cruelty and stupidity.

But if we can accept that this fundamentalist violence is the consequence of a more mundane set of political problems then we can recognise that it requires political solutions, or at least a political process, to address the causes of alienation alongside the security response necessary to attempt to fend off future attacks.

Picasso’s Rape of the Sabine Women

The full extent of the political agenda that should be followed will be considerable and international in scope. It may necessarily include consideration of the question of reconciliation between French and Algerian peoples. It should probably include confrontation of Pakistan and in particular Saudi Arabia as countries that have been the ideological reservoirs, financiers and facilitators of much of the terror that is currently plaguing the Middle East and the world. Unquestionably one element must be the robust pursuit of a just peace between Israel and Palestine, instead of the international acceptance of the quasi-apartheid that currently pertains. This will require the Jewish community bearing a heavy burden of leadership comparably to that required of non-violent Muslim leaders: the one thing the current Israeli government and its apologists seem afraid of is ordinary Jews publicly repudiating the Israeli government’s extremist policies and racist attitudes. Such sanction carries with it a credibility that non-Jews, lacking links to the appalling tragedy of Jewish history, could never hope to attain.

An international political process that openly seeks to deal justly with grievances would provide political weight and credibility to those leaders and citizens, particularly Muslims, who wish to pursue the path of non-violence. Without it, those same advocates for peace will be rendered much less effective, twisting in the wind as the West blunders on repeating the patterns of the past 10 years with brutal and inept military responses to problems emerging from countries and societies that we barely begin to understand.

Traitor to his Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, by HW Brands

Posted on February 1, 2015 by aidanjmcquade

Franklin Roosevelt, the only US president elected more than twice, is generally viewed alongside Lincoln and Washington as the greatest of American presidents. This biography is an elegantly written survey of his life, times and accomplishments.

At the outset of his life it seemed the world was his oyster. He was born into considerable wealth and a prominent family – cousin Theodore was a Republican president. As was typical of his class much of Roosevelt’s upbringing was left to nannies and servants. Peculiarly Brands suggests that two of these servants, Helen McRorie and Elspeth McEachern, because they were from the North of Ireland, cemented his anglophilia. For those familiar with the politics of Ireland, the Catholic name of Helen McRorie would rather suggest that she may have been a significant source of his radicalism: It is more than probable that she was from the nationalist community and brought with her deeply felt memories of marginalisation and discrimination at the hands of the British and Unionist establishments in Ireland. Indeed this awareness of the nature of British colonialism may have added conviction to Roosevelt’s advocacy of Indian independence during the war.

Roosevelt’s privileged youth led him to Harvard and then a political apprenticeship in New York politics, thence to a spell, including the duration of the US involvement in the First World War, in the federal government as Under-Secretary of the Navy in the Wilson administration.
But the seeming gilded path was somewhat illusory. His wife, an extraordinary person in her own right, Eleanor, was almost certainly gay, and so, as their marriage progressed it became less a loving relationship and more a political alliance of close friends. Roosevelt’s life was further cruelly marred by a bout of polio which deprived him of the use of his legs. Following a period of rehabilitation however he found his way back to electoral politics eventually becoming governor of New York and then, in 1932, president.

His accomplishments in this role were considerable: the “New Deal”, a rearrangement of the political economy of the United States, helped bring an end to the Depression, introducing banking regulation, promoting labour rights, founding social security and ending child labour in the process. His leadership of his country in the Second World War was decisive in the defeat of the Axis, and the United Nations remains one of his most enduring international legacies.

Part of Roosevelt’s success derived from his legendary charm, but beneath this there was unquestionable steel, tempered by his personal travails, but constantly under control. The strain that this placed on him was not inconsiderable: observers noted his exhaustion at Yalta from trying, perhaps a little naively, to charm Stalin away from his murderous, imperialist ways. And the pressure of the presidency through the crises of war and peace contributed to Roosevelt’s relatively early death.

Traitor to his Class is a fine introduction to one of the pivotal figures of the twentieth century and his times. Still, in spite of this, at the end Roosevelt seems a rather remote figure. It is as if the restraint and reserve he showed through life still renders him somewhat unknowable today. Nevertheless, as Eleanor noted at his death, “If at the end one can say: “This man used to the limit the powers that God granted him: he was worthy of love and respect and of the sacrifices of many people, made in order that he might achieve what he deemed to be his task,” then that life has been lived well and there are no regrets.” And in Roosevelt’s case, the liberty of western Europe emerged from his life, and those of us who live here must always remain grateful for that.

Letter to UK Ambassador to Saudi Arabia

Posted on January 30, 2015 by aidanjmcquade

Help free Raif Badawi

UK Ambassador to Saudi Arabia
British Embassy, PO Box 94351
11693
Riyadh
Saudi Arabia

Dear Ambassador,

Welcome to your new role and congratulations on your appointment.

raifbadawifamily-banners-1200-627 I am sure you are aware of the case of Raif Badawi who was sentenced in Saudi Arabia to 10 years and 1,000 lashes for running an online forum. Amnesty International believes Raif is a Prisoner of Conscience. He has done nothing criminal, yet he is facing this barbaric punishment simply for exercising his right to freedom of expression.

Over 100,000 people in the UK have signed Amnesty International’s petition calling on the Saudi Arabian authorities to stop the lashing of Raif Badawi and release him immediately.

I urge the UK Government to use its influence and raise concerns with the Saudi Arabian authorities about Raif Badawi’s situation.

I call on you specifically to:

• Prioritise Raif’s case in all meetings with the Saudi Authorities

• Meet with the minister responsible in the Saudi Arabian government and request permission to visit Raif in prison.

I look forward to your response.

Yours sincerely,

Aidan McQuade

Letter to the Saudi Ambassador to London regarding Raif Badawi

Posted on January 15, 2015 by aidanjmcquade

Emailed to ukemb@mofa.gov.sa

Your Excellency

Raif Badawi

I am writing to express my dismay at the protracted torture and imprisonment of Raif Badawi by the Royal Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

At a time when the world has been appalled by the massacres in Paris the world sees that violence echoed by the Saudi state in its treatment of Raif Badawi.

That Raif Badawi is being tortured and imprisoned by the Saudi state in such a brutal and medieval fashion for attempting to exercise free speech shocks the world. Further it undermines the Royal Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s claims as a bulwark against “Islamic State”, as the world begins to see little distinction between the violence of the two.

The immediate ending of Raif Badawi’s flogging and his release back to his family will begin to repair some of the damage that has been done to the international reputation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

I respectfully request that you convey to your government this request, in the name of human rights, for the ending of the torture of Raif Badawi and his release.

Yours faithfully

Dr Aidan McQuade

The struggle goes on: marking 175 years of Anti-Slavery International

Posted on December 5, 2014 by aidanjmcquade

Tonight we are marking the end of our 175th year in existence. I don’t want to spend this evening telling you of boring stories of our glory days, but rather to reflect for a moment, not so much on what we have achieved over these years as why it has been achieved.

Last time I was in the outstanding museum of slavery in Liverpool I saw a poster there: it said remember not that we were enslaved, but that we fought.

That remains the truth today as it did in the past. From the brick kilns of northern India, to the agricultural fields of west Africa and North America, to the servants quarters of every major city of Europe, ordinary people are struggling for decent work, for dignity, for freedom for themselves and their families.

Change when it comes arises from that insistence from ordinary women and men that the powerful cannot ultimately ignore.

It was the courage and belief of a disparate coalition people of conscience and courage across the globe from the Quakers and the trades unions in Britain who founded Anti-Slavery International, to the Maroons, and Sam Sharpe and Toussaint in the Americas that forced the British Government to end first the slave trade and then abolish slavery itself in the British Empire.

That same dynamic was something that Lincoln recognised when he saw that the action and sacrifice of, among others, the black troops of the Union army would not let him reconstitute a slave-holding union.
It’s something that this British government recognised when people of conscience and courage in businesses, trades unions and civil society, many who are here this evening, put their names to a demand to the British Government for more robust anti-slavery action on supply chains.

Much work remains to be done to ensure that the modern slavery bill going through the UK parliament is truly world leading, providing proper statutory protections for victims of forced labour, and ending the de facto legalisation of trafficking for domestic servitude.

Yet more work is required internationally to ensure that slavery eradication is recognised as fundamental to poverty reduction and advancing human development, and to ensure that those who are struggling for freedom across the globe are offered solidarity and meaningful support and not merely warm words and empty sentiment.

Martin King once said that the moral arc of the universe ultimately bends towards justice. It does because human beings twist it in that direction. Everyone here tonight, through numberless acts of courage and belief have been writing the anti-slavery history of our times. Let’s keep going for as long as that takes until finally, we have overcome.

’Where you weren’t known and far from what you knew’: vulnerability, migration and bureaucratic prejudice in trafficking

Posted on December 1, 2014 by aidanjmcquade

Speech to conference “Common Action to Fight Trafficking in Human Beings”, organized by COMECE (Commission of Catholic Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community), along with BEPA (Bureau of European Policy Advisors) European Commission, and CEC (Conference of European Churches)
27 Nov 2014, Brussels

I took the title of this presentation from a poem by Seamus Heaney, about the consequences of bigotry and prejudice. And of course Heaney’s phrase echoes one in the Book of Exodus “I have been a stranger in a strange land”.

That is apposite because the first denunciation of trafficking in Western Christianity came from a migrant and former slave, St Patrick , echoing a more visceral strain of European anti-slavery demonstrated by Spartacus and Crixus in their desperate struggles for freedom. It is also apposite because the contemporary exodus of poor migrants in search of decent work can, too often end with their enslavement rather than their liberation. Because contemporary slavery is another consequence of bigotry and prejudice.

Let me try to illustrate this with a case that we encountered recently:
A group of Polish construction workers came to a police station in England to complain about not being paid and about their working conditions. They did not speak much English and were swiftly turned away as the police deemed this not to be their matter. Another group of Polish workers who worked for the same construction project complained to another police station and were met with the same response.
The workers then decided to ask their families back in Poland for the money to return home.
Upon their return home, they complained to the Polish authorities about their treatment in the UK and about the inaction of the UK authorities. The Polish authorities took the matter up with the UK embassy.

Eventually, following the complaints from the Polish authorities, the UK police investigated the case and ended up prosecuting the recruiter that trafficked the Polish workers in the UK.

Now there are a number of important lessons from this case

The first key lesson, I think, is that in order to properly identify survivors of forced labour and to detect trafficking it is important that those charged with upholding the law actually know what the law is and what their responsibilities under the law are. If the police in this case had bothered to pick up a phone to obtain a translator and to explore the accounts of the workers against the indicators of forced labour they would have found that they were being presented with an enormous opportunity to deal with something that is explicitly recognised as a major crime in British, let alone European and international, law.

But in being ignorant of the law they are not alone. This ignorance is widespread even amongst many who should know better. I’ve been at more than one meeting, some of them organised by the Churches, which have had keynote speakers seriously asking “Is trafficking slavery?” and failing to come to any convincing conclusion after half an hour’s deliberation.

The struggle against slavery is one of the oldest human rights struggles in the world, so if someone is new to this field, as some important actors are, it is important to remember that we do not have to reinvent the wheel. This path has been trodden by giants before us and we are building on the work that they have done. Indeed without proper consideration of the learning of anti-slavery activists from history and from the world beyond Europe and, indeed, beyond Christendom, there are considerable risks that efforts towards ending trafficking will result in little more than well meaning slogans.
it is vital to note that this question of, “What is slavery?” is not a matter for social scientific contention of the sort so beloved by academics. It is something that has been established in international law as a result of considerable effort over the past 100 years to provide a robust framework for the continuing struggle against slavery.

Part of the reason for the breadth of law in the international conventions is that contemporary slavery reflects a diversity of human experience: a life lived in bonded labour in Indian brick kilns is different in important respects from that of a Nepalese domestic worker in Lebanon, or somebody in chattel slavery in West Africa, or a “restavek” child slave in Haiti, or a forced labourer in European agriculture. This can complicate identification. It also means that the responses to these diverse manifestations of slavery must be nuanced and adjusted to the realities of those particular abuses in the time and circumstances in which they occur.

But in spite of the advances of national, European and international law on forced labour over the past few years there clearly is not yet a general law enforcement culture across Europe and the rest of the world that appreciates adequately the nature of forced labour and trafficking in a way that they would for other crimes of violence. So there there needs to be greater professional police and other criminal justice training to understand their diverse roles and responsibilities towards this crime. And there will remain a need for specialist units to support local efforts and to help lead and develop police and criminal justice policy and practice through example.

A second important matter that this case illustrates is that while there are a diversity of manifestations of slavery there are underlying all such cases, three common factors: individual vulnerability, social exclusion, and failure in rule of law. Slavery emerges at the conjunction of these three factors.

In Europe those who end up in forced labour tend to be poor women and men who are generally subject to wider social prejudice because of their migratory status, ethnicity, sexuality or indeed because of their particular personal vulnerabilities in the case of substance dependant or mentally challenged individuals.

The issue of social exclusion and discrimination is a fundamental one in slavery: when we look at historical slavery in the Americas we see that racism was both a cause and a consequence of that slavery. This remains the case today. In Latin America today many in forced labour are indigenous people. In South Asia most people in slavery are Dalits or from other scheduled castes or minority groups. And in Europe most people in slavery are migrant workers.

This is important for a variety of reasons. Most immediately it hinders the identification of survivors to trafficking and slavery.

It is wholly without credibility to presume that any individuals charged with identification of survivors of trafficking are going to be immune from the prejudices of the wider society from which they are drawn and to whose elite they report. It is not fanciful to suggest that the police who encountered these Polish workers may have regarded them with some disdain and some may even have felt that their responsibilities towards foreigners in exploitative employment were lesser than those towards locally born citizens.

Indeed this point is emphasised when one considers the broader figures relating to identification of survivors of trafficking in the UK. There, if a person from the European Union presents themselves to the authorities as a potential survivor of trafficking then there is a greater than 80% chance they will be recognised as such. If they come from outside the European Union then there is less than a 20% chance they will be recognised as such. That sort of imbalance in decision making can only be the result of institutionalised discrimination, something fed by the media and political elites who should instead be sanctioning those who disgrace their offices by privileging their petty bigotries over their responsibilities under the law.

It is beholden upon leaders across Europe and the world to take active steps to eradicate these sort of prejudices, sanctioning public officials who disgrace their offices by pandering to their bigotries rather than upholding rule of law.

But often political leaders themselves privilege their prejudices and exclude the groups they dislike from the basic protection of rule of law.

In India, for example, a system of caste-based apartheid excludes Dalits and other minority groups from the effective protection of rule of law. Indeed even Pope John Paul II noted that within the Catholic Church in India discrimination against Dalits was rife and a matter that the Church had failed to respond adequately to. Such acquiescence in discrimination allows almost 300 million Indian citizens to be enslaved by more powerful members of society in a range of industries from brick kilns to garment manufacture.

This benefits us too. Probably each one of us in this room is wearing at least one garment tainted by being manufactured using slavery.

A week later she received a call to say now she could collect her daughter. She was dead.

Now when we present evidence of forced labour in their supply chains to businesses their defence tends to be “But we audit our supply chains!” Such ethical auditing has been going on for years now. Its reasonable to come to some assessment of its effectiveness. And one of the things that is completely clear is that it has been wholly ineffectual in identification and protection of vulnerable workers, and wholly inadequate in bringing about any reform in the systems of production where forced labour and trafficking are so rife.

That should not be news to anyone because the purpose of “ethical auditing” is to find nothing. And should some diligent journalist or non-governmental organisation ever expose the sort of exploitation that is routine for the supply of cheap garments to our high streets, there is no consequence for those businesses or the business executives who have made the decisions to source from slavery. Their goods are not excluded from European markets. The executives are not held criminally liable.

In Qatar and across the Gulf there has recently been attention paid to the systematic use of forced labour of tens of thousands of migrant South Asia labourers in the preparation of the infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup. This forced labour is underpinned by what is called the “kafalah” system. This is a so-called sponsorship system that ties workers to their employers to such an extent that even in the most abusive employment relationships, up to and including forced labour, the workers cannot change jobs or even go home.

It is a cynical system to facilitate medieval levels of exploitation up to and including slavery.
It is also essentially the same system that the United Kingdom government has in place for migrant domestic workers, which de facto legalises trafficking for forced domestic servitude.

Here again the issue of discrimination comes into play in facilitating slavery. By refusing to recognise the realities and risks to migrant domestic workers lives because of the simple fact that they are migrants the powerful in society refuse to recognise, to identify, their enslavement and hence singularly fail to protect them.

Now I don’t know what the Churches are saying privately to the UK government about this, but publicly some church leaders are acting as little more than cheer-leaders for the British Government’s hype that it is becoming a world leader in the struggle against slavery. Frankly the only people who would see what the British government is doing is world leading are those who know nothing about what world leading action dealing with the fundamentals of contemporary slavery actually looks like.

When we consider cases such as these it is clear while organised crime is an important element in contemporary slavery it is in a considerable minority. The vast majority of slavery in the world today is disorganised, perpetrated by ordinary people provided with the considerable opportunity for exploitation and indulging of their prejudices and racism by the failures in rule of law across the world.

This case of Polish workers in the UK illustrates another important point and that is the value of governments acting on behalf of their migrant citizens. It was the intervention of the Polish government here that compelled the British authorities to action. I would argue that there is a universality to this lesson. The remittances of migrant workers across the world are vital for poverty reduction and human development in their home countries. The contribution that migrant workers are making to the countries of their birth indicts their home governments failures to fulfil their international responsibilities towards their citizens. Aside from the moral and legal responsibilities of governments towards their citizens their failure to do more to protect migrants is short-sighted economically as it could help them obtain decent work and hence higher remittances.

This is as true for Asia and Africa as it is for Europe. And, looking a bit beyond our own European borders it would be an important European initiative against trafficking and towards poverty reduction if we were to support financially and professionally the establishment of a more comprehensive system of labour attaches for those migrants who we are seeing most exploited in the countries where there is most exploitation.

Across the Gulf migrant workers speak with envy of their Filipino colleagues whose government attaches some importance to this sort of support for their migrant citizens. That government’s position and that of the migrant workers of other countries would be strengthened if more governments were to act in this way. Perhaps European support to such measures could stem somewhat the bloodshed of vulnerable workers unleashed by FIFA’s decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar.
Tom Bingham, one of the outstanding British jurists of the past 50 years argued that human rights, including, of course, an absolute prohibition on slavery, must be at the heart of any credible system of rule of law.

But, as we have seen, sometimes societies and nations refuse to apply these basic protections to particular social groups.

Political leaders are able to get away with this because the prejudice against the enslaved and their communities prevent slavery from becoming a political issue: if slavery is being inflicted upon groups and individuals who the wider society simply does not like, then that wider community is more likely to tolerate the abuses if they see them and not raise their voice to demand that governments do their jobs to stop the problem.

This strikes at the very principles which Europe is meant to represent: equality before the law, rule of law and human rights.

Slavery is a crime but its effective eradication requires more than a narrow criminal justice approach. It requires a rethinking of aid, trade and diplomacy as well as criminal justice.
Within our own common European homeland it requires a repudiation of the causes, in particular anti-migrant bigotry, as well as its consequences.

Countries which are establishing their competitive advantage in whole or in part based on their toleration or facilitation of forced labour should not be granted unimpeded access to European markets.
Business executives who knowingly use forced labour in their supply chains should be held criminally liable and Europe should advocate for and implement extraterritorial law on this matter.

When we discuss the issue of identification and protection of victims of trafficking we normally think of law enforcement being responsible for this. As I have alluded business also has such responsibilities, moving away from the discredited systems of auditing towards more effective ones of investigation. Aid agencies also have responsibilities for identification and protection. The European Commission, Caritas, Christian Aid, Oxfam and others work across the world in countries where slavery is prevalent and were options for decent work for socially discriminated against groups are limited. So slavery eradication should be mainstreamed into all European funded development and humanitarian projects. This can start relatively simply by asking of each project what is it doing to address the issues of slavery and ensure that those who are vulnerable to discrimination and social exclusion are incorporated into the programmes. The answer “nothing” may be reasonable – some projects will legitimately have other priorities. But introducing this question to development and humanitarian response would at least engage the scores of professionals working in these sectors and harness some of their energies and abilities toward the purpose of ending slavery.

Europe should assert that the eradication of slavery and child labour should be made stand alone post-2015 sustainable development goals and should act as if it is so in the development of its aid strategy.

One critical area with which Europe could make a vital contribution through aid and diplomacy is on strengthening rule of law, in particular anti-slavery law, in states like India, which have decent law but fail to protect its citizens because of inadequacy of labour inspections, corruption in police, insufficient judicial capacity and engrained caste-based apartheid. Given that so many of India’s Christians come from the Dalit and scheduled castes the Christian churches should at least have a selfish interest in ensuring that the rights of our co-religionists, as all human beings deserve, are robustly asserted.

Harry Truman once said “Its amazing what can be achieved when you are not bothered who gets the credit!” Indeed that is because, as Bobby Kennedy pointed out it is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that the history of our times are written.

Slavery is a human institution but like all human institutions it can be changed by human action. So the immediate challenge is: how do we, professionally, as individual citizens and collectively, use our power to fashion a political economy that repudiates slavery in all its forms and all its evolutions. That is a challenge which has no easy answer and which requires a dynamic process in response.

But while we don’t know how this struggle will end we do know how it should begin.

Jesus said “I bring not peace but the sword”. Europe and Christianity should pick up that sword now, and stand alongside the other Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, non-believers who have been labouring for decades in isolation to challenge those vested interests who maintain, for their own selfish ends, the political economic systems that enslave people the world over.

How the UK has de facto legalised trafficking for forced domestic servitude