Introduction
Ask someone from the Guardian non-job seekers collective of Holland Park about slavery and they will say it does not exist anymore. These people are educated, they know some history, they know that the British Parliament of 1807 voted to abolish slavery and that by 1833 had passed legislation to end slavery throughout the British empire.
So, public slave auctions and the transatlantic trade were consigned to the history book of dark corners by the early 19th Century.
However, today, a conservative estimate tells us that 27 million citizens are enslaved. That number exceeds the triangular slave trade at its height in the 18th Century. It is also, probably, in excess of the numbers enslaved historically by Islamist slavers across sub-Saharan Africa.
Modern slavery is beyond the grasp of the Guardian non-job seekers, far too complex. They know about people trafficking and child labour, they can talk around the issues all evening but they never use the S-word. Their job spec' requires them to protect rights, they see themselves at the quality control end of the production cycle, observers looking out for damaged goods.
UP
Progress so far
Two centuries after the 1807 Parliamentary vote to end slavery are we more civilized - no! There are more slaves in the world today than ever.
The Holland Park non-jobbers worry about human rights but do fuck all about it and the liberal intelligentsia up in Primrose Hill have managed to confuse slavery with some infringement of the free movement of labour.
Modern slavery is real, it's as real as people who do nothing for living, working for NGOs and think tanks.
Wilberforce would be a disappointed man, knowing that the price of a child in the Sudan today is four cows.
Wilberforce spent decades raising the barbaric practice of human slavery in Parliament. Today's politicians hardly ever utter the word slavery. Yet, slavery is a fact of life for millions of people in this 21st Century. Two hundred years on from the Parliamentary vote to end slavery the situation is worse today than it was when Wilberforce wept tears of joy.
Let my people go
In 1833 700,00 slaves were set free throughout the Empire. The slave owners were paid £20m in compensation. The freed slaves became exploited workers and struggled to understand their new form of alienation - the price mechanism.
UP