Leading the fight against slavery

Slavery and people-trafficking have always been closely linked. This is the logic that impels the British Home Office, responsible for policing the United Kingdom’s borders, and the Catholic Church, present in states from where slaves come as well as to where they are sent, to combine their efforts to stamp out this evil trade. And this is how the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, British Home Secretary Theresa May and head of the Metropolitan Police Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe come to be jointly responsible for an international conference in London this weekend.

The initiative was launched at the Vatican last spring, with a joint declaration signed by police chiefs committing themselves “to eradicate the scourge of this serious criminal activity”. They welcomed Britain’s leadership in this campaign, and at this weekend’s conference will be fascinated to hear how nuns patrol with police officers in central London and elsewhere. Girls trafficked for sexual slavery are often traumatised when the premises from which they are forced to operate are raided, and members of religious orders have the humane qualities needed to reassure them that they are safe at last. The Metropolitan Police leads the world in developing this kind of sensitive approach.

The British Government has also led the world in seeing the need for specific legislation to give the police and courts adequate powers to catch and punish those who engage in what Pope Francis has declared “a crime against humanity”. The Modern Slavery Bill is now before Parliament, and last week the Government published its Modern Slavery strategy document. Meanwhile on Tuesday Pope Francis and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, jointly launched their interfaith declaration, also signed by Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim, both Shia and Sunni, leaders, which committed them to work for the abolition of slavery by 2020. Given that there are an estimated 35 million slaves in the world, this is an ambitious target. By no means all are women trafficked for prostitution, and a key part of the exercise will be to eliminate slave labour in farming and industrial sweatshops. Firms in the West have to take responsibility for what goes on in the supply chain before those goods arrive. Some have stepped up to the mark, and some could do more.

It is in this area that ordinary people can have influence. They can make clear, for instance, that they will not tolerate child labour – always a form of slavery – in the manufacture of cheap clothing. But slavery does not just happen somewhere else. It is, as Theresa May emphasised this week, all around. Police know of suburban houses converted to cannabis farms and run by unpaid foreign workers in fear of their lives; and of gangs of slaves forced to work in the fields after being smuggled into Britain by criminal gang-masters; they may not be known to the police until members of the public draw attention to them. Even men who visit prostitutes have a duty to ensure the women have not been trafficked. It is only by zero tolerance and unflagging vigilance that this scourge will be beaten.