Slavery in Bristol

‘But wasn’t slavery abolished 200 years ago?’ A common response from my fellow peers when asked what they know about modern slavery.

So what is modern slavery? The Anti-Slavery International Charity claims a slave is anyone ‘forced to work, through mental or physical threat’, is sold like property and is physically constrained.

Who are enslaved? Students confirmed the typical image we have of those who are enslaved: ‘foreign, vulnerable women forced into the sex industry’. However, Corydon Ireland, a staff writer from Harvard, claims that only ‘a tenth of those are in what experts call “commercial sex servitude”’. Although sexual abuse often comes with slavery, women involved in prostitution accumulate to only a small percentage of industries in human trafficking. The Anti-Slavery Charity, for instance, talks about Ricardo who was forced to work in Florida on a farm picking tomatoes that were sold to UK fast-food chains. All industries are corrupted by human traffickers who indebt or force humans of any age and either gender to work.

Surprisingly UK nationals are often enslaved internally. Dr Christien Van de Anker, a human rights lecturer at the University of West England talked about British primary school girls who are picked up at school by traffickers and forced into prostitution across all the major UK cities. Slavery penetrates all industries all around the globe and many have called for the new abolition, which has been sparked by the 200^th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in 2007.

The anniversary inspired new charities and coalitions such as the Bristol Counter Trafficking Coalition, who for the past year have held talks and workshops to promote awareness of human trafficking. Partnering with the Bristol City Council and the civil service has allowed the Coalition to provide help for those who have been trafficked. UnSeen (UK), a Bristol based human trafficking charity, has also been establishing links with civil society with focus groups, and the creation of a safe house in Bristol in 2011 is their main priority, as other safe houses in Britain have been at full capacity.

Why Bristol? Dr Anker states we are ‘most effective where you live and work yourself’, which has been proved with the success of the Coalition. Furthermore, Bristol is buried in history; you only have to see the street names ‘White Ladies Road’ and ‘Black Boy Hill’ to see the racist attitudes of the British during the slave trade. Being one of the major cities today, it is likely that many vulnerable humans are being trafficked into Bristol.

So how can we help? The Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) focuses on the ‘three-Ps’: prosecution, prevention and protection. Through education we can send the criminals to the police, educate the vulnerable and provide protection to those enslaved. Students themselves can join the Amnesty and Anti-Slavery societies’ campaigns and attend talks to gain more knowledge about the issues. So bear in mind, who, what and how were our products made when buying them, as slavery is much more prominent across the globe than you initially may have thought.

Jess Goodwin, Bristol University