Policy Library

Summary:

Over two hundred years after William Wilberforce’s success in abolishing the slave trade, the British Parliament has a second opportunity to abolish slavery entirely. Slavery flourishes to this day, although unlike two hundred years ago, it is now invisible.

It continues behind front doors, in factories and on farms, in brothels and on the streets of our towns and cities. To give just a few examples, across the country today there are Vietnamese boys forced to work on cannabis farms, Nigerian women held in domestic servitude, Polish and British men controlled by criminals as forced labourers, and British and Eastern European girls trafficked into prostitution. This, however, is by no means a comprehensive list of either the forms of modern slavery taking place in Britain or of the primary nationalities that are being exploited.