‘Modern slavery is all around’
A Friend from Richmond gave a talk about tackling modern slavery on 30 January
Modern slavery is all around, a Richmond Quaker told nineteen Friends last month at a London Quakers gathering.
Rebecca Baumgartner, a civil servant whose work for the last four years has focused on tackling slavery, spoke at Kingston Meeting House on 30 January as part of an event called Free Me.
Rebecca Baumgartner told the Friend that the day was ‘a sort of awareness-raising session which started off with talks about the history of slavery and the Quaker abolitionist movement, and then looked at what modern slavery is today: ownership, servitude, human trafficking, and forced and compulsory labour’.
When it comes to recognising the signs and taking action to help, she said it is difficult as ‘their sustainability and simpler living ideals means that Quakers are less likely to be using the kind of services where victims are found – for example, in car washes and nail bars’.
However, she said that in 2018 nearly 7,000 victims were referred to the authorities in the UK, with the top three nationals being from the UK, Albania and Vietnam. She gave one example of an operation in the West Midlands which uncovered workers picking vegetables for supermarkets. Despite being in officially recognised employment, the victims’ bank accounts were being controlled by criminals.
It is estimated that 40.3 million people globally are victims of modern slavery.
