Southern Marches’ anti slavery donation
A donation by Southern Marches Area Meeting has been welcomed by an anti-slavery charity
Canon Noel Beattie, founder of the Lifting the Stone Coalition/Anti-Slavery Network in the Marches, has thanked Southern Marches Area Meeting for what he describes as their ‘generous donation’ to the group’s work against slavery. He said: ‘This donation has now allowed us to run the first tranche of handy information cards that can be a ready reminder of what to observe and then what you can do.’
He added: ‘Actually, we can only rid society of this crime against humanity by working in partnership. I have just learned that there is in Hereford a “county lines” gang from the cities which is grooming children as young as eleven years to carry and sell illegal drugs, with all the attendant risks to life. There is work to be done within our schools. Your participation with us is so very important.’
Friends donated £125 to the group after a talk by Noel Beattie at Ludlow Meeting House on 12 January, ‘Slavery in the Twenty-First Century’, which drew an audience of forty-five Quakers.
Jamie Wrench, from Southern Marches Area Meeting, told the Friend the talk ‘generated much discussion’. He said: ‘We were all left wondering if we’ve seen any of these people in our own area without knowing, such as car-washers in supermarket carparks.’
According to the minutes from the talk, Noel Beattie invited the audience to consider ‘how we can learn to recognise modern day slavery’.
The minutes said: ‘Slavery is found in every corner of the world.’ They highlight that more than forty million adults and millions of children are at any time enslaved. They continue: ‘We are challenged to think globally but act locally. In the UK, victims have been identified from 116 nationalities; the highest number is of victims from the UK itself – up from third highest in 2016 – and the police believe the number is still rising.’
The talk also explained the ways in which victims are lured into slavery, and the circumstances that contribute to this. According to the minutes: ‘These are modern day social conditions, and there are many modern day types of exploitation, involving highly organised activities ranging from sexual exploitation and drug trafficking to benefit fraud, often associated with gangs. The largest by proportion are, unsurprisingly, sexual or labour exploitation; in particular children are subject to labour exploitation.’ Exclusions from school were often the starting point for children.
