Up to 13,000 people in Britain are being held in conditions of slavery, four times the number previously thought, the Home Office has said.
In what is said to be the first scientific estimate of the scale of modern slavery in the UK, the Home Office has said the number of victims last year was between 10,000 and 13,000.
They include women forced into prostitution, domestic staff and workers in fields, factories and fishing boats.
13,000 is obviously 13,000 too many but if that’s the total number of slaves then there’s not 25,000 sex slaves alone then, is there?
Depends on the error bounds for the estimate. Likely to be very wide…
The late and lamented Kieth Waterhouse and his invention of The National Guesswork Authority (PLC) always spring to mind whenever these NGO derived figures are quoted.
Data from the National Crime Agency’s Human Trafficking Centre had previously put the number of slavery victims in 2013 at 2,744.
So the figures leapt by 10,000 in a single year. In other words, they are pulling figures out their ar$es and they have no idea.
Launching the Government’s modern slavery strategy, Home Secretary Theresa May said the scale of abuse was ‘shocking’.
‘The first step to eradicating the scourge of modern slavery is acknowledging and confronting its existence,’ she said.
No it isn’t. The first step is to find out if it exists at all.
And if it does exist the second step is to figure out if existing laws can deal with it.
So if the figures are scientifically so high, where are these people?
I do not recall more than a handful reported – over the course of the past few years.
I don’t doubt there’s some doubtful stuff happening on the domestic servant front. I might even have seen an instance. There was a house in London’s Bishops Avenue I did a lot of work at. Rich Arabs who were very rarely resident. Carried a staff of about a dozen. Pakistani or similar I’d guess. Both sexes. Heaven knows what was going on there. The only person I dealt with was the head honcho. Most of the rest, particularly the women, were kept out of any area I was in. Lot of fleeting shadows disappearing round corners at ends of corridors. All very odd.
Domestic I’d go with because some of the enrichment do this sort of thing in their home countries. And it wouldn’t have to be economic. That sort of control over people in their homes is what the cultures prefer. .
But economics makes the wider slaver issue unlikely. Slaveholding’s just a very economically inefficient way of employing. You have to support the slaves & keep whippin’ ’em. It’s a reprise of what I’m always banging on about with the sex trade. There’s no way a slave hooker’s going to compete with the endless supply of hot to trot, self sustaining, self motivating women who want to sell their ass-ets. It works with most other forms of labour.
It’s why slavery died out, isn’t it? It’s not economically efficient in an advanced economy.
“Domestic workers are imprisoned and made to work all hours of the day and night for little or no pay.”
huh? If you’ve got a slave who’s imprisoned, why would you pay them? What are they going to spend money on?
More fodder for the Fish-Faced Hag eh?.
There may be dodgy stuff among imported servants and workers (as there is on a much larger scale in various arab enclaves such as Dubai). But it is the “enforced prostitution” shite where the real tinpot tyranny will come. The dozy cow has already endorsed the “100,000 under-age Viet prostitutes being forced to work out of nail bars” sick fantasy. What happened to them?. Shouldn’t they be included on the roster?.
Evidence of these supposed 13000 slaves?. A guess from a govt paid puke. Designed to strengthen the “case” for yet another piece of abusive police-state shite already in progress.
Oh—and some more publicity for the new Thatcher. What next?.
~“Domestic workers are imprisoned and made to work all hours of the day and night for little or no pay.”
huh? If you’ve got a slave who’s imprisoned, why would you pay them? What are they going to spend money on? ~
Ah! That’s the bit where “slavery” defines a point on the (low) pay scale. It’s moveable. End point’s when bankers’ bonuses make them slave labour. And what would they have to spend the money on? Apart from Ferraris? They’re trapped I tell you! Virtual prisoners in their own penthouses. Something should be done.
Denis Macshane probably estimated the number of sex slaves in the same way he estimated his expenses.
As usual we have politicians appearing on the telly quoting figures from a NGO, who have calculated the numbers by using that scientific technique known as “Making Stuff Up.”
The irritating thing is, that is quite believable that there are 10,000 “slaves” using the definition that one person owns the body and labour of another. Of course slavery in that manner has been illegal for 200 years in Britain and so these people are de facto rather than de jure slaves. But 10,000 isn’t really that many when one considers how many very rich people from…er… “less enlightened” countries live in London and keep their domestic staff in servitude.
And so the government decides that “something must be done” and introduces yet another law that cannot be enforced. How many mansions in Belgravia are really going to be raided in pursuit of these “modern slaves” ?
After all, everyone who earns a wage is already a serf to the State.
“the first scientific estimate”: as in Climate Science, presumably?
Apparently there’s already a Minister of Modern Slavery, name of Karen Bradley. And so I suppose there is a Shadow Minister for Modern Slavery as well.
Let’s hope that the job description is less ambiguous than the title. However, given that she has managed to raise the number of slaves by 10,000 in less than a year, that may not be the way to bet.
“There’s no way a slave hooker’s going to compete with the endless supply of hot to trot, self sustaining, self motivating women who want to sell their ass-ets.”
Err, how about price?
Mr Eck’s asks if its to strengthen the case for some legislation. It is. The one where all companies will have to document the fact that they have no slave labour anywhere in their supply chain, even if outsourced overseas. Except it won’t apply to companies like Whites who have already said that they don’t have any slave labour making their “This is what a feminist looks like” t-shirts.
‘Estimate’ = guess.
A guess is still a guess whether a ‘scientific’ one or not, and no more credible or likely to be correct than one made by the Man on The Clapham Omnibus.
Runaway Manmade Global Warming was a ‘scientific’ guess on which nearly all ‘scientifics’ agreed, and it has turned out to be spectacularly wrong as most guesses are… which is why science, except climate science, uses observed evidence not guesswork.
“Err, how about price?”
Honestly, I doubt it’d be much cheaper. If you’re holding a girl rather than a girl just working for herself from a flat, she might not get paid, but you’re going to want to be. And that’s got to factor in making enough to compensate for the potential outcome of life imprisonment for human slavery. If that “compensation” is more than £100/hr, the girl can probably beat you.
Some bored, scared girl isn’t going to make much money. People will start posting reviews on Punternet and Adultwork and putting punters off. You’ll be down to charging the same rates as streetwalkers, at which point, it’s not worth doing.
Plus, you’re exposing your slavery operation to lots of people. That’s why I suspect there’s far more slavery in domestic servants and agricultural workers, where you can cut down the interactions. There’s plenty of normal blokes who are punters who would go to the police if they thought a girl was enslaved.
Bloke with a Boat – “And if it does exist the second step is to figure out if existing laws can deal with it.”
And as with Rotherham, the third step is to find out why the laws are not being applied properly. Especially to our more vibrant neighbourhoods and fellow citizens.
bloke (not) in spain – “It’s why slavery died out, isn’t it? It’s not economically efficient in an advanced economy.”
There is a considerable body of literature showing that slavery was not dying out, nor was it economically inefficient, when the British banned it. It was a very expensive decision.
As I understand it (a mate does research in this area), there are very few trafficked women in the prostitution racket. Anon is correct that the brothel owners cannot afford to run many prostitutes since there is a substantial cost to monitoring (effort). Throw in the cost of smuggling and possibility of being caught and its a marginal business.
I can see domestic help + forced labour on farms etc being larger, but it doesnt strike me as a big problem needing legislation.
Dear Mr Worstall
I make it 40-50 million and counting, some as young as 6*, who are kept in tax slavery by our rapacious government.
DP
* or whatever age they get pocket money to spend on taxed goodies, and that’s before OBG** pile on the sugar tax.
** Our beloved government. I’m claiming that as mine. I’ve always wanted a TLA of my own.
PS I dare say OBG™ is creating this act so the EU can use people it doesn’t like (ie most of us) as forced labour. We’re being softened up with ‘community service orders’ as a form of gulag light. There will be a section somewhere saying OBG™ (both Westminster and BrusStra) will be exempt so the real gulags can start operating.
See if you can spot it:
Page 1
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/lbill/2014-2015/0051/lbill_2014-20150051_en_2.htm#pt1-pb1-l1g1
DP
“Anon is correct that the brothel owners cannot afford to run many prostitutes ….”
Good time to clear up a popular misconception.
In several years of being connected to the industry, both in Spain & through the girls there gaining a good idea of what happens both in the rest of Europe & elsewhere, I have never heard of anyone operating what many people consider to be a “brothel”. A business that employs women & sells their sexual services. Not one.
There are various business models.
The girl pays a room rent & may live in.
The girl pays bar rent & takes the customers elsewhere.
The girl splits the take with the venue in exchange for soliciting there & using their facilities.
A permutation from the above.
The only exception is parties, where the girls may take a fee for the event, paid out of the entrance or booking fee collected by the organiser.
In all cases, whether the girl supplies a service to the customer is the girl’s choice. Even with parties. Although a girl who was unreasonably choosy wouldn’t get booked for another party.
So no. A venue can afford to run any number of prostitutes. It’s in their interest to run as many as the venue can hold. More girls. More house dressing. More income. Sadly for the girls, often too many. The shortage is in the customers, not the girls. And bar type venues take a large proportion of their revenue over the bar with, in many cases, the girls earning commission on drinks. But in general terms, the girls pay the venue, not the venue the girls.
Essentially, the above is why the “sex slave” model isn’t economically viable. It’s the girls take all the business risk, not the organisers.
The above’s also the response to SMfS’s:
“There is a considerable body of literature showing that slavery was not dying out, nor was it economically inefficient, when the British banned it.”
Whatever the literature says. Slaveholding is only economically viable if you have a labour shortage. Because you have to provide your slaves with sustenance. (Or if you starve & work them to death, buy or capture more slaves.) But if you have a labour surplus, employees provide their own sustenance & balance your supply/demand requirement for you.
Markets.
bloke (not) in spain – “Whatever the literature says. Slaveholding is only economically viable if you have a labour shortage.”
Slavery is actually a very complex topic. We tend to think only of American slavery. A lot of slavery is not economic at all. What is unusual about the West is that it did not really want young women all that much. Most places pay the most for young healthy women. The reason is obvious and it is not an economic motivation. People used to have slaves for prestige reasons. Whether they produced or not.
But in general I agree.
“But if you have a labour surplus, employees provide their own sustenance & balance your supply/demand requirement for you. Markets.”
More motivated too. But at the point Britain decided to ban slavery, it was not dying out and it was not un-economic. As can be seen by the expense and the fact that places in the Americas did not recover for a long time. Seymour Drescher has a good book on this called Econocide.
Essentially, the above is why the “sex slave” model isn’t economically viable.
It’s not in Europe. But in the Middle East and Asia? It exists, of a sort.
The first thing to get out of everybody’s heads is the idea that sex affects all women the same way. It doesn’t. Thai girls in the provinces often lose their virginity at around 12 years old to a male relative who doesn’t give them much say in the matter. And nobody gives a shit, that’s just how it is. So by the time they reach adulthood they are battle-hardened and can bring themselves to have sex with just about anybody as easily as a European shakes hands. I have seen Central Asian and Chinese women with similar levels of toughness and non-emotion, albeit not on the same scale or with the same degree of ruthlessness as the Thais. I guess Filipinas are similar.
So what happens in places like Dubai is one of these girls is brought over either as a prostitute, or as something else, or changes her mind, but either way ends up working under conditions she doesn’t like and can’t leave. But she is not somebody who is chained to the bed weeping, she just gets on with it. The toughness of some women is extraordinary – which is why it always amazes westerners to see some tiny, pretty Thai girl going hand in hand with some fat, greasy foreigner and asking “How can she do that?” I saw rejections from the Russian girls in Dubai – they had a standard on nationalities rather than looks – but never from Chinese in Dubai or Thais in Thailand. And on the latter, trust me, I’ve seen some sights.