“All forms of modern slavery continue to exist in India, including inter-generational bonded labor, forced child labor, commercial sexual exploitation, forced begging, forced recruitment into non-state armed groups and forced marriage,” Untoldstory.in
by “Law Student”
Slavery is undoubtedly among the greatest evils inflicted by humans upon humans. Over 250 years, common law jurisdictions have progressively outlawed slavery – on paper, if not necessarily in practice – beginning with the chattel slavery typical of the Atlantic slave trade.
Slavery has again come into focus for lawmakers, due to a greater awareness of the presence of slavery in the complex international “supply chains” that are now used to produce everyday goods. That is to say, one part of the production of a certain product may be accomplished in a locale where persons are working under force.
The British Parliament passed a world-first Modern Slavery Act in 2015, and Australia is now set to follow. I argue, however, that the approach in the new legislative model is fundamentally inadequate to eliminate modern slavery globally.
Following a parliamentary inquiry held during 2017, the Australian Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Trade issued the Hidden in Plain Sight report, recommending that the Australian Parliament pass legislation along the lines of the British Modern Slavery Act.
In stark contrast to most parliamentary committee inquiries, where a majority and dissenting report split along party lines are released, the Joint Standing Committee was able to release a unanimous report backing the passage of a Modern Slavery Act.
In April 2018, the Foreign Minister Julie Bishop told Commonwealth leaders assembled at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London that Australia intended to pass legislation before the end of the year to come into effect in 2019, saying it would ‘raise awareness about the scourge of modern slavery’.
Given the bipartisan support for a Modern Slavery Act, any bill introduced along the lines recommended by the inquiry would be very likely to pass through Parliament. Such a step would certainly constitute a significant step forward in terms of Australia’s legal response to modern slavery, but it is questionable whether the Modern Slavery Act model provides a sufficient state response to properly address modern slavery.
A Word about “Traditional” Slavery
One of the first serious attacks on the legal basis of slavery in England was the 1772 decision in Somersett’s Case. An enslaved African man, James Somerset, had been brought from Boston to England by an English customs officer named Charles Stewart in 1769. Two years later, Stewart imprisoned Somerset in preparation for selling him as a plantation labourer in Jamaica. Stewart’s godparents, who had met him upon his baptism in England, applied for a writ of habeas corpus, which was granted.
Upon his release, Somerset filed action against Stewart in the Court of King’s Bench to seek his freedom, with his legal costs being met by the wealthy abolitionist Granville Sharp. The trial judge, Lord Mansfield, found that chattel slavery could not be supported by the English common law.
Reputed as saying that ‘this air is too pure for a slave to breathe in’, Lord Mansfield found in his judgment that slavery ‘is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law [meaning statutory law]’. The effect of this case was that chattel slavery was found to be unsupported by the English common law.
However, this left open the question of slavery in the Empire. British merchants and business interests were continuing to profit from transporting slaves and the widespread use of slave labour in the colonies, particularly the plantations of the Caribbean. Abolitionists continued to campaign for slavery to be totally outlawed through the British Empire.
As the historian Marcus Rediker describes in The Slave Ship, the 1788 publication by the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade of an engraving depicting the plan of the slave ship Brookes with 454 slaves arranged upon its decks was a pivotal point in the abolitionist movement. This was because it provided anti-slavery campaigners with a unifying visual identity for their cause, symbolising the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade.
Over the next 40 years, advances were made in outlawing the slave trade, but it was not until 1833 with the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act that chattel slavery was legally abolished throughout the British Empire. It persisted as lawful in the United States for a further 32 years until the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865.
Following the abolition of chattel slavery under the law, slavery received scant attention from legislators.
While non-chattel forms of slavery, such as forced domestic servitude, sexual slavery, and unfree labour persisted and grew, it took considerable time for legislators to recognise the need to respond to this issue. A complicating factor was the growth of global supply chains used by multinational companies to produce goods such as clothing, shoes, and agricultural commodities, which often obscured the true origins of everyday products.
Meanwhile, cases of contemporary slavery continued to grow. In 2014, the United Kingdom’s National Referral Mechanism for slavery had reported 2,340 cases of human trafficking. It was clear that a renewed fight against slavery was necessary.
The Prawns and the Slave-grown Fishmeal
At the same time, media attention on the role of slavery in the transnational supply of consumer goods sharpened public awareness of contemporary slavery. A ground-breaking series of reports in the Guardian newspaper on the use of slaves in the production of prawns sold and eaten in the UK adopted Thai slave fishing ships as a symbol of contemporary slavery in much the same way as the earlier generation of abolitionists had adopted the Brookes as shorthand for the Atlantic trade.
The story was soon picked up across the British press, leading to widespread public concern. A fortnight after the first Guardian article, Britain’s largest supermarket chain, Tesco, announced that it would be requiring its Thai farmed prawn suppliers to stop feeding prawns fishmeal that could not be proven to have made entirely with free labour. The public awareness of slavery was heightened, finally making it a politically opportune time to address the issue. This culminated with the passage of the Modern Slavery Act in 2015, a law intended to address modern slavery both in the United Kingdom and internationally.
To address slavery within the United Kingdom, the Act created new criminal offences, increased resources for investigation of slavery, and improved protections for victims. These were generally well-received, with academic Caroline Robinson praising these provisions as embracing a labour rights approach.
The Voluntary Reporting System
However, reaction to the Act’s main provision dealing with slavery outside the United Kingdom has been mixed. The crux of the Modern Slavery Act’s approach to addressing slavery in international supply chains is a requirement that certain large companies doing business in the UK must produce a report outlining either the steps that they took in the previous year to prevent the use of slavery in their supply chains, or disclosing that they made no effort to address the problem of modern slavery.
Note: Qantas Airline has complied by reporting.
On the basis of such information. consumers and NGOs would be able to pressure companies that are seen as not sufficiently committed to fighting slavery in their supply chains.
Unfortunately, the Act does not compel companies to disclose any specific information in their reports. The result is that many companies issue reports consisting of vague sentiments against slavery without any details of concrete action being taken.
In any event, many companies simply do not comply with the reporting requirement, and the government has shown little appetite for enforcing it. This means that the international provisions of the British Modern Slavery Act are essentially meaningless in practice, and fail to fight international slavery.
Should We Outsource?
Australia is now considering adopting its own Modern Slavery Act following the British model. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop announced in mid-April 2018 that compared to the British legislation, the Australian law would contain stricter requirements for the contents of reports.
However, the neoliberal model being used is fundamentally the same. Companies are left to decide for themselves what measures are appropriate to address slavery in their supply chains. Market participants must then decide whether these anti-slavery measures are adequate on the basis of the information provided.
Contemporary anti-slavery activists face a more difficult task in some sense than campaigners against the Atlantic trade. Slavery is already illegal – the task of today’s abolitionists goes beyond merely calling for the law to be changed, and instead insisting that the existing laws against slavery are enforced.
The approach of the British and proposed Australian Modern Slavery Acts sets a dangerous precedent of the state failing to take responsibility to enforce its own laws against slavery. Simply trying to pass the buck off to other groups with fewer resources than the state through disclosure requirements will not be adequate to eliminate the scourge of slavery.
I call it “outsourcing law enforcement.” Who could have faith in such a thing?
— “Law Student” is making his way through the labyrinth of legislation, with a sceptical eye.
Modern slavery is economic here . 1 million $ borrowed becomes 2.5 million $ minimum to service debt over thirty years !
And what do you recommend we do? Can one buy manumission? With whom can we negotiate the matter?
20% interest on one million is still a handsome profit for the lenders .
Sadly their greed has no limits so they charge 150% interest or more .
That poor Indian girl in the above photo explains it all .
As a false sense of security and abject poverty are identical in Spirit, and as Aus is largely possessed by the former, the picture of the little brick girl should really be supplanted by one of a well-fed Aus family of four in a newly “acquired” suburban palace.
Given the Alfie Evens case, it’s hard to believe that anyone would have the cheek to promote Britain as a paragon of liberation: how could anyone be left with any doubt that government controlled health,welfare, and education is the heart and soul of modern slavery ?
Middle class also descending towards poverty, then slavery?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-30/new-type-poverty-crushing-middle-class
Some top corporations senior managements/boards have been complicit.
The regulators (govt., APRA, ASIC, ACCC, etc.), have been captured/emasculated/reactive/ineffective. Until criminal trials are conducted for responsible persons/parties, the deterrent message will not be effectively conveyed.
How to get such trials?
“Until criminal trials are conducted” – Isn’t that making the ASSUMPTION that the legal system isn’t part of the system? Terms such as ‘equality before the law’ sound great, but is it true or just a slogan for the masses?
There’s a reason the government wanted to disarm the citizens by slaughtering people at Port Arthur, I wonder what it could be…
Re: “making the ASSUMPTION that the legal system isn’t part of the system?” Good point! It shifts/directs attention towards the more fundamental/systemic role of the “deep state”/”dark forces” in Oz, and wider afield (I wonder what/who these could be . . . ). It certainly transcends the often cited “inappropriate (organisational) culture”.
The old world slavery had the advantage of a investment in slave maintenance and up keep, whreas now we have freedom for the individual, meaning the individual although having the benefit of representation by law, few can afford lawyers, the set up today is you become enslaved by the system of finance, such as being enslaved for thirty years paying off mortgage for what is in todays builiding constructed of second rate materials as most housing today is constructed of materials that are poor quality, freedom consists of democracy, democracy is a system imposed on the individual having little possibility of voting for change, corporations run government, as can be seen by the policy of Liberals of pro the individual as opposed to the welfare of many, the Liberals are not pro individuals but pro a small elite whom make millions of dollars per annum, they are a cult, there job is as can be seen by the Australian banking investigation whom are a criminal sect, they will be all part of the system who will be well rewarded for a legal crime syndicate.
The chances are within this system of regulated corruption, this ideology will be seen as flawed by exterior forces such as China will be able to destroy what is left of so called democracy, the amount of individuals who have any moral compass will be insufficient to save the best of what is left of democracy, as can be seen by Turnbull’s when gaining power propagated a great educated population for Australia, as he became as what he always was a part of the elite corrupt, needed to have a docile public of being uneducated, hence we see since he has been in power we are fast slipping down in stats of education,the elite requires a docile public to remain enslaved.
As the Western countries like Australia have been encouraged, through their political class, to close local industry, slavery in the Third World countries will flourish. Many who had invested in local manufacture, now make more money by investing in these same types of industry in Third World countries where sweat shops are operated.
Australians have been forced to buy overseas manufactured items, as these same items are no longer produced here, so we are in fact supporting the use of slave labour.
Our politicians have been part of this agenda. Manufacture is not the only area affected. In W.A. during Richard Court’s term as premier, orchardist were paid to eradicate orange trees from their orchards. Now we import oranges from California and Argentina. This is maniacal! Who is to say that these countries will not at some time put embargoes on Australia, or in an extreme situation be at war with us.
Australia has the potential to produce any horticultural product and nearly any manufactured item. We have the knowledge, man-power and raw materials. This is what has the Globalist Cabal so scared.
If Third World standards of living improve, so that there is no such thing as slave labour, the profits of the Capitalist class of the One World Government would be dealt a significant blow.
In fact there’s no way of knowing that “made in China” merchandise hasn’tr been put together by political prisoners
Leo Gerard is pretty astute re the dynamic of so-called “free trade” :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5mZ3ZlK_A8
‘Work for the dole’ is slavery. And Julie Bishop is Gung ho about work for the dole.
In the good old days, a slave had to be fed, clothed, washed and housed. There were laws to enforce these standards.
What a work for the dole victim has in his pocket after his day of enslavement is less than what slave owners had to pay out for food, clothing, care and shelter.
It’s fine for Julie to prattle on about slavery but a definition of what precisely what constitutes slavery is a necessary prerequisite. I would bet she would then drop her noblesse oblige like a hot brick.
As“work for the dole” means working for considerably less than the award wage the orchestrators simply need to be told that they are law-breakers
Another aspect of immiserisation, enslavement and exclusion:
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/01/bupa-m01.html
Already (or very soon) the practice/expectation of “a fair go” will be deemed/categorised as a completely “optional extra”. Australian values??? What’s that???
Kermit, you have got the right target — loss of a value. How do you suggest we reinstate it? Surely you must have some suggestion.
Keep doing what you are doing!
Julie, Julie, Julie….
How dare you send Planned Parenthood $9.5million on our behalf, under the guise of “Women’s Rights”.
Trump is instigating investigations of Planned Parenthood for criminal activities involving human foetal organ tissue sales. For God’s sake. Selling baby body parts???? And what exactly do they use these “spare parts” for? Additives to food flavourings for Nestles and for some bizarre reason, they seem to need to put them into vaccines. WTF!!!
And the head of Planned Parenthood , Cecile Richards, pays herself a salary of $2.5 million a year?
You people in charge of our “gubmint” are absolutely criminal monsters, with slick tongues and black hearts.