Reducing modern slavery isn't that hard, but getting governments to implement solutions is next to impossible

In September 2024, the BBC reported on a case of modern slavery in England. It told a story of Czech workers forced into labour. Some were at a McDonald’s franchise in Cambridgeshire, others at a factory supplying pita bread to major British supermarkets.

The reporting followed a familiar template. The piece asked why the companies hadn’t spotted the signs of modern slavery, like the workers’ long hours, or their lack of control over their bank accounts. There was dramatic footage from a police raid, pictures of squalid accommodation, and brief interviews with the workers. The perpetrator’s lavish lifestyle was highlighted. At the end, the big golden chains he wore were replaced with handcuffs.

The usual talking heads then followed: former UK Prime Minister Theresa May, the UK’s former anti-slavery commissioner, and a representative from the NGO Justice and Care. Contrite statements from the implicated companies were read out by the presenter, which said they take the issues “seriously” and either no longer use the suppliers or have improved inspections. The workers seemed pleased to see their exploiter behind bars. But they said they’d still like the companies to apologise.

I’m glad the BBC described the signs of modern slavery and showed that household-name companies can be involved. Yet I was disappointed that, yet again, the dominant message was that law enforcement is the solution. Being tough on criminals solves modern slavery was the clear takeaway. After all, we’d just seen one end up behind bars.

This is fantasy.

A mirror to the society

A few weeks before the BBC piece, the Guardian published a series of investigations by the Czech journalist Saša Uhlová. She went undercover as a farm worker in Germany, a cleaner at a hotel in Dublin, and a care worker in Marseille, France.

Like the BBC, Uhlová describes many well-established trafficking indicators: lack of contracts, long hours, poor pay, instructions on how to behave in front of inspectors, and a second set of “official” timesheets. These cases sit somewhere on the continuum of exploitation between decent work and forced labour, and would likely fit the formal definitions of human trafficking or modern slavery. But in this case, we do not hear about anyone leaving the building in handcuffs.

The significance of these stories is not that some crimes are punished and some are not. To me, they illustrate why responses that rely predominantly on law and order have not led to significant reductions in modern slavery. It will not end until we accept how fundamental exploitation is to our societies and economies. It’s built into the bedrock of the global system, and there isn’t a prison big enough to hold everybody implicated.

Slavery and forced labour are not principally technical problems. They persist because government and society permit them to persist

This belief in the primacy of law enforcement for ending human trafficking is a key part of technocratic approaches to dealing with modern slavery. Many politicians reach for it by default when confronted with the complexities of exploitation.

Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, did this last September when he pledged to “break up people-smuggling gangs in the same manner used to apprehend and jail … rioters.” Yet in the nearly quarter-century that I’ve been involved in the struggle against modern slavery, such technical approaches have never proven sufficient.

Starmer is a former prosecutor, so it is unsurprising that he seems incapable of thinking beyond his prosecution background to include the more sophisticated policy options that are available to government.

But he is not alone. I recall that ministers were heavily focused on the primacy of policing in the initial discussions on the 2015 Modern Slavery Act. It required considerable pressure and argument to ensure victims protection measures ended up in the final draft. Many in government were also dumbfounded when they learned that British business wanted a ‘transparency in supply chains’ clause included in the act to help them clean up their own supply chains. Such was the narrowness of governmental understanding of contemporary forms of slavery and their causes.

Too many in both government and civil society persist in the belief that there should be technocratic solutions to slavery and forced labour. But slavery and forced labour are not principally technical problems. They persist because government and society permit them to persist.

This is allowed, in turn, because they tend to fall upon groups that are discriminated against, such as migrants in Europe, Dalits in South Asia, indigenous peoples in South America, and women everywhere. More powerful sections of society benefit from the exploitation of these marginalised individuals, including from the cheap goods and services they are forced to provide.

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This can be done

Aidan McQuade and many others on this site have written about the political economies of slavery and forced labour. They’ve shown how, in many instances, the slavery crimes which so baffle politicians and overwhelm law enforcement are in fact enabled by cherished government policies.

There are approaches that could reduce some of world’s major contemporary slavery problems. Indeed, there are approaches that would be relatively uncontroversial. For example, given that debt bondage is a major contemporary means of enslavement, governments could focus on debt reduction amongst slavery vulnerable and migrant origin communities. Or donor governments could establish new budget lines to finance the anti-trafficking action plans of governments in the Global South, which are mandated under the 2014 Forced Labour Protocol.

Unfortunately, as with the entire history of anti-slavery, there is no magic solution to fix the challenge of entrenched government ignorance and the allures of quick fixes within electoral cycles. So, what is needed – perhaps even more than good research and media investigations – is endurance. Persistent protest and a willingness to be unpopular by speaking truth to power will eventually bring the advances we need.

As the African proverb states, “Infinite patience wears down even the hardest stone.”