It’s unlikely William Wilberforce ever handed out beer mats. By the time the 18th century social reformer had embarked on his 20-year campaign to end the transatlantic slave trade, he had put the world, the flesh and the devil firmly behind him. That said, he’d doubtless approve of Aimie Littler, a young actress who has put the stage on hold to launch a hard-hitting campaign against the sex trade that traps thousands of women in 21st century slavery.

When the cult American rock band Black Rebel Motorcycle Club played in London earlier this month, Littler and her team of twentysomething activists were handing out beer mats styled as phone box calling cards, a sexy image on one side — and a chilling message on the other.

“Fancy it?” asks one, a pair of long legs in fishnet stockings and suspenders lassoing male eyes. The small print was less beguiling: “Knowing that I was trafficked into London, sold to a brothel, put to work to pay off my ‘debt’, told they will beat me if I try to escape and that you’re one of 30 men I’ll have to service today. The truth isn’t sexy.”

But like Wilberforce, the honourable member for Hull, Littler was at the House of Commons last week, having persuaded a clutch of government ministers, MPs and peers to give the campaign The Truth Isn’t Sexy, its own parliamentary launch.

“The number of British men paying for sex has doubled in a decade,” she explains. “But the punters don’t know that these women may have been raped and beaten as they are forcibly moved from country to country. When young men discover the horrendous lives of trafficked women, it’s harder for them to be light-hearted about a so-called bit of fun on a stag night.”

It was 200 years today that parliament voted to abolish the slave trade but Wilberforce’s abolitionist heirs like Littler argue that slavery has not disappeared from contemporary European culture, it’s just gone underground.

From children sold by debt-ridden parents to the boom in human trafficking in a world without borders, the United Nations estimates that in the 21st century 12m people are trapped in slavery.

According to the government, 4,000 women and children were trafficked into prostitution in the UK in 2003. Many come from eastern Europe or Africa on the promise of good jobs or education. They end up sold into the hands of sex gangs.

Daina, 19, from rural Lithuania, flew to London for a holiday at the suggestion of her boyfriend. Her illusions were shattered with a slap in the face from the man her boyfriend had arranged to meet her. “He drove me to a flat where I started work straight away. I don’t know how many men had sex with me that day but it was the longest day of my life. I could not believe that this was happening to me.”

Her ordeal lasted seven months until she managed to escape to a refuge for trafficked women. Most of her clients would have had no idea they were complicit in her plight, says Littler, who discovered that some of her own peer group thought nothing of heading off for a night of partying that might end up in buying sex. “I asked these guys if they knew about sex trafficking: they either didn’t know or didn’t want to know.”

She now works full-time on the campaign, without a salary, focusing on what she calls “the demand side” of the sex trade. “Without the demand there would be no market and no money to be made, the sole reason women are trafficked.”

The profit motive also drives the clandestine supply of children from Africa to British homes, a trade that Debbie Ariyo began campaigning against after the death of Victoria Climbié in 2000. Victoria had been sent by her parents in the Ivory Coast to her great-aunt in London. They believed their eight-year-old daughter would receive a better education in Britain. Instead, her aunt and boyfriend murdered her, claiming she was possessed by the devil.

British-born and Nigerian raised, Ariyo founded Afruca — Africans Unite Against Child Abuse — to target African diasporan communities who “disguise child abuse as cultural differences”. Recently a 17-year-old turned up at her door who had come to Britain aged 14 on a false promise of trials with a football club. “He ended up working weekdays at a car wash in south London and at the weekend in a nightclub, spraying perfume on men coming out of the gents.”

Some African families, Ariyo says, are used to young children doing full-time domestic work and don’t see a problem in paying a relative to send over a child. “A lot of people feel it is acceptable to treat children like slaves. They say, ‘What is the big deal? We have all paid for children to do domestic work in Lagos’.”

When they reach 18, many of these children are deemed “no longer useful” and might be sent away. They have no ID, might not know where they are from and are effectively without a state or identity. “It parallels the days when slavery was abolished. Then the slave owners got compensation but the slaves got nothing and became a liability. These young people are also becoming a social liability in Britain,” she says.

But Ariyo’s campaigning inspiration comes not from Wilberforce but from Olaudah Equiano, the freed 18th century slave who wrote of his experiences and campaigned alongside Wilberforce. “As an African who lives in the UK I can relate to Equiano. I see both the supply and the demand side of the slave trade and like him I think this trade is evil and has to be exposed.”

Equiano became something of a celebrity for his public readings recounting the experience of his slave days and the abolitionists’ awareness-raising tactics continue to inspire many modern lobbies, including Make Poverty History. Alongside Wilberforce’s parliamentary lobby, 300,000 people boycotted slave-harvested sugar while the campaign was backed by celebrities such as Josiah Wedgwood, who provided a “campaign logo”.

A modern celebrity, the pop star Daniel Bedingfield, is one of the organisers of Stop the Traffik. Recently returned from visiting child slaves in Africa and India, he is behind a boycott of chocolate Easter eggs that are not fairly traded. Cocoa beans are today’s equivalent of the 18th century’s unethical sugar trade, he says.

“Half the chocolate in British Easter eggs comes from cocoa plantations that use slave labour,” he says, rattling off statistics like the best of the new breed of activists. “Twelve thousand children have been trafficked into [the Ivory Coast] just to harvest cocoa beans for our chocolate.”

Having grown up in Brixton, the child of two social workers, he has been aware of child trafficking since his youth but nothing prepared him for meeting children as young as 14 forced into prostitution in Mumbai. “It is incredibly moving to meet young kids who have been rescued from brothels and are now being rehabilitated but it is hard to imagine how a mother can sell her child in the first place,” he says.

Such transactions are a sign of the sheer desperation of people in extreme poverty and campaigners recognise that ultimately only the economic development of the poorest countries will cut the supply lines of people sales.

Meanwhile, Bedingfield is hosting the Voice of Slavery fundraising show featuring Razorlight, Supergrass and others in London tonight. He and these other modern Wilberforces are undaunted by the challenges that face them. Wilberforce, Bedingfield explains, faced down a British Empire that took slavery for granted — and won.

“He’s such an inspiration to us. He put his life on the line for this issue, the first person with the clout and energy to turn the face of the British Empire against an evil they had taken for granted. It can be done again.”

To find out more visit www.thetruthisntsexy.comwww.afruca.org www.stopthetraffik.org

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