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.com
www.afruca.org www.stopthetraffik.org
