Slavery never went away... it is going on here and now in Britain

Wars have been fought to outlaw it and laws passed to consign the practice to the history books, yet figures show that 27 million men, women and children are still being forced to work against their will.

Slavery has grown into a £20bn global industry, with Britain firmly enmeshed in this growing trade. Last month, a high-profile raid on a site in Bedfordshire brought the issue into sharp focus as 24 people were said to have been freed from entrapment.

But as a new documentary shows, such scandals are far from unique. Former BBC war correspondent Rageh Omaar says the number of people being held, sold and trafficked as slaves throughout the world is now more than double the 12.5 million Africans who were taken into slavery during the several centuries of the Atlantic slave trade.

During his career, Omaar has been witness to some of the most brutal conflicts of recent times. But he says he’s never been as appalled as by the sights he witnessed while filming for new documentary series Slavery: A 21st Century Evil, which is being screened on Al Jazeera English next week.

“Most of the people we spoke to came to their new countries with visas. They had been promised work and arrived on the same flights you and I take – that was really shocking,” he says.

“They would arrive at the airport, have their passport taken by organised criminals, and find themselves enslaved – facing threats of violence, living in poverty, afraid for their families.”

Omaar says the problem goes on under our noses. “Look at prostitution in Amsterdam. There aren’t many Dutch girls working there. They’re mostly from the Eastern Bloc. You might not think it, but they are enslaved. You see girls there who have the names of their pimp tattooed on them.

“That’s just the equivalent of branding the African slaves. And yet you see families walking around the red light district as if it’s a tourist area. If they only knew.”

Recently-released statistics about slavery make for chilling reading. Kalayaan, a UK charity that helps provide justice for domestic migrants working as slaves, helped 356 escaping servitude in 2009 alone.

In April last year, a Scotland Yard investigation into organised networks trafficking young people to the UK discovered that 180 children had been taken from a single Romanian village. And yet across the whole UK, just 215 children were referred to the authorities as victims of trafficking in the same period.

Aidan McQuade, director of Anti-Slavery International, says no country is immune to the dangers of modern slavery. “We need to dispel the comforting myth that slavery ended with the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade 200 years ago.”

Here in the UK, few cases against those involved in slavery have been successfully brought to trial and there have been just 10 convictions for labour trafficking under the 2004 Asylum and Immigration Act.

But McQuade says the situation must change. “It is up to each of us to campaign on behalf of those forced to work against their will, just as the British public did two centuries ago, to make sure that governments and businesses do more to finally consign slavery to the history books.”