Slavery in the UK

[WhollyGhost]

"Twenty-four men believed to have been held against their will and forced to work have been freed from a caravan site in Bedfordshire.

Five people on the site, in Leighton Buzzard, have been arrested under suspicion of keeping 24 men from England, Romania and Poland as slaves in "filthy and cramped" conditions, police said. Four men and a woman were arrested after a long-running investigation by Bedfordshire police."

Horrible that some were there for up to 15 years.

Awful . And as others have said it throws the spotlight on a very very nasty side of some of the travelling community.

Sticky- apparently salves are often scared into staying withs tories of being deported etc.

I absolutely refuse to generalise to travellers at othersites though

Slavery has only been illegal in this country since 2010!

WTF, I cannot believe this hasn't been highlighted before.

Stickyghost, that was one of the first things I thought. Where's Vanessa Redgrave, how does this sit with her "loving the little people" project?

Shocking story. I do love your typo Peachy 'scared into staying with tories of being deported'. Very apt?

The media bury stories like this because the slavers are generally people with protected status ("Travellers", Muslims, Sheikhs, etc).

Channel 4 news tonight were saying it's not an isolated case - that there are fears about people being held on other sites. (I hadn't heard about the case Stranded refers to - appalling.)

I guess if you are evil enough to be involved in this hideous type of crime then a Travellers' site is quite a good place to hold people - hidden away from wider society.

c4 coverage here:

www.channel4.com/news/five-arrested-on-slavery-charges-at-travellers-site

There is going to be a Dispatches programme on Travellers. I've also been told that a BBC film crew have been in Rathkeale, where the Dale farm travellers originate - I don't know if that was for Dispatches, or for a different BBC programme. If the extraordinarily ostentatious houses (which I have seen) and the luxury cars are featured, it could stir up real ill feeling against Travellers, and shatter the romantic notions that so many urbanites hold.

I feel worried now for the Travellers, a genuinely marginalised group, that they will suddenly lose the support they've become used to, and be subjected to more discrimination than before. I've argued ad nauseum on the Dale farm thread that they should not be "cut some slack" on the grounds of cultural sensitivity, and should be required to follow the law of the land like everybody else, not least for the protection of vulnerable individuals within the Travelling community. Several of those posts were deleted, so I am surprised that this thread has been allowed to stand.

Most Travellers are good people, and they have few choices in life - with little in the way of formal education, and kept isolated from the wider community it is very difficult for those who would like to integrate. I am concerned that "securing a voice for a community in policymaking" really means securing a voice for the men in charge of this patriarchal community - and that efforts to preserve Traveller culture are not always in the interests of that community as a whole - particularly given the health outcomes - e.g. statistics on child mortality in the Traveller community. Travellers often have hard lives - their treatment of the vulnerable men they seemingly enslaved is probably not all that different from what is endured by many Travellers. While some have mansions and luxury cars, I have met others who have pale, thin children with clothing that is neither adequate nor vaguely clean.

They are not a homogenous group, and I hope it is possible to bring the abusers to justice and allow the children to access an education that will both broaden their horizons and bring them into contact with the wider community in which they live.

There's also been a case in Hampshire. Not sure if that made the news or not.

Oh my god there are more cases?? Absolutely shocking.

here's the hampshire one That's all that I know of for now but I am sure there are more that we are not yet aware about.

channel 4 news said there were dozens of cases, they showed some on a map.

It's horrible. Those poor men.

What depresses me just as much is wondering what will happen to the men now. Where will they go? If they were homeless and vulnerable in the first place who will ensure they don't end up homeless again?

They are getting lots of help - they is a system in place and will be looked after by a charity if that is what they wish. They have also had medical help. This is the same for all victims of human trafficking in this country.