William Wilberforce (1759-1833) was
successful in his campaign to abolish the slave trade within the British Empire
in 1807, and slavery itself in 1833, but, strange to tell, that did not make
slavery illegal in Great Britain itself.
Slavery has finally been made illegal
The “Somerset Case” of 1772 effectively
ended slavery in Britain in practical terms, because Lord Mansfield ruled in a
civil case that a slave could not be bought or sold; in other words slavery was
not a condition that could be subject to an enforceable contract. A slave could
therefore seek his or her freedom in the courts and their owner would not have
a defence in contract law.
However, that did not make the institution
of slavery illegal because it had not been so declared by Parliament. That did
not happen until 2010, with the Coroners and Justice Act (Section 71) that made
it a criminal offence to hold a person in “slavery or servitude”. The
punishment for so doing was set at up to 14 years’ imprisonment.
This may sound like a pure technicality,
especially as there have long been laws in Great Britain covering such matters
as false imprisonment and forced labour, but slave masters have been active in
the black economy for many years and the lack of a specific law aimed at them
had made it difficult to secure prosecutions. Fortunately, that is no longer
the case.
It may be hard to believe, but there are
still people around who seek to enslave others in this country. A recent case
involved a traveller family who picked up “down and outs” and forced them to
work for the family business for food and nothing else. Although the laws
against false imprisonment and forced labour would have applied in this case,
the specific recognition that this constituted slavery was important because it
“called a spade a spade” and enabled the proper punishment to be applied.
Slavery is still a real problem in many
places
Unfortunately, slavery is still endemic in
many countries in the world. It has been estimated that there are more than 27
million slaves in the world today, which is more than were seized from Africa
during the 400 years of the slave trade.
© John Welford
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