{"id":23260,"date":"2013-12-09T11:53:41","date_gmt":"2013-12-09T16:53:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=23260"},"modified":"2013-12-09T11:53:41","modified_gmt":"2013-12-09T16:53:41","slug":"the-epidemic-of-slavery-in-britain-is-an-urban-legend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/12\/09\/the-epidemic-of-slavery-in-britain-is-an-urban-legend\/","title":{"rendered":"The “epidemic of slavery” in Britain is an urban legend"},"content":{"rendered":"

In sp!ked<\/em>, Frank Furedi<\/a> talks about the much-talked-about but almost certainly mythical “epidemic of slavery” in Britain:<\/p>\n

A London detective inspector, Kevin Hyland, informed the world that \u2018we have never seen anything of this magnitude before\u2019. The UK home secretary, Theresa May, echoed his sentiments and said she would make tackling modern-day slavery her top priority. She said there was \u2018one positive\u2019 to the case of the south London slave house: the public had finally become aware of the issue of slavery, which, according to May, continues to have a \u2018shocking presence in modern Britain\u2019. By this time, claims that thousands of people in Britain were being held in conditions of \u2018slavery\u2019 were circulating in the media.<\/p>\n

Detective inspector Hyland may not have seen \u2018anything of this magnitude\u2019 before — but the fact is that what he saw, or imagined he saw, was a fantasy of slavery rather than the grim reality of forced servitude. Indeed, the story of the south London slaves rapidly unravelled. Early reports hinted at a heroic rescue mission involving detailed planning and up to 40 police operatives. But within a few days it became evident that the three \u2018slaves\u2019 were not slaves as we have traditionally understood that term. Certainly they were not physically held against their will. Contrary to early media reports, which suggested the three women had been imprisoned in a house for 30 years, later accounts revealed that they went outdoors to run errands and had access to telephones and a television.<\/p>\n

As the initial story of forced imprisonment became difficult to sustain, the narrative of scaremongering shifted — now focusing on the psychological and emotional horrors the women allegedly suffered. Suddenly, the image of the iron collar and chains used by slave-owners gave way to talk of \u2018invisible handcuffs\u2019. From this point on, the promoters of this urban legend about modern-day slavery argued that what is really significant about this hitherto unrecognised crime is not what can be seen by the naked eye but rather the often \u2018invisible\u2019 problem of mental enslavement. These are slaves who are not physically chained into a life of servitude, but rather are wrapped up in \u2018emotional chains\u2019 by their psychologically manipulative captors. \u2018Brainwashed\u2019 became the term most commonly used by campaigners spreading myths about an epidemic of \u2018slavery\u2019.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In sp!ked, Frank Furedi talks about the much-talked-about but almost certainly mythical “epidemic of slavery” in Britain: A London detective inspector, Kevin Hyland, informed the world that \u2018we have never seen anything of this magnitude before\u2019. The UK home secretary, Theresa May, echoed his sentiments and said she would make tackling modern-day slavery her top […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,28],"tags":[347,931,98,605],"class_list":["post-23260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-media","tag-debunking","tag-moralpanic","tag-police","tag-slavery"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-63a","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23261,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23260\/revisions\/23261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}