A New Moral Crusade?

I have been reading more and more about the crime of Human Trafficking lately. It makes for interesting and at the same time very uncomfortable reading. Some aspects of it will appear in one of my marked essays so I will have to be deliberately vague here.

Like I said the material I have read makes for very uncomfortable reading. Especially from the standpoint of a male. While guys, often very young ones are susceptible to this kind of exploitation, the victims remain predominantly female. To be female in this world is to be more vulnerable on many levels than men to any number of sources of exploitation. Is this a coincidence that men have a monopoly on governance in this world? Probably not. So after us men have swallowed those hard pills what are we to do?

I currently reside in Bristol, a city second only to London in terms of the scale of Human Trafficking. I once lived in a, shall we say 'modest' room a few miles further north in Bristol. A year after I had left that particular household I found out that within the apartment block up the street, resided a man that used the services of a certain prostitution service. He requested the same girl every week, who herself was barely in her teens if at all.

So we know such immoral activities not only exist but thrive, and not on a TV screen but in some cases it can be as close as next door. And yet moral outrage is averted. We stay busy with problems more central to our lives, we have bills to pay etc. The problem carries on and the song remains the same.

It seems nowadays that our country is in national self-repair mode. We have austerity measures upon austerity measures to carry out. We are clawing back money from the EU while fiercely defending what it can and cannot touch (mostly the latter). When we send out foreign delegations it is to spread the word of UK business. International outreach for our national needs. I am not trying to argue that such action does not need to be carried out. Of course it does, international trade binds us all together, keeps the nationalist gremlins at bay and makes us much less likely to want to kill each other.

But in the past we have not been so self-interested. Nearly 200 years ago today our Houses of Parliament outlawed the institution of the slave trade (not slavery which took a few decades longer), thanks in large measure to the efforts of William Wilberforce. I would recommend William Hague's biography of Wilberforce. From then on our national strength was directed at liberating those still held in bondage by our own countrymen as well as others. With the strength of the most powerful navy in the world we had a massive stick to wield against the evil institution.

At the moment I feel we are a country without a mission foreign policy wise and in other senses. I wonder what would happen if we made a sudden change and declared Human Trafficking to be the new Slavery? If there is a cause worthy of a moral crusade I feel it is this one. Many of the solutions in terms of the crime are not just possible, in many places they have already been carried out. All that is required is the political will and the public backing. And why just leave it to the state? Politicians and the public would reap the rewards if people were actively encouraged to engage with the voluntary groups that already operate against Human Trafficking, I am sure they would welcome the help and the exposure.

One could be cynical and ask, with so much suffering in the world why start here? I have three answers to this. One this problem is so clearly visible and potentially solvable (at least in terms of reducing it) that we have a moral obligation to tackle it. Two, we the public are guilty by association of allowing it to continue. Some among us pay for the continuance of this vile industry, so we the majority of the British public have a moral obligation to make up for this, by showing that we reject their actions. Thirdly, this country long ago committed itself to getting rid of slavery. The fact is slavery still exists. Human Trafficking is a case of unfinished business on our part.

Any action on our part would have to tackle the problem at its root and cause parts. That is the reasons why people get enslaved by trafficking networks would have to be looked at and the traffickers punished. Victims of trafficking should not be treated like criminals, but in many cases are. Punishing them is waste of time when we could be making an example of those who profit from the trade, thereby creating a real deterrence from engaging in this trade.

Many of the barriers stopping Human Trafficking from being righteously attacked by the state are due to uncomfortable political truths.  Activists against Human Trafficking have more than once eluded to the fact that many officals in our political system use the services of this base trade, including some foreign diplomats.  With the former we can expose and prosecute, with the latter we can expose but cannot prosecute thanks to diplomatic immunity.  But we can simply hand over a foreign ambassador their passport and ask them to leave.  Such exposure would create a political firestorm.  But sometimes such firestorms serve a purpose.  People need to be worried and enraged about these issues.  Losing their constituency is the least that an MP deserves for being implicated in being involved with a Human Trafficking network.  Yes, such allegations need to be handled with care.  Any criminal investigation should have the suspect's right in mind to not be treated as guilty until proven to be.

Politically speaking a broad coalition against Human Trafficking could be constructed.  Besides the fact that the crime is morally indefensible, the crime presents us with many issues that will concern varied parties.  Those that hail from the right want our borders secure, the existence of this crime shows they are not.  The fact that this crime is being carried out so close to home means that there is likely a certain amount of corruption in our government institutions.  This kind of corruption, especially in our security concerned sectors of government is a concern to everyone all over the political spectrum.

My dream job is Foreign Secretary of the UK. I would love one day to invite all of the main activists against Human Trafficking, including those who have had to hide out from corrupt governments. It would be a pleasure to invite them into my office and then ask them freely: "what can we (the country) do for you?"