Here’s a conundrum. Whilst Home Secretary, Theresa May introduced what was called ‘the hostile environment’, a basket of policies designed to discourage many poor people (including refugees and asylum-seekers fleeing violence and conflict) from attempting to come to this country. The consequences of these policies have been well-aired, from the appalling treatment of the Windrush generation, the vastly increased and murderous cross-channel small boat traffic, to the everyday, nonchalantly brutalising treatment by the Home Office (now widely regarded as totally unfit for purpose) of those waiting for decisions on their status, waits which themselves have often led to destitution and suicide. One less publicised consequence has been that many people seeking to come to the UK, often legitimately to work, have been driven into the underground labour market and in turn into forms of forced labour or other types of what is now defined as modern slavery.

A few years later, now as Prime Minister, Theresa May launched a process which culminated in the passage of the 2015 Modern Slavery Act, legislation which, May asserted, calling somewhat cheaply on the imagery of Wilberforce and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, would position the UK again as ‘world-leading’ in the fight against modern slavery, ‘preserving the freedoms and values … of our country’. Criticism of the shortcomings of the Act was immediate and wide-ranging (see Craig etal., 2019 for an initial critique of its failings), not least its connecting of modern slavery policy to immigration policy in a way which discouraged potential victims from coming forward, or criminalised many who were identified. For example, young Vietnamese men driven into managing cannabis farms found that their ‘rescue’ by the police led to court appearances, jail sentences and deportations, despite the provisions of section 45 which expressly claimed to protect then with a statutory defence. Commentators less familiar with the territory were perplexed by two sets of legislation which seemed totally at odds with each other.

The fight against modern slavery certainly has had its ardent supporters, not to say evangelists. Tens of thousands of police, statutory services such as child protection workers, NGOs, researchers and others, across the world, have invested huge amounts of time and money over the past twenty years attempting to soften the rough edges of the new modern slavery industry. At the same time, an academic debate was stirred into prominence with one tendency arguing that what has been defined as modern slavery is inappropriately named in the context of historical debates about slavery, exploitation and unfree labour. For many activists and practitioners, this debate simply muddied the waters of prosetylising campaigns.

In this contested, confusing and challenging environment, a book entitled ‘The truth about modern slavery’ might not be welcomed by many of those, critical or not, who have been working on the issue for years and who might find the title patronising. However, this sin of commission could be forgiven if the book brings its sharp analysis to a much wider readership, and to those in particular who have swallowed the ‘world-leading’ truth. Written by Emily Kenway, who has spent a part of her own working life confronting issues of forced labour, it offers the hope that, even if is not the whole ‘truth’ (since much of it remains hidden from public view), very many more people may learn much more about what the rapid growth in concern – both amongst legislators, activists and the public as a whole – about ‘modern slavery’ actually represents.

Kenway has set herself the task of demonstrating that modern slavery, which she describes as a ‘framing mechanism’, is not what you (joe public) think it is. She immediately points to two major problems: one is that definitions of the term are huge in their breadth, the other that the terms have no precise meaning in law. She not only highlights these and other major contradictions but ruthlessly undermines the claims of the historical abolitionist movement to have ended slavery for all time: far from it, abolition opened the way to other forms of officially-sanctioned exploitation which have continued to the present. So there is actually nothing modern about modern slavery. And exploitation of humans continues but morphs into new forms to adjust to the changing natures of labour markets. The modern slavery ‘frame’ in truth hides how global economies create harm, and how restrictive immigration policies generate exploitation.

Readers who have managed to accept alternative versions of the Wilberforce myth – for example, as a racist by today’s standards – could do worse than turn to Kenway’s opening chapter which excoriates the growth of the new abolitionist movement (with its many evangelists attempting to assume Wilberforce’s mantle), demonstrating that the growing global moral panic about modern slavery was based on extremely dodgy statistics and assumptions. It is this moral panic which has driven much of the energy now exhibited by the anti-slavery movements worldwide, from governments down to street corner gatherings. Whatever the mass anti-slavery movement may think it is trying to achieve, what is more significant are the formal documents, laws, protocols, conventions and so on, which define the nature of modern slavery. These make it quite clear that governments are far more concerned with crime control and immigration control than they are about the control of exploitation or basic human rights.

And that is the nub of Kenway’s argument: if we look for the causes of exploitation, they lie in the way economies are organised and regulated (or not) and the role that states have in largely capitalist societies in facilitating or (occasionally) impeding human exploitation. This often manifests itself in apparent contradictions, such as an extremely right-wing Conservative politician (Iain Duncan-Smith, architect of the disastrous Universal Credit fiasco) under the auspices of a totally inappropriately named Centre for Social Justice, arguing that it was everyone’s task to combat modern slavery when he daily legislates on and colludes, as company director, in processes which facilitate human exploitation. The modern slavery discourse is, in its own way, fake news: presenting it as (as government framing intends it to be seen) merely a very nasty crime – and not something which is, in reality, ‘socially produced’ i.e. embedded in the way our society and economy operate. As a consequence, given the way legislation is framed, exploitation may be addressed but only as a marginal issue which can be wrapped up and ‘defeated’: in doing so, we are blinded to the fact that exploitation is what our society, our economy, our shopping, our everyday lives, are built upon.

Much of Kenway’s book is used to illustrate and amplify her argument through narratives and case studies, exploring the nature of human trafficking, sex work, domestic labour, and the ways in which complex supply chains both within and beyond the UK can be used by, particularly, the ‘big brands’, to obscure the various forms of exploitation that occur within them. For those unused to what slavery looks like now, this offers graphic illustrations which show again how governments are complicit in exploitative practices and where the ordinary person fits in or can struggle not to fit in. One of the book’s great strengths is the way in which Kenway places informed comment from ‘experts’ alongside these narratives, providing strong linking and critical analyses which connect local phenomena to global processes. It also shows how we, as consumers, despite government exhortations, remain powerless to address the rampant exploitation in global supply chains: yet we, hapless consumers are supposed – according to May – to be leading the fight against the exploitation generated by big business by choosing where we buy from. Tell that to the poor parent driven into the arms of, say, Primark or Sports Direct, for cheap school clothing. Or tell that to trade unions, whose power to confront exploitative labour has been severely circumscribed. Or to the football fan planning a trip to the Gulf for global sports activities in stadia built on the deaths of migrant construction workers.

In her conclusion, Kenway reminds us that it is politically fine to challenge common ‘wisdoms’ about modern slavery and indeed the idea itself. Her truth is a perfect example of the old adage that truth is neither pure nor simple as well as, in the hands of many present politicians, probably not true anyway. When listening to modern slavery ‘experts’ it is important to understand what their interest is in the subject, particularly so when those who are speaking do so from a position of power – that is, one where they can do something about the appalling conditions in which many people live and work. As one respected commentator remarked, ‘you cannot have a strong position against it (modern slavery)’ unless you are also against motherhood and apple pie, and that is the cleverness of politicians and their acolytes – to have co-opted so many into an uncritical acceptance of the nature of modern slavery. The task confronting us is to criticise from a position of knowledge or, if you like, knowing the truth, a truth which remembers that our society is built on exploitation, that human rights are for everyone and, not incidentally, a truth which comes more credibly from those who are labelled as its victims.