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The Government has recently passed a new piece of primary legislation called Anti-Slavery Day Act 2010.

This is with no doubt a pointless piece of legislation probably setup under the equality banner – but not by Labour. Basically, it says an Anti-Slavery Day is “An Act to introduce a national day to raise awareness of the need to eradicate all forms of slavery, human trafficking and exploitation; and for connected purposes“. However, it is not a bank holiday and the Act doesn’t even define the day (an Order needs to be created to determine the exact date).

Anti-Slavery Day Act 2010

Be it enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—

1 Anti-Slavery Day

(1) The Secretary of State shall by order made by statutory instrument specify a date which shall be observed each year as Anti-Slavery Day.

(2) The purpose of Anti-Slavery Day shall be to—

(a) acknowledge that millions of men, women and children continue to be victims of slavery, depriving them of basic human dignity and freedom;

(b) raise awareness amongst young people and others of the dangers and consequences of slavery, human trafficking and exploitation and encourage them to be proactive in the fight against it;

(c) draw attention to—

(i) the progress made by government and those working to combat all forms of slavery, human trafficking and exploitation, and
(ii) what more needs to be done.

(3) In this Act “slavery” includes—

(a) trafficking for sexual exploitation,
(b) child trafficking,
(c) trafficking for forced labour, and
(d) domestic servitude.

2 Short title and extent

(1) This Act may be cited as the Anti-Slavery Day Act 2010.
(2) This Act extends to England and Wales.

Anti-Slavery Day

Started off as a Bill introduced by Con-servative MP Anthony Steen to introduce a national day to raise awareness of the need to eradicate all forms of modern day slavery – has been made law on the 8th April 2010.

This is a great opportunity for a protest against the Work for Your Benefit UK Workfare scheme.

epolitix.com has a great article on this Act: we have added snippets as follows:-

“To combat human trafficking in the UK and globally, the British people, Parliament, local government, our other institutions and quangos, and the private as well as the public sector must be made aware of the realities of human trafficking and must be dedicated to stopping this contemporary manifestation of slavery.”

He highlighted that increased awareness of human trafficking and slavery was necessary and suggested an anti-slavery day, “so that it can be constantly remembered that we have modern-day slavery in this country.”

He also commented that teaching of modern day slavery could be incorporated into the national curriculum.

Andrew Dismore (Lab, Hendon) commented that he supported the principles behind the Bill but suggested that a Bill might not be necessary for Steen to achieve what he wanted to.

See the full article: Anti-Slavery Day.

My criticism would be perhaps a combined day between the transatlantic slave trade and modern day slavery types and make it a bank holiday.

Work for Your Benefit

This Act in its Bill-form initially contained the words “modern-day slavery” but was removed to prevent offending African people. Work for Your Benefit is a form of modern-day slavery.

This is an interesting point made by Mr Steen: a Con-servative MP; which if Con-servatives come into power they intend to make workfare stricter than that on offer by Labour in these pilots.