You may remember the London slaves case in November 2015, which suggested to horrified newspaper readers that people had been brought into the country and kept as domestic slaves. The case was shocking because the women concerned were held for 30 years.
Helped by the revulsion to this example of “slavery” the Modern Slavery Act 2015 was accepted by Parliament shortly afterwards, and following agreement by both Houses on the text of the Bill it received Royal Assent on 26 March 2015.
In fact, within a few weeks of the women walking out of the house the whole narrative had collapsed. This turned out to be a case of a household of browbeaten former Maoist women groupies taken over by a domineering paranoid male. He is now on trial, and will very probably be convicted. I imagine that after arguing that the women consented to everything he did, he will be sent for psychiatric examination and be found to have either paranoid schizophrenia or a severe personality disorder, or both.
http://drjamesthompson.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/slaves-of-defunct-philosophies.html
Odd, isn’t it, when psychiatric diagnoses seem better founded than Parliamentary legislation?
I've never really understood how we could possibly need a new law against slavery. The old statutes, and the common law, should surely do very well.
ReplyDeleteI don't approve of legislation as a means of striking poses: if I wanted that I could move to Italy.