Human trafficking must not become part of our culture war

Police raided nail bars in South London on Thursday, rescuing 24 victims of human trafficking, in what was the culmination of a five-month operation.

The incident was just the latest example of a shameful truth: that there are many people in the UK who live and work in awful conditions and for little or no pay. The National Police Chiefs’ Council believes that a significant amount of the cannabis consumed in the UK is farmed in this country by victims of human trafficking.

As a nation, we are still largely blind to this inconvenient truth. Tamara Barnett, head of office at the Human Trafficking Foundation, told me: “The level of awareness among the British population of what’s going on with human trafficking in this country is still relatively low, despite some recent high-profile cases.”

News of the south London raids spread on social media as they were happening. Local groups like Anti Raids and the London Campaign against Police and State Violence criticised what was going on, assuming the police were trying to catch and deport migrants.

This is an understandable reaction. After all, migrants in this country have been living for years in the “hostile environment”, which many argue contributed to the ethos that led to the Windrush deportations.

There is also a long history in Britain of state violence against vulnerable groups and people of colour. A report by the Institute for Race Relations found that, from 1990-2015, 500 out of the 1,500 people who had died in police custody were black, Asian, or from another ethnic minority.

As part of its mission statement, Anti Raids calls for totally open borders, with no control over who enters the country.

The group states on its website: “We are against all immigration controls. We believe that no one is illegal. We believe in freedom of movement”.

This is a frequent reaction to news of human trafficking being uncovered.

In the aftermath of the Essex human trafficking tragedy in October, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants told the Guardian: “We need a commitment to opening safe and legal routes to the UK and quick decisions for people seeking to make a better life for themselves in the UK. People move — they always have and they always will. Nobody should have to risk their life to do so.”

But Tamara Barnett thinks the issue is less straightforward than that. She says that, while it’s true that tough immigration laws can encourage people to take risky routes into the UK, “often people can come in on tourist visas and disappear into the ether and they’re trafficked, a lot of the time into domestic servitude.

“And for those cases, there are a lot of NGOs who argue for stricter border controls, so we can keep track of people and keep them safe.”

Thursday’s case illustrates a phenomenon that has perhaps been exacerbated by the EU referendum. Among certain sections of the British left there is real hostility to operating and enforcing border controls, and a prevailing view that the police are a largely malign presence in our society, whose purpose is to carry out the will of a brutal state.

In other words, it’s another front in the ever-expanding culture war in Britain, an us-against-them mentality that benefits no-one.

What’s needed is a more nuanced approach, and a recognition that human trafficking groups can be complex international operations, requiring a sophisticated response that often only the police can provide.

Above all, we need a greater and more widespread understanding of the fact that our behaviour and habits always have consequences. That even though you buy your weed from a chatty guy in your building, or you get your nails done by a smiling British woman, the friendly front might be concealing a world of misery hidden in a backroom.