The Inaugural Annual CCARHT sponsored Thomas Clarkson Lecture: 'Modern Slavery, Human Trafficking, Contemporary Chattelage: What’s in a Name?'

You are cordially alerted to the inaugural Thomas Clarkson lecture convened by the Cambridge Centre of Applied Research in Human Trafficking at the Old Divinity School, St John’s College.

The BIG conversation which is stimulated by this inaugural Thomas Clarkson lecture is the semiotics of enslavement and contemporary exploitation, in which the human rights of those so exploited are deemed to be comprehensively contravened, and move us back into the domain which the Eighteenth Century researcher Thomas Clarkson (St John’s College) wrote his blistering attack on not only the condition of servitude in the TransAtlantic Slave trade of his day, but also on the condition of servitude across the prior centuries.

CCARHT has brought together three voices from different perspectives to wrestle with the terms in currency to describe the condition of labour (criminal and ‘commercially licit’ ), sexual and domestic servitude which finds millions of people in thrall, and through the smuggling routes deployed internationally, sees thousands losing their lives each year. Whether that be in the South Americas, the middle and west and eastern Mediterranean passage, or the North African route across the Great Sea of the Sahara, or the route down through Asia toward Australia, , or from time to time on inflatables from the sands of the French coastline, or in a shipping container crossing the channel from Zeebrugge.

The Conversants

Ambassador C. de Baca served in the Administration of President Barack Obama as Ambassador at Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (2009-2014), and as the Director of the Office for Sex Offender Monitoring Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking (2015-2017). Now retired from government service, he is a Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School, and a Senior Fellow of Modern Slavery at Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Centre for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.

Speaks to ‘Modern Slavery’ and its legislative roots in the last one hundred and fifty years of US history.

Caroline Haughey QC is widely regarded as one of the leading legal experts in Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery in the UK. Caroline prosecuted the first case of modern slavery in the UK, ( R-v- SK) Caroline was subsequently involved in advising the all parliamentary group on a proposed bill, gave evidence before the parliamentary committee and was subsequently involved in the drafting of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. She has prosecuted a number of firsts under the new Act – the first prosecution in child sex exploitation, first child labour exploitation, first victimless prosecution, and the first interim Slavery Trafficking Restriction Orders prosecution . A recent Panorama programme followed her work on Operation Fort, which has been the largest labour exploitation and trafficking case in Europe to date. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00085r7

Caroline will speak to the work of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, and explore the significance of Human Trafficking in international criminal legislation & intervention.

Dr Simon Stockley is a Director of the Cambridge Centre for Applied Research in Human Trafficking, (CCARHT), the Deputy Director of the Accelerate programme based in the Cambridge Centre for Social Innovation and Senior Faculty lecturer in Management Practice at the Judge Business School. Before coming to Cambridge, Simon was the Director of the award winning MBA at Imperial College and established the break-through work of HERA (Her Equal Rights and Autonomy) – which was one of the first bespoke programmes of entrepreneurial education targeting female survivors of trafficking for sexual exploitation to be provided in the UK.

Simon as the third conversant of the evening, raises a novel category in the discourse of Contemporary Chattelage recently mobilised by CCARHT as another useful lens to consider the pervasive exploitation which underpins our thinking and engagement with Modern Slavery, and Human Trafficking.

The evening’s discussions will facilitate a deeper understanding of which terms do what work. We look forward to a deeper analysis of the systemic challenges existing in globalisation and the way neo-liberalism now does business, the harvesting of human misery by ‘traders’, ‘traffickers’ and opportunists, and the fragility of rights protection for a new generation of peoples ‘on the move’. We look forward to a fresh exposure to the dynamics of ‘how slavery works’, how one form of slave trade was dismantled two hundred years ago in the wake of the Applied Research and effective parliamentary lobbying of Thomas Clarkson and the Anti Slavery coalition of which he was a vital member.

We explore with one of the leading QC’s prosecuting labour exploitation in the UK and Europe today the work in hand in law courts and audit trails to resist human trafficking and forms of slave like practices, and we shall consider how commoditisation of people, comprehensively de-grades supply chains across sectors where ‘chattelage’ flourishes unprotected by constraining laws and ‘civilising’ respect-filled practices.

We look forward to your engagement and presence. Please would you alert your colleagues, LISTS, and students to this powerful event where those working on the interface of justice and policy, will be reflecting on the meaning of words, and their impact in this arena. This is a ticketed event – but all on cam.ac.uk emails are our guests at no charge, but they DO need to apply as space is limited. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-inaugural-ccarht-annual-thomas-clarks...

For more information see: http://www.ccarht.org/lecture