Before Christmas, I was sitting on the train reading Toni Morrison's Beloved, a book about slavery set in 19th century America. While reading, I became aware that the man next to me was reading over my shoulder. I put my book away, as there's nothing more irritating, and he struck up a conversation with me about the novel, and asked if I thought Britain should apologise for its part in the slave trade.
My answer? No. Not because the horrors of slavery don't deserve an apology, but because the slave trade continues in this country – and others – to this day, and I don't think we can apologise for the existence of something we have yet to abolish.
The newspapers this week have been full of reports that London is now viewed internationally as a centre for human trafficking, and that women from across the globe arrive on our streets seeking prospects and opportunities that are denied them at home, only to find themselves forced into prostitution, and who are then subjected to regular and brutal violence and rape.
The statistics are depressing. The British police ran Operation Pentameter last year, a Home Office-funded operation designed to combat sex-trafficking. Although they managed to rescue 84 women from the slave trade, prosecutions were lower than anticipated, meaning that the 84 women saved will by now have been replaced by others facing the same degrading treatment.
Women comprise 77% of human-trafficking victims. In cases where women are trafficked, 87% are sold into the sex trade. Police estimates state that 4,000 women have been brought into the UK to work as sex slaves. The real figure could be far higher.
Girls as young as 14 were found to have been traded by the traffickers, and for as little as £6,000 to £8,000. We are bargains in the eyes of traffickers – that four-figure investment will earn them upwards of £800 a day as women are forced to sleep with man after man, as many as 30 a day.
These numbers put paid to the traffickers' claims that the women 'owe' them the money for the costs incurred in bringing them to Britain – just 10 days' work should be enough to secure their freedom. But there is no morality in this business. We are commodities to be bought and sold, and to be discarded once our brutalised bodies have taken all they can.
My use of we is deliberate here. We may be professional, and computer literate, and educated, accustomed to our freedoms and our treats, but we are women. It is only an accident of birth that separates us from those being trafficked, who are denied the freedom and opportunities that should be theirs by right. Had we been born in countries with fewer opportunities, and were we prepared to risk more to make the most of those opportunities – by taking a chance and leaving the country for a city where the streets are paved with gold – we would be at equal risk of being trafficked.
This is a crime that affects all women, young and old. While there are people out there prepared to profit on our vulnerabilities, and men – our husbands, fathers, brothers, and boyfriends – prepared to pay for sex whatever the moral cost, this trade will continue.
As long as there are still women alive – in this country and on our planet – who are forcibly subjected to the brutal treatment of Sethe and her ancestors in Beloved, we cannot view the slave trade as something that is past, finished, and apologised for. It is our duty – not just on International Women's Day but every day – to stand up and be counted, men and women all, and say that we will no longer stand for the enslavement of any human being, irrespective of race, gender, or creed.
If we fail to do this, we fail our ancestors who worked for abolition, and all of those who have suffered as a result of the slave trade, past and present. It is up to us to ensure that slavery has no future.
Statistics from BBC News
Kate Walker is Production Manager for Shiny Media and a passionate supporter of equal rights and opportunities for men and women.