Shocking Truths - The 21st Century Slave Trade

A Meeting Organised By The RSA

The RSA, London, UK
27th September 2007

Speakers:

EMMA THOMPSON

HELEN BAMBER, The Helen Bamber Foundation

My attraction to this meeting was the content. As part of our project on the Globalisation of Crime, I felt that this would be an interesting source of information about the flow of people, both legal and illegal, for the purposes of an illicit objective – the UK sex trade. I did have reservations about the involvement of celebrity (Emma Thompson has won two Oscars, and is quite well known on the UK) because I feared that it might overshadow the purpose of the meeting. However, on the other hand, it appears to me that many of my fellow attendees were there to see Emma Thompson, so the inclusion of celebrity, on this occasion, did broaden the conversation to a wider audience.

On the whole, I found the talk to very useful and illuminating. Although there were times when Emma Thompson’s celebrity played to the audience, I don’t feel that it detracted too much from the issues. The key point was that the talk persuaded me to go over to Trafalgar Square to have a look at the installation. If that was the purpose of the talk, then it achieved that purpose.

READ the full report.