Mitchel must go

Good to see that along with the protests over George Floyd's death, there's a rising focus on slavery and demands that statues of famous slave traders should be removed.

As well as the recently toppled statue of Edward Colston in Bristol, the statue of Robert Milligan has been removed in London's docklands. Now I discover there are calls for removal of a statue of slave trader John Mitchel in Newry in Northern Ireland. He lived in Newry for most of his life.

Queens University student Patrick Hughes and the former head of Anti-Slavery International, Aidan McQuade, are demanding the removal of the statue. They also want John Mitchel Place to be renamed.

John Mitchel (1815-1875) was a contradictory character. Although he was an Irish revolutionary famous for his paper The United Irishman, he was also fiercely racist. He supported enforced slavery and white supremacy and wanted to resume the transatlantic slave trade that was abolished in 1807.

Aidan McQuade first wrote to the local council about the statue in 2007. The council still refuses to remove it on the grounds that "19th century figures can't be held to 21st century views".

But he points out that there were radical abolitionists in the mid 19th century who found Mitchel's views repulsive at the time.

He thinks a more informative plaque isn't enough. The statue should be moved to a museum and set in an explanatory anti-slavery context.

The council has now decided that an Equality and Good Relations Forum later in June will discuss the matter.

I know there's an ongoing debate about whether such statues should be disposed of or left as relics of an earlier time, maybe with updated plaques. Personally I think statues of public figures are totally unnecessary and I'm happy to see controversial ones pulled down. Why should a statue that offends hundreds of local people stay put?

Pic: Patrick Hughes and the statue

PS: The University of Liverpool is to rename a building named after former prime minister William Gladstone due to his support of slavery

Busybodies

Don't we all hate busybodies who poke their nose into things that don't concern them and aren't doing them any harm? Shouldn't they just mind their own business and butt out?

Well, yes and no. Busybodies who tell us we should get married, or have children, or earn more money, or get more exercise, are a pain in the arse. Who asked for their opinion?

But busybodies who're concerned about some blatant injustice and want to put it right are a different matter. Without them, all sorts of social scandals would never have been tackled.

It was busybodies who got steamed up about slavery, sweatshops, industrial accidents, child labour, slums and chain gangs, while others looked the other way.

If the do-gooders (as they're often snidely described) hadn't raised their voices in protest, these things would just have continued unabated. Many more people would have suffered.

And if it wasn't for today's busybodies (i.e. people with a conscience) complaining about domestic violence, people trafficking, mistreated immigrants or filthy hospitals, nothing much would be done about those either.

Sometimes poking your nose into unexpected places and passing judgment on what you find can be a good thing, even if those alighted on bristle and try to shut you up.

As long as it's something genuinely abhorrent and pernicious, why not? No, I don't want to be lectured on my dress sense or my dust bunnies. But yes, I do want to be told about sex slavery in Soho. There is a difference.

Sex trap

Can you imagine what it's like to be lured to Britain with the promise of a lucrative job, only to find yourself in thrall to a pimp who forces you to have sex with 15 men a day and pays you nothing at all?

And if you even think of running away, he'll threaten to kill your family, beat you and keep you permanently locked up?

Police say the number of women trapped like this is nearly five times more than previously thought - anything between six and eighteen thousand.

They could be working next door to you in an ordinary suburban house that's been taken over by gangsters and filled with coerced women.

While they're paid nothing for their humiliating labours, their owners bank colossal sums from what is now one of the highest-earning crime rackets in the world.

Operation Pentameter 2, run by police forces across the UK, has just finished its biggest ever crackdown, releasing 154 women and 13 girls, arresting 528 suspected traffickers and closing 822 brothels and other premises.

Most of the women are foreign but British women are also being lured away from their home towns and put to work hundreds of miles away.

It seems there's an endless supply of men keen to prove their masculinity by having sex with a complete stranger in the most squalid conditions, no doubt well aware of the misery behind the scenes but only interested in satisfying their physical cravings.

And unfortunately there's also an endless supply of gullible women falling for enticing job offers that turn into something hideously different from what they were promised.
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Jenny and I have been invited to Veronica Trinket's sumptuous New York hideaway in the Hamptons. If the weather's good, we'll be on the yacht. If not, we'll be pampering ourselves in her private beauty salon. See you all soon. Behave yourselves while we're away. I'll be keeping an eye on you via Veronica's laptop!

Mud huts to mortgages

Don't you think the whole business of finding a home has gone backwards rather than forwards? At one time all you had to do was build yourself a house and you lived in it and owned it and that was that. Now most of us can only get a house by paying someone huge amounts of money - and we may not own it either.

Gone are the days of the humble mud hut or tepee. Now houses are so elaborate most people simply don't have the skills to build one. So we have to rely on someone else to do it and they charge us monstrous sums for the privilege.

Instead of just relaxing and enjoying our home, we have to spend years sweating and toiling to pay the rent or the mortgage. Is this really the height of civilisation? Or is it more like some modern form of slavery in which we are permanently in hock to someone else?

I know that in return for all this cash we may have very comfortable, very well-furnished homes with all mod cons - a far cry from a rudimentary shack with no running water or toilet or electricity. But hasn't something gone seriously wrong here, that a bit of domestic comfort has such a high price attached to it?

Of course homes might be a lot cheaper if it wasn't for the property price phenomenon - house prices going up and up seemingly without end because there are never enough to go round and because it's so prestigious to own your own home.

If it wasn't for that, house prices might even be affordable, instead of costing umpteen times the average wage. As it is, we're now stretching ourselves to our financial limits and beyond, with thousands of homes being repossessed every year.

The housing situation has gone from odd to completely insane and there seems to be little we can do about it. Home Sweet Home? These days, more like Home Sweet Ball and Chain.

Fruit picking hell

Once again the USA, which claims to be the most civilised nation on earth, is proved to be the exact opposite by the Florida fruit-pickers existing in conditions of near-slavery.

A group of them who were held captive and brutalised by their employer for almost a year have just escaped and told their story.

They were living in a lorry on a diet of rice and beans, and paying so much for rent, food and showers they were permanently in debt. They were paid so little for picking tomatoes (45 cents for a 32-pound bucket), they had to pick two and a half tons of them just to get the minimum wage.

If they said they were too sick to work, their employer would beat them and force them to work anyway. They often had to labour in blisteringly hot conditions seven days a week.

These conditions aren't new - they've been going on for decades. Many politicians and public figures have tried to improve the fruit-pickers' lot but they've been resolutely ignored by their employers.

Recently some of the big food chains like McDonalds, KFC and Pizza Hut agreed to pay the pickers more but Burger King is refusing and threatening the whole deal.

The fruit pickers aren't covered by employment law and aren't unionised. But they're now being represented by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, and 100 church groups have joined the protests.

It seems all the overweight families who demand a constant supply of super-cheap fruit and tomatoes couldn't care less how they're produced, just as long as they get them.

And this is the nation that invades countries all round the world to bring them "civilised values". They should try civilising their own backlands first.