“The clearer the proof of their inability to treat stateless people as legal persons, and the greater the extension of arbitrary rule by police decree, the more difficult it is for states to resist the temptation to deprive all citizens of legal status…”
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism , 1951.

I thought it was just me
feeling that visceral lurch
of moral vertigo at the very idea.

I thought that only war
was vile enough
to provoke really huge demonstrations.

But I stood corrected
on a traffic island, watching the banners:
Stop Sex Slavery Now;
Free The Slaves;
Owning People Is Wrong;
and simply:
Abolition!
All passing under the illuminated adverts of Piccadilly Circus
saying: Coca Cola; McDonalds;
Samsung; Carlsberg; Sanyo; TDK;
Seattle – cloudy; Bombay – sunny.

Somehow countless thousands of people
on a drizzly day had overcome
their nervous, prurient repugnance
to realise that in slavery
prostitution is a euphemism.
And our relief at the overcoming
gave us a festivity at odds
with the uncarnival subject of the march.

I saw Polish flags and punks dancing
like medieval puppets to a pomping metal horn
and then being bossed about
by march stewards in fluorescent jackets.

I saw an earnest vicar with a walking stick
and a home-made sign:
There Should Be No Slavery In England Today.

I saw a very different vicar,
red-bearded, deep in drink,
handing out leaflets explaining that
Evolution Is A Fraud and that
Neanderthal Man had died out only because
he'd short-sightedly trafficked Neanderthal Woman
to the Cro-Magnons.

I saw a donnish controversialist
aglow with our collective rightness,
whose placard bore only
a neatly lettered quote from Hannah Arendt.

And following a similar line I saw banners saying:
Immigration Laws Make Immigrants Outlaws;
No One Is Illegal;
Fear Of Deportation Means The Sold Have No Protection;
The Asylum Act Creates A Class To Whom Anything May Be Done;
Repeal The Act – And The One Before That;
and, referring to the Home Secretary responsible:
Blunkett Is Da Pimp.

I saw this last point illustrated by a demonstrator
with a garish 70s pimp jacket, cool shades
and a toy black labrador on wheels,
which was in bad taste
in two distinct senses.

Then came the anti-capitalists:
Slavers Are Illegal, Yet Typical, Corporations;
Stop It Before It Spreads;
Wage Slavery –­ The Clue's In The Name.

Behind that were a clutch of more moderate banners:
Humane Standards Of Welfare For All Involuntary Workers;
Regulation Not Abolition;
I'm Against Violence
(But I Don't Want To Force My Opinion On Anyone Else);
They're Only Prostitutes But Slavery Is Still Appalling;
Abolition Soon But Other Issues Are More Pressing.

And as on any big march I saw the irrelevant banners
seemingly grabbed at random out of the banner cupboard:
Defend The North Korean Workers' Bomb;
The Chagos Islanders' Wishes Are Paramount;
End Science Now;
Gimp Blair – Hosed Down After Every Summit.

I saw reporters chatting with transvestites on stilts
carrying banners saying:
Free Lovery Not Sex Slavery.

I saw the men from the Serbian Community Centre,
in what I think were Homburgs,
chatting with SM Pride activists
carrying black and blue flags
saying: Only Consent.

I saw women in combats whose banners said:
Protect Sex Workers – Legalise Sex Work,
arguing with other women in combats whose banners said:
Prostitution Is Coercion By Economics,
underneath portraits of Che Guevara and Andrea Dworkin.

And everywhere I saw the police,
nudging each other, smirking, sniggering.

The march entered Hyde Park and I heard the indistinct speeches
over some primitive tannoy, booming and honking
as inconsequentially as the ducks on the Serpentine.

I could smell caramelised nuts
and in the distance a samba band
was clattering like a Soviet tractor factory.

I saw everyone I knew and every kind of person
apart from the slaves themselves
who, presumably, hadn't been given the day off.

And the banners kept coming into the park:
Make Slavery History;
Abolition, Abolition, Abolition;
Stop The War Against Women;
Reclaim The Sheets;
Peace and Love;

Love and Peace;
Peace;
Love;
Peace.

© 2007

See also:
Reports from The Poppy Project on slavery and prostitution in the UK.