Leicester sweatshops sweating themselves?

Here’s one I saw on twitter this morning? Priti Patel thinks laws around slavery should be revamped after the police failed to tackle “slave” sweatshops in Leicester for fear of being called racist. These workers it was discovered after an undercover investigation are earning £3.50 an hour, were working in appalling conditions and there was no let up or measures taken during the Covid lockdown to protect them.

The undercover report conducted by the Sunday Times included this snippet.

At one factory, where clothes at bound for online giant Boohoo and Nasty Gal, employees are said to work for less than half the national minimum wage. The undercover report by The Sunday Times also found that no additional hygiene or social distancing measures were in place, despite the city being in a localised lockdown due to an outbreak of the virus.   In covert footage, the undercover reporter records himself packing garments clearly labelled as ‘Nasty Gal’. He is also approached by the factory foreman, who warns: ‘These motherf***ers know how to exploit people like us. They make profits like hell and pay us in peanuts.’ ‘Take me for instance, I’ve been working for so many years in this industry, I’ve been here for five years but never could I take a proper pay packet. I’m still only on just over £5 an hour.”

There has to be a serious conversation not just in UK but around the “free” world about this kind of behaviour and around the people that cry “racist” if their 3rd world practices are discovered. Anyone speaking out in what we used to call a free society clearly cannot because the corruption is deep into local government and the cronyism that is woefully wound around any human rights charter. If Ms Patel is allowed to take this fight forward and the voters maintain their confidence we could see a solution but never an end so long as these people are allowed into positions of power and money. It is the fundamental flaw with local politics. Only those with friends and funds can get anywhere near power and you need both to get onto the TV, in the newspapers and on the ballot paper.