007 Bond-age and branding

Branding and Bondage

It's 007. 2007 - the Bond-age! Happy New Year.

Various celebrations are planned to celebrate the "abolition" of slavery. 1807 saw Parliament passing The Slave Trade Bill, prohibiting British vessels engaging in the slave trade. This bill did not abolish slavery, but only prohibited British ships being involved in the slave trade.

To mark this year The National Maritime Museum Liverpool will open a new gallery in 2007, known as the National Museum and Centre for the Understanding of Trans-Atlantic Slavery.

It is reckoned that there are still 20 million people around the world living in servitude, so the fight to abolish slavery continues. Slavery persists in many different forms. The characteristics which distinguish slavery from other human rights violations include:

forced to work -- through mental or physical threat;
owned or controlled by an 'employer', usually through mental or physical abuse or threatened abuse;
dehumanised, treated as a commodity or bought and sold as 'property';
physically constrained or has restrictions placed on his/her freedom of movement.
Bonded labour affects millions of people who are forced to work long hours to repay a loan. They may receive food and shelter for their work but can never pay off their debt.

Early and forced marriage affects women and girls who are married without choice and lead lives of servitude.
Forced labourers are people who have to work under threat of violence.
Some people are born into a slave class or group that others regard as slaves.
Others are trafficked from one area to another for the purpose of forcing them into slave conditions.
Then there are the 126 million children who are in work that is harmful to their health and welfare.

So it is appropriate that we also remember that the fight for the abolition of slavery continues, and that there are many people who continue to profit from slavery.

It might be appropriate to celebrate our own freedoms and to ask the question whether we are in fact ?free?. This question comes to my mind through reference to ?branding? ? a historic feature of slavery and revived for us through marketing.

Did you know that a professor in Nebraska has found 300 girls called "Armani" and that 70% of 3 year olds recognize McDonalds but only half of them know their own surname. Branding is a threat of a different magnitude, but for all that, still does threaten our freedom.

Freedoms - large and small - have been protected by generations going all the way back to Moses and the Exodus. William Wilberforce is only one who has been inspired through our religious heritage.

At the heart of Christian prayer is the phrase "deliver us from evil" - which is the evil that deprives people of freedom, dehumanizes them by branding and condemns them to bondage. Such prayer reminds us to open our eyes to the realities of present day slavery and to realise the dreadful deprivations of freedom endured by so many. It alerts us to the subtle threats of our own branding culture and mobilizes us as champions of human freedom in all bond ages.

David Herbert