Modern slavery statements and the UK’s leading food retailers

Abstract

Introduction Gerry Kearns (2020) introduced his article on decolonising space with details of the dumping of the statue of the 17th-century slave trader, Edward Colston, in Bristol Harbour in June 2020. Edward Colston was a member (and for a while Deputy Governor) of the Royal Africa Company (RAC). Between 1680 and 1686, the RAC had a monopoly, in England, on trading along the west coast of Africa in gold, silver, ivory and slaves. While slavery is often seen as ‘problem of the past’, and is a now crime under international law, so called modern slavery is ‘alive and well’ (Landman and Silverman, 2019, p. 277), and remains ‘a viable and profitable management practice for business’ (Banerjee, 2020, p. 415). Further, many large companies are currently potentially exposed to the risk of modern slavery in their businesses and supply chains. Although some research has been undertaken on the consumption of landscapes of past slavery activity (e.g. Yankholmes and McKercher, 2015), work on modern slavery has attracted limited attention from geographers (e.g. Lewis et al., 2015; Brickell et al., 2018; Brown et al., 2021). This article looks to make a small addition to such work, by exploring one of the ways in which the UK’s four leading food retailers have ‘addressed’ modern slavery, by reviewing their modern slavery statements.