RUSSIAN SLAVERY
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—The General Committee of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society has decided to institute an impartial enquiry into the allegations of Forced Labour, Cruelty and Slavery, obtaining in certain Russian timber camps for the supply of timber to this country.
The officers have been instructed to invite members of the Society with legal and judicial experience to advise and if possible to co-operate in the task of enquiry. They are also approaching two other humanitarian organizations with a view to making it a joint enquiry by the three bodies. The Society has taken this action with a view to ascertaining and publishing the facts, and also in view of the important
Despatch* issued by Lord Grey in December, 1913, to the British Consular Service, upon the treatment of labour in which British interests were involved. The committee holds that whilst it is true that this Despatch was issued primarily with regard to coloured labour, the principle of it would equally apply if slavery conditions are established with regard to white labour. The principle extracts from this Despatch are appended.--We are, Sir, &c., London, S.W.1.
Cd. 7148.
"It is certainly desirable that sufficient information on labour conditions should be supplied to this Department to enable His Majesty's Government to take what action is necessary and possible to expose or prosecute British employers responsible for oppressive or inhuman labour conditions, and though . . . these abuses do not in all probability come within the meaning of the word slavery. as used in the 'Consular Instructions' and in the Slave Laws, it is desirable that Consuls should carry out the spirit of the Consular Instructions' in that connection, and report the existence of labour conditions amounting to virtual slavery or entailing the ill-treatment of coloured labourers which usually accompanies that abuse.
With this object in view, Sir E. Grey is in communication with the Board of Trade with a view to your being furnished with such relevant information as they possess about companies and firms operating in your district which are British, or which are wholly or partly controlled by British subjects. You should make yourself familiar with the working of such companies, with any labour difficulties that may exist, with the rate of mortality among labourers, with the local labour laws and so forth, and while it is not generally intended that you should communicate to this Department all the information which you may thus collect for your own guidance, you should embody in an annual report any details which may appear to you to indicate that labour conditions for which British subjects are responsible in any part of your district are unsatisfactory, and which would enable Sir E. Grey to call for more particular reports, or to convey a warning to the companies concerned."
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