I worked with a slave in the U.K.

I worked with one of the 130,000 slaves in the UK.

I didn’t know he was a slave then. I was 21 and naive, working as a broke waiter in a slimy restaurant.

Chuggs, our only chef, worked in the kitchen. 

We never learnt his real name. My boss just told us to call him Chuggs.

I also didn’t know that my boss held his passport, and Chuggs couldn’t have told me either because he didn’t speak English. 

The daily routine of a modern slave

Chuggs was a little round man who arrived every morning as I mopped the floor before opening. 

He wore the same clothes: grey slops, black shoes, and a white T-shirt. 

For 11 hours a day, 7 days a week. 

He ate on the job, never took a holiday, and no one helped him. 

I never knew where he came from. Once, I saw him exit a black car up the road on the way to work. 

In hindsight, it all tallies up. According to the experts, modern slaves are… 

• Most likely migrants

• Have few personal belongings

• Have limited access to personal ID

• Are physically and verbally abused

• Dropped off and picked up at the same time, same place.

Chuggs ticked off every single one. 

The slaves revolt

One day, Chuggs refused to work. 

He sat silently on a stool in the kitchen while a flurry of orders came through. Customers complained and wanted their money back. 

We didn’t tell our boss because he didn’t like being disturbed in his little ‘office’. Once, we caught him getting a blow-job from his 19-year-old girlfriend. 

My boss was a creepy forty-year-old alcoholic and a serial liar who, according to some disgruntled former colleagues I spoke to, beat the aforementioned girlfriend and threw her down the stairs. 

After an hour of trying to placate angry customers and pleading with Chuggs to get working, we told him. Our boss flew into the kitchen like a vampire bat and slapped Chuggs around the head, hissing at him in Punjabi, throwing him to the floor, and beating the living daylight out of him. 

Chuggs never staged a protest again. 

How the modern slave owners get away with it

My boss was up to his neck in sleaze and dirt. He was:

❌ Not paying VAT

❌ Or PAYE

❌ Was operating a struck-off company.

In short, he was operating below HMRC’s radar.

He spent most of his time in his ‘office’, a shabby backroom with piles of ashtrays and empty beer bottles littered about. There he’d sit on a crusty old sofa, smoking cigarettes, watching wall-to-wall CCTV. 

He was also laundering money. I know because he boasted about it one night when he was very drunk. He claimed he had £150k stashed under a mattress upstairs. 

And, every Wednesday, just before midday when the restaurant opened, a man with a rucksack walked in, asked for my boss, went into his office, and left again with a suspiciously lighter rucksack. 

There is a direct correlation between businesses engaged in money laundering and forced labour. 

A company that owns slaves probably: 

🧑‍⚖️ Pays cash in hand to avoid taxes

🏚️ Engages in money laundering

🚨 Employs a suspicious number of migrants with dodgy paperwork.

Bye bye boss

One day, we had enough. Here’s a condensed version (for want of time): 

1. We staged a mass walkout

2. My boss tried to gouge out a DJ’s eyes after said DJ took a selfie with his girlfriend

3. The DJ bit his finger off

4. We called HMRC and told them everything

5. The restaurant shut its doors forever. 

My boss was never seen again. Last I heard, he was in prison. 

I don’t know where he is now or where Chuggs is either. 

Why Brexit led to more slaves

If you want to look at the effect of Brexit, look at the number of slaves in Britain: by the end of 2022, roughly 16,000 cases had been referred to the authorities—the highest since records began in 2009.

Experts think the actual number is nearly ten times higher. 

Since Brexit, employers have had to recruit workers from the Third World to do jobs that Brits don’t want to do. 

Aka, the people who pick our fruit and wipe our grandfather’s arse. 

Often, the bosses pay for migrants’ recruitment fees, flights and accommodation, then saddle them with a debt they spend years trying to pay off. 

When the migrant comes, the employer confiscates their passport under the guise of safekeeping. 

From there on, the migrant is in ‘debt bondage’, controlled by men like my ex-boss who parasitically prey on the hopes and dreams of vulnerable people. 

Few people care about this issue because they’ve never seen or heard of it. 

But it’s real and alive.  

Chances are you’ve met a slave. You just didn’t know it.