PRESS RELEASES

UK Conservative Party Endorses
STOP THE TRAFFIK

Bournemouth, England, Sunday 1st October 2006

Shadow Foreign Secretary and former leader of the Conservative Party, William Hague MP endorsed the Stop the Traffik campaign at a fringe event of the 2006 Conservative Party Conference in Bournemouth.

At the event William Hague praised the ‘excellent work of Steve Chalke and STOP THE TRAFFIK ’, and said ‘I fully support their campaign.’ I salute their great work and look forward to joining them on 25th March’, when the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade will be marked by Freedom Day events across the world.

At the meeting, entitled ‘Slavery: Do we need a 21st century Wilberforce?’ William Hague described in detail the growing scale of the problem, from Africa to Latin America to Europe. He referred to various examples of inter-governmental efforts to tackle the problems of trafficking, and made several policy recommendations concerning what the UK government could do.

Steve Chalke, co-founder of STOP THE TRAFFIK, then spoke about the importance of ‘people power’, the necessity for personal as well as organisational change, and called for an increase in temperature, to change hearts, drawing inspiration from the examples of William Wilberforce and Martin Luther King Jnr.

The meeting closed noting both the opportunities and the abuses of the globalised community, and that figures such as Wilberforce did not act alone, but had and sought out allies. It needs the will and actions of everyone to combat human trafficking.

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