Not the largest or fanciest such place in the area, but quick and convenient from where we are.
As it happens, I have read within the last few days that there is still lots of slavery in the world. I did not get as far as reading quite what this involved, given that slavery is illegal nearly everywhere, but I suppose the numbers include a fair proportion of people who are working in circumstances which amount to slavery, without perhaps being slaves in any legal sense. No public buying and selling. No fugitive property acts. Or confiscation in settlement of unpaid debts.
While just now, I find that the parent organisation (reference 2) of this very garden centre (reference 1) finds it necessary to include a statement of its policy in regard to slavery and human trafficking on their web site. I was not altogether clear, but I don't suppose that this was about their not abusing the people that they are supposed to be helping, accusations of a sort which might well have been flying about in the 1970's when trade unions worked hard to get the occupational therapy units - quite a lot of them commercially productive - of mental hospitals shut down on the grounds that they were run on cheap labour, taking the bread out of the mouths of their members. One result of which was that the people who once did occupational therapy, perhaps on a farm, then did little or nothing.
All ancient history, given that we don't have the sort of mental hospitals which could carry a farm any more. But I do wonder what all the people who used to work on them are doing now.
Reference 1: http://www.theoldmoatgardencentre.org.uk/.
Reference 2: http://www.richmondfellowship.org.uk/.
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