Meeting Britain's Street Slaves

Making an edition of the radio documentary File on 4 is always interesting and absorbing. But the people I met making 'Street Slaves' have stayed on my mind like never before.

I met men who're offered work when they were living on the street - and find they're paid just pounds a day, or not paid at all, by gangs looking for cheap labour. These men (it was mostly men since I was looking at labouring work) can be exploited because they're homeless, desperate. But in a vicious circle, they're homeless because they're being exploited. Who can afford rent earning £20 a day?

But I  keep thinking - as I sit writing this in a house with light, running water, chairs, a kettle  - of the Polish men I met in Croydon - who showed me the 'home' they go back to after a day working for £3 an hour; an electricity sub station on some wasteland. They sleep on a dirty old mattress and in the morning they slip out through a gap in the fence, wash in the bus station toilets and wait for the gangs to call with work. They might get paid a couple of quid. If they're lucky.

You can hear their stories here.