It’s basically indentured servitude - in that poverty is what now turns people into de facto slaves rather than race - in pretty much the same way as the English “ended slavery” but not really back in the 18th century.
The thing is, unlike in the US the Brits got rid of indentured servitude more than a century ago, plus in the US poverty and race are tightly couple for afro-Americans because the ultra-Capitalist system in American transformed ex-slavery and the subsequent tail of racist discrimination into poverty and made poverty a dynastic characteristic (in that even after active Racism was weakened, being born poor means a huge probability of being foverver poor so the victimization of Historical Racism was propagated down the generations) so present day indentured servitude in American disproportionately hits the descendants of the slaves whilst indentured servitude in Britain mainly hit the majority ethnic groups in those isles (though I do believe that for example the Irish were much more likely to be victims of it than the English).
countrypunk@slrpnk.net 2 days ago
Yup, it helped oppress even more poor people 😍. Heaven forbid we have class solidarity /s