Focusing on the role of the Australian charitable foundation Walk Free, an organisation connected to the faith-based abolitionist movement, this chapter traces the emergence of a global antislavery governance network and explores the role of philanthrocapitalists and public–private partnerships in it. It shows how Walk Free established an ethical business alliance that portrays slavery in global supply chains as resulting from market failure and depicts the control large transnational corporations have over their supply chains as an antidote to the limits of state sovereignty. Walk Free and the global antislavery governance network advocates for market-based solutions to the problem of modern slavery – such as supply chain transparency and mandatory human rights due-diligence legislation – that enlist transnational corporations located in the Global North to enforce international legal standards against contractors located primarily in the Global South. This chapter illustrates how scale and governance interact in ways that reconfigure sovereignty and shore up neoliberal capitalism.

This chapter explains how modern slavery figured in a revitalised vision of British global sovereignty as EU membership was under threat. The Coalition Government assembled an elite policy network and forged a bipartisan consensus in favour of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. Although primarily carceral, the act also required large corporations to disclose their efforts to rid their supply chains of slavery. Part of the Conservative government’s antislavery agenda, the Immigration Act 2016 pulled labour regulation further towards criminal law. As home secretary (2010–2016) and prime minister (2016–2019), Theresa May positioned the United Kingdom as a critical actor in the global antislavery governance network and fashioned the United Kingdom’s fight against modern slavery as a key plank in her vision of Global Britain. After May’s resignation, the pandemic, and Brexit, the Conservative government came to treat victims of modern slavery as if they were illegal migrants undeserving of human rights.