Labour accused of turning ‘blind eye to slavery’ over solar panels made in China

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/25/labour-accused-of-turning-blind-eye-to-slavery-over-solar-panels-made-in-china

Posted by SoggyWotsits

22 comments

  2. And now do child labour of cobalt mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo for phone and electric car batteries.

  3. Ye cry aloud in the streets, saying, **”Give us green energy, that we may dwell in the land without toil!”** And lo, the Lord hath granted thee thy desire, yet now ye do lift up thy voices again, saying, **”But how is it made? Whence cometh it? We are displeased!”** **THOU HAST THY CAKE, AND YET THOU WOULDST EAT IT TOO!**

    Who art thou, O peasant, to pry into the mysteries of the Lord? Is it for thee to question how the sun doth rise, or how the rivers do flow? Nay! Yet thou dost think thyself wise, meddling in matters far beyond thy station. First, thou demandest ease and abundance, yet when it is given, thou scornest the hand that provideth! **Dost thou seek to weary the Lord with thine unceasing folly?**

    Therefore, thus saith the Lord: **IF YE ARE UNSATISFIED, I SHALL STRIP THEE OF THY PANELS!** Yea, the heavens shall be as brass, and the wind shall be still, and ye shall have NO POWER save that which thy hands may yield. From this day forth, let it be decreed: **Every peasant shall labour at the turning-wheel, a great contraption of toil!** Each shall take his turn, three hours per day, pressing his shoulder against the burden, that he may produce but a meager spark to light his dwelling. **THEN SHALL YE KNOW THE PRICE OF THY WHINING!**

    Cry not unto me, saying, **”This is unfair, Lord!”** for thou didst bring this woe upon thine own head! Let the idlers and the complainers gird up their loins, and let their own sweat be the source of their power! **FOR HE WHO WOULD MOCK THE LORD’S WAYS SHALL LEARN TO FEAR HIS HAND!**

  4. Let’s ignore the GREAT democracies we rely on for oil and how they treat their workers as kings and has done so for the past 125 years.. not to mention how CLEAN that energy source is and how few wars have been fought over oil…

    who the fuck even buys these shitty planted stories, are people that stupid?

  5. I’m not sure this is particularly high up the list of things the Government should be focusing on

  6. Of fuck off already with this shit. No other country on earth is bothered by any of this. And it’s not like we can deal with the EU exclusively because everything is a fucking battle with them. If it’s not a chance for them to exact revenge for Brexit then it’s the fucking French profiteering at every opportunity.

  7. They’re just saying that because Uighur people made it, Uighurs must be slaves, therefore, solar panels are slave made.

    The fuck did these people do to you to deserve such hatred?

  8. The guardian ought to know better than this spurious reasoning without any push back or clear definitions. Uyghurs are not slaves they are an ethnic group, there is no defacto correlation. The uyghur genocide is still entirely undocumented or recorded in anyway some twenty years in, unlike Gaza where you can watch it every night, even sometimes from Isreali news sources.

    Slavery in the supply chain, invalidates probably most of the modern technology for lithium batteries, and probably most of the chocolate through child Labour. Coffee, sugar, bananas God knows what else historically that is still using forced labour. Then you’ve got dealing with the countries that do this, such as the US, which has both the worlds highest incarceration rate and to no surprise prison Labour of the slave variety, still written into its constitution.

    I mean if I could bother to read that again I’m sure theres more.

    Oh yeah IDS is a massive cunt who should be redacted in minecraft.

  9. Only slavery in solar panels in China is of the poor robots making them. It’s *extremely* automated production.

  10. Yet another reason we should have gone all in on nuclear energy

  11. This right wing anti environmental agenda is as disturbing as it is dumb.

    Like solar panels are the only thing we procure from labour

  12. I thought all this green energy nonsense was supposed to “create” British jobs? Why are they ordering them from China?

    Reminds me of the Scottish windfarm that was promised to create 3k jobs locally… but the SNP just purchased the turbines from Holland.

  13. Heck the whole political establishment are turning a blind eye to it in the British construction industry as a whole

  14. The slavery accusations wouldve been valid a decade ago, but in all honesty Chinese solar panels are so cheap now because Chinese manufacturers automated much of their factories during Covid to mitigate the labour issues caused by restrictions on cross country movement. No amount of slavery can compare to the productivity of an industrial robot that operates 24/7.

  15. It’s the polysilicon that’s the primary concern for modern slavery in this context. I find it noteworthy that this concern is primarily raised over solar panels and not, say, virtually every single electronic device we all own.

  16. Just as M&S would be pilloried for sourcing tee-shirts from sweat shops in Bangladesh, so should the Government be pilloried for sourcing solar panels from China, a country with crap human rights and (er) slavery.

    My preference would be for Great British Energy to support the creation of indigenous industries. There are several UK-based (and owned) solar panel producers that the Government should support, and who would benefit from UK taxpayers money.

    The Government must do better!

  17. China have literal slaves in their re-education camps, so not sure why its all of a sudden become a newsworthy problem. The Chinese state is awful, as are many other corrupt, despotic regimes around the world, but we deal extensively with all of them if they have something we need – hell we even prop a few up

  19. So an ongoing issue is only becoming accusatory because…. Labour.

    Ffs.

  20. Would the article name other parties. Erm. No.
    I like pineapple

  21. At least cheap solar panels help with global warming….maybe pick a different hill to die on.

  22. This is an odd thing to fixate on considering the sheer amount of shit imported from China but all of a sudden it’s a fundamental issue around solar panels? Surely there is no agenda there.

Comments are closed.