Police reveal London slaves met alleged captor in a 'political collective'

The fresh details of the "highly complex and difficult investigation" were disclosed as officers conducted house-to-house inquiries in Peckford Place, Brixton, south London, where the women were found.

A man and woman, both 67, who were arrested on Thursday morning as part of the investigation, are of Indian and Tanzanian origin, and came to the UK in the 1960s.

They have since been released on bail until a date in January.

All three alleged victims - a 30-year-old British woman, a 57-year-old Irish woman and a 69-year-old Malaysian woman - were believed to have suffered "emotional and physical abuse", Metropolitan police commander Steve Rodhouse said.

The Met said that part of the agreement on October 25, when the women were removed from the address, was that police would not take any action at that stage. None of the women were reported missing after they were rescued.

Officers have recovered a birth certificate for the 30-year-old woman, who is believed to have lived her entire life in servitude, but no other official documents for her have been found.

Rodhouse said: "We believe that two of the victims met the male suspect in London through a shared political ideology, and that they lived together at an address that you could effectively call a 'collective'.

"The people involved, the nature of that collective and how it operated is all subject to our investigation and we are painstakingly piecing together more information. Somehow that collective came to an end and the women ended up continuing to live with the suspects.

"How this resulted in the women living in this way for over 30 years is what we are seeking to establish, but we believe emotional and physical abuse has been a feature of all the victims' lives."

The case came to light after the Irish woman rang the Freedom Charity last month to say she had been held against her will.

All three women are now in the care of a specialist non-governmental organisation.

Rodhouse said: "To gain the trust and confidence of highly traumatised victims takes time, and this must move at their pace, not anyone else's.

"I understand the huge public interest in this case, the desire for information and the shock that it has caused.

"However, we must take every step to protect the identities of the victims, who are understandably emotionally fragile and highly vulnerable."

The couple on bail were previously arrested in the 1970s, but police have not said why they were detained.

Freedom Charity founder Aneeta Prem, whose media appearances on forced marriage and dishonour violence prompted the Irish woman to contact it, said the organisation had received five times as many calls in 24 hours as they usually get in one week since the arrests.

"We have seen an extraordinary rise in calls to our helpline since the rescue of the three women came into the public domain," she said.

"These women have had traumatic and distributing experiences, which they have revealed to us. What needs to happen now is that the three victims, who have begun a long process of recovery, are able to go through their rehabilitation undisturbed, without being identified."

Meanwhile, the MP in charge of reviewing evidence of slavery in Britain, said the Brixton case was the "tip of a rather large iceberg".

Frank Field, chairman of the Modern Slavery Bill evidence review, said criminal gangs were making "huge sums of money" from people being imported into the UK to work "almost for nothing."

Field said many victims who escape have no way of communicating because they speak little or no English and often come from countries where they are "deeply suspicious" of the police.

He added: "We've had this example of domestic slavery but people are being imported to work, almost for nothing, in industry. We've got begging gangs being developed, with people being imported. And we've got the whole question of how children are being imported to work.

"It's a whole range of issues we've got to wake up to."