Fairtrade Fortnight diary
(Or Jim's journey around the UK in 14 days)
Jim Cranshaw
Sunday 22nd February
It’s the day before Fairtrade Fortnight officially begins, so some wonderfully helpful (and depressingly more able than me) student volunteers and I go down to the Launch Event on the South Bank in London. As this photo shows, Matt McMullen, Stacey Long, Amani Ashraf and myself had fun whether or not anyone else did.
Image © 2009 FTFN launch event
As the Saturday had prompted exclamations about the ‘beginnings of summer’ the big day itself was predictably windswept and cloudy. However that didn’t stop a few thousand people from dropping in to see the combination of acts, stalls, freebies, producer talks and astonishingly vivacious dancing banana women. We ran a stall and, in persuading 100 or so people to fill in our Fairtrade survey, operated a sort of reading group atmosphere whilst people threw cricket balls at Peter Mandleson and Gordon Brown’s faces at the stall just next door. That kept the spirits up. On the other side a crew were selling pants, putting an end to poverty through the means only of smalls. It was a positive experience running a People & Planet stall. I think people like us. Can’t imagine why (joke!).
Monday 23rd February
No rest for the wicked, and I must have really screwed up in a previous life or something because the next day it was back to Oxford for a twelve hour day ending in the Oxford Great Trade Debate, an event that happened in cities across the country. Some great panellists included the EU envoy from the banana-producing Windward Islands, the head of the Fairtrade Foundation, the ever-smiling Harriet Lamb, John Hilary from War on Want and Andrew Mitchell, the Tory Shadow International Development secretary. Our debate asked whether Trade Justice was a lost cause. Everybody seemed to agree that no, it wasn’t. They just all seemed to mean different things by trade justice. For MP Mitchell, trade justice was synonymous with Fairtrade, and the same as free trade. Well, I suppose if free trade is trade justice, then we have got it! As Frank Gallagher says in Shameless, “Lets all have a party!”.
Image © the Guardian
I sniffed what looked like a small but potentially significant change in Conservative trade policy. Mitchell said that he agreed with [Infant Industry Protection]. This is when a developing country government decides that it doesn’t want to produce the one or two primary commodities its old colonial masters used to insist on, but wants to have industries like rich countries do. Therefore the government taxes all imports of, say, electronics, so that they can build up their own electronic industry, which it may also give subsidies to. Cambridge Economist Ha Joon Chang has shown how all currently rich countries have done this during their development, but previously both the Labour government and the Conservatives have said that they were against it. (Which is why some call them ‘anti development’ ). Therefore Mitchell’s retreat from an utter obsession with completely free trade and free markets, perhaps in the light of the economic crisis they have caused, can only be a good thing.
Weirdly, Mitchell then contradicted himself, twice, by saying that he agreed with Free Trade, and wanted the swift conclusion of the disastrous Doha Trade Round at the WTO, the one developing countries have been so fiercely resisting. But free trade is the opposite of letting poor countries protect their industries, infant or not. And the Doha Round will actively prevent developing countries being able to do this (by binding tarriffs at a uniformly low rate, if anyone’s still reading this section. God I love trade policy, but that’s just me I expect).
The night was really stimulating, and if you ever question your commitment to Fairtrade or trade justice, just listen to the politicians’ terrifyingly fundamentalist faith in free trade and your doubt will end pronto.
Thursday 26th February
The evil I must have perpetuated in previous lives is really stacking up now. For some reason, unbeknown to me, I decide to travel an eleven hour round trip to the beautiful Sowerby Bridge in the Yorkshire Dales to deliver a one hour Fairtrade workshop to Ryburn Valley High School sixth formers. God I hope they enjoyed it. Their teacher proudly informed me that their school will achieve Fairtrade status this year, which is a fantastic achievement, driven, she said, by a group of sixth formers. It gave me ammunition in my arguments that sixth formers can leave a massively positive mark that outlasts them and creates positive change. The teacher said that the school might join the one million people Fairtrade banana eating world record on the following Friday. I said to watch out because The Sun seemed to think that it would be dangerous see here but she didn’t seem to take it that seriously. Possibly because The Sun, to put it kindly, seem to have got the wrong end of the stick.
On my way back now. It’s dark. Not got to Birmingham yet. Someone said to me once that to be a campaigner you also have to be immortal. I’m beginning to see what they meant.
Saturday 28th February
Slap bang in the middle of the Fortnight is an amazing event called 6 Billion Ways (which I suppose refers to ways to change the world, so that makes one each roughly, a bit stingy I think).
6 billion ways, London, 28 February 2009
Thinking that otherwise I would probably be wasting time by doing my washing, sleeping, or eating food, I volunteered to help out ages ago. So it’s back to London, and I’m cursing my previous incarnation. Don’t any of my pleasant acts during this corporeal roam mean anything? The amount of fantastic names at this mind-bogglingly free event is too much to recount, but suffice to say when not supporting our very own Becca Jones in doing another bit of sterling public speaking on redressing fashion, I saw Mark Thomas, Mozzam Begg, the released Guantanamo prisoner, John Hilary again, Ken Livingstone and many others. Couldn’t stay for the DJ set of Asian Dub Foundation because a train awaited, destination Leicester, but that’s another story.
Tuesday 4th March
Off to Telford near Birmingham for some direct action and protest outside Fruit of the Loom’s headquarters as part of the Redress Education campaign. Their subsidiary Russell Athletic (they of naff sportsware) has closed a Honduran factory because its workers wanted to join a union, as shown in a [recent report]. This contravenes the workers’ human rights to free association, and is disgracefully cynical. Worse thing is, Fruit of the Loom supply us and educational institutions around the world with uni, college and school hoodies and uniforms. The campaign against them has really taken off though, with 12 unis cutting Russell off in the last week, causing them $5 million dollars worth of damage. We’re calling for all UK schools, colleges and unis to do the same. Read more about it here. The action is fun, with a 30-strong die-in, giant evil Fruits of Doom, and some journos there to make sure everyone knows about what’s going on. Then back to Oxford again for a drink or two. That’s fair, no? The redress education campaign is all about taking ‘Fair’ness further up the supply chain, as factory workers need it too!
People & Planet students protest for Honduran workers
Wednesday 5th March
One of my very favourite schools, the wonderful Thomas Tallis School near London, had invited me to do a workshop, and to meet them to discuss the amazing events they are putting on this year for Fairtrade Fortnight. On Friday, they will be doing Yellow Friday, a no-uniform day with a banana theme, to raise funds to support People & Planet’s campaigning, taking part in the banana eating world record, and generally making a massive day of it. This is on top of running the most professional looking student-run Fairtrade cafe I’ve ever seen all year long, and hosting the celebration for London’s Fairtrade town status in November. This well run school shows that there is no limit to where sixth formers can go with Fairtrade campaigning (at least without catering supplier sabotage, but even that can be overcome.) It was nice to catch up with the lovely members of the P&P group there and to thank them.
Friday 7th March
Banana eating nationwide
I know from the many schools (and unis like Manchester Met) that have got in touch that some cracking events are going on nationwide to celebrate P&P’s connection to the Fairtrade Fortnight. Lots of groups are also using it to fund raise. Will we succeed in getting a million people to eat a Fairtrade banana, and succeed in the longer term goal of having 50% of the notoriously exploitative British banana market conquered by Fairtrade bananas by next year? I don’t know, I’m asleep under my desk. (I did manage to eat my banana though don’t get me wrong. My colleagues just had to feed it through my sleeping nose at the appropriate time). I’m beginning to worry that someone’s going to fashion my gravestone in the shape of a banana, and read out a banana poem as my epitaph — I’m getting typecast.
