The Fair Trade
movement and the Labour movement share near identical beliefs and aims, yet the
two remain remarkably distinct from each other. Nowhere in any Labour manifesto
is global fair trade mentioned, and it is down to the associated Co-operative
party to fight for this issue. Global fair trade is simply not on the agenda of
the party, and yet it is surely something that should be central to the party.
There is a hidden world out there, a dark world which is the base of our consumer driven Western world and without which the West could not survive. This world sees extraordinary poverty the like of which has not been seen in Europe since the 1920’s. Where men, women and children as young as five start work at daybreak, sometimes shackled to their stations in sweltering heat, have no pauses, very little food or water, must urinate where they sit over a sewing machine making clothing they can never afford for twelve hours straight for as little as £1 a day. There is no health and safety, no rights, no dignity. There is also no pension, but as most would be lucky to reach retirement age that is incidental. They do it because they must, and because those in charge can get away with it. The government don’t intervene, the employer takes the money, the rest of the world turns a blind eye to them. This is a world where life is cheap. As a social democrat (and a Christian), I cannot stand idly by. This is not necessarily a call for greater regulation but for greater monitoring and even consumer awareness and choice.
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| Child labourer on chocolate farm in Cote d'Ivoire; paid less than £1 an hour |
Labour needs to
put its full weight behind the fair trade movement and start campaigning for
it. It would be beneficial for the Labour party, for the fair trade movement,
but most importantly for the millions who still suffer and are still exploited
with unfair wages and dangerous working conditions for our comfort.
Supporting fair
trade would give Labour the moral high ground. Chinese and Indian workers are
forced to work in sweat shops on meagre wages like 10p an hour, which is a pure
scandal, yet not a secret. It is impossible to find anyone who would defend
such a system without looking like a stereotypical Wall Street greaser. This platform
means standing against big business and high profit margins, standing against
the likes of Primark, Sports Direct, BHS and others while standing for the defenceless
and exploited, the very people Labour stood for at inception. This also gives
Labour a distinct platform which many argue it has been missing, and reconnect
the party as part of an international movement against the exploitation of
workers.
The benefits to
the Labour party are evident, but the benefits to the Fair Trade movement are
more important. By getting behind fair trade, Labour would place the fair trade
movement into the mainstream and take it beyond simply informing and into a
more action orientated role. There would at last be government pressure on big
business to conduct trade fairly, something the fair trade movement has been
missing.
The current free
market system not only makes it permissible but beneficial for companies to
exploit this cheap labour, which is a very small step up from slavery. This is
why we oppose the free markets: not out of ideology, not because it’s an “us vs
them” world, not because some mad ranted on a century ago or some hope of
glorious progress of mankind – but because the system causes unimaginable
suffering to millions. The free market runs on incentives; the key, therefore,
is to ‘disincentivise’ through economic benefit.
There is a way out
of this world, but we have to work with other nations who share our values and
rewrite the rules. The European Union should set up tariffs against unethical
labour to disincentivise the exploitation of human life in the name of profit.
Business only knows the language of profit; by making ethical European labour
cheaper than the unethical alternatives (importing the produce of slave labour
in Asia), businesses, industry and manufacture will come back to Europe, and
ultimately most of our goods will be produced with fair wages and conditions
for workers. We can spread the values that believe in workers dignity, and it
would help European employment figures while making Europe more independent
from questionable regimes.
A European
autarchy would make Europe productive again and do wonders to employment
figures and independence, but it would also punish and dissuade unfair trade
and exploitation of workers. The main point, though, is that it can be done.
The EU is still the largest economic entity in the world and the biggest
consumer base; business will not abandon it as many pro-free traders would
argue. It is also why European nations must act together and not alone; they
can abandon the UK, but not the EU as a whole as it is too lucrative, there is
still profit to be made here. Even if they do leave, let them; when one company
goes another will take its place.
The Green
Alternatives to Globalisation Manifesto, by Michael Woodin and Caroline Lucas,
suggests reforming the key provisions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT) and the rules of the WTO to create a General Agreement of
Sustainable Trade (GAST) which covers several reforms, but ultimately and
summarily suggests that trade will be ‘regulated by fair trade rules similar to
those that are currently adopted voluntarily within the fair trade movement to
guarantee decent wages, working conditions, environmental standards and fair
prices for producers and consumers. One way of enforcing such rules would be
for a successor to the WTO to withdraw the international trading licence of any
company that is found to have breached the rules’. Greens truly are a bunch of
watermelons; green on the outside, red on the inside. But why wait for the
successor of the WTO, why not use the EU?
There is a
downside; consumables will become more expensive, which would put already
suffering people under more strain to buy the essentials – food, shoes, school
uniforms and so on. But we should start asking ‘how much should a t-shirt cost?’
An ‘ethically made’, fully fair pair of jeans costs $300, yet one can buy a
pair for just $50. Who pays for the other $250? Milton Friedman actually noted
this problem and used the example of a pencil by saying “nobody knows how to
make a pencil”, because one line of production passes responsibility to the
next line with no questions asked. Well, maybe it’s time to ask questions, and
time for a responsible non-profit orientated body like government to at least
monitor trade and implement some regulation to prevent exploitation.
It is not
revolutionary, it’s a natural progression of our movement. It is not “socialist”
to believe that farmers and workers should be given a fair wage for their work
– its common decency. Everyone in the line of production of an item should be
paid a decent and fair wage. Consumers need to start thinking about how their
commodities are made and how many people are involved, and governments should
start encouraging fair trade. It is a fundamental of the Labour movement; all
men will be brothers, no man should be a ‘slave’ and no man ‘master’, in our
world there is to be no exploited or exploiters. That is the ideal of socialism,
the true ideal of civilization. Labour can lead the way to tackle world
poverty, but we must act now.
