Author’s Note: This was my address for the Fairtrade service on 1 September 2024, ahead of Fairtrade Fortnight 2024 on 9-22 September 2024.

When I prepare services, I sometimes make a list of things NOT to do or mention. If you’re interested, for this service it was:

• Don’t make it a lecture, we’re here for our spirits
• Don’t just make it about coffee and chocolate, although do HAVE some coffee and chocolate at the end.
• Don’t tell that story about throwing starfish in the sea again!

The Fairtrade mark is 30 years old this year. I’ve been involved in supporting Fairtrade for about ten years now, through my work with the Newcastle Fairtrade Partnership, and one of the responses I keep coming across is “oh, is Fairtrade still going?”

Perhaps that’s a mark of success, that Fairtrade is now part of the background. I’m reminded somewhat of that old quote about the problem with Unitarianism; “the problem is, we won the argument”. When your entire reason for existence was to provide a space for religious freedom in the face of conformity, and suddenly society thinks that’s totally normal, and going to church on a Sunday is a weird habit, what are you supposed to do?

I actually think that, as with Unitarianism, Fairtrade is in the position of having to win the argument all over again. Because Fairtrade has been around for so long, I think it has rather faded into the background. But, as we’ve heard, Fairtrade is still very much needed.

Part of the reason I mentioned the story about the starfish is because, shortly before I started preparing this service, I was producing the service video for the Whitby Trip. Part of the service we heard at Whitby in July was about the work of the Send A Child to Hucklow charity, in which Sue Catts, who is a trustee of the charity,talked about their work to send children in need to the Nightingale Centre in Great Hucklow in Derbyshire, where they can spend time in nature, and for some of them, this is the first time they will really have had chance to do that. You might remember my ‘Hucklow Bears’ service earlier this year about the charity.

Sue recounted how she once had someone say to her “Sue, is it fair to give these children a glimpse of what they can’t really have?” to the collective indignation of everyone present at the service.

I’m going to be a little controversial and say that …I can see that person’s point.

I don’t think they were right. But I think all of us who engage in social action sometimes wonder: “Is it worth it? Am I actually changing anything here, or is this a token gesture?”

So, is Fairtrade a token gesture? Can we actually change the world, one chocolate bar at a time?

As someone who has supported Fairtrade for years, you won’t be surprised to hear me say that I think Fairtrade is special in that, unlike many such schemes to support better farming conditions for both farmers and the environment, it does work to empower the people who produce goods. We heard in our third reading about how the Fairtrade Premium gives producers financial resources so that their children can go on to higher education, so that they can work to protect their homes and farmland from the effects of climate change, which is only going to be more important in the coming decades, I’m sorry to say.

I do think that that matters. It matters in a fundamental way, because one of the biggest criticisms of our current economic system is that it does not value human beings as people, only as production units. We see from the very first reading that this is one of the oldest human moral struggles. As far removed from our world as the world of the author of the book of Deuteronomy is, we can see in the wording of that extract:

“Do not take advantage of a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether that worker is a fellow Israelite or a foreigner residing in one of your towns. Pay them their wages each day before sunset, because they are poor and are counting on it.”

the recognition that all of us are human. Whoever wrote that clearly saw that it does not matter whether a human being in need is an ‘Israelite’ – one of your own tribe – or a ‘foreigner’. They realised that if a person is hungry and in need, they need that money to buy food and look after their families. Jesus would later teach in the parable of the Good Samaritan, “love your neighbour as yourself”, and I think we are all familiar with the idea of the Golden Rule, that most religious, spiritual, and philosophical traditions arrive at the same fundamental principle. Whether you phrase it as “we are all children of God” or “we are all alike in human dignity”, we are all equally human and equally valuable.

And I do go back to that comment by that unknown person about the Send A Child to Hucklow fund, and I want to make two observations about it, one challenging, one hopeful – or so I hope!

The first is that comments like that should be a bit of a prod to all of us. Perhaps that person did mean what it sounds like they meant – “these kids will never break out of their lives of urban poverty, so why make them miserable by showing them something they can’t have?” But perhaps also – shouldn’t that prompt us to think, why is it so unlikely that the children helped by Send A Child to Hucklow can’t have a world in which they have the same access to nature as children from more affluent families? Why is it that we in the richer world, the global North, are in a position to help others by buying bars of chocolate? I think we should ask that, I think that following the spiritual path demands it. When we think about great spiritual leaders, be they the Buddha, Jesus, Mohammad, or many others, you won’t find ‘conformist’ in any description of them. They came to change and challenge society, and I think that that radical spirit is needed. May we never shrink from that challenge. 

My second observation is more hopeful, which is that Fairtrade shows us how we can take steps on the way. It shows us that partnership between those who, by accident of where we were born, have more, and those who have less, can lead the way forwards. Again, when we think of great spiritual leaders – it is striking how all of them wanted to build a community, worlds founded on equality, on divine love, on compassion.

And I think also of both the limits of what we can predict, and how acts of solidarity can ripple beyond what we can see. Who knows what inspiration a child at the Nightingale Centre might take from experiencing nature in a way they have never managed to do before, and how it might inspire them? Who knows what impact being able to access education might have on the child of a Fairtrade farmer – or on that farmer themselves? It is never too late to learn and change. 

Buying a Fairtrade chocolate bar – or a Fairtrade rubber glove, or a Fairtrade smartphone – won’t fix the world on its own. But it is a step on the right way, on the way to that one world we all want to live in, where we all have an equal place at the table. May the spirit of Fairtrade live in us, and may we always strive to see that better word. May it be so!

Louise Reeve