Today is the beginning of Christian Aid week. Each year many give generously of their time and money to support this charity. Churches have a long history of concern for developing countries and missionary work has often gone hand in hand with trying to relieve the effects of poverty and other social projects. Some churches even go as far as to link any appeals they have to a developing cause. I came across one church last year which linked its floodlighting appeal to Water Aid on a £1 for £1 basis, so if they raised £1000, £500 went to Water Aid and £500 to their appeal.

This kind of generosity is deeply impressive. I seem to remember coming across something about our own building appeal here being linked to a developing country project, but I don’t seem to have heard anything about it. Have I dreamt this and is it still the case? Christian Aid week is an opportunity to take stock for a moment and ask how big our world is? It is a chance to ask how widely our concern goes and whether it goes far enough?

It is for this reason that I have changed our gospel reading this morning to that passage from Luke’s gospel about Jesus going to the synagogue and reading from the scroll of Isaiah (Luke 4:16-22a). The passage he chose is not at all comfortable. When God sent his Son into the world, he sent someone to upset things and stir it up. I don’t think any parish would find Jesus an easy vicar to live with. Bringing ‘good news to the poor’, announcing ‘release to captives’, letting ‘the oppressed go free’ and proclaiming ‘the year of the Lord’s favour’ take us way beyond stuffing a fiver into that familiar red envelop, though that is a start.

Many of the aid agencies now want to upset the money changers’ tables in international trade. Giving handouts is only one aspect of aid work and one that does nothing to tackle the root causes of poverty and the need for aid. The aid agencies are aware of this and that is why they are also involved in many imaginative and long term projects. Natural disasters, of course, are beyond these arenas and when these things strike, we send help. Some natural disasters, though, are made worse by man-made factors, and man-made often means man-made, not woman made!

The principle behind fair trade, which I have written about in this month’s magazine, is that a fair price should be paid for a fair crop and that those who work in factories should not be exploited. Two centuries ago during the industrial revolution in this country we had the same cry, ‘A fair days pay for a fair days labour’. Trade unions may have needed reform in some respects, as all movements do - we belong to a church with one foot in the Reformation after all, but the principle of defending worker rights and ensuring just conditions is well and truly in harmony with this gospel passage.

As consumers, we have more of a part to play in this than we might assume. Basically when we go shopping we are involved in international trade. If you buy a bunch of bananas, someone has grown them, harvested them, shipped them and sold them to you. Money changes hands all along the route. Bananas are the most popular fruit in the UK and account for about 28% of all fruit sales in this country. They are relatively cheap, but the cost behind the scenes is often being borne by those who shin up the trees to get them.

I enjoy a cup of coffee. Actually I am vicar who doesn’t like tea, so I drink loads of it - that’s why I always look so bright and perky! As a church we have coffee mornings and distribute buckets of the stuff each week. Because of the way international trade often works through stock markets, the price is often divorced from any consideration of those producing it at the other end. Fairtrade offers a minimum guaranteed price which covers the basic costs involved. As far as I am aware, no other coffee brands do this.

Now having moved from Kent I am aware that developing countries are not the only ones in farming caught in this bind. Many of the orchards in Kent are being grubbed because there isn’t a market for English apples. We import them and we import them because even after taking shipping into account they are cheaper. Why are they cheaper, because someone else is not being paid a proper price. Those involved in the clothing industry know that it is cheaper to use sweatshops in the far east and ship the materials across the world to be assembled and then the finished product back again than it is to make shoes in Nottingham, the traditional home of shoe manufacturing in this country! This seems a crazy situation to be in and we are all the losers in it!

Once we start pulling at these threads all sorts of things start to unravel and a number of campaigns become interrelated. Around the Millennium a lot of campaigning went on to have unrepayable debt for developing countries written off. Jubilee 2000 has become Jubilee Plus and this campaign continues with another finance leaders’ summit coming up. The major aid agencies have launched another campaign taking fairtrade that step further - it is the Trade Justice Movement and this is taking a serious look at how international trade operates and militates against the poorest countries. There are serious issues here and we should not dismiss the whole thing because of the violent anarchists who catch the headlines, who are unconnected with the serious side of those questioning the destructive side of globalisation.

Like pension policies, international economics makes my brain spin. It does this because we are fed the allure of certainties, of a sure return, but in reality there are no certainties. So much of it is bluster and hides behind a smoke screen of unquestioning obedience to a system. So people become made for economics and not economics to serve people - to rephrase Jesus words about the Sabbath. There is an often unacknowledged rule that when we give we receive more than when we try to horde as much as we can for ourselves. Accepting that there must be a minimum fair price, helps us all. It helps those in sweat shops and the farmers in our own country having to grub orchards in the garden of England.

In a part of the country which changed dramatically in the industrial revolution, these issues should be dear to our hearts. This is not allied to a particular political party - campaigners for Jubilee 2000 came from all sides of the political spectrum.

To take it forward we can start to look into the deeper side of trade justice and debt relief. That will not be everyone’s cup of tea. Something we can all do is to look out for the Fairtrade logo on products. This means that the products either pay a minimum guaranteed price all along the route or ensure that the factory conditions are not exploitative. It is rather difficult to my mind to be against that. The products to look out for are coffee, tea, bananas, mangoes, fruit juice, chocolate and some snack bars. All of the major supermarkets stock them. Buying them is a positive way of supporting the aims of agencies like Christian Aid and trade justice. And if you aren’t familiar with the logo, here it is.

In our gospel reading this morning Jesus announced good news to the poor, release to captives, freedom to the oppressed and the year of the Lord’s favour - Jubilee. If we take that seriously, and I don’t think he was joking, then fairtrade is something we have to take a look at.

© Ian Black 2002

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