Dai Havard

Labour Party | Merthyr Tydfil & Rhymney

HAVARD IN THE HOUSE – ‘Fairtrade’ Makes Free Trade

This month has seen ‘Fairtrade’ products promoted in our shops. We can now choose from more than 1300 products – fruit, honey, nuts and wine to coffee, tea and chocolate and UK sales have reached £195m this year. Cotton is the latest product to be included in the ‘Fairtrade’ line to help improve the lives of cotton farmers. Many in our communities will remember the struggles for textile workers both in the UK and India which involved Mahatma Gandhi. Those young people who visited the recent Paul Robeson exhibition in Merthyr College will make the connection with the struggles of the cotton workers and black workers of the US to free themselves both politically and economically, as recently as forty years ago.

Chocolate was the first product to get the ‘Fairtrade’ mark – giving shoppers a guarantee that the farmers and growers who produce the cocoa get a fairer price for their crops. Following the Make Poverty History campaigns we are all hopefully questioning the sourcing of the goods we buy – realising that Fair Trade makes for genuine free trade. As you may know I have visited both Iraq and Afghanistan over the last few years and have seen the need to develop these countries so that they can trade peacefully in the world economy. My discussions with Afghan farmers who are currently trapped into growing opium crops - which end up in hard drugs on our streets - have shown me directly that if they are helped to grow the fruits and other products their country used to be renowned for and export them as ‘Fairtrade’ we would all benefit. The same applies in South America and those of us who remember the struggles of workers in Chile in the 1970’s are pleased to see ‘Fairtrade’ Chilean wine on the shelves of our local Co-op. The Fair Trade label represents much more than any other business logo. It is in all our interests to make buying ‘Fairtrade’ goods become the right thing to do not just the fashionable thing to do.