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Trading With Principles Famous Speech by Anita Roddick
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Trading With Principles Famous Speech by Anita Roddick
International Forum On Globalisation's Tech-In - Seattle,
Washington - November 27, 1999
We are in Seattle arguing for a world trade system that puts basic human
rights and the environment at its core. We have the most powerful
corporations of the world ranged against us. They own the media that
informs us - or fails to inform us. And they probably own the politicians
too.
It's enough to make anybody feel a little edgy.
So here's a question for the world trade negotiators. Who is the system
you are lavishing so much attention on supposed to serve?
We can ask the same question of the gleaming towers of Wall Street or the
City of London - and the powerful men and women who tinker with the money
system which drives world trade. Who is this system for?
Let's look more closely. Every day, the gleaming towers of high finance
oversees a global flow of two trillion dollars through their computer
screens. And the terrifying thing is that only three per cent of that -
that's, three hundredths - has anything to do with trade at all. Let alone
free trade between equal communities.
It has everything to do with money. The great global myth being that the
current world trade system is for anything but money.
The other 97 per cent of the two trillion is speculation. It is froth -
but froth with terrifying power over people's lives. Reducing powerless
communities access to basic human rights can make money, but not for them.
But then the system isn't designed for them.
It isn't designed for you and me either. We all of us, rich and poor, have
to live with the insecurity caused by an out of control global casino with
a built-in bias towards instability. Because it is instability that makes
money for the money-traders.
"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie - deliberate,
contrived and dishonest," said John F Kennedy, "- but the myth -
persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." Asking questions can puncture
these powerful myths.
I spend much of every year travelling around the world, talking to people
in the front line of globalisation: women, community farmers, children. I
know how unrealistic these myths are. Not just in developing countries but
right under our noses.
Like the small farmers of the USA, 500 of which go out of business every
week.
Half a century ago there were a million black farmers in the US. Now there
are 1800. Globalisation means that the subsidies go to the big farms,
while the small family farms - the heart of so many American communities -
go to the wall.
Or the dark, cramped factories where people work for a pittance for 12
hour days without a day off. "The workers are not allowed to talk to each
other and they didn't allow us to go to the bathroom," says one Asian
worker in that garment factory. Not in Seoul. Not in Sao Paulo. But in San
Francisco.
We have a world trading system that is blind to this kind of injustice.
And as the powers of governments shrink this system is, in effect, our new
unelected, uncontrollable world government. One that outlaws our attempts
to >make things better.
According to the WTO, we don't have the right to discriminate between tuna
caught without killing dolphins and tuna caught by those who don't care,
don't worry and don't try.
According to the WTO, we have no right to hoard patented seeds from one
harvest to plant the following year.
According to the WTO, we have no right to discriminate against beef with
growth hormones.
According to the WTO, the livelihoods of the small-scale banana farmers of
the Windward Islands are worthless - now facing ruin as the WTO favours
the big US exporters
The truth is that the WTO, and the group of unelected trade officials who
run it, are now the world's highest court, with the right to overturn
local laws and safety regulations wherever they say it 'interferes with
trade'.
This is world government by default, but it is a blind government. It
looks at the measurements of money, but it can't see anything else. It can
recognise profits and losses, but it deliberately turns its face away from
human rights, child labour or keeping the environment viable for future
generations.
It is government without heart, and without heart you find the creativity
of the human spirit starts to dwindle too.
Now there will be commentators and politicians by the truckload over the
next week accusing us of wanting to turn the clock back. They will say we
are parochial, inward-looking, xenophobic and dangerous.
But we must remind them what free trade really is. The truth is that 'free
trade' was originally about the freedom of communities to trade equally
with each other. It was never intended to be what it is today. A licence
for the big, the powerful and the rich, to ride roughshod over the small,
the weak and the poor.
And while we're about it, let's nail another myth.
Nobody could be more in favour of a global outlook than I am.
Internationalism means that we can see into the dark corners of the world,
and hold those companies to account when they are devastating forests or
employing children as bonded labour. Globalisation is the complete
opposite, its rules pit country against country and workers against
workers in the blinkered pursuit of international competitiveness.
Internationalism means we can link together at local level across the
world, and use our power as consumers. Working together, across all
sectors, we can turn businesses from private greed to public good.
It means, even more important, that we can start understanding each other
in a way that no generation has managed before.
Let's be clear about this. It's not trade we're against, it's exploitation
and unchecked power.
I don't pretend for a moment that we're perfect at The Body Shop. Or that
every one of our experiments work out - especially when it comes to
building trading relationships that actually strengthen poor communities.
We are absolutely committed to increasing our trade with communities
around the world, because this is the key - not just for our future, but
the planet's. It means that they trade to strengthen their local economy
for profit, but not because their very survival depends on it.
Community trade will make us not a multi-national, but a multi-local. I
hope we can measure our success in terms of our ability to show just
what's possible if a company genuinely opens a dialogue with communities.
Heaven knows, we're not there yet. But this is real life, and all any of
us can do is to make sure we are going in the right direction, and never
lose our determination to improve.
The trouble is that the current trading system undermines anybody who
tries.
Businesses which forego profits to build communities, or keep production
local rather than employing semi-slaves in distant sweatshops, risk losing
business to cheaper competitors without such commitments, and being
targeted for take-over by the slash-and-burn corporate raiders. Reinforced
by the weight of the WTO.
It's difficult for all of us. But if we are going to change the world then
nobody - not governments, not the media, not individuals - are going to
get a free ride. And certainly not business, because business is now
faster, more creative and far wealthier than governments ever were.
Business has to be a force for social change. It is not enough to avoid
hideous evil - it must, we must, actively do good. If business stays
parochial, without moral energy or codes of behaviour, claiming there are
no such thing as values, then God help us all. If you think morality is a
luxury business can't afford, try living in a world without it.
So what should we do at this critical moment in world history? First, we
must make sure this week that we lay the foundations for humanising world
trade.
We must learn from our experience of what really works for poor countries,
poor communities around the world. The negotiators this week must listen
to these communities and allow these countries full participation and
contribution to trade negotiations.
The rules have got to change. We need a radical alternative that puts
people before profit. And that brings us to my second prescription. We
must start measuring our success differently.
If politicians, businesses and analysts only measure the bottom line - the
growth in money - then it's not surprising the world is skewed.
It's not surprising that the WTO is half-blind, recognising slash-and-burn
corporations but not the people they destroy.
It's not surprising that it values flipping hamburgers or making sweaters
at 50 cents an hour as a valuable activity, but takes no account of those
other jobs - the caring, educating and loving work that we all know needs
doing if we're going to turn the world into a place we want to live.
Let's measure the success of places and corporations against how much they
enhance human well-being. Body Shop was one of the first companies to
submit itself to a social audit, and many others are now doing so.
Measuring what really matters can give us the revolution in kindness we so
desperately need. That's the real bottom line.
And finally, we must remember we already have power as consumers and as
organisations forming strategic and increasingly influential alliances for
change. They can insist on open markets as much as they like, but if
consumers won't buy, nothing on earth can make them. Just look at how
European consumers have forced the biotech industry's back up against the
wall.
We have to be political consumers, vigilante consumers. With the barrage
of propaganda served up to us every day, we have to be. We must be wise
enough so that - whatever they may decide at the trade talks - we know
where to put our energy and our money. No matter what we're told or
cajoled to do, we must work together to get the truth out in co-operation
for the best, not competition for the cheapest.
By putting our money where our heart is, refusing to buy the products
which exploit, by forming powerful strategic alliances, we will mould the
world into a kinder more loving shape. And we will do so no matter what
you decide this week.
Human progress is on our side.
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Trading With Principles Famous Speech by Anita Roddick
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