|
|
Shoes, Shopping and Justice
This rather good article was written for Christian Aid and first appeared on fish.co.uk.
Believe it or not, you can see a whole church service built around it at a rather groovy London church called Grace.
Call me pathetic, but shopping is just too much for
me.
Maybe it's a bloke thing. My idea of successful shopping is buying the first pair of shoes I try on in the first shop I see, and then disappearing into the coffee shop. Meanwhile, my wife is spending her perfect Saturday trying on every pair of shoes in town, some of them several times, and also ends up buying the first pair she tried. Well, so long as everyone's happy.
But sometimes the choice overwhelms me. None of them are quite right. Too tight. Too floppy. Too pointy. Too shiny. Too square. Ah, perfect... how much?
So the last thing I need is to have to wrestle with footwear ethics too:
'Excuse me, these size 9 two-tone Chunky Boots, are they made in accordance to generally groovy principles, from a sustainable err... shoe crop, by workers and suppliers paid a fair price for their labour?'
'Sorry sir, I'm just an acne-plagued Saturday job kid. Do you want me to ask Mr Bellingham when he comes back from lunch?'
And yet I can't get away from it. If I buy one pair, I'll be wearing plasters on my heels for a month. If I buy another pair, I'll be financing a corporation that exploits and abuses workers in the Third World. How can they justify causing such trauma to an innocent man trying to do a bit of shopping?
Even when I end up in the coffee shop, it's the same. I have a nagging suspicion that the people who are selling me these burnt beans ground up in hot water keep their farmers on a shameful pittance, so that they can rake in huge profits and I only have to pay £1.25.
ACCIDENTAL VILLAINS
Why? Why does it have to be this way? I don't want to rip anyone off. I don't want to take part in a global conspiracy against the poor. I just want a hot drink, a dangerous amount of caffeine and somewhere to read the paper. Is that too much to ask?
Apparently so. And the more you find out, the worse it gets. Food, clothes - even dear old chocolate - conspire to make me a cold-hearted villain.
And here's the lowest scam of all. I say to myself: Self, enough of this. I'm not buying anything any more till my conscience dies down a bit. And so my towering piles of money sit in the bank - where they're probably funding some project to beat democratic protesters about the head with baseball bats (you can tell my grasp on the precise economics of this is somewhat flimsy).
What they certainly are doing is supplying financial institutions who bleed the Third World dry with debt repayments they can't afford and didn't deserve in the first place.
These people are turning me into a bad guy. It's not even as if I want to be especially good. I just want to pass. But they're making me destroy people's lives every time I buy anything. And that sucks.
So that was my Saturday. How was yours?
The next thing you know, it's Sunday, and I make it to church. And I'm sitting there, minding my own business, not exploiting anyone as far as I can tell. And someone gets up and starts reading from the Bible.
Maybe I shouldn't be surprised to find the Bible saying something so relevant to today's world and my life, but I am.
Especially coming from the prophet Amos, living in the Old Testament with, I assume, a big beard, a tea towel on his head, a stripy dressing gown, sandals and a long knobbly stick.
'They trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth,' he says. Hey, that sounds familiar. That's me.
'They sell the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.' Well, if that's not a prophecy about buying Nike, I don't know what is.
'At every place of worship, people sleep on clothing taken from the poor as security for debts.' He's even got our number on the debt repayment thing. Actually, I usually manage to stay awake through the morning service, but I don't think that's his main point. Even our worship is funded by money that does not belong to us.
He then goes on to describe the judgment coming on the nation that enjoys its deluxe, top of the range standard of living at the expense of the poor. You don't want to hear it, it's not nice.
So how about that? Even church, which can usually be relied upon to take my mind off things for 90 minutes, agrees: the likes of you and me are bad news. We're the Wicked Stepmothers on the stage of life. We have blood on our hands and it's not the theatrical, out-of-a-bottle type. We are implicated in a vast institutional evil.
FIGHTING BACK
At this point, you, kindly reader, may be thinking: Get a grip, Tomkins, it's not your fault. Don't take it so bad. There's nothing you can do about it - it's just life.
Or alternatively, for the less kindly: Get off my back. I didn't set up international trade regulations and I'm not the one who can change them. Haven't you got anything better to do than make people feel guilty about things they can't control? There's nothing I can do about it - it's just life.
OK. Good point.
Just one thing.
It's called the Trade Justice Movement, and it's being launched by a lot of groovy people like Christian Aid. Its aim is to change international trade laws - abolish restrictions that cost the Third World $17 billion a year, that kind of thing.
And it works simply by getting irate shoppers like me to send a few emails and letters and stuff. Which is handy, because I'd hate to be ruled out from abolishing poverty just because I haven't got the attention span.
Nice idea, isn't it? Of course, it'll never happen. It's biting off more than you can chew.
FOUR CENTURIES IN A ROW
Christians are always biting off more than they can chew. Wilberforce, for example. Woke up one morning in the 18th century and said, 'Think I'll abolish slavery in Britain.' Admittedly he succeeded, but it took him 56 years, and he only heard the news on his deathbed.
Then there was Shaftesbury, who led the 19th-century campaign to reform the whole of British industry to stop it exploiting the workers, despite being prone to depression. He succeeded, too, of course, but against all the odds.
In the 20th century, it was the same all over again with Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu and racial segregation.
You see what I mean? In each century Christians have seen a great institutional evil, got wild, unrealistic ideas about taking it on, campaigned against it and defeated it.
And we are standing in their shoes. Apart from Tutu's, which I believe still have him in them.
Is it too much to ask to make it four centuries in a row? I didn't ask to get into a scrap with global capitalism, but they started it - and I'm damned if I'm going to let them get away with it. Or if not damned, pretty unpleasantly called to account, if Amos know what he was talking about.
And talking of standing in shoes, I hope we can pull this thing off pretty quickly, because I really need a new pair.
