Thought for the Day - 18 July - Radio 4

Rhidian Brook
Last week a friend from Kenya came to stay with us. She had never been out of Africa before. One morning she appeared with three beautiful baskets and asked where the nearest market was in order to sell them. I explained we had no such market but that we'd ask some neighbours if they would buy them. It wasn't difficult persuading them. The fact that the money was going direct to source, the craftsmanship of the product, and that they had engagement with its maker helped make for a quick sale.
Regrettably, in this age of mass consumption, we rarely have connection with the manufacturers of the goods we are purchasing. Some retailers have tried to address this (photographs of coffee producers are an good example of trying to put faces to things) but usually the human provenance of a product - the narrative behind it - is hidden or unknown. The purchase remains a disembodied, impersonal transaction.
A story this week highlights the consequences of the dis-connect between the things we consume and the people that make them. One of Britain's largest retail chains has allegedly had its Bangladeshi garment workers working on 80 hour week shifts for 4p an hour, in order to make the cheap clothes that we enjoy buying from its supermarkets. Some people, it seems, are paying a heavy price for our want of a bargain.
The market may help create the illusion of a consequence-free purchase, (as long as the dismal story behind the making of a T-shirt is out of sight, it's out of mind) but the reality is that the purchase binds me in a complex chain of moral and spiritual relationships; and if the cheapness of the product cheapens the life of the person who makes it then the relationship is already imbalanced and the purchase immoral.
For as long as we want goods at lower prices and supermarkets seek ways of lowering costs, someone else will take the hit. Our quality of life must be questioned if it's built on what looks like the slow suffocation of someone else's. What we spend our money on and how we treat people in that process is a moral and spiritual issue. The prophet Jeremiah actually equates knowing God with our willingness to defend the cause of the needy versus setting our hearts on oppression and extortion.
The market is not the enemy - it's the place we have to work these things out; indeed it could actually play a redemptive role in this (the word redemption even come from the marketplace). By helping us engage with the people behind the things we buy, the supermarkets - with their massive resources and reach - could do a great deal to make this possible. As well as ensuring the rights of their workers - the living wage; rest from work - they could be creative in helping connect the manufacture to the consumer.
Think how different our consumption might be if the things we bought could tell their stories. Let's use the communication technology we have to hear the stories of the things we buy, let's see the faces of the people that make them. As well as asking what the carbon footprint of a product is - let's see the human fingerprints that got it here. I may not meet the person who made my t-shirt but at least I can acknowledge their presence in the market place - and their dignity in it.