Phil@Stop the Traffik

A few years ago, at the start of the Stop the Traffik chocolate campaign, we were excited to be invited to the UK parliament to discuss the fact that thousands of children were (and are) being trafficked and exploited on the cocoa fields of Ivory Coast. We were invited to a meeting of the Cross Party Committee on Chocolate and Confectionary, no less. With jobs like that, it's a wonder that MPs even need to over-claim their expenses. We were excited though, because it was the first political interest in the UK.
We spent hours preparing the case, re-reading all the research, in the knowledge that the chocolate industry would also be represented and would be arguing to the MPs that they were doing all they could to stop the exploitation of children. They had even managed to find a sympathetic charity to attack us.
I was on holiday in Wales on the day of the hearing, so I got up at 4am and caught a train from a windswept, dark station, winding my way through to Birmingham, changing trains, and finally arriving, bleary eyed in London, more than five hours later (unbeknowns to me, my boss Steve Chalke had managed to get a lift from a friend with a helicopter and arrived from the north of England in less time than it had taken me to get out of Wales. Oh to have friends with helicopters!)
We went through security into Portcullis House, and were shown into the meeting room by a friendly assistant. Slowly the industry representatives were shown in, and lastly the MPs arrived. As we predicted, the argument between us and the industry was sharp, but what struck me most was the behaviour of some of the MPs. They were not really that interested in the plight of the children of Ivory Coast, but rather their attention was fixed on the large bowls of free chocolate that Nestlé, Mars and others had provided for them. Brian Woods showed the famous and moving film he had made in the Ivory Coast of children who had been trafficked and held as slaves, showing their wounds and talking of the pain they had suffered. All through this the MPs happily munched away at their chocolate, as if it was a trip out to the local cinema.
At the end of it all, one MP went over to a side table and picked up some of the gift bags that the chocolate industry had provided "Time to take my blood chocolate" he sniggered to us, and left. We were astonished.
Well, that was almost two and a half years ago, and much has changed. Industry has started to make steps forward, although there is still a long way to go. It isn't politicians who have made this happen, it is ordinary people who have bought fairtrade, written letters, held chocolate fondue parties, protested and petitioned. I can imagine that a meeting of the Cross Party Committee on Chocolate and Confectionary would be very different today, as everyone knows that voters want to see this terrible abuse end. That's why Stop the Traffik is a grass roots movement. We know that change starts in our own communities and the politicians will catch up with what we are doing. Perhaps, on some issues, that's the way it should be.