Having been involved with Christian Aid since the start of my ministry I have seen immense enthusiasm for its work. But sadly, poverty is still with us. I am reminded of the words of Nelson Mandela to the United Nations when he said: “Like slavery, poverty is not natural. It is immoral.” But there have been so many misunderstandings by the great and powerful regarding the solutions to the problems. Bob Geldof in his enthusiasm in Live Aid thought that if the rich countries gave to the poor then all would be well. This is actually only part of the truth. Yes, we need to send aid into Burma and to China when there are disasters, but I believe that the real problems are much more complicated, and much deeper. Money sent to poor countries often just gets into the hands of the rich. Count how many African leaders have Rolls Royce cars! Christian Aid encourages us not to have sloppy thinking - linking poverty in one place with wealth in another. By making Europe poor you will not make Africa rich. Trade is the essential requirement and hopefully fair trade. So when you buy vegetables at the supermarket sent all the way from Kenya by plane, you might be surprised, or when you purchase a cotton shirt which was made in India, you might wonder whether we could produce these ourselves - but in reality trade is a good thing. The most important objective we should have is to break down world trade barriers so that many countries would then be released from poverty. We should buy goods from India, China and Africa as long as they are fairly produced. We may complain about the emergence of India, and China polluting the world, and wanting more steel, oil and food so putting up prices in our country, but the USA is still the most polluting nation in the world, using most of the world’s resources. And we in the United Kingdom are still increasing our rate of pollution in spite of every attempt to change the way we live.
Coming from a horticultural retailing family, I would suggest that we should encourage the wealth creating process of the world by trade. This has been proved by the millions of people who have emerged from poverty in Russia, China and India in the last decade who have embraced global trade. However, we should be interested in how wealth is created and how it is distributed. The answer, as Christian Aid worked out years ago, is not just to hand out money to the poor so much as to create a global economy and open up all borders to fair trade. The USA is one of the worst countries in the world in blocking free trade and in the EEC we are not much better. We have prospered in our history when trade barriers have been taken down. Isaiah prophesied good news: