William Kendall
William Kendall in partnership with Nick Beart, a financial director, have played a large part in Green & Black's development. Kendall has become a public supporter of the Conservative Party and he signed a Financial Times letter in support of it.
The Financial Times letter, according to the Guardian columnist Catherine Bennett "features the usual suspects - the JCB magnate, Tesco's Sir Laurie Magnus, Sir Christopher Gent and, more interestingly, William Kendall, CEO of Green & Black, whose fair-trade organic cocoa is a staple in so many Islington trolleys. Does this tell us something interesting about the Conservative party? Absolutely not. But it does tell you quite a lot about fair-trade organic cocoa." [1]
This association with the Conservative Party is very interesting the fact that the party is associated with the lessening of state control as well as the opening up of markets. Rather than fairtrade, the Conservatives would be more likely to support free trade. This is a totally different method of trade and one which could cripple the small scale farmer which Green & Black's supposedly supports. The fact that Green & Black directors are asociate with politics leads many to wonder about their actual intentions within the company. "Whatever the logo on the product, international trade will never be fair, and there's no western government that wants it to become fair."[2]
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Notes
- ↑ Catherine Bennett We don't care who's in your fan club, Tony The Guardian, Thursday April 28 2005
- ↑ Counting beans Ten years ago, Green & Black's Maya Gold chocolate launched Fairtrade in Britain. Today, the organisation's annual sales top £63m, but just how fair is it? William Sutcliffe heads to Belize to assess the impact of that one chocolate bar on the lives of the cocoa farmers working there, The Guardian Saturday August 7, 2004
