Maybe sweatshops are here to stay.

This will be the least opinionated comment I ever write. Why? Because we at Nouse desire, once again, to entertain the question of ethically-sourced clothing and, more specifically, the York University Students’ Union’s patronage of those companies who do not deal in it.

If you are new to York this year, it is possible you have not yet heard about YUSU’s failure to comply with its own standards for the purchase of ethically-sourced clothes. The debate came to a frothy head this summer when former AU President Tom Moore admitted, in a gesture of brazen defiance, from the shock of which York’s liberal consensus has yet to fully recover, that he did deliberately, and with malice of forethought, order sports gear from Fruit of the Loom, a clothing company whose use of labour is reckoned to be exploitative.

Desperate as I am to breathe new life into what many would say is an irredeemably tedious subject, I realise that an impassioned defence of sweat-shops is implausible and completely off-limits. But if the issue of ethical merchandise is as clear-cut as everyone imagines, why do we find the YUSU obstructive and the student body submissive?

The time has come to throw open the windows surrounding this entire contention. When asked to account for his actions by a Nouse reporter, the AU President questioned whether anyone really cared about ethical sourcing. A dubious rebuttal: callous, evasive and somewhat irrelevant – but don’t you think he might have had a point? If the groundswell of indignation wasn’t even sufficient to effect a plummet in sales of the T-shirts for the Viking Raid party (also provided by Fruit of the Loom) last winter term, let alone an organised boycott of the event, then what do we at Nouse think can be achieved by continuing loudly to censure YUSU’s conduct?

Well, obviously we hope that, by printing frequent and incendiary articles opposing the exploitation of labour, we will nag students to demand more from their elected representatives, which might in turn encourage the YUSU to adopt a more ethically-responsive posture. But in the meantime, it is widely believed that the subject of ethical merchandise has, for Nouse, become something of a monomania. By pursuing this sterile line of argument, virtuous as it may be, we run a real risk of boring our readership into disaffection.

So, a new angle! Clearly, there is little that has not already been said in condemnation of sweat-shops, and little that could ever credibly be said in their defence. But I have attempted to fill this need for the beginnings of a reappraisal of the whole debate with an extract from an article by philosopher and journalist-occasional Jamie Whyte (The Times, August 11 2007):

“You cannot help people by preventing them from engaging in voluntary transactions. If a Bangladeshi wants to work in a clothes factory for 20p an hour, then chances are that this represents a good deal for him. Those who lobby to prevent the import of the clothes that he is ‘exploited’ to make are not helping him. Giving him enough money to think it no longer worthwhile to work for 20p an hour would be an act of generosity. Running his employer out of business because cheap labour offends you is an act of selfishness.”

Maybe the whole panorama of your thinking on this subject has been suddenly and wonderfully refreshed. Or maybe it hasn’t. I certainly don’t have an opinion one way or the other. Something to think about, though – wouldn’t you agree?

Related Posts

• Say no to badly dressed Vikings
• Viking Raid t-shirts bought from unethical supplier
• YUSU accepts mistakes over ethical merchandise
• SU support campaign for ethical merchandise
• Controversy over use of Fruit of the Loom as Roses kit supplier