BBC’s Blood sweat and T-Shirts

It is true I am a self-confessed t-shirt designer, I admit it, I do design tees, I don’t make them, I don’t print them, but if I did I would be calling as many fair trade operators as I could find.

So what’s the big idea Paul? I suppose it began with the ordeal of watching the recent BBC series “Blood, Sweat and T-shirts“. Not the ordeal of watching a Third World country slowly climb into it’s rightful place in the Second World and perhaps before long The First World (do any of these glib Western references still apply to the current world economy?). No, my problem was having to sit through the sulks, fits and tantrums of the spoiled British student types shrugging their collective shoulders and sneering their top lips in uniform fashion every five minutes. The smell! The dirt! The noise! There are no toilets and there’s no coffee machine, and all the sewing machines are powered by a gas guzzling home-made generator that really must cost an absolute fortune to run these days. You know, oil crisis, world economic depression, Middle East conflict, China’s expansion, and so on…

Back to my point if there is one, its about accepting two opposing views at the same time. Economics, well business in general, in fact making and selling just about anything on this planet takes a lot of hard work. The poorer you are the harder you work. Imagine living in England three or four hundred years ago. Wet, cold, boggy, highwaymen stealing your hard earned money, zealots from all sides chopping and stabbing and torturing to get their point across. The people, the “serfs”, had no rights, they were paid a pittance, perhaps only food and rent, England was Third World, no, make that just about the whole planet.

When the Roman or Greek or Egyptian empires were at their peak, everyone else was living in hovels, everyone else only had sticks to rub together. The best the ancient Britons ever managed was Stone Henge, sure it used to line up with the equinox, and as a kid I felt something was going on there, (although the fences weren’t up in the 1970’s). But… and this is a big but, if you had the choice of continuing on in your First World life or have a crack at lugging a few tons of rock three hundred miles across bogs, heaths and moors, with a gang of hairy smelly barbarians. most likely you’ll stay put.

If you have to drag a rock that far to fill the days, well something is missing from your life, i.e. civilization. It is only with the benefit of hindsight that we can now play with comparisons. Britain has history but little money left. America, if it holds back on the gas and food, might just scrape through, but with far less friends. China? China will strip the world of resources to build that secret moon base they all want to move to when the seas begin to boil (sorry it is rather late :P) India. India, or rather the Indus Valley culture is perhaps the earliest recorded civilization (that is still in existence) on the planet today.

Ever read the Vedas? I have, basically aliens had a war here 10,000 years ago. That’s how old India is, it even invented Sci-Fi before the West had stopped living in caves :/ My point, oh please ye, at last the point.. is… each nation goes through a natural cycle, bust and boom, that’s all it is, you just need a little more than one lifetime’s perspective to see it. If there is such thing as reincarnation, then all those sulky Brits must have worked somewhere smelly or dirty at some point in their unfulfilled existence. Hey I worked as a garbage man one summer to pay my student debts, I don’t need regression therapy to remember that steamy and rather putrid few weeks. The guys working there were happy to have a job, they got Christmas bonuses and tips for taking bulky junk. But the way the lunch hour secretaries looked at us in our dirty overalls, the car salesman on his forecourt, the wine bar owner, the solicitors, anyone will social motivation saw Third World in their First World and they didn’t like it.

I’m far cleaner and less smelly these days. I work in front of my lovely MacBook and design t-shirts. It’s a completely different world to ten or twenty years ago for me and I love it, but I can’t sneer at people who work in the dirt, someone has to, don’t they? The truth is, instead of the awful documentary, the BBC should have spent it on a website, a Fair Trade, Organic, Co-Operative T-Shirt site. Like CafePress.com or SpreadShirt.com but with far more ethics. Not that they are particularly unethical, but what site out there actually aims to help people out of the sweatshops rather than simply condemn them or ignore the problem. People have to eat, improve their conditions first, then change their environment. One day’s pay, and considering that the Brits managed to earn $3 each for over a week’s work, is vital to the workers’ survival, their families, their lives are hand to mouth, day by day. Imrove their lives first, then condemn or complain.

If there’s a charity out there with a lot of backing and clout on the Internet, that wants to make a killing in t-shirts and still help the Third World, then learn from the corporates. I didn’t realize how many groovy little branded companies are earned by the same old stodgy names of yesteryear. Yes Google and YouTube, but so many online banks with pink and purple cards and crazy surreal ads are just a front. There’s few real independent record companies, or film studios that don’t actually owe their souls and livelihoods to the “man” - whoever he may be. He’s rich, I know that much…

Charities, get you act together, learn how to be cool, subcontract to those who can target more affluent markets. Learn that putting your brand over everything is just a downer. Understand that unless you can compete with the corporates and actually offer people something they want, you’ll only ever receive “guilt money”. What about making the same as Nike or Chanel or Sony? It basically means making money from the poor and handing it over to them, it means not printing miserable messages on t-shirts, mugs, badges, posters. It means creating a whole new brand that has nothing to do with promoting your charity, just make sure people know where the money’s going and leave the politics behind.

The same goes for the BBC…