Who Dressed You?

"Ma, I’m on the third floor. Help me." Then the voice went dead. 
- A girl calling her mother after the clothing factory building collapsed in Dhaka.

The fashion parade at the Punchestown races this week and the latest horrific deaths of hundreds of men and women in a clothes factory in Bangladesh exhibited two aspects of the clothing industry that are seldom connected. The interviewer at the races feeds the curiosity of the viewing public by asking where the interviewee got his or her outfit. The interviewee’s answer goes no further than a local boutique or a clothing chain. They seldom make the connection between the outlet where they purchased the item and those whose hard labour in sweat-shop conditions manufactured it. The probability is that the outfit will be worn just for that day and then disposed of to a clothing bank.

In a bubblegum culture not only is the item of clothing disposable but the person that fashioned it is too. This is obvious from the conditions they slave in and the accidents that occur either in fires or in the collapse of buildings similar to the one in Dhaka this week.

The clothing business has over time migrated to the cheapest manufacturing destination to feed the western market system with cheap garments. Of course this practice is not new. The African Slave Trade perpetrated by European powers put in place a mercantile exploitative paradigm that has been copied right up to the present. The African Slave Trade supplied the European consumer market with cheap goods and essentially financed the industrial revolution. It was terminated after more than a century of campaigning that took on and exposed the slave system of plantation owners and their protectors in European governments. It is well to remember that at the abolition of slavery European governments indemnified the slave owners. The slaves, wealth creators, were turned out on the road and left to fend for themselves. 

After the Second World War European governments at the request of business imported workers from their former colonies again as cheap labour to fill the demographic deficit in European populations as a result of war. As in slave times, European governments and manufacturing companies in a mercantile mind-set forgot that workers were people, human beings like themselves with similar aspirations. These workers, immigrants, people, organised themselves and as in the past had to struggle for their rights and dignity.

However, as they demanded and eventually got parity of wages and rights with the indigenous population, manufacturing companies began to look elsewhere for cheaper labour. Simultaneously, indigenous European populations became anti-immigrant. Listening to political voices at general and local elections that used immigrants as scapegoats, new immigration legislation rendered the importation of cheap labour prohibitive. But, manufacturing companies with their newly acquired lobbying outreach in centres of power around the world persuaded governments and international agencies to facilitate their interests in the form of free trade agreements and the easy movement of capital in a system of modern globalisation. Its architects in their race for riches created their own reality, a reality that excluded people. After centuries of struggle, people, human beings, wealth creators became slaves again.

In that light manufacturing chased cheap, unprotected labour. Government departments in developing nations like Bangladesh sought out manufacturing companies offering all kinds of sweetheart deals that would give employment; in doing so, these governments sold their people short. Transnational companies, as in colonial times, became the extension of western governments – most of whom turned a blind eye as long as cheap commodities kept flowing in, some profits were repatriated and market share maintained.

Over time, however, consumers throughout the world have become disgusted on hearing about the treatment of those who make the clothes they wear. This disgust is heightened on seeing the horrific pictures of poor women, girls and men being pulled out of collapsing buildings in which their clothes are sewed. They are equally horrified by news and pictures of industrial accidents that leave people dead and their environment poisoned like what happened in Dhaka this week.

So, what do you do? Check the brands you have on your back and in your clothes closet. Are they brands from those stores whose clothes are manufactured in these sweatshops? If they are, do you feel any connection with the woman trapped in that clothing factory calling for her mother to come and release her?

We are indignant about the women who were exploited in this country in Magdalene laundries. Should we not be equally angry about the way women are treated in Bangladesh that sew our clothes?

What should we do?

• Check the brands we wear.
• Where are they manufactured?
• Are there outlets for these brands in Ireland?
• What stores near you sell these brands?
• Network with others who are campaigning for change.
• Check out the Clean Clothes Campaign Ireland.
• Lobby your elected officials and European Members of Parliament. 

We didn’t want to go in but the supervisors threatened to dock pay if we didn’t return to work. 

– The words of a worker who was ordered to leave the factory building the day before because of cracks on walls.

Irrational Rants Feed Empty Souls

“It is necessary to destroy all churches of the region.” 

- Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, 12/3/2013

The bombing at the Boston marathon has shocked people to the core of their civility. Those maimed are left with reminders for life. Those who narrowly escaped being there at the finish when the bombs went off are left struggling to put their escape in context. They, as private citizens, and many others in the media are asking why? Similar questions are put after each horror. How could two young people carry out such an irrational act, to kill and maim innocent people like themselves and their kith and kin out enjoying an international occasion? What feeds the irrationality, the emotional aridity of two young people to make bombs that kill people like themselves? However, those two young people do not have a monopoly on irrationality.

Recently, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia called for the destruction of all Christian churches in the Arabian Gulf. There was little uproar from the leaders of Christian churches or governments either in the west or in Arabian Peninsula. Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, Pope Francis, other church leaders, governments and Saudi rulers have remained silent. If her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, declared that the central London mosque in Regents Park should be closed would there be uproar about her intolerance and insensibility? If Pope Francis declared a fatwa against mosques in Europe would the media remain silent? Certainly not, both Christian leaders, Queen Elizabeth and Pope Francis would be pilloried, attacked and written off bird-brained irrationals.

Yet, there is surprise when two young people act irrationally and maim people that they obviously judge are children of a lesser God, not their God. What role do Saudi religious leaders, such as the Grand Mufti, have in feeding that irrationality, intolerance and hatred of others that western and Islamic leaders remain silent about?

Equally, what is lacking in the signs and symbols of so-called western democracy that these young people reject and feel alienated from? And what is a world movement, like Islamic extremism, offering as an identity to those who act with the depravity of the Boston Marathon bombers? What part does the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan, drones in Pakistan, the Palestinian situation, Abu Ghraib, support of corrupt Islamic despots and the negative depiction of Islam in the west have to do with the development of Islamic extremists? Are these the ingredients that nurture the kind of Islamic extremism that propels the depravity of two brothers to maim innocent bystanders in Boston?

How has the natural goodness in young people been so eroded that they see no difficulty in bombing or shooting innocent bystanders in schools, shopping centres, cinemas, all their neighbours? It would seem that in such circumstances identity with a global movement is so self-consuming that it robs people of natural feelings for what is decent, local and home-defining. They have no home for normal human feelings such as empathy, sympathy, concern and care for others near and dear. The heart has lost its nature. There appears to be no concern for the effects of their actions on their family, friends and wider community. Such emotional aridity denotes poverty of spirit. 

For an ideal to be healthy, it needs to be pitted against objective fact, networked with others who can be objectively critical, emotionally tempered and be in solidarity with balanced objectives within lawful constraints. Ideals lacking the aforementioned constraints easily become tyrannical demons. History is pockmarked with such tyrannies.

In the case of much religious and nationalist extremism, it would seem that many adherents come from immigrant backgrounds, particularly second generation-born. Their immigrant parents relate the kind of treatment they experienced in their adopted countries. If their experiences in the new country are negative in the form of racism and discrimination these will be shared with the children. The children’s experiences at school and socially, if negative, will be reinforced by the parent’s stories. 

A factor that causes confusion for the younger generation is the parents' definition of home which will be the country they came from. The young generation’s experience of home is locally on the street, at school with their friends, at the local mosque and at other social activities. If the parents have idealised where they have come from, as many immigrants do, if they have unresolved grief about home, the young generation are caught between their real home and the idealised home of their parents. Home for the parents is their story. For the children, many don’t know the old country and do not fit into the new country. 

Another factor that causes confusion is that immigrant parents expect their children to be like their cousins back home. The mosque, the temple or church should be a bridge between home and away, an agent of integration into the new society. If the imam, priest or pastor is an immigrant from the country of the parents a danger is that he will model his ministry on where he came from and expect his adherents to measure up to that paradigm which is generally idealised. Essentially, in that scenario the minister is keeping his adherents prisoners of his and their parent’s nostalgia. All are robbed of understanding secular urban society, relating and interacting with it, contributing to it and benefitting from it. Many eastern thinkers over the century have tried to understand the clash between the spirit of the orient and the science of the west. Sayyid Qutb highlighted that dichotomy in his writings having lived in the United States in the middle of the last century.

Here young immigrants have to cope with signs and symbols of a nation that may or may not be soul-warming depending on the quality of the social, political and cultural diet they consume and experience at home and on the street. If they feel rejected, alienated or discriminated against because of race, religion or ethnicity the chances are they will recoil to the rumour mill of the ghetto and link into worldwide movements offering participation, self-esteem and identity. That identity will be defined by what they dislike about others rather than what they like about themselves. This is the first step towards emotional bleaching that gives way to literal dogmatism in the name of a greater cause. Emotional aridity leaves ideals feral and unregulated.

Extremism of the kind expressed by the Grand Mufti and his adherents particularly in the Arabian Gulf will meet the desires of youth whose idealism needs an experiential challenge expressed against a perceived enemy. For Muslims extremists that enemy is the apostate west.

The tragedy is that western leaders, particularly in the political arena, remain silent and seem unlikely to disturb the sources of the kind of fundamentalism the breeds the Boston Marathon bombers and others, local or foreign, that cause so much havoc to innocent bystanders.

Governments need to monitor their diasporas with a message of inclusivity, particularly those in whose homelands conflicts smoulder. Over the past half century most of the cross-border and internal conflicts have been and still are financed by immigrant diasporas annually topped up by involuntary economic migrants, emigrants. These are people who had to leave home to get a better way of life. They carry unresolved grief and anger that can easily be channelled into avenues of grievance against their home governments. It is necessary to keep in mind that most if not all liberation movements of the past century germinated in diasporas.                        

In the modern era we’ve allowed our children’s souls to grow emptier, our schools have become a disgrace, and our communities have become shattered. Fathers cannot get jobs, mothers are overworked and underpaid, and everyone is looking for real intimacy. And our young people are left dangling. It just gets worse and worse, generation after generation. Then sooner or later, someone says, “We’re in a state of emergency!” No, you’ve been in it for a long time. You just refused to acknowledge it. 

 – Cornel West, 'Hope On A Tightrope'

Is the only certainty we learn from history that we don’t learn anything from history?