CAMPAIGNERS hoping to achieve Fairtrade Town status for Ripon say they are ‘disappointed and dismayed’ after councillors refused to back the project.
Monday evening saw members of Ripon City Council’s Finance and General Purposes Committee vote no
t to support the campaign, effectively ending Ripon’s chances of becoming a Fairtrade Town.
The council reached it’s decision after members were given an article from the Telegraph newspaper entitled ‘Fairtrade Fails To Tackle Poverty’.
Speaking just before the vote, Coun Mick Stanley said: “I think it becomes fairly obvious that it is only fair trade for those who are in the scheme and there are lots of Third World traders who are not in the scheme, therefore it’s not actually fair.”
The decision has angered members of Ripon Fairtrade Action Group who feel the matter was not debated sufficiently.
Chairman, Linda Scannell said: “There are five goals which have to be achieved for this and one of them is getting a council resolution supporting Fairtrade and getting Fairtrade tea and coffee at council functions.
“We appreciate Fairtrade may be a new concept to some people and we offered them (the council) information if they needed it but nobody got back to us.”
Despite the setback, Mrs Scannell said the campaign would go on.
“We are going to lobby the council because we are all still very keen,” she added. “We do need this resolution.”
Ripon Fairtrade Action Group was set up in January. A Fairtrade Town is one which has made a commitment to supporting Fairtrade and using its branded products.
Speaking after Monday’s meeting, Coun Peter Horton said: “The item was on a previous agenda and I deferred it because I had read an article in the Telegraph about how this (Fairtrade) works and how it doesn’t. We decided to make a decision on the strength of that article.”
Coun Horton pointed out that any decision reached by the council cannot be debated again for six months.
