Discomfort food: Susan Groves uncovers a difficult period in the history of Quaker chocolate company

‘Why did it take you so long?’

Around fifty Friends from Central England Quakers gathered at Bournville Meeting House on Saturday 21 October to explore the theme ‘Chocolate, Slavery and Bournville’.

As the flyer advertising the event said, quoting from the Yearly Meeting Epistle of 2022, ‘We are called as Friends to understand and tell the truth about the past’.

We were led with skill and kindness in the afternoon event by Kathleen Bell, a Friend from Beeston, who had been an Eva Koch scholar at Woodbrooke in 2019. Her research, under the heading, ‘When Quakers got it wrong’ led her to exploring how Cadbury’s, at the start of the twentieth century, depended on the forced labour of enslaved women, men and children.

In her presentation, Kathleen placed the people of São Tomé and Principe, islands located in the Gulf of Guinea, at the centre of this history. Slavery was abolished in 1833, so the reliance on the labour of enslaved people in the early twentieth century is something many of us are unaware of. The information I include here is largely from Kathleen’s presentation.

Cadbury bought about twenty per cent of the cocoa beans that were exported from São Tomé. The island was also the main source of cocoa beans for the Rowntree and Fry chocolate companies. William Cadbury knew from at least 1901 that the cocoa purchased from São Tomé and Principe was produced through the labour of enslaved people.

For many years – 1901–1909 – William tried to ‘manage’ this situation. He writes that he attended a Society of Friends Meeting (possibly Sufferings) in London in 1907, and that ‘there was a very divided feeling about our action, many I regret to say considering that we were acting hypocritically, although perhaps nobody quite said that word.’

While Cadbury’s advertisements spoke of the excellent conditions of Bournville workers, this was not the case with those labouring on the islands.

In 1908, the missionary Matthew Stober attacked the slow endeavours of companies that advertised the idyllic conditions for their factory workers, but purchased cocoa beans grown by enslaved people: ‘Are not both entitled to the same rights?’

The Standard editorial of September 1908 said that Cadbury’s planned trip to West Africa ‘does not come too soon’, and that the ‘white hands of the Bournville chocolate makers are helped by other unseen hands some thousands of miles away, black and brown hands, toiling in plantations, or hauling loads through swamp and forest… It is not called slavery… but in most of its essentials it is that monstrous trade in human flesh and blood against which the Quaker and Radical ancestors of Mr. Cadbury thundered in the better days of England.’

In 1909 – eight years after gaining knowledge about the enslaved workers – Cadbury decided to stop purchasing from São Tomé. A week later the Cadbury company made a joint announcement with Rowntree and Fry.

Our Bournville gathering was then asked to consider this question in groups: ‘If you were a descendant of one of the enslaved people (or anyone else) on São Tomé and Principe, what might you want to ask Quakers today? Is there anything you would want to say?’

Responses from one of the groups were as follows: ‘Do you realise the situation now is as it was then? We are still being exploited unfairly for our labour while you make the profits’; ‘Can you still be a Quaker after you know all this?’; ‘Have you worked on your white supremacy?’; ‘Look at me. Do you not see we are the same? Let us now work together but let us lead the way this time.’

Another group gave the following responses: ‘Why did it take you so long? What reparations are Quakers going to make in response to all the money Cadbury’s made out of the labour of enslaved people?’; ‘Are you moving towards social justice now?’; ‘Did you really know the damage you did? When you do, we would like you to say sorry’; ‘Are you happy being a Quaker now? Are you working on your white supremacy?’

A follow-up task asked this: ‘Considering what you have heard and talked about today, can you write an “advice” and/or a “query” that might help with further consideration – for individuals, for Quakers in their Meetings and for British Quakers as a body?’

Responses from the groups were as follows: ‘Are we willing to acknowledge our historical complicity as Quakers in the fact that Quaker businesses involved in using the labour of enslaved people generated the wealth that built our Meeting houses?’; ‘Are you aware of Quaker involvement in wrongdoing in the past and today? Do you personally benefit from economical exploitation such as slavery in its historic and modern forms now? Are you acting in ways that try to address past injustices and current racial inequalities? Do you recognise and challenge racism in all its forms?’; ‘Do you do due diligence to help nurture and support local economies and communities, and do you refuse to consume, and actively oppose the consumption of goods and services derived from corporate pillaging and corporate neocolonialism’; ‘Who are you? Do not hide behind ignorance. Do you know your own history or the history of your country? Try to understand the filters through which you view the world and question your privilege. Are you aware of the origins of what you consume? Take time to learn about the structures that underpin our consumption’; ‘Do we fully recognise our responsibility to take action when we realise that others are being harmed, whether directly or indirectly by our lifestyle and choices? Do we try to enable those whose voices have been taken from them to be heard?’; ‘Have you considered how your current existence is built upon the injustices of the past and of the present? How can we approach this with loving justice?’; ‘Are we willing to build an ubuntu [I am because you are] community in which we open the door to discomfort?’.

There was a sense of appreciation of the afternoon and there had been a very positive atmosphere. We trust the Spirit to lead us on.

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