Fair Trade Way launched
New national trail takes in Quaker history
Quakers in the north-west of England are at the centre of a plan to launch the ‘Fair Trade Way’ as a long-distance footpath this week. The eighty-five mile route begins at Garstang, which became the UK’s first Fairtrade town in 2000, and finishes at Keswick.
The overnight stays on the six-day hike will all be in Fairtrade towns. A website for the Fair Trade Way will list cafes, restaurants and accommodation that serve Fairtrade goods.
Bruce Crowther of Garstang Meeting, one of the organisers, told the Friend that the walk will combine four themes: fair trade, slavery, Quakerism and chocolate. Much of the route will pass through the ‘1652 country’ in which Quakerism initially developed. The walk also includes Lancaster, now a Fairtrade town but once the fourth largest slave trade port in Britain.
‘The themes all link to each other and, in fact, have a resonance with social and cultural history that goes back two hundred years,’ said Bruce. Drawing links between campaigns for fair trade and the anti-slavery movement, he explained: ‘It is a question of challenging accepted practices’.
