The Elves, the Shoemaker, Colonialism and Fair Trade

Had a fairly surreal evening putting the kids to bed this evening. They were given a choice of a Paddington book (often a favourite) or one of ‘granny’s stories’ (the selection of 40 year old Ladybird books my mother in law has kept which are classic stories representing the oppressive and often shocking ideals of the 19th and early 20th centuries).

The children chose the latter and selected’The Elves and The Shoemaker’.  ‘This was one of my favourite books as a child’, I told them anticipating another much loved tale not bearing up under the scrutiny of time.

It felt quite surreal reading the book as it almost felt like the words resonated with a verbatim memory I had of it.  This was even more strange given that I had completely forgotten the plot. Spoiler alert! The story tells the tale of a couple (shoemakers) living in poverty, they are at the end of their rope and mysteriously get helped by some unknown benevolent force that lifts them out of poverty.  They stay up one evening and realise that the people (elves) who are helping them have almost nothing themselves. So they make them new clean clothes and new shoes to bear the cold winter temperatures. The elves are overjoyed and skip off happily singing, never helping them again. Rather unusually for one of these tales, everyone lives happily ever after.

After reading this to the children, I feel relieved that, unusually, no one has died or been physically beaten. Additionally a treasured tale seems to have made a positive impression on the idealistic set of beliefs I continue to hold today.  Reflecting on it though, I wonder about the subtle lesson that it is the responsibility of those living in poverty to help each other.  It also strikes me that the only way that the shoemaker was able to earn enough money to lift himself out of poverty was by producing goods for the wealthy that were so unattainably perfect that mystical non-existent creatures had to produce them.

Reflecting on the story does provide some instruction for the post-colonialist age, and reminds me of a conversation I had with a Ghanaian taxi driver in London many years ago.  He said that he really missed his home and his family but earned every cent that he could to send back home.  When I asked him why he didn’t just go home and be with his family, he responded that the British Empire had taken so many resources to build the wealth in the UK, that he felt a responsibility to repatriate as much wealth as he was able to.

It is this conversation that makes me reflect on the elves and the shoemaker.  While not wholly impoverished, the colonies helped former and present colonial powers attain the global wealth and status they enjoy today.  A lesson should be taken from this tale. More consideration should be given, to the ways in which former colonisers can reciprocate and repatriate the wealth they have enjoyed off the back of other nations. Enabling them to be free of a position of inferiority and servitude in the global economic system, and celebrate the promise of their present and future prospects.

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