Activist

Seattle is one of those deceptive cities that hides a hive of
activity behind a screen of laid-back, feelgood vibes. Most of its
inhabitants seem to feel blessed to be living there. And I'm sure they
would consider themselves to be pretty enlightened. I imagine that's
what the World Trade Organisation was counting on when it chose this
city symbol of the new economy as the venue for its 1999 convention.
What better platform from which to offer the world a glimpse of the
glowingly prosperous future promised to all by free trade?

Well, that fairy tale bit the dust in the first days of the convention
in a cloud of teargas and a hail of rubber bullets. I'm a huge movie
fan and it was surreal to be stuck front row centre in a scene that
felt like something I'd watch on screen. I was among a crowd of
peaceful protesters - teachers, talkers, farmers, priests, indigenous
tribes, union men with their families who had come from all over the
world to show that the WTO didn't speak for them - marching on the
hotel where WTO delegates were staying, but between us and our goal
stood a solid wall of police. Their aggression seemed to rise in
inverse proportion to the peacefulness of the protesters. The first
volleys of gas and rubber bullets were stunning. Truncheons, police
horses, tanks lined up against kids in T-shirts! It was terrifying but
I couldn't pull back. The press of people behind me kept me upright and
in place. At the same time, I wouldn't have left if I could. It seemed
critical to bear witness. The robocops were probably the same age as
the people they were attacking. "Shame on you", chanted the crowd.
"Shame!" "Shame!" I will always remember that as the cry of the Battle
of Seattle.

I'm no stranger to public protest. In the Sixties, I took part in the
big marches for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the
demonstrations against the war in Vietnam but these global issues
seemed to subsume the stories of individuals caught up in the history
that was being made. Every so often, we'd be reminded of those
individuals - a little girl ablaze with napalm running down a road, a
ditch full of bodies at My Lai - but geopolitics dominated the media.
It was really when I started The Body Shop in 1976 that human rights
became an intimate, individualised issue. It didn't take me long to
realise that our freedom to do business where we wanted rested on
other, basic and more profound, freedoms. And I kept meeting ordinary
individuals all over the world who put themselves on the line to defend
the rights of millions of men, women and children denied their basic
right to live, love, learn, work, pray or even play. If they could do
that with their lives, the least I could do would be to dedicate my
business to them.

As I've got older, I feel like my sense of outrage has become ever more
personal. That's been my journey as an activist. Now I can see it as a
full circle, starting from the time when, at the age of 10, I came
across a book at home which included a photo essay on the Holocaust.
The fact that human beings had been responsible for such inhumanity
charged my life from that moment on. A child's passionate sense that
such a thing should never be allowed to happen again matured into an
adult's intensifying commitment to activism. Seattle felt to me like
some kind of fruition, like I was facing up to fate.

Believe it or not, it was the American president Woodrow Wilson who
said, "The history of Liberty is the history of resistance." So that's
it - when I fight, I'm free.