You can help make trade fair by following the information on the excellent website..
Glastonbury Festivals's very own Emily Eavis presented an excellent night at the London Astoria to raise money for the Haitian coffee farmers devasted by the fall in global coffee bean crisis and the indifference of the system to their plight. Both money and awareness were raised in equal abundance with the line up of stars and the 2000 sell out audience in attendance. The global crisis has destroyed the livelihoods of 25 million coffee producers around the world. The point of the campaign is to make trade fair, at present the farmer gets a pitifully small amount of the money charged to the consumer. Emily had this to say "Farmers sell their coffee at a loss, coming from a farming family myself I was paticularly struck by the injustice of this. As consumers we can change the system. I realised how much power the individual has, just by buying fair trade coffee you directly benefit the farmers... which means the difference between educating their kids or not or having enough to eat or not".
	After South an acoustic version of Idlewild took to the stage. Having seen their heavy set at The Pilton Party earlier this year it was fantastic to hear all these excellent songs in this form. As a duo of voice and guitar and as a four piece with keyboards and second acoustic guitar. All the money raised at this concert is going to help the impoverished farmers. Over the last five years the value of coffee exports world wide has fallen by four billion US dollars. The price it costs the coffee farmers to produce their crop is more than they earn. The price their families pay is hunger, a lack of education and limited if any medical supplies. In the UK, coffee shops now seem to be everywhere - we take them and coffee for granted. But the farmers who grow the beans in the coffee we drink can take nothing for granted, except hardship and poverty. The extra few pence for fairly traded coffee triples the income for the farmer and allows them to have dignity and a very basic standard of living.
Lamb got an excellent and accurate introduction from MTV and X-fm presenter Zane Lowe as the artist with sound that every artist wishes they could make, "making the electronic sound like the most beautiful of music". This certainly was true. Their set was beautiful and captivating, and gave use time to think about some of the issues being raised here.
Noel Gallagher started his set with a self parodying opening line of Yesterday by Sir Paul Macartney - "you really thought I would play that!!" - I think he said. Then reminded everyone of his hard man image threatening the front row to stop singing - "do you think this a ***** karaoke ? ". The stage was Noel, a chair and acoustic guitar and 6 of the best songs of our generation including a rare performance of Wonderwall, that he has vowed never to play again - “This song belongs to everyone… but mostly me because I wrote it".
	Chris Martin of Coldplay spent a week in Haiti with Oxfam - "Whatever I thought Haiti to be, I didn't expect it to be like this. Some of it's like Hell on Earth, yet other bits are so beautiful. No one I talked to wanted their children to lead the lives they do. They hoped they'd leave the country and send money home. That's sad". "On the trip I might people who are working to change things. People who are trying to help themselves and Haiti grow from the bottom up.
	To succeed, however, they have to be allowed to produce crops for themselves- both to feed their own people and to have something to trade with. But because of unfair trade rules, loan conditions and corrupt governments, developing countries aren't allowed to progress" He got involved with Oxfam as they are currently promoting their new album and he would "rather talk about Oxfam than the colour of my socks". We can all raise awareness of the plight of those exploited far away.
The evening concluded with sets by Coldplay, Miss Dynamite and a number of special suprises. You can read more about this on the xfm web site who stayed until the event was over! Not like me catching the last train home to Brighton... But the thought I took away was that in a globalised world these issues are our concern and we must do something rather than believe nothing can be done. Please do go to the website www.maketradefair.com to see what you can do and what the people at Oxfam are doing. With everyone's support these injustices can be corrected and we will all be better off for it. Words & pictures: John C Scott It is hoped that some better pictures and words from others will be posted here within the next few days.