Robin & TWIN
Robin wanted to turn the world of international trade upside down. It was his vision, his ideas about how trade could be done differently, that provided the foundations for the development of Fair Trade principles which guide the Fair Trade movement to this day. He was an extraordinary person. I had the pleasure of working with him for eighteen years from the day in 1997 when I attended my first Twin and Twin Trading Board Meeting to the day in 2015 when I finally quit saying that eighteen years was quite long enough for anyone to stay on a Board. Twin and Twin Trading Board meetings were like no others I have ever attended, run more like university seminars than business meetings. I learnt so much.
Robin co-founded Twin and its trading company Twin Trading with Michael Barratt Brown in 1985. He believed that enterprises should work directly with farmers in a collaborative way, developing long-term relationships and joint ownership structures so that farmers had a share in the businesses that bought their products and a share in any profits. In 1991, Robin, through Twin, was instrumental in the founding of CafeDirect, in 1998 of Divine Chocolate, in 2001 of Agrofair UK (trading in fresh fruit) and in 2003 of Liberation Nuts. He promoted business with a social purpose, community based, small, local, participative, democratically organised, recognising the essential role of women in farming and in their communities. For so long women had been invisible, their work unacknowledged and unappreciated, their voices unheard.
Robin’s influence on Fair Trade was huge. He was as much at home with the micro as the macro. He never stopped studying. At every and any moment, the notebook would come out to record something new, a fresh idea, an innovation. Those notebooks! Those questions! He fought for social, economic and climate justice and against inequality. He was an optimist, full of hope that a better world is possible if we all work together, co-operatively, for the benefit of all.
August 2020