|
DAME
ANITA RODDICK, British visionary social activist and human rights defender
dead at 64.
|
THERE WAS NOTHING LIKE THIS DAME, DAME ANITA
RODDICK, DEAD AT 64 by RORY O'CONNOR (MaximsNews.com,
U.N.)
UNITED
NATIONS - / www.MaximsNews.com@ U.N./ - 11
September 2007 –
I lost a friend, and the world lost a visionary social
activist and human rights defender this week, when Dame Anita Roddick died at
age 64 from the effects of a brain hemorrhage. Roddick, the working class
British daughter of immigrants, was an unlikely global business pioneer, who as
founder of the socially responsible cosmetics firm Body Shop fought to bring
sustainable and ethically-sourced products to the beauty industry long before it
became fashionable, earning her the sobriquet “Queen of Green.”
From its humble beginning in 1976
as a single store in Brighton, England, with only fifteen products, the company
grew rapidly on the strength of strong demand for both those products and
Roddick’s in-your-face social activism. After eight years, the company went
public and franchises spread all over England, and later the world. Today there
are more than two thousand Body Shop stores in 55 different markets, serving
more than 77 million customers speaking 25 languages.
How did it happen? By
happenstance, according to Anita, who explained it all in 1993 in Third Way
Magazine:
“The original Body Shop was a
series of brilliant accidents. It had a great smell, it had a funky name. It
was positioned between two funeral parlours – that always caused
controversy. It was incredibly sensuous. It was 1976, the year of the heatwave,
so there was a lot of flesh around. We knew about storytelling then, so all
the products had stories. We recycled everything, not because we were
environmentally friendly but because we didn’t have enough bottles. It was a
good idea. What was unique about it, with no intent at all, no marketing nous,
was that it translated across cultures, across geographical barriers and
social structures. It wasn’t a sophisticated plan, it just happened like
that.”
But the success of her stores was
hardly an accident – and business success was just the beginning for Anita.
Although it led to great wealth (her ‘net worth’ reportedly topped out at
more than $200 million) and high honors (in 2003, Queen Elizabeth II appointed
her a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire), business itself was
always merely a means to an end. And the end Anita Roddick had in mind was
making the world a better, fairer place for all.
We first met nearly two decades
ago, at a gathering of progressive business executives called the Social
Ventures Network. At the time, my Globalvision partner Danny Schechter and I
were producing the not-for-profit weekly television series “South Africa
Now.” Naturally, the program was anti-apartheid – after all, at the time
even the president of the United States, George H.W. Bush, openly opposed the
racist underpinnings of South Africa’s white minority government…
Nonetheless, we were deemed “activists” instead of journalists, our position
was deemed too controversial to obtain support from public broadcasting
bureaucrats, and we were forced to seek funding for the program elsewhere, such
as from the United Nations, foundations, and business leaders like Roddick.
For whatever reason –most likely
our shared working class backgrounds — Danny, Anita and I instantly connected
on a visceral level, and we spent much of the SVN meeting talking, laughing and
plotting over drinks. Anita promptly invited us to visit her in the UK, which
soon led to a whirlwind but typically comprehensive tour that included a brief
stay at one of her London flats, a detailed examination of Body Shop production
headquarters in Littlehampton, lightning-like visits to several shops in the
Midlands, and ultimately a long, wet weekend tramping through high gorse in the
Scottish Highlands. Soon we became fast friends and co-conspirators.
Thankfully, the situation on the
ground in South Africa changed, as Nelson Mandela managed to negotiate his own
release from prison after twenty-seven years, and the beloved country began its
long procession toward modern democracy. We wound down weekly production of the
South Africa Now show, and immediately began plotting a new human
rights-oriented newsmagazine – this time focusing not just on southern Africa,
but the entire world. Anita and her husband Gordon were key players in that
series – “Rights & Wrongs: Human Rights Television” – coming to
fruition. They contributed their energy and enthusiasm, their ideas and
information, their contacts and creativity (and oh yes, their capital!) and
without all of it, the series would never have been born. But with their help,
the award winning newsmagazine was broadcast weekly for four years, on more than
150 public television stations in the USA, as well as on channels and networks
in sixty-one other countries. It remains the only regularly scheduled television
program in history devoted exclusively to coverage of human rights.
In addition to their longstanding
interest in and support of human rights, Anita and Gordon both dedicated
themselves to a wide variety of other causes, ranging from campaigns to save the
Amazon rain forest and to stop violence against women to battles over climate
change, to concern over the effects of globalization and the need for fair
trade, to active involvement in prison and justice issues and programs aimed at
combating HIV/AIDS. But Anita was still a visionary businesswoman, despite her
many and loudly public anti-business remarks. (Most famously, she wrote in her
autobiography, Body and Soul: Profits with Principles, “I hate the beauty
business. It is a monster industry selling unattainable dreams. It lies. It
cheats. It exploits women.”) And at the same time that she committed a large
grant to the production of Rights & Wrongs, we also entered into a
commercial relationship aimed at fostering better corporate communications
within the burgeoning Body Shop empire, as well promoting Anita herself and the
Body Shop brand, and smoothing its entry into the United States.
Soon, Globalvision and the Body
Shop seemed joined at the hip. In addition to weekly episodes of our human
rights broadcast, we were also producing ‘fortnightly’ (a word we had picked
up from Anita and begun to employ widely!) editions of Body Shop Television –
a unique, in-store television magazine devoted to internal communication among
Body Shop employees and managers. In addition, there were numerous special
videos to produce and many more speeches, press releases and conferences, store
openings and media appearances to coordinate and attend to. Being in business
with Anita – being anywhere around Anita – was simultaneously exhilarating
and exhausting. She was in all respects a human dynamo…
Although Anita wasn’t a media
activist per se, she intuitively understood how media could be used for
activism, and she did so shamelessly and in a cheerfully relentless manner.
Whether she was supporting social and environmental causes through window
displays, convincing American Express to pay her to appear in an ad promoting
the Body Shop and its causes, working with Globalvision on its commercial and
non-profit programming (or later writing books, blogging, running an activist
website, contributing to the success of Mother Jones magazine, or working
closely with — and donating millions to — media-savvy organizations such as
Amnesty International,) Anita intrinsically ‘got’ the importance of
characters and stories to selling anything—from cold cream to ideas and values
– and she employed them cleverly and constantly in support of her principles.
In time, the rigors and realities
of capitalism caught up with Anita, as they do with all of us in one way or the
other, and she and her husband began to back away from running the company. In
2002, they stepped down as co-chairmen, though she continued to contribute as a
consultant. “I source new products during travels abroad,” she wrote. “And
I constantly question myself: How can I bring values to an industry that is
certainly not values-laden?” Finally, in July 2006, the Body Shop lost its
independence entirely and became part of the French company L’Oreal Group.
Then this past February Anita
revealed on her website that she was suffering from cirrhosis of the liver after
contracting Hepatitis C from blood given during the birth of her youngest
daughter in 1971. She had unknowingly lived with “this silent killer” for
three decades. “What I can say is that having Hep C means that I live with a
sharp sense of my own mortality, which in many ways makes life more vivid and
immediate,” she said, perhaps presciently.
Tributes to that life have been
pouring in ever since Anita’s passing, from the high and mighty to ordinary
workers and fellow activists.
British Prime Minister Gordon
Brown noted, “She will be remembered not only as a great campaigner but also
as a great entrepreneur.” Justin Francis, who worked with her at Body Shop,
said “She had a great passion for life, a great passion for business and for
people.” And Adrian Bellamy, present chairman of The Body Shop International,
said in a statement that “Anita was not only our founder but she was also the
heart and passion of The Body Shop and with her we achieved so much, whether on
animal rights, human rights, Community Trade, or through the founding of
organizations like Children on the Edge. It is no exaggeration to say that she
changed the world of business with her campaigns for social and environmental
responsibility.”
And now all that is left is to
mourn. Our sympathies go out to her husband Gordon, and beloved daughters Sam
and Justine. But ultimately it should be left to Anita, and Anita alone, to have
the final words. After all, she was so damned good at public speaking, it would
truly be a shame to get in her way!
To her children:
“I hope to leave my children a sense of empathy and pity and a will to right
social wrongs”
To fellow entrepreneurs:
“I want to work for a company that contributes to and is part of the
community. I want something not just to invest in. I want something to believe
in.”
AND: “Political
Awareness and Activism must be woven into the fabric of business–to do
otherwise is to be not merely an ostrich, but criminally irresponsible.”
To the rest of us, her
customers, fellow citizens, and friends: “To succeed you have to
believe in something with such a passion that it becomes a reality.”
AND: “If you
think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito.”
And finally:
“Join me: I want to connect with people who share my outrage over the menace
of global business practices, and who, like me, are seeking solutions. But I
also want to tell — and hear, from you — stories that lift our spirits, that
celebrate how glorious our planet is. Outrage and celebration — let’s run
this gamut together.”
Rest in peace, my old friend, and
I hope to see you again on the other side…
RoryOConnor@MaximsNews.com
RORY
O'CONNOR
~~~~~
MaximsNews.com, An Independent Voice from the
U.N., provides commentary and analysis from
leading world figures: King Abdullah II
(Jordan), HRH Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid Al-Hussein
(Jordan), Sir Brian Urquhart, Hans Blix, Amb.
Richard Holbrooke, Anwar Ibrahim, Bianca Jagger,
Dr. Nafis Sadik, Shashi Tharoor, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, Noeleen Heyzer, Kerry
Kennedy, Ian Williams, Stephen Schlesinger,
Masood Haider, Sen.
Timothy E. Wirth, Marc Morial, Amb. Jayantha
Dhanapala (Sri Lanka), Amb. Pierre Schori
(Sweden), Amb. William H. Luers, Susan Roosevelt
Weld, Rory Kennedy, Mehri
Madarshahi, J. Michael Adams, Gloria Feldt,
Jeffrey Laurenti, Rodney D. Smith, Ashley
Bommer, Rory
O'Connor, Genevieve Stamper, Max Stamper and
others.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MaximsNews Network® LLC is a Global News Network reaching over 30,000 in the International Community. It is associated with MediaChannel.org and Globalvision News Network, global news and media information services with more than 350 news affiliates in 135 countries.
MaximsNews®LLC is in partnership with the United Nations Foundation and the Better World Fund.
Established in 1999.
The views expressed are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of MaximsNews®
LLC.
MaximsNews.com
U.N. ® LLC News for the United Nations and the International Community -
www.MaximsNews.com
| MaximsNews@MaximsNews.com |
Please
contact us about Republishing:
Syndication@MaximsNews.com ©Copyrights 1999 - 2007, MaximsNews® LLC. All rights
reserved.
|
