U for Uncertainty and the search for hope in an Unusual place. Can we make connections between the social construction of gender and race and economic empires? Are new connections between campaigns and corporate social responsibility possible for major corporations?. I explore the history of soap, with roots in racism. Can Unilever make a U-Turn?.

Sitting on a hill in Donegal, far from cities but closer to neolithic history, the stone ditches around my fields demand that I look for hope in strange places. The story of a modern naked Emperor joins me in the shower with memories of Merseyside, Trade Unions and Save the Children.

My time spiral transports me to the motorway journeys forty years ago between Manchester and Liverpool on my way to support local self-help projects as manager for Save the Children Fund. I admired the sky above the towering chimneys belching out weird greens and blues which mixed with the declining sunset. I carried the confidence that we could change cultures of discrimination with the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Children. We knew how to change laws which had a direct impact on rehousing women and their children forced out through domestic violence or Travellers who could not find a place to park their mobile homes. The website on one of those projects, Amadudu.org a refuge for Black and ethnic minority women and children who are escaping domestic abuse still survives but this is not enough to comfort me as we face an increase in domestic violence, racism and femicide alongside the parallel growth of hidden empires which threatens the future of all our children.

In 1990’s when I travelled the motorway between Manchester from Liverpool the strange colours from a mix of chemicals and sunlight conjure up the mighty shifts in living conditions, class mobility and gender. Developments which brought the upward spiral of  fame to some local Liverpool lads. In 1962, Ringo Starr of Beatles fame performed in Port Sunlight the village created by William Lever for workers at the Sunlight Soap factory. It is now a museum which you can visit. I was unaware as I drove the motorway of the dirty history hidden in the strange smoke signals above Port Sunlight connecting the shower gel or shampoo in my shower which replaced soap. The shower gel in my palm could have given me clues to the operation of forces more powerful than the nation state and its laws – clues to the way wealth has accumulated bringing migration, homelessness, poverty, and extinction of living species.

In 2022, in the London Review of Books (REF), I read about how the founding father of what is now the Unilever empire used racism to justify his exploitation of the land and people of Congo to expand the Lever brothers’ empire. In a letter to a company director, he wrote ‘it is a well-known fact that the brain of the African ceases to be capable of receiving new impressions when he arrives at the adult stage’? The long history of racism covers up economic exploitation has been eloquently covered by Toni Morrison who explores the invention of racism and sexism to justify oppression. Degradation of our environment and degradation of our human nature go hand in hand. As Toni Morrison says, “the spotlight turns away and shines not on the object of degradation but on its creator.”

To-day I am struck by the naked intimacy of our connections to the exploitation of palm oil and the Africans who worked on the Lever plantations in the Congo without which there would be no Unilever Empire to-day. How come the people of Congo are so poor when they created so much luxury in our world?  Even today the vaults below the surface  in Congo contain  riches which our technology needs but the people are among the poorest in the world. Toppling statues of the dead does little to uncover our hidden everyday collaboration with corruption and greed. Our lives in 190 countries are connected every time we consume “Unilever products which include food, condiments, ice cream, cleaning agents, beauty products, and personal care.”  Check your cupboards or look for the U on the packet or jar before you wash your hands.

Paul Polman once CEO of Unilever has said it is obscene to pay CEO’s of mighty economic Empires 12 million pounds or more and that companies should be putting into society more than they take out. According to his environmental balance sheet we should focus on the future we are stealing decade by decade from  young children.

When I look up the Leverhulme Trust which funds research in UK Universities, I find it is “recruited from the highest levels of Unilever.” The Trust is committed to best practice “including checks on the rights of employees, agency workers contractors and volunteers” The Trust assesses its suppliers “to ensure that they have appropriate policies in place to minimise the risk of slavery and human trafficking in their business and engage with environmental, social and governance issues”. With such a huge global enterprise it is not surprising that Ethical consumer researchers have over the years identified some problems in practice and identified “several ethical issues with Unilever, including environmental reporting, habitats & resources, palm oil, pollution and toxics, human rights, workers’ rights, supply chain management, irresponsible marketing, animal rights, animal testing, factory farming, anti-social finance”.

The temptation to blame the emperor and wash away our own collaboration is strong. The individuals in the Empire of Unilever are no better or worse humans than the rest of us who are all caught in the industrial machine and packaged dreams of finance capital. Unilever has its head office in the UK and Ireland for 90 years. The emperor is on our doorstep and expects us to admire his cloak with the gems of flattery of marketeers and public relations consultants but a cloak of fine words cannot conceal the naked profit motive. Unilever’s  “investment decisions are predominantly driven by economic concern”  It is time to remind the emperor of the two swindlers who told the court they would design an outfit which could only be seen by the wise. It took a child to point out that  flattering words of the “wise”  were not enough to cover the emperor’s naked body. The packaged Dove will  not bring him peace and the Lifebuoy soap will not save him from floods.

And Unilever is one of the best with at least a desire to improve human rights and care for the planet.  The Trade Union, UNITE has urged Unilever to ‘consider long-term sustainable trends – for both the company and its workers – rather than the fickle fluctuations of the money markets’ Unilever have made a commitment to look at the global supply chain of labour with a target date of 2030. If shareholders, consumers, and staff all demanded cleaner soap then investment decisions would be based on the survival of human, animal, and plant life and not on naked profit.

Unilever has managers, workers, consumers, investors in 190 countries. Who among us will find ways to respond to Unilever’s stated desire for us to “feel good, look good and get more out of life” when we step out of the river, the ocean, or the shower? After a bout of skin cancer, I replaced the shower gels with soap made in Donegal and avoid palm oil. I can still find U on products in my cupboard.