(Not so) Nice cup of tea?

It’s International Tea Day. And it probably doesn’t come as a surprise to readers of this blog that your cup of tea (yes, even the fair trade one!) has a long and complicated history – steeped in colonialism.  

Tea first became fashionable in Britain in the 1700s, but was available only to the elite. By the 18th Century, however, the UK was importing over 2,000 tonnes of tea each year. In 2020, the amount of tea imported into the UK had a net mass of around 129 thousand tons – the British drink 36 billion cups a year.

Tea originates in China, but by the 18th Century tensions between the British and Chinese led British companies to hunt for new sources of tea. In order to end Chinese monopoly on the tea trade, the British began to plant tea in Sri Lanka and India.  

Colonial tea planters set up estates in North Bengal and Assam, where conditions for tea growing were optimal. Many well-known household tea brands have their roots in colonial era India.  

Cultivating tea is an incredibly labour intensive. With slavery outlawed in the British Empire from 1833, The East India company began to use indentured labourers – for whom conditions were not noticeably far removed from slavery. People from Nepal and Adivasis tribes, among others, were forcibly resettled, unable to leave the estates they worked on, and paid exploitatively low wages.  

Today, over 350 million people in India are employed in the tea industry. Many are workers on the very same tea estates first planted by colonial settlers. 150 years later, and descendants of the first tea labourers face many of the same problems.

Much of the tea we drink in the UK today is grown in unacceptable conditions.  

Tea estates control the lives of their labourers, with child labour, malnutrition, poor educational provision and appalling living conditions rife among workers who are unable to leave the estates. Workers and their families are afraid to speak out for fear of repercussions, and estates are often (illegally) closed to journalists and news outlets.  

Traidcraft Exchange’s ‘Who picked my tea?’ campaign led to six major brands agreeing to publish which estates their tea is grown, increasing transparency in the tea supply chain. At the end of last year, as a direct result of this campaign, the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre published their tea transparency tracker which lists over 3000 tea estates, and led 17 companies to publish their suppliers.  

But transparency from brands is only the first step in making real changes to the horrific conditions works suffer. Traidcraft Exchange is working alongside communities exploited by tea estates, raising awareness of their rights, and helping them to demand change, as well as providing skills training so communities can develop other sources of income, outside the tea sector.  So far, our work has reached 9000 tea workers on 35 estates.  

Once these tea sector communities in Assam and North Bengal are supported to get their basic rights, they can fulfil their human potential. They will be able work in dignified conditions, with safe housing and have access to land to grow their own food. Alongside this, they can get skills to work in other sectors and take up new opportunities, such as mobile phone repair and transportation.  

This International Tea Day, help us build a world where our breakfast tea doesn’t leave the bitter taste of exploitation. Sign up to our email list to find out more.