So Cadbury’s have sold out to the Americans, and I think it’s rather a sad day.
Not because I’m anti-foreign takeovers, because generally I believe in an open market. Not because I subscribe to the great “decline of British manufacturing” school of thought, and if I did, I wouldn’t necessarily associate it with cream eggs.
I’m sad because in a way, it marks the end of a NFEA chapter.
When NFEA was established in 1992, the Cadbury firm and the Cadbury family were extremely supportive. Sir Dominic Cadbury was a NFEA vice-president for many years, our first chief executive, John Guest, was a secondee from Cadburys and our first office was at Bourneville.
Cadburys of course were one of that great group of Quaker businesses who truly believed in giving back to society. It wasn’t corporate social responsibility as a gesture, as a marketing tool or even a whim of the chairman’s wife. It was because they genuinely believed that business existed to serve society, and that business could only thrive in a healthy society.
And for all the millions ploughed into CSR, for all the departments and consultants who live off the back of CSR, it’s rare these days to see a big business taking the direct and practical steps that the Cadburys took to support small business, and we are all the poorer for it.