The once godlike pop singer Morrissey is grey-haired, florid and about an inch away from seeming tragi-comic. Fur coats, once seen as disgusting badges of shame, are more fashionable today than in living memory. And the once-revered queen of right-on-ness, Anita Roddick, who pretty much single-handedly showed a generation that it was possible to combine ethics and commerce, has just sold out to L’Oréal for £652m, of which, with an 18% stake in the company they founded, she and her husband Gordon will pocket £130m. Because they’re worth it.

For some of us, this feels like a watershed moment: my generation (I’m 40) became politicised in small but long-lasting ways in the 1980s — we were aggressively vegetarian thanks to Morrissey, violently opposed to animal testing thanks to Roddick, against the wearing of fur thanks to a combination of both, helped along by those eye-popping anti-fur ads by David Bailey.

We wore slogan T-shirts by Katharine Hamnett, and the rightness of, say, supporting the slightly sandals-and-lentilsy Body Shop was never questioned. Back then L’Oréal was not just another cosmetics company but was boycotted and much campaigned against for its unrepentant stance on animal testing (which it abandoned in 1989). This stance was diametrically opposed to the Body Shop’s, whose labels prominently featured the words “Against animal testing”.

Things change, of course, and ideological U-turns are occasionally necessary if one is to evolve. Like many of my generation, I was a vegetarian for five years or so and am now actively carnivorous. When I bought a coat a couple of years ago, not realising that its collar was made of real fur, rather than fake, I wore it anyway (uncomfortably, it has to be said — it creeped me out and ended up on eBay).

I have a daughter who was very ill when she was born, and although the idea of animal testing still turns my stomach, I am 100% in favour of it — as, surely, is anyone whose loved ones have spent any time in an intensive care ward, or anyone who last week read about the terrifying and catastrophic consequences of testing new drugs on humans.

But for some reason, Roddick selling the Body Shop to L’Oréal still comes as something of a shock. It is rather like finding out that the people who used to keep up a 24-hour protest outside South Africa House in Trafalgar Square had all snuck off to buy villas in Cape Town (“And we have loads of servants! So cheap!”) or as though Bono said “Sod Third World debt. It makes me yawn. I’m off for a pint,” and Bob Geldof piped up with “Africa, shmafrica”.

Speaking last week Dame Anita said: “For both Gordon and I, this is without doubt the best 30th anniversary gift the Body Shop could have received. L’Oréal has displayed visionary leadership in wanting to be an authentic advocate and supporter of our values. They understand what a maverick the Body Shop was in the business world.”

Um, not quite. They understand the value of conscientious consumerism, and that “ethical” or green-seeming brands are where it’s at as far as the consumer is concerned, and are keen to add some to their portfolio, much in the way that American Express has introduced its new Red card. (For every £1 spent by a customer, Amex will donate a minimum of 1% to the Global Fund, which helps women and children with HIV and Aids in Africa. I’ve got one. It feels good. But if I really wanted to help children in Africa, I’d give money to Unicef.).

So it’s sweet of Roddick to appear to believe that L’Oréal admires the Body Shop for its “maverick” qualities, but the less attractive truth of the matter is that giant conglomerates are keen to get in on conscience-friendly acts, and that this is due to cynicism rather than a deep love of the planet, or of Amazonian Indians and what’s left of their poor rainforests.

I suppose people less geriatric than I might well praise L’Oréal, Amex or indeed the Gap, currently selling red T-shirts with 50% of profits going to the aforementioned Global Fund, for wanting to tap into consumers’ desire to make a difference. And I suppose they might have a point: after all the Global Fund does good work, and will get more funding as a direct consequence of people getting a new credit card or buying a new T-shirt.

And yet . . . I find the whole business oddly cynical and demoralising. It suggests that we are only capable of being charitable if we are offered photogenic bait: a pop concert, a flash new Amex card, a T-shirt, some self-righteous rock star with a messianic complex banging on (and on) as if he were full of extraordinary wisdom and the rest of us were desperately thick. The only people who properly give to charity are the super-rich or the super-poor: the middle classes are the tricky ones and, being among them, I find it slightly grim that so few of us are able quietly to fill out a direct debit form to help those in need. Why do we need to be seen to be flashing our red Amex or wearing our charity T-shirt?

I stopped shopping at the Body Shop years ago, for the good reason that it got left behind when other ethically minded cosmetics companies got in on the act with superior products. But I liked knowing it was there, still tenaciously combative and right-on, still, via its website, urging its customers to make known their dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq.

L’Oréal says it’ll run the Body Shop as a stand-alone business, only stepping in when it comes to marketing and branding. Which it might do, I suppose. But I still feel like yet another one of of my youthful ideals has come crashing to the ground. Talk about a sellout.

• And talk about taking a bulldozer to flatten an ant: Claudia Schiffer, sometime supermodel, has won a year-long legal battle against her former chef, Sophie Michell, after the latter had the temerity to use a complimentary quote from Schiffer on the cover of her cookbook. “We love Sophie, and everyone loves her cooking too,” the jacket proclaimed, inoffensively enough. The quote came from a letter Schiffer had written to Michell’s mother.

  Annoyed at the quote being used without her permission, Schiffer hired über-lawyers Mishcon de Reya to take the matter to court. She won: the book has been withdrawn, the process has cost Ms Michell, who has ME, £100,000. She went bankrupt a fortnight ago.

  What on earth is this about? Is Schiffer mad, or greedy, or both? Still, her method gives a person ideas. I noticed the other day that a book I’ve never read features a ringing endorsement from me on its jacket, which clearly infringes my human rights. I must give Cherie Blair a call.

  india.knight@sunday-times.co.uk
  

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