[g8-sheffield] Re: g8-sheffield Digest, Vol 4, Issue 64
Chris Malins
chrismalins at gmail.com
Wed Jun 29 15:39:39 BST 2005
Ironic that the example of the need for centralisation should be a group
doing something and ignoring everyone else. Surely there is room for a
comparison with the SWP unilateralist tendency...
Dan wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Yeah, it's good stuff. I also got send this today, from the SWP website:
>
> http://www.swp.org.uk/article_swp.php?article_id=305
> "Democracy without centralism will fail"
>
> It's an interesting article. The writer, for example, cites something
> that both Naomi Klein and Starhawk have previously picked up on:
>
>> At one anti-capitalist demonstration not long ago, in Washington DC,
>> demonstrators agreed to blockade all the entrances to a World Bank
>> conference. But in one area a group decided to follow their own
>> decision, ignoring everyone else, and let the bank delegates
>> through-dissolving the whole protest into pointlessness.
>
>
> There are certainly discussions to be had about what kind of structure
> works where. The drive toward decentralisation is something that both
> certain left-wingers and most economists share. We need more argument
> about is when it's really appropriate, and when it doesn't work. The SWP
> writer simply says that the task of working towards revolution demands a
> level of organisation that autonomistas cannot provide. I have always
> believed that we must walk the talk - that our actions today must mirror
> the future we want. That would mean, for example, not having a civil war
> in order to give power to the proletariat, because I believe in peace -
> and because too many revolutionaries have a category for 'reactionary
> elements of the working class' who can also be shot. (This may be naive
> of me, but I refuse to drop it just yet!)
>
> There's also a nice bit in Mark Steel's 'reasons to be cheerful' that is
> a rather amusing critique of 'the tyranny of self-organisation', about
> an anti-fascist rally he was on.
>
> "... every single person amongst the thousands who attend, as they
> arrive asks the nearest person ‘what’s happening?’ But no one ever knew
> the answer. Eventually, a group of fifty or more would walk in the same
> direction and everyone followed. They might have all been going for a
> burger, but as everyone joined them it would go around that the fascists
> were definitely this way. So even if they were going for a burger they
> would now believe that the fascists are this way anyway and abandon the
> burger.” [Mark Steel, Reasons to be Cheerful, London, Simon & Schuster,
> 2001, p.39]
>
> I'm personally still much more in favour of self-organisation, because
> centralisation, historically, always leads to abuses of power. But then,
> saying "there's no power here" doesn't make it so either!
>
> A couple of other resources: the Joseph Rowntree foundation have been
> funding a 'power inquiry' (see http://www.powerinquiry.org/) and they've
> produced a book called "Beyond the Ballot - 57 democratic innovations
> from around the world." (PDF from
> http://www.powerinquiry.org/publications/documents/BeyondtheBallot_000.pdf)
>
> Maybe we could do something at Matilda, from a much more leftie angle?
> It could be an inquiry from the left - with democratic centralists and
> autonomists making up two of the positions, for example. (It was
> heartening to read in the SWP article that debate is so important: and I
> noted that I fit in to the 'fevered dreams about the SWP being
> armies...! I only hope it's not merely spin...)
>
> And if you have time, take a look at http://www.extremedemocracy.com/ -
> lots of chapters on devolving democracy until it looks a little like a
> free market...
>
> Maybe we shouldn't close this list. Perhaps it could be used for debate...?
>
> Dan
> ----
>
>
> IAN WALLACE wrote:
>
>> I think Vol 4, Issue 64 might go down in history itself. Two very
>> good, thoughtful, measured, and generally excellent contributions
>> focusing on some of the real issues from Mozaz and Fabien.
>> Maybe the G8 Sheffield Digest could always be like this?
>> Ian
>>
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>> Today's Topics:
>>
>> 1. Inside the Murky World of Make Poverty History (zerosevenfour two)
>> 2. Fwd: [resistg82005] Great article in the guardian today (fabian)
>>
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 11:49:44 +0000
>> From: "zerosevenfour two"
>> Subject: [g8-sheffield] Inside the Murky World of Make Poverty
>> History
>> To: g8-sheffield at lists.aktivix.org
>> Message-ID:
>> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
>>
>> a must read
>>
>> http://indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/06/315058.html
>>
>> Make Poverty History would seem an unprecedented success story.
>> Uniting
>> trade unions, charities, NGOs and a stellar-cast of celebrities,
>> its cause
>> is dominating media coverage while the campaign's white wristband
>> is being
>> worn the world over. So why, as the G8 summit approaches, are leading
>> members briefing against each other to the press and African social
>> movements saying ‘nothing about us, without us'? Stuart Hodkinson
>> investigates.
>>
>> For a sun-soaked Friday in late May, there was an unusual air of
>> panic at
>> the British Trade Union Congress (TUC) for the monthly members'
>> assembly of
>> Make Poverty History (MPH). Officials hurriedly briefed reception
>> with some
>> last-minute security instructions: “You must make sure that only
>> assembly
>> members are let in,” one instructed. “The meeting is open to the
>> public, but
>> only public members of Make Poverty History.”
>>
>> The nerves were understandable. Two damning stories about MPH were
>> about to
>> break in the British national press. The cover story of British
>> centre-left
>> weekly, New Statesman, ‘Why Oxfam is failing Africa', had exposed
>> deep anger
>> among members of the MPH coalition at Oxfam's ‘revolving door'
>> relationship
>> with UK government officials and policies, accusing it of allowing
>> Britain's
>> two most powerful politicians, Prime Minister Tony Blair and
>> Chancellor
>> Gordon Brown, to co-opt MPH as a front for New Labour's own
>> questionable
>> anti-poverty drive.
>>
>> The right-wing Sunday Telegraph, meanwhile, had given notice of
>> its shocking
>> exclusive on how large numbers of the ubiquitous MPH white
>> wristband – the
>> very symbol of the campaign – had been knowingly sourced from Chinese
>> sweatshops with Oxfam's blessing.
>>
>> Inside MPH, however, the embarrassing revelations were no
>> surprise. For the
>> past six months, some of the UK 's leading development and
>> environmental
>> NGOs have been increasingly vocal in their unease about a campaign
>> high on
>> celebrity octane but low on radical politics. One insider, active
>> in a key
>> MPH working group, argues there “has often been a complete divergence
>> between the democratically agreed message of our public campaign
>> and the
>> actual spin that greets the outside world”. He is angry:
>>
>> “Our real demands on trade, aid and debt, and criticisms of UK
>> government
>> policy in developing countries have been consistently swallowed up
>> by white
>> bands, celebrity luvvies and praise upon praise for Blair and
>> Brown being
>> ahead of other world leaders on these issues.”
>>
>> THE RISE AND RISE OF MPH
>>
>> This is surely not what campaigners had in mind back in late 2003
>> when Oxfam
>> initiated a series of informal meetings with charities and
>> campaigning
>> organisations to consider forming an unprecedented coalition
>> against poverty
>> in 2005 to coincide with the UK presidency of both the G8 summit
>> and EU, the
>> first five year evaluation of progress on the UN Millennium
>> Development
>> Goals (MDGs) agreed in 2000, the 6th WTO Ministerial Meeting in
>> Hong Kong,
>> and the 20th anniversary of Live Aid.
>>
>> In September 2004, the Make Poverty History coalition was officially
>> launched as the UK mobilisation of an international coalition, the
>> Global
>> Call to Action Against Poverty (G-CAP), led by Oxfam
>> International, Action
>> Aid and DATA – the controversial Africa charity set up by U2
>> frontman, Bono
>> and multi-billionnaires, George Soros, and Microsoft's Bill Gates,
>> the
>> world's second richest person with a fortune of just under $50
>> billion.
>>
>> Since then, MPH has become an impressive campaigning coalition,
>> boasting
>> over 460 member organisations including all the major trade unions
>> and the
>> TUC, development NGOs, charities, churches as well as several
>> faith and
>> diaspora groups. Its successful mix of celebrity backers and
>> anti-poverty
>> message has captured the attention of both politicians and mass
>> media,
>> encapsulated in the near-hysteria following the annoucement by
>> veteran rock
>> star and Africa campaigner, Bob Geldof, that a series of free
>> concerts in
>> London, Paris, Philadelphia, Rome, and Berlin would take place
>> under the
>> banner ‘Live 8' to coincide with the MPH campaign to lobby the G8
>> summit in
>> Gleneagles, Scotland in July.
>>
>> But despite the success, there is widespread unhappiness within the
>> coalition over the campaign's public face and its cosiness to
>> Blair and
>> Brown. Critics argue that on paper at least, MPH's policy demands
>> on the UK
>> government are fairly radical, especially its calls for “trade
>> justice not
>> free trade”, which would require G8 and EU countries, notably the
>> UK, to
>> stop forcing through free market policies on poor countries as
>> part of aid,
>> trade deals or debt relief. MPH also says rich countries should
>> immediately
>> double aid by $50bn per year and finally meet 35-year old promises
>> to spend
>> 0.7 per cent of their national income in development aid. More and
>> better
>> aid, meanwhile, should be matched by cancellation of the
>> “unpayabale” debts
>> of the world's poorest countries through a “fair and transparent
>> international process” that uses new money, not slashed aid
>> budgets. With
>> additional calls for the regulation of multinationals and the
>> democratisation of the IMF and World Bank, John Hilary, Campaigns
>> Director
>> of UK development NGO, War on Want, has a point when he asserts
>> that MPH's
>> policies “strike at the very heart of the neo-liberal agenda.”
>>
>> The problem, however, is that when these policies are relayed to a
>> public
>> audience, they become virtually indistinguishable from those of
>> the UK
>> government. This was brought home back in March this year when
>> Blair's
>> deeply compromised Commission for Africa set out its neo-liberal
>> proposals
>> for the corporate plunder of Africa's human and natural resources
>> under the
>> identical headlines used by MPH – ‘trade justice', ‘drop the debt'
>> and ‘more
>> and better aid'. In return, most MPH members, led by Oxfam and the
>> TUC,
>> warmly welcomed the report's recommendations. As Ghana 's Yao
>> Graham makes
>> clear in July's Red Pepper, African civil society is far less
>> enamoured with
>> the Commission's report, which he argues lays out a blueprint for
>> “the new
>> scramble for Africa ”.
>>
>> REVOLVING DOORS
>>
>> Thanks to the New Statesman exposé, much of the blame is placed on
>> the
>> leadership of Oxfam – the UK 's biggest and most powerful development
>> agency. Despite its pro-poor image around the world, over the last
>> two
>> decades, Oxfam has become a feeder school for government special
>> advisers
>> and World Bank officials and has a particularly close relationship
>> with New
>> Labour. Blair's special advisor on international development, Justin
>> Forsyth, was previously Oxfam's campaigns manager. Forsyth's
>> opposite number
>> at the Treasury is Oxfam board member, Shriti Vadera, a former
>> director at
>> the US bank, UBS Warburg, and specialist in public-private
>> partnerships, a
>> policy that litters the Africa Commission's report. Less well
>> known is John
>> Clark, who left Oxfam for the World Bank in 1992 to join the World
>> Bank
>> where he was responsible for the Bank's co-optation strategy with
>> civil
>> society before advising Tony Blair in 2000 on his “Africa Partnership
>> Initiative” that directly led to the New Partnership for Africa 's
>> Development (NEPAD) in 2001. At the heart of MPH is Oxfam's Sarah
>> Kline, a
>> former World Bank official who champions the organisation's
>> ‘constructive
>> dialogue' approach with the IMF and World Bank.
>>
>> Oxfam's political independence from neo-liberal governance is also
>> compromised by the £40m or so of its annual income that comes from
>> government or other public funds. Nearly £14m alone originates
>> from the
>> Department for International Development (DfID), which is a major
>> champion
>> of privatisation and its benefits for UK companies in developing
>> countries.
>> In this, Oxfam is of course by no means alone – almost every
>> development NGO
>> in Britain is on DfID's payroll. While it is possible to take and use
>> government money progressively while being critical of the donor's
>> policies,
>> such large amounts of government funding inevitably influence how
>> far Oxfam
>> will stick its neck out politically and risk future funding cuts.
>>
>> Oxfam's unrivalled financial resources and existing public profile
>> make it
>> by far the most powerful organisation in the MPH coalition. Last
>> year,
>> Oxfam's annual income surpassed £180m – three times the amount
>> received by
>> its nearest rival, Christian Aid, and dwarfing more social
>> movement-oriented
>> development NGOs like WDM and War on Want who punch way above
>> their weight
>> on just over £1m each. Such wealth disparity inevitably translates
>> into the
>> direction taken by the coalition, especially its public image.
>> Oxfam's army
>> of press officers, researchers and campaign officers can naturally
>> take
>> advantage of the huge media opportunities generated by the campaign.
>>
>> But making Oxfam the scapegoat for MPH's co-optation by New Labour
>> misses
>> the key role played by Comic Relief and its celebrity co-founder,
>> the film
>> director, Richard Curtis. As one of Britain's most prolific and
>> brilliant
>> comedy writers, Curtis shot to fame in the 1980s with the TV series
>> Blackadder, and his since penned hits like Mr Bean, The Vicar of
>> Dibley, and
>> the blockbuster movie, Four Weddings and a Funeral. With wealth
>> and fame has
>> come enormous political clout. In 2001, British centre-left daily
>> broadsheet, The Guardian, ranked him the 10th most powerful person
>> in the UK
>> media industry, ahead of every national newspaper editor, except
>> Paul Dacre
>> of the Daily Mail.
>>
>> Curtis's personal commitment to raising money for Africa goes back
>> to 1985
>> when, at the height of the Ethiopian famine, he visited refugee
>> camps as a
>> guest of Oxfam. It was a life-changing experience and on his
>> return to
>> London persuaded showbiz friends to set up Comic Relief, the
>> celebrity-led
>> charity that uses the medium of comedy to raise both awareness about
>> poverty, famine and disease in Africa , and huge sums of money to
>> such
>> causes.
>>
>> Despite its incredible success in bringing in the bacon – over
>> £337m since
>> its inception – Comic Relief's live televised shows every two
>> years are also
>> criticised for their distinct lack of politics and inaccurate
>> portrayal of
>> Africa as a continent-come-country ravaged by natural disasters
>> and warring
>> tribes – the roles of colonialism, IMF and World Bank structural
>> adjustment
>> programmes and Western corporations don't get a look in.
>>
>> THE MPH MEDIA MACHINE
>>
>> Comic Relief's apolitical approach to Africa is deeply important
>> to the
>> fractious debate inside MPH. For while Bono and Geldof get the
>> limelight and
>> Oxfam dominates the policy agenda, it is Richard Curtis who is in the
>> driving seat of MPH's all-important publicity machine.
>>
>> Curtis's power partly lies in the financial and human resources he
>> brings to
>> the campaign. He has personally ensured the bankrolling of MPH,
>> convincing
>> Scottish multi-millionaire business tycoon, Sir Tom Hunter, to
>> donate a £1m
>> to the campaign, and advertising executives to donate more than
>> £4m of free
>> airtime. This helped propel his ‘Click' advert worldwide in which
>> global
>> film and music mega-stars, like George Clooney, Bono and Kylie
>> Minogue,
>> kitted out in full white T-shirt and wristband regalia, click
>> their fingers
>> every three seconds to mark another child dying in Africa . Curtis
>> has used
>> his unrivalled celebrity address book to ensure that MPH's
>> platforms, events
>> and entire PR strategy are dripping with celebrities.
>>
>> While most MPH members gratefully accept that Curtis's celebrity
>> support has
>> been integral to the campaign's phenomenal marketing success
>> (sales of the
>> MPH white wristband are nearly 4 million and the website gets
>> thousands of
>> hits a minute), some believe it has come with too heavy a price.
>> First
>> there's the dubious role of Sir Tom Hunter, no ordinary sharp-dressed
>> philanthropist. Worth £678m, his Hunter Foundation charity is an
>> evangelical
>> force behind public-private partnerships and child entrepreneurism in
>> Scotland . Since 2001, it has helped fund the Scottish Executive's
>> Schools
>> Enterprise Programme in which the private sector helps groom
>> children as
>> young as five in the wonders of business.
>>
>> Ewan Hunter, CEO of The Hunter Foundation, rejects this
>> characterisation of
>> the scheme as “completely erroneous”, and claims it is “a world
>> leading
>> initiative” to support a “can do” attitude in children: “For the
>> record we
>> consult widely with the relevant trade unions, councils, governments,
>> teachers and children before agreeing any investment in
>> education.” Note he
>> doesn't actually refute the business-child relationship.
>>
>> Tom Hunter recently caused a storm even in the right-wing tabloid
>> press when
>> he began selling special edition charity Live 8-MPH white
>> wristbands stamped
>> with the logos of six global fashion brands, including Hilfiger
>> Denim whose
>> owner, Tommy Hilfiger Corporation, is accused by labour right
>> campaigners of
>> sourcing its clothes from anti-union sweatshops in Latin America
>> and the
>> East Asia.
>>
>> According to Stephen Coats, Executive Director of the
>> Chicago-based US/Labor
>> Education in the Americas Project that monitors and supports the
>> basic
>> rights of workers in Latin America, Hilfiger's labour record falls
>> short of
>> minimum standards:
>>
>> “In our experience, Tommy Hilfiger is at the bottom of the list in
>> demonstrating refusal to accept responsibility for the way workers
>> are
>> treated.”
>>
>> Back in October 2003, the company was accused by labour rights
>> campaigners
>> of cutting and running from its responsibilities to workers when
>> evidence
>> was uncovered of labour abuses at the Tarrant blue jean factory in
>> Ajalpan ,
>> Mexico .
>>
>> The revelations have once again left Make Poverty History
>> campaigners angry
>> at the contamination of their high-profile symbol by its
>> association with
>> anti-labour companies. War on Want's John Hilary speaks for many
>> inside MPH
>> when he says that unless Hilfiger had suddenly reformed without
>> them knowing
>> “it's not the sort of company we'd want to be associated with”.
>>
>> Then there's Abbot Mead Vickers (AMV), the UK 's largest
>> advertising agency
>> that has previously worked for Comic Relief and has been brought
>> in to help
>> with the campaign's communication strategy. Among AMV's many
>> ‘politically
>> incorrect' proposals rejected by incensed MPH members was a
>> high-profile
>> billboard campaign in which images of Ghandi and Nelson Mandela
>> would sit
>> alongside Gordon Brown, with the caption ‘2005…?'. The ad's
>> message was
>> clear: this could be the year in which Brown himself becomes a
>> ‘man of
>> history', cajoling the G8 into the ultimate sacrifice of dropping
>> Africa 's
>> debt to take his place alongside two martyrs of anti-colonialism.
>>
>> Unsurprisingly, this ridiculous proposal to draw an equivalence
>> between
>> those whose lives were dedicated to fighting white supremacist
>> imperialism,
>> and a man who wants to turn Africa into a giant free trade zone on
>> behalf of
>> Western multinationals, was blocked by several incensed Make
>> Poverty History
>> members. But such insensitivity comes with the turf: AMV's
>> corporate clients
>> not only include Pepsi Cola, Pfizer, Sainsbury, Camelot, and the
>> Economist
>> but also, ironically, Diageo, the drinks multinational which
>> happens to own
>> the Gleneagles Hotel where the G8 leaders will be meeting, and is
>> a major
>> investor in Africa.
>>
>> According to Lucy Michaels from UK-based research and campaigning
>> organisation, Corporate Watch, Diageo has a track record of
>> lobbying OECD
>> and G8 countries to push for greater investment liberalisation in
>> developing
>> countries and its PR activities in Africa are deeply controversial:
>>
>> “Diageo aggressively promotes its products in Africa by attacking
>> one the
>> continent's key micro-scale industries – home brewing. It recently
>> released
>> its 'Corporate Citizenship Report for East Africa' in which it
>> labelled
>> unbranded alcohol as posing severe 'health and social risks', despite
>> evidence from the International Centre of Alcohol Policies,
>> incidentally
>> funded by Diageo, that 'illicit' brew' is generally of good
>> quality and is
>> vital to the household and local economy.”
>>
>> SANITISING MPH'S MESSAGE
>>
>> But the most destructive aspect of Curtis's involvement, critics
>> argue, has
>> been his personal intervention in the public communications of MPH
>> to ensure
>> that the politics are routinely buried by the personality as part
>> of his own
>> personal and completely unaccountable strategy to change G8 policy:
>> “Richard's philosophy has become painfully obvious to everyone in
>> MPH,” one
>> critic argues. “He believes that we should support the efforts of
>> the UK
>> government to bring other G8 countries into its line on aid and
>> debt, and is
>> adamant that Brown and Blair should not be criticised.”
>>
>> A few months ago, tensions came to a head when members challenged the
>> discrepancy between MPH's agreed position and the campaign's
>> pro-government
>> public face. The response from a key Comic Relief official was
>> that Curtis
>> “found it difficult” to turn against the government because of his
>> personal
>> friendship with Gordon Brown. The extent of the Curtis-Brown
>> relationship
>> was revealed on primetime national television on Saturday 25 June in
>> Curtis's BBC 1 film, The Girl in the Café (bizarrely announced as
>> being
>> shown across Africa ).
>>
>> A love story between Gina, an idealistic young campaigner, and
>> Lawrence, an
>> adviser to a tough but caring Gordon Brown-style Chancellor, who
>> helps his
>> new lover get an audience with world leaders at a pretend G8
>> summit in
>> Iceland and inspires the UK government to insist on ‘making poverty
>> history'. Brown even attended the Scottish première of the film in
>> May at an
>> event organised by MPH paymaster, Tom Hunter, who has since been
>> knighted in
>> the Queen's Birthday Honours List.
>>
>> Against this background, it is little wonder that a number of NGOs
>> in MPH
>> have recently felt forced to try to undermine the
>> Oxfam-Curtis-Brown axis by
>> making their displeasure known to the press. The ensuing fall out
>> led to MPH
>> members agreeing to quickly distance the coalition from the
>> government by
>> rushing forward by several weeks a report criticising UK
>> government policy.
>> However, the respite was only temporary. The coup de grâce came in
>> a recent
>> announcement that Gordon Brown has been invited to the 2 July
>> rally in
>> Edinburgh .
>>
>> Frustration would not perhaps be so intense if there was real
>> pluralism and
>> democracy in MPH's organising practices. But as the G8 draws near,
>> MPH
>> apparatchiks have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that
>> come the 2
>> July rally in Edinburgh , only the branded, monolithic message and
>> speakers
>> of MPH are seen and heard.
>>
>> DON'T MENTION THE WAR
>>
>> MPH's website fails to even acknowledge the other protests, events
>> and
>> groups like Dissent, Trident Ploughshares and G8Alternatives, but who
>> themselves are actively encouraging everyone to go and support the
>> MPH
>> rally. The MPH Coordinating Team, which includes Oxfam, Comic
>> Relief and the
>> TUC, has also twice unanimously vetoed the Stop the War
>> Coalition's (STWC)
>> application to join MPH on the Orwellian grounds that the issues
>> of economic
>> justice and development are separate from that of war, and STWC's
>>
>> === message truncated ===
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
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