[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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