[g8-sheffield] Re: g8-sheffield Digest, Vol 4, Issue 64
Lee Rock
lee.rock at blueyonder.co.uk
Wed Jun 29 16:43:33 BST 2005
Dan
If you have been trying to follow what is going on in the SWP at the moment,
with regards to RESPECT and StWC then you will have found it very difficult.
You read of no debate in their publications, but instead have to try and
read between the lines of what the leadership is saying.
There is no real internal democracy for ordinary members of the SWP.
Decisions are made by a self-electing leadership.
The SWP does not operate 'democratic centralism'.
All of this is a real problem for the rest of us on the left - as the SWP
are by far the largest and most influential group. In Sheffield, for
example, they insisted on doing their own thing via StWC with regards to the
G8 visit. (Many of their members would not even have been aware of the
Dissent campaign.) How much better it would have been if there had been a
single united campaign around this one issue, don't you think?
All the best
Lee
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan" <dan at aktivix.org>
To: "IAN WALLACE" <ian.wallace15 at btopenworld.com>
Cc: <g8-sheffield at lists.aktivix.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2005 3:05 PM
Subject: Re: [g8-sheffield] Re: g8-sheffield Digest, Vol 4, Issue 64
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
>
> */g8-sheffield-request at lists.aktivix.org/* wrote:
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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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