John Hilary | ukwatch.net

After the crisis, a new beginning

JamieSW — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:19:17 +0000

Strange times bring strange bedfellows. On the same day that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling were putting the finishing touches to their plan to bail out the banks with up to £500bn of public money, the international labour movement marked the first ever world day for decent work.

Events in more than 100 countries across five continents made it a genuinely global occasion, yet fears of imminent recession and accompanying job losses put any celebrations on ice. Instead the day was spent in sober reflection on the role decent work has to play in rebalancing the global economy and addressing the root causes of the crisis now threatening to spread across the world.

For with the ink barely dry on the government’s immediate rescue plans, attention is already turning to the underlying economic problems that have allowed the current financial crisis to develop. Even now, the recognition is growing that fundamental changes are needed to the global economic system far beyond the reach of recapitalisation packages or injections of liquidity, however large.

Increasingly, too, there is an understanding that rebalancing the relationship between capital and labour will be a central element in any long-term solution. Put simply, decent work forms an essential part of the macroeconomic restructuring needed to address the roots of the current malaise.

The basic definition of decent work is productive employment for women and men in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity. The moral case for such rights has been clear ever since Engels wrote his classic account of the working class in England in 1844, and there is still much to do today to ensure that all workers in Britain enjoy decent pay and working conditions. While the minimum wage posted its latest rise this month, to £5.73 an hour, many employers still break the law by not paying it. Women migrant workers are those most at risk.

Yet many of the worst sweatshops relocated long ago to the low-cost labour markets of the developing world. The media has been filled with stories of workers producing goods for the British high street in abominable conditions in countries such as Bangladesh, China and India.

Consumers have expressed outrage at news of women being forced to work around the clock for a few pence an hour under the threat of constant abuse and humiliation. As long as there are no legal requirements that companies must guarantee all workers decent conditions and a living wage, such scandals will continue.

The UN has also stressed the importance of decent work for poverty reduction. Achieving full employment and decent work for all has been enshrined in the millennium development goals adopted by world leaders at the start of the century.

UN agencies confirm that productive employment is the link that can translate economic growth into long-term development, enabling people to work their way out of poverty rather than just deeper into debt. Without decent work opportunities for the many, growth simply concentrates the benefits of economic development in the hands of an elite few.

Yet decent work is no longer just a moral imperative. The financial crisis has underlined the systemic dangers to the wider economy of ignoring workers’ rights. For while the crisis may have manifested itself in the convulsions of the financial markets, its roots are to be found in the imbalance which has been allowed to grow between corporate power on the one hand and a disempowered labour movement on the other. “Light touch” globalisation has brought multinational corporations vast new freedoms as the regulations governing their operations are dismantled in country after country. By contrast, workers have found their rights, wages and working conditions increasingly undermined.

As a result of this imbalance, multinational companies have amassed huge profits in the globalised economy, notably through relocating to or sourcing from labour markets such as China where pay and conditions are kept low. Working people have been largely excluded from the feast, as shown by the decline in the share of national income enjoyed by wages and salaries over the past three decades. The UK and US credit bubbles were inflated to record levels in order to make up for this shortfall in working people’s pay packets, and it is the bursting of those bubbles that echoes all around us today.

By the same token, decent remuneration of workers is now necessary both to avoid driving us deeper into recession and to restore a broader macroeconomic balance. Darling’s suggestion just last month that public-sector wages must be kept low to stave off the threat of inflation now sounds as if it came from another world.

This rebalancing of relations between capital and labour is especially important now that recession is looming, not least because it is working people who will again be hit hardest by the economic downturn. As demand weakens and businesses find credit harder to come by, the pressure on jobs will build.

The first signs of this are already appearing in Britain, where official figures show the largest rise in unemployment in 16 years. The UK jobless total is forecast to pass the 2 million mark in the coming months for the first time in over a decade.

In many of the world’s poorest countries the impact will be even worse, and it will again be women workers who are most affected by the downturn. When the economies of south-east Asia collapsed under the financial crisis of 1997, the feminisation of employment which had been heralded as one of the achievements of the Asian economic miracle turned into a feminisation of unemployment almost overnight. Thousands of Thai and Indonesian women were forced into prostitution as a result of losing their jobs.

Today’s financial crisis opens up the debate over what sort of economic system we wish to create for the future. Now that the merits of free-market capitalism have been exposed as a dangerous mirage, the world has the opportunity to develop a fairer system of international economic governance and to redistribute the spoils of globalisation.

Preserving the current model, with all its failings and injustices, will simply perpetuate the imbalances which have led to today’s crisis. A global economy based on decent work and a living wage for all women and men offers a real chance for a new beginning.

John Hilary is executive director of War on Want.

Food Crisis: Stop Digging!

Ellie Keen — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 22:34:44 +0000

Forget Mugabe. This week’s UN food summit in Rome has opened up a far more profound debate over the future of the global economy and our ability to feed the world’s ever-growing population. In the blue corner, the government and corporate leaders who argue that we need more trade, more markets and more globalisation. In the red corner, a growing number of people who point out that when you’re in a hole, it’s a good idea to stop digging.

Cheerleader for the blues is the British prime minister. Gordon Brown would have us believe that the best way of tackling the global food crisis is to conclude the current round of talks at the World Trade Organisation, which aim to liberalise international trade still further and open world markets to the exports of multinational corporations. According to Brown, and to other siren voices in the British press over the past week, a good dose of free-market medicine is what the world needs to bring it out of its current malaise.

Such medicine is more likely to kill the patient. It is precisely the liberalisation of agricultural markets that has exposed poor countries to the full force of the current food crisis, as their farmers have been overwhelmed by competition from cheap imports and local production systems have collapsed. Even countries such as Mexico and the Philippines, which were formerly self-sufficient in food, are now forced to buy in vast quantities to feed their own populations. To suggest that they need another free-trade deal is like tackling knife crime by handing out guns.

While local markets used to be protected from global price shocks, people now find themselves defenceless in the face of the perfect storm of factors which have forced up world prices. Free-market policies have driven millions of rural and urban workers in developing countries out of regular jobs and into the informal economy, where hunger is an ever present reality even at the best of times. As that hunger turns to desperation, food riots have erupted in 34 countries, including severe unrest in Egypt, Haiti, Bangladesh, Kenya and Somalia, to name a few.

The trade deal on offer at the WTO would exacerbate this problem by forcing open markets still further. In a plea to government ministers, UN chiefs and other officials attending this week’s food summit in Rome, an international coalition of 237 farmers’ organisations, aid agencies, food and trade specialists has published an open letter arguing that the global food crisis must not be invoked as a reason to rush through a WTO trade deal. Instead, the letter says, such a deal “will intensify the crisis by making food prices more volatile, increasing developing countries’ dependence on imports, and strengthening the power of multinational agribusiness”.

So where should we be looking for solutions? Certainly the world would welcome an end to the EU and US farm subsidies which lead to the dumping of agricultural produce on developing country markets, yet anyone who still believes that the WTO is going to deliver this has not done the maths. More importantly, agriculture needs a radical reorientation away from the mess that globalisation has made of it.

In the current crisis, the food sovereignty model that puts local producers and local markets first is winning over more and more followers. Investment in sustainable farming practices and genuine land reform would mark an important first step in that direction. But if there’s one thing that everyone is coming to see, it’s that “more of the same” is not an option.

A Privatisation Too Far

Tim Holmes — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 23:17:59 +0000

The Iraqi government’s decision to review the status of all private military and security companies operating in the country is an important step towards reasserting its authority. These private companies have long formed the second largest occupying force behind the US, with industry figures estimating up to 48,000 mercenaries active in Iraq at any one time. Yet the bigger question concerns Britain’s role in developing these private companies in the first place. How far are we willing to see wars which are supposedly fought in our name outsourced to mercenary troops?

The Iraqi government’s move follows Sunday’s massacre of Iraqi civilians by mercenaries employed by Blackwater, one of the most high-profile US military companies. Fuller reports of the incident now coming out of Iraq state that the Blackwater troops opened fire randomly across a line of traffic at a busy roundabout in the Mansour district of Baghdad. The civilian death toll could be as high as 20, according to the Iraqi interior ministry, with several more wounded.

Far from being an isolated incident, these killings are the latest in what has become an established pattern of human rights violations by private military and security contractors in Iraq, making them the most hated symbol of the occupation to many Iraqis. Widely publicised cases include the “sports shooting“ of civilian cars by a Triple Canopy mercenary in Baghdad; the trophy video posted on the internet by an employee of UK private military company Aegis, which has none the less just won a massive $475m contract to provide security services to the US military over the next two years; and the involvement of Titan and CACI contractors in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. Blackwater’s private army was again the cause of a major stand-off between US and Iraqi troops last December when one of its soldiers shot dead an Iraqi security officer in Baghdad.

The Iraqi government’s crackdown on mercenary companies is a first attempt to deal with the free ride they have enjoyed up to now. All foreign contractors were granted immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts as a result of the infamous Order 17 of the Coalition Provisional Authority, which remained in force even after the CPA left Iraq. There is no international framework for holding the companies to account, given that the UN’s 1989 convention on mercenaries was written to address a different problem in a different time, and there is no legislation in the UK or US to deal with them in their home territories either. One reason that there are so many reports of atrocities by private military contractors is that the mercenaries can seemingly commit such acts with complete impunity.

Yet beyond questions of jurisdiction, the Blackwater incident and its resulting fall-out raise the issue of just how far we are prepared to see military operations around the world privatised in our name. Is the business of war just another business? Or are there certain operations which are too sensitive to be outsourced to private companies, whether out of concern for the welfare of the host communities or for fear of undermining the state’s cherished monopoly on the use of force?

There is an established consensus among most observers that combat operations should remain the preserve of regular forces and not be opened up to mercenary troops. So far, so good. At the same time, however, regular forces are increasingly dependent on a range of combat support services provided by private companies, including interrogation, psychological warfare, armed escorts, covert operations and even battlefield intelligence. These services now form integral parts of modern combat, so should they not also remain exclusively the domain of regular armies?

Blackwater would have us think otherwise. Its president Gary Jackson has declared that he would like to build Blackwater into the “largest, most professional private army in the world”, while other officials from the company have spoken of having a brigade-sized force ready for deployment at a moment’s notice in any conflict zone. It will be interesting to see whether this week’s events have dented the company’s confidence.

According to commentators more favourable to the continued deployment of mercenaries, our forces are now incapable of carrying out their duties without this private paramilitary support. US and UK troops are so overstretched, the argument goes, that they would not be able to sustain occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan were it not for the private military and security companies operating alongside them. Given the horrors which have been inflicted on the people of those countries, however, that sounds like one of the most compelling arguments in favour of their demise.

Making a Killing From War

Tim Holmes — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 15:48:57 +0000

We did not need the horrors of Iraq and Afghanistan to tell us that war is a catastrophe for those on the receiving end. Fully 80% of the world’s poorest countries have suffered a major war in the previous 15 years, and the legacy of conflict casts a long shadow over a country’s development prospects. Nine of the 12 states with the worst rates of hunger and malnutrition have experienced recent conflict or civil strife.

Yet Iraq did remind us, graphically, that some people get a lot richer from war. Lest we forget this fact, the Defence Systems & Equipment International (DSEi) arms fair is back in London this week to showcase the corporate side of conflict. Never having been inside an event which boasts that it “enables countries to showcase their warships right alongside the exhibition venue”, I went along to the fair’s opening day to see which are the companies profiting from 21st century warfare.

From recent reports in the media, you might think the defence industry’s time was up. BAE Systems, Europe’s largest arms company, is under investigation for alleged corruption by the US department of justice, while the Serious Fraud Office’s infamous decision to drop the UK investigation into BAE is now itself facing a legal challenge. Reed Elsevier, which has run DSEi since 1999, announced in June that it was pulling out of all future arms fairs due to public pressure. Then Gordon Brown decreed that Deso, the UK government’s arms promotion agency and a key DSEi sponsor, is to be closed down. Could the tide be turning against the arms trade?

Once inside the fair, however, reports of the industry’s demise seem greatly exaggerated. This year’s DSEi has attracted over 1,350 exhibitors from 37 different countries, 400 of them participating for the first time. Major international players such as BAE, Thales, QinetiQ, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman all have large, high-tech displays, while hundreds of smaller companies offer specialised products from night optics to razor wire. More familiar high street names are present too, with Saab, Rolls-Royce and Land Rover all there to remind car owners that their next purchase could come with machine guns fitted as standard.

With governments such as our own determined to pursue military adventures around the world, the arms trade remains big business. And despite a supposedly softer focus on “force protection” rather than offensive weaponry at this year’s DSEi, there is no mistaking the fact that the industry’s end product is death. If cabinets full of guns, grenades and armour-piercing ordnance do not make this sufficiently clear, marketing is there to fill in the gaps. Lockheed Martin is promoting its bid to upgrade the British army’s Warrior armoured vehicle by talking up its “greatly enhanced lethality”, while one of the Pakistani companies present is selling a new automatic firing system on its “increased kill probability”.

Even the innocent-looking stands harbour secrets. Caterpillar’s smart display of its military diesel engines gives no indication that the company has been singled out by the UN for complicity in Israel’s violation of Palestinians’ human rights. Similar concerns apply to the eight Israeli companies exhibiting at this year’s fair. Campaigners have long complained that Israeli weapons technology has been developed in Palestine, Lebanon and other conflicts where many of its victims have been civilians, and indeed the equipment on the Rafael stand is proudly labelled “combat proven”. When the promotional video for the Cardom 120mm mortar boasts of its “superior lethality” and shows Israeli soldiers firing it at the rate of 16 rounds a minute, it is hard to keep recent history out of one’s mind.

The UK government is regularly condemned for inviting repressive regimes to send delegations to DSEi and, as if on cue, a phalanx of Chinese army generals did stride past me on their way to check out the latest hardware at one point in the day. Yet what was for me a more telling incident actually occurred at the stand of one of the two Chinese companies exhibiting for the first time at the fair. While I was talking with the firm’s representatives, two UK customs officers came up and carried out a snap inspection of the boots, uniforms and police accessories on display on the stand, suddenly becoming very exercised at finding two telescopic truncheons among the other equipment. Checking that the company reps had no more such batons with them (or worse), the officials strode off purposefully to check with higher authorities on what their punishment should be.

I appreciate the need to clamp down on offensive and illegal weaponry as much as the next person, but part of me couldn’t help sympathising with the Chinese exhibitors’ confusion that a couple of truncheons should attract such attention when all the grenade-launchers, mortars, heavy machine guns and surface-to-air missiles on neighbouring stands apparently gave no cause for official concern. Yet that sums up not only the arms trade but also our complacent reaction to it. My product may be infinitely more deadly than yours, but so long as it is mine and only likely to be used in faraway places against foreign targets, let’s focus on yours instead.

Britain has exported £26.5bn-worth of military equipment over the last five years, according to industry statistics, and BAE’s imminent sale of 72 Eurofighter Typhoons to Saudi Arabia looks set to add another £20bn to that figure in years to come. With such profits to be made through future deals with industrialised and developing countries alike, the weapons industry has no plans to disappear any time soon. Only outrage at the human cost of war will sustain the campaign against corporations profiteering from conflict and eventually bring an end to the arms trade.

Cleaning Up the High Street

Tim Holmes — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 12:45:37 +0000

Last December Tesco, Asda and Primark were named and shamed by War on Want for exploiting garment workers in their quest for ever cheaper clothes to sell to bargain-hungry British shoppers. The Guardian followed up with further evidence six months later. Asda acknowledged privately that there was a widespread problem in their supplier factories. Through gritted teeth Tesco agreed that terms and conditions often fell far short of what was fair.

However, as the Guardian’s new inquiry reveals, the exploitation of garment workers is now a systemic problem right across the high street. While the budget retailers may be leading the race to the bottom, companies such as Mothercare, H&M, Marks & Spencer and Gap now stand beside them in the dock. British bargains come at the expense of workers’ rights in developing countries, just as our years of low inflation are founded upon their years of low wages.

It would be wrong to point the finger solely at UK retailers. Governments in the host economies of the developing world establish the laws and regulations that determine workers’ rights and set minimum wages. Factory owners are responsible at a local level for the pay and conditions their workers receive. However, all the evidence shows it is the multi-billion retailers that hold the whip hand.

Recognising their influence over the supply chain, a large number of UK retailers have signed up to the Ethical Trading Initiative, a multi-stakeholder initiative to improve working conditions around the world. While the ETI has brought some benefits to workers, the retailers have failed in the central objective of delivering a “living wage” which would enable workers to escape poverty.

A key reason given by retailers for this failure to pay a living wage is not that they can’t afford it but that they can’t agree on what it should be. Strangely, this does not seem to be a problem at the other end of the pay scale, where we learned last week that UK company directors have been awarded an inflation-busting 37% increase over the past year. The average CEO salary in the UK is now around £2.9 million, compared to the 13p an hour paid to Indian workers in the Guardian report.

What these inequalities highlight is the total failure of the market to address the exploitation of workers who supply UK retailers. Voluntary initiatives to enhance corporate social responsibility are similarly ineffective. What is needed is decisive action from the UK government to address the abuses of British retailers from this end, once and for all.

Nor is it beyond Gordon Brown to grasp this nettle. Despite his enthusiasm for the market, the prime minister is also well aware of its shortcomings, most notably its inability to address such issues as workers’ rights. Moreover, Brown’s much-vaunted commitment to the cause of “making poverty history” requires him to take action on this central question of social justice. Decent jobs offer people in developing countries their best chance to work their way out of poverty, while exploitation leaves them mired in misery.

Brown will soon have an opportunity to act when the Competition Commission reports the findings of its current inquiry into the groceries market. One easy step would be for the prime minister to appoint an independent regulator to oversee and enforce the existing supermarket code of practice. However, to ensure genuine corporate accountability, the government must make UK retailers liable for abuses in their supply chains. Why shouldn’t workers across the world have the right to seek redress in British courts for wrongs done them by UK plc?

Iraq Says No to Oil Theft

Tim Holmes — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 23:44:08 +0000

Only two things seem to bridge the sectarian divide in today’s Iraq. One is football, as shown in last week’s celebrations among Sunnis, Shias and Kurds when the national team beat Saudi Arabia to win the Asian Cup. The other is oil – or, to be precise, how best to use Iraq’s massive oil reserves in order to build some form of future prosperity on the ruins of occupation and civil war.

A unique public opinion survey has just been published which asked respondents from all sections of Iraqi society whether they feel the country’s oil sector should be opened up to development by multinationals such as Shell, BP and Exxon, or kept under the control of Iraqi public sector companies instead. Eight in 10 believed that wise use of Iraq’s oil could still provide some prosperity for them and their children in the future. Yet, more tellingly, two in three respondents said they wanted to see the country’s oil kept under Iraqi control rather than see it opened up to foreign companies. And that view is shared across all ethnic and sectarian groups.

The poll was conducted on behalf of a group of NGOs to establish what support might exist for the new oil law currently grinding its way through Iraq’s parliamentary process. The Iraqi government has come under intense US and British pressure to pass the law, which was included as one of the political “benchmarks” set for the country by President Bush at the beginning of this year. At the centre of the law is a proposal to hand over to foreign multinationals the primary role in developing Iraq’s vast unexplored oilfields, under contracts of up to 30 years.

We also know from meetings with the Foreign Office here in London that British officials have been working with the oil industry on drafts of the law since its earliest beginnings, long before it was ever shown to Iraqi MPs. Only once the Iraqi council of ministers had approved the law in February of this year was it shown to parliamentarians, and there has still been no public debate over the issue, despite its obvious centrality to the future of the country. Three-quarters of Iraqis polled in the current survey complain that they have been kept in the dark on the matter.

Worse still, the Iraqi government seems to be taking steps to close down what little debate exists. In a move reminiscent of the Saddam era, Iraq’s oil minister has issued a directive banning trade unions from participating in any discussion on the new oil law. Given that the only real opposition to the law within the country has come from bodies such as the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, this latest repression is a double act of violence against Iraq’s democracy today and its prosperity tomorrow.

The battle over Iraqi oil lays bare the motives behind the US-led invasion in 2003 and our continuing occupation of the country four years on. Yet if our own political leaders wish to maintain their supposed commitment to democracy in Iraq, they must respect the Iraqi people’s opposition to foreign takeover of their oil wealth. Hassan Juma’a, president of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, visited London last month to pledge his union’s commitment to an ongoing campaign against the theft of Iraq’s oil wealth. The least we can do is support the Iraqi people’s right to dissent.

Cheap and Nasty

eddie — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 19:40:26 +0000

Just before Christmas, War on Want exposed the appalling conditions in Bangladeshi garment factories producing clothes for discount retailers Asda, Primark and Tesco. The companies threw up their hands and pledged to address the issue with all the urgency it deserves.

Now, six months on, Guardian reporter Karen McVeigh has gone back to see whether all the hand-wringing made any difference to the reality of life for workers on the ground in Bangladesh. Sadly, if all too predictably, her story in today’s paper makes clear that the horrific conditions still persist.

In response, Asda has committed to re-auditing all of its Bangladeshi factories. Primark speaks of its “considerable concern” at the problem. Tesco – supposedly the market leader – is stonewalling again, refusing to act because of the confidentiality under which the interviews were conducted to protect already vulnerable workers.

Our big high street retailers pay lip service to the importance of decent working conditions for their developing country suppliers. But their mantra of calling for more and more audits so as to “catch out” the miscreants is no more than an attempt to pass the buck. Blaming their suppliers in developing countries is a smokescreen intended to hide the unacceptable truth that the buying practices of the supermarkets themselves are the root cause of the problem.

Powerful retailers such as Tesco, Primark and Asda (itself part of the massive Wal-Mart family) place immense pressure on factory owners in developing countries to produce garments quickly and at ever-decreasing costs so that clothes can be sold at lower and lower prices in the British high street. These demands translate directly into pressure on the workforce and into poor working conditions. And as a price war rages between the big supermarkets, the pressure on suppliers is intensified still further.

The appalling treatment of sweatshop workers was brought to the world’s attention over a decade ago. Numerous voluntary initiatives were spawned in an effort to combat the problem, yet little has changed. Voluntary codes often rely on audits of factory conditions to expose problems and recommend remedial action. But in addition to the fact that the audits themselves can be deeply flawed, the systemic demands and pressures from retailers mean that carrying out more audits cannot provide a solution.

The supermarkets have failed to put their own house in order, and they have had long enough to do so. It is now up to government to introduce binding regulation to ensure retailers do more than pay lip service to the ethical treatment of workers in countries across the developing world.

Gordon Brown has often stressed his commitment to the world’s poor, yet permits the gross exploitation of people working gruelling 80-hour weeks just to keep their families fed, housed and clothed. Introducing legislation to protect such vulnerable workers would show that he is serious about making poverty history, and would draw a line under Blair’s stubborn refusal to promote anything but voluntary codes. An independent regulator to enforce compliance with the Supermarket Code of Practice would be a good first step in the right direction. How about it, prime minister?

John Hilary is director of campaigns and policy at War on Want

Time to Get Serious

Tim Holmes — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 16:33:45 +0000

You know that things are serious when a parliamentary select committee puts out a call for sanctions against another sovereign state. Doubly so when that state is supposed to be one of Britain’s key allies in the Middle East. Yet today the House of Commons international development committee is calling on the Labour government to press for sanctions against Israel over its treatment of the Palestinian people. Things must be pretty bad.

Things are indeed bad, says the committee’s new report. As a result of Israeli occupation and the accompanying restrictions on movement, the Palestinian economy is in freefall. Fully 70% of Palestinians are now living in poverty, according to UN calculations, a figure which rises to 80% in Gaza. Over half of all Palestinians are now unable to cover their families’ daily food needs without relying on external aid – a scandal in such a rich and fertile land.

As a first step in putting pressure on the Israeli government to end this oppression, the UK should now urge its fellow members in the EU to consider suspending the EU-Israel association agreement, the cross-party committee says.

That agreement gives Israeli exports preferential access to the markets of the European Union. Europe accounts for two-thirds of Israeli exports, and suspending the preferences those exports currently enjoy would send the first proper message to Israel that its oppression of the Palestinian people is unacceptable.

That message is long overdue. The EU-Israel agreement should have been suspended years ago, as its own text states that it is conditional upon respect for human rights. In this regard Israel has already violated the agreement many times over. The UN’s own special rapporteur, Jean Ziegler, among many others, has pointed out that the agreement should already have been suspended under its own terms.

The call for suspension of Israel’s trading preferences is the first in a line of sanctions which the UK could take. Suspending arms sales is another obvious candidate. The UK has been approving record levels of arms sales to Israel over the past couple of years, despite admitting that it cannot trust Israel’s claims that the weapons will not be used in its military operations against the Palestinian people. The government is now facing a court case on the issue.

Today’s committee report is not just targeted at Israel. It also slams the UK and other international donors for withdrawing aid to the Palestinian Authority since early 2006. Together with Israel’s withholding of revenues due to the Palestinian government, this action by the international community has “increased poverty and hardship amongst most Palestinians”, the report says. At least one million people have been affected by this punitive action, the least smart form of sanctions since those imposed on the people of Iraq during the 1990s.

The main significance of the committee’s report is that it challenges Tony Blair to move from his unconditional support of Israel to a position of standing up for the Palestinian people. In so doing, the report echoes the call of a new coalition also launched this week. The Enough! coalition brings together all major British trade unions, campaigns organisations and charities plus faith groups from the Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities in a joint call for justice for the Palestinian people. Only through such justice can Israelis and Palestinians hope to build a lasting peace for the region as a whole.

The immediate focus of the coalition is to mark this year’s 40th anniversary of Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, Palestinian groups trace their suffering back further to the 1948 nakba, or catastrophe, when 750,000 were driven into exile in order to make way for the founding of the Israeli state. Both anniversaries are equally important.

For those of us who bear the weight of British imperial history, there is another reason for marking 2007. This year also sees the 90th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, in which Britain, for its own political ends, committed itself to a Jewish national home in Palestine. Britain and France had promised self-determination to the peoples of the former Ottoman empire, but the British government chose to deny the people of Palestine this right.

Yet the historical responsibility of the British state is not the issue. It is Britain’s current support of Israeli aggression which must be challenged and changed. Today’s call for action from MPs in the international development committee must be the start of a radical reorientation of Britain’s policy towards the Middle East. Sanctions against Israel is a first and necessary step on that journey.

Every Little Hurts

Tim Holmes — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 04:54:20 +0000

If you’re one of the growing number of shoppers tempted by “cheap chic” in the run-up to Christmas, this is for you. New research from Bangladesh proves (as if proof were needed) that the cut-price clothes currently on offer at bargain retailers Primark, Asda and Tesco are only possible through the exploitation of garment workers toiling away in sweatshops across the developing world. Forget the win-win scenario hypothesised by the apologists of globalisation. The real world remains as cheap and nasty as it’s ever been.

The new research, conducted through interviews with factory workers in Dhaka, shows that employees in the garment industry are regularly forced into working 80 hours a week for the equivalent of 5p an hour – well below the living wage even in an impoverished country such as Bangladesh. Overtime is mandatory and usually unpaid, and workers are often locked into unsafe units, despite the fact that factory fires have already claimed the lives of over 100 this year alone.

One of the problems in the past has been identifying the exact factories which supply the retailers, given that high street stores guard their supplier details closely. This time, however, workers from across the six factories concerned have confirmed that they produce for Primark, Asda and/or Tesco, so the link is clear. All the retailers can do is throw up their hands in horror and deny that such abuses have anything to do with them.

Yet the retailers know full well what goes on in the factories supplying them. One story tells how Primark’s managing director Arthur Ryan was approached by a factory owner selling a product for £5. Ryan told the owner he wasn’t interested unless the price went down to £3, saying, “I don’t care how you go about it – just do it.” There is only one variable a factory owner has control over: labour costs. And when squeezed by the buyers, the owner will cut those costs in any way they can.

Wages are first in line. In Bangladesh, the minimum wage has halved in real terms over the past 10 years, and even with the recent increase proposed by the National Wage Board, it remains well below what’s needed to make ends meet. Tesco agrees that a living wage in Bangladesh requires around £22 a month, yet even the better-paid workers in its supplier factories get only £16. Tesco itself, on the other hand, cleared £2.2bn in profits last year.

But this isn’t just about Bangladesh. Garment workers from China to Honduras to Kenya slave away for a pittance because the business model of the budget retailers – who control 40% of the British market – force them to. This is not a case of a few rogue factory owners victimising their workers. The problem is systemic.

So what are consumers with a conscience meant to do? A boycott of the budget retailers would end up costing these most vulnerable workers their jobs, so that’s no solution. Shoppers must demand instead that the companies stay committed to countries such as Bangladesh, China and Honduras but clean up their act across the board. Decent working conditions are, surely, not too much to ask?

But political pressure is perhaps even more important than consumer pressure. The British government is supposed to be squarely behind the fight against global poverty, yet ministers have washed their hands of this issue. New Labour has put its faith in voluntary codes and the goodwill of industry rather than calling corporations to account for their treatment of suppliers. It’s time to admit this approach has failed.

UK's Global Power Empire

Tim Holmes — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 15:05:58 +0000

When is a private company not a private company? Answer: when its wholly owned by the UK government and forms part of our overseas aid programme. No one may have heard of the power company Globeleq, but its doing its best to keep alive the dream of electricity privatisation in a world that is increasingly turning away from the private sector.

Globeleq was set up in 2002 by the Department for International Development (DFID) as part of the governments strategy of promoting the private sector in the developing world. The company remains wholly owned by DFID through its private sector promotion arm CDC, formerly known as the Commonwealth Development Corporation.

Globeleq now has operations in the energy sectors of 16 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and is actively pursuing further acquisitions in its bid to be the fastest growing power company in the emerging markets.

Globeleq has indeed grown fast. The companys rapid expansion has been made possible because other multinational power companies have been keen to exit developing country markets as a result of the problems associated with energy privatisation.

However, this means that vast amounts of aid money supposedly earmarked for development purposes have been given instead to US power companies wishing to pull out of the developing world. Two such companies AES and El Paso have benefited to the tune of over US$1 billion between them in this way.

In this way Globeleq is keeping alive a private sector presence in situations where other companies have abandoned the market. This is in line with DFIDs broader aim to sustain the private sector in cases of market failure, but it raises serious questions in light of DFIDs overall mandate of poverty reduction. The involvement of multinational power companies in the energy sectors of developing countries has been deeply problematic, as the poor have often found themselves excluded from access to privatised electricity. Far from solving the problems of poverty, electricity privatisation has often exacerbated them.

There are currently 1.6 billion people around the world without access to electricity, roughly a quarter of the worlds population. Two thirds of these are in Asia, with most of the rest in sub-Saharan Africa. The International Energy Agency estimates that it will be necessary to roll out electricity services to a further 600 million people by 2015 if the world is to meet the top line UN millennium development goal of halving the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day.

Yet privatisation of the electricity sector has not been successful in expanding coverage to poor communities. In fact, privatisation has led to sharp increases in the tariffs charged to consumers, and these increases have often raised prices beyond the reach of the poor. The arrival of multinational companies such as AES, Enron and EDF in developing countries during the 1990s saw dramatic price increases in electricity. When the Indian state of Maharashtra opened its power sector to Enron, for example, the state electricity board soon found itself forced to raise tariffs to farmers by a crippling 400 per cent to meet the added costs.

Electricity privatisation has proved hugely unpopular in many of the countries in which Globeleq operates. In Arequipa, southern Peru, mass protests erupted when the government attempted to privatise two electricity companies in 2002, with two people killed and 150 injured. Months of demonstrations against electricity privatisation in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh left three people dead and thousands arrested.

Yet DFID continues to promote the privatisation of public services through Globeleq and other such initiatives. This not only conflicts with DFIDs own poverty reduction mandate, but it also undermines the ongoing work to build alternative models of energy provision, such as public sector and community- based services that are affordable and accessible to all.

The government has acknowledged the problems caused when developing countries are required to hand over public services to multinational companies.

Why, then, does it own a private power company that aims to take over energy services in the developing world?

John Hilary is director of campaigns at War on Want. A full report on Globeleq is available at regulating more than most.

Labour MPs led by Jon Trickett, Emily Thornberry and Jon Cruddas have tabled amendments to plug these loopholes. If the government accepts their amendments, it would mean a real step forward by making companies more accountable for their actions. The new rules would give shoppers access to the information they need to start making an ethical choice. They would have access to real information about companies, not just the slick “corporate social responsibility” reports that companies churn out now.

Even leaving aside the progressive case for reforming company law, there is a sensible business case for supporting the amendments. If I were Tesco or British Airways, I would be pretty annoyed that competitors Asda Wal-Mart and Virgin aren’t covered simply by virtue of not being listed on the stock exchange. There is a strong case for a level playing field here, and it would be strange if the government didn’t want to introduce it.

The good news is that these changes do have a chance of getting through – if we can keep the pressure up. Over 100,000 emails, postcards and letters have already been sent to MPs from voters demanding stronger and better rules to rein in British companies. Yet the Labour government is still scared about the reaction from big business, which really quite likes not being accountable, as the CBI has consistently reminded them.

One thing’s for sure: the government would be much more inclined to listen to the voters if the Tories weren’t so ready to pounce from the sidelines. Despite their new touchy-feely rhetoric, David Cameron’s troops are actually trying to strip the social and environmental sections out of the bill. Not content with rules that don’t go far enough, the new-style Conservatives want to gut the bill and leave company law stuck in the 1980s. Thanks, Dave.

There are just a few days left to make this bill work. You can still email and call your MP to tell them they must support the amendments to improve it – find out the relevant names and numbers for yours here. If you have a Conservative MP, write and tell them they must live up to their new centrist rhetoric if they are to ever be trusted. This bill is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make companies more accountable. We must not waste it.

No Tears for Doha

Alex Doherty — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 14:28:24 +0000

The global trade talks have collapsed, and already the airwaves are full of the sound of politicians and pundits lamenting this “lost opportunity” for the world’s poor. Cue the obligatory statistics from the World Bank as to how much better off the world would be if the talks had succeeded in freeing up global trade. Roll out the Jeremiahs to predict that this will destroy the multilateral trading system and condemn the poorest to everlasting despair.

Don’t believe it. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has shown itself unfit for purpose when it comes to addressing the needs of the world’s poorest communities, and the “deal” on the table in Geneva would have exposed developing countries to immense damage. Both the EU and USA have long insisted on significant new business opportunities for their own multinationals as a condition for taking part in the talks, despite the fact that these would have come at the expense of producers in developing countries and would have cost millions of local jobs. Abandoning the negotiations was the only positive option left, and we should be thankful for it.

It didn’t have to be this way. The WTO could have focused its energies on brokering a deal to stop the dumping of EU and US farm produce on developing country markets, one of the very worst abuses of the international trading system. It should also have used the current negotiations to undo some of the harm caused by the Uruguay round of trade talks, which concluded in 1994. These were meant to be the central planks in the “Doha development agenda” launched with such fanfare in 2001, and they would have been a prize worth having.

Yet neither of these two objectives came close to being achieved. The EU and US refused to take the action needed to prevent dumping, as their commitments to cutting subsidies were restricted to symbolic gestures only. Similarly, the problems caused by the Uruguay round were conveniently forgotten a while ago.

Instead the WTO reverted to type. In place of a development agenda, the talks degenerated into an unapologetic market access agenda. This focus on market liberalisation engaged new players in the global trade talks, as Brazil sought business opportunities for its latifundia landowners, India for its service providers and China for its manufacturers. It did not address the needs of the great mass of poorer countries, which found themselves largely excluded from the negotiations.

So does the collapse of the trade talks mean a big loss for the world’s poor? Actually, no. The most recent calculations concur that previous estimates had overstated the likely gains. Even the World Bank has had to revise its gung-ho predictions sharply downwards, lopping 80% off of its earlier calculations. On its new calculations, developing countries would have been left with estimated gains of just $16 billion, the great majority of which would have gone to the more advanced developing country economies. And these countries are making spectacular gains anyway, even without a new trade round.

Indeed, all studies now show that the distribution of the spoils is more important than the aggregate gains to the global economy. It has long been acknowledged that poorer countries – and particularly those of sub-Saharan Africa – would lose from the liberalisation envisaged from the Doha round, whether from the erosion of preferences they enjoy in third markets or from the direct impact on their own agricultural, industrial and services sectors. The EU’s own impact assessment warned in May this year that many developing countries stand to lose more than gain from the Doha round, not least from the loss of he tariff revenue on which so many poorer governments depend.

What about the argument that the failure of the Doha talks will usher in an even more damaging era of bilateral trade negotiations, in which developing countries are picked off one by one and forced into more extreme concessions than could ever be agreed at the WTO? This chestnut should have been laid to rest years ago, as it’s long been clear that the EU and USA are going to proceed with their bilateral deals whether the round succeeds or fails.

As if confirmation was needed, this month has seen the leak of Peter Mandelson’s vision for the EU’s international trade relations, which confirms that Brussels will press ahead with more aggressive bilateral deals irrespective of the outcome at the WTO. These predatory adventures are typically characterised as “WTO-plus”, which means that they build on the level of liberalisation achieved at the WTO and extend it upwards. This means that an ambitious Doha round of market liberalisation would make the bilaterals even more threatening.

The good news is that the collapse of the Doha round opens up a crucial new public space for debating what sort of rules we wish to put in place to govern the global economy in the 21st century. Instead of the WTO’s determined belief in free trade as the dominant model for the world economy, we can now have an open debate over other approaches that prioritise trade justice and sustainable development over neoliberal economics. This opportunity to debate alternatives is why civil society groups in the global south have overwhelmingly welcomed the collapse of the Doha talks.

And there is no shortage of alternatives on offer. From the ALBA initiative confronting US power in Latin America to the international movement for food sovereignty and farmers’ rights, there is a range of inspiring new models which put the long-term needs of people and the environment before the short-term gains of multinational capital. The international community must use the breathing space granted by the collapse of the WTO talks to debate these genuine alternatives. There should be no attempt to resuscitate the Doha corpse.

Honest Broker?

Tim Holmes — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 14:34:28 +0000

Yesterday’s joint press conference between the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and Tony Blair represents yet another low point in Britain’s shameful history of intervention in the Middle East.

Rolling out the red carpet for Olmert just four days after the massacre of Palestinian civilians picnicking on a Gaza beach is a stark example of the double standards employed by the British government towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and shows Blair yet again turning a blind eye to war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Israeli government is renowned for cancelling meetings with foreign dignitaries to suit its own purposes, famously refusing to allow Jack Straw’s plane to land in Tel Aviv after some “off-message” comments from the former foreign secretary in 2001. A similar cancellation from our side would have registered at least some condemnation of the Gaza beach killings, not to mention anger at the killings of 140 other Palestinians by Israeli armed forces this year.

Had the situation been reversed, it is inconceivable that the British prime minister and foreign secretary would have met Palestinian leaders. In a brutal display of doublespeak, the British government refuses any communication with the democratically elected Palestinian Authority, on the grounds that it has refused to rule out violence in principle, while happily meeting an Israeli government that practises violence on a daily basis.

Yet rather than rebuke Israel, the UK and its fellow EU member states are actually sitting down today with Israeli representatives in Brussels to seal the continuation of the EU-Israel association agreement. The agreement grants Israel important trading preferences for its exports into the EU, even though these are supposedly conditional on respect for human rights from both sides.

UN officials, developing countries and campaigns groups have long called for the agreement to be suspended in view of Israel’s continued breach of Palestinian human rights, and Amnesty International has thrown its weight behind the calls. Yet the British government has rejected any talk of sanctions out of hand, clinging instead to the mantra of “close engagement” with Israel, though government officials openly admit the policy is having no effect.

The idea that the UK is an honest broker in the Middle East has now lost any credibility. Perhaps the time has come to tell Tony Blair that if he is incapable of doing anything constructive in the Middle East, he should consider doing nothing at all.

The G8: A Study in Power

eddie — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 16:43:43 +0000

Thirty years ago, in November 1975, Frances President Giscard dEstaing invited the leaders of the UK, US, Germany, Japan and Italy to a three-day summit in the presidential palace at Rambouillet, near Paris. The world was not so different then: the global economy was struggling with record oil prices and the US was coming to terms with the fall-out from its latest invasion. At least Harold Wilson, representing the UK at that first summit, had not sent British troops to Vietnam.

This July the same powers, plus Canada and Russia, will gather as the G8 in the Scottish golf resort of Gleneagles. All police leave has been cancelled, and ID cards will be issued to local residents so as to allow them access into the militarised zone around the summit itself. Yet the £150 million security operation designed to shield the G8 from popular protest also strips away its legitimacy, showing that our elected leaders can only maintain supremacy through their monopoly over brute force. So what are they hoping to achieve?

Keeping Africa poor

The G8 was originally conceived as a forum in which the worlds top economies could make common cause on the most pressing economic issues of the day. The profound shock to global capitalism caused by the oil crises and runaway inflation of the 1970s gave the first summits an air of high drama, but the themes they addressed are all too familiar: global energy problems, financial instability, and the programme to expand the reach of capital through trade liberalisation and the creation of new markets around the world.

Todays global economy might seem more at ease with itself, but under the surface lie tensions as great as those which existed thirty years ago. The cliché that we live in an interdependent world carries with it real consequences, in that the richest countries are now wholly dependent on cheap labour in the poorest. Cut-price consumer imports are essential to keeping down inflation in rich countries, just as imports of cheap raw materials remain crucial to sustaining the profit margins of our industries. Maintaining control over these supply chains has been a priority concern ever since the former colonies of Africa and Asia won their independence.

Tony Blair has announced that Africa will be a key issue at Gleneagles, following the report of his Commission for Africa in March this year. Yet in private British government officials have conceded that the G8 will not offer any concessions when it comes to the economic policies that keep Africa poor. Instead, the Gleneagles communiqué will reaffirm its support for a swift conclusion of the Doha Round of world trade talks, which aim to open up developing country economies for further exploitation by multinational corporations based in the rich world. UN reports have confirmed the devastating impact which such liberalisation has had on the worlds least developed countries: those states which have opened up their markets most dramatically have also seen the greatest increases in poverty over the past ten years.

The G8 countries bear a particular responsibility for poverty in Africa. The G8 enjoys in-built control over the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a result of their one dollar, one vote decision making structures. Through those two institutions, the G8 imposed the structural adjustment programmes which caused economic stagnation, mass unemployment and increased poverty throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Today the G8 maintains control over Africa through its monopoly on aid and debt relief, both of which are made conditional upon compliance with the neoliberal economic policies which the G8 promotes.

The G8 countries also dominate the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which claims to operate on the democratic basis of one member, one vote but has not held a single vote in its ten-year history. Instead, the WTO regularly sees poor countries sacrificing their own economic interests as a result of threats that they will lose aid, debt relief or trading opportunities if they do not agree to the G8s proposals. The WTOs much vaunted Doha Development Agenda has failed to deliver, instead exposing developing countries to the threat of increased liberalisation and poverty.

British trade officials admit that the development agenda has little relevance to their real work. Responding to a strong steer from lobby groups such as the Confederation of British Industry, the driving impulse is to achieve new market access for British business through the increased liberalisation of the manufacturing, industrial and services sectors of the developing world. The UK has by its own admission been at the forefront of the campaign to open up developing country markets in these sectors. The Labour Partys manifesto statement that We do not believe poor countries should be forced to liberalise rings hollow in the face of this reality.

The UK is by no means alone in dancing to a corporate tune. All other G8 countries base their policies on the wishes of their corporate lobby groups, many of which also band together in international federations such as the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue and International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), not to mention regional groupings such as the European Services Forum and UNICE, the EU employers federation. In addition to their regular lobbying of G8 country representatives, the ICC has the special privilege of making a formal presentation to every G8 summit. Lest there be any doubt, it has identified the WTO trade negotiations as its top priority for the coming year.

The G8s paramount concern is control of the global economy for the benefit of its corporate sponsors. This control is maintained on a day-to-day basis through the institutions listed above, but ultimately it rests on military domination and the demonisation of opposition forces. The so-called war against terror was explicitly linked to the G8s economic agenda following the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, when delegates attending the WTOs Doha Ministerial Conference were told that opposition to a new round of trade liberalisation would be interpreted as support for terrorism. The security cordon thrown round Gleneagles is no more than a symbol of the military power which sustains the capitalist adventure worldwide.

Cheap oil at any cost

Nowhere is the link between the economic and the military shown more clearly than in the fight for oil. The G6 countries meeting in Rambouillet in 1975 stated bluntly: We are determined to secure for our economies the energy sources needed for their growth. Ever since that declaration, the need for cheap energy to power the rich worlds overconsumption has remained a G8 priority. Sitting on the worlds third largest oil reserves, Iraq never stood a chance.

Yet the greatest threat to the future supply of cheap oil comes not so much from political opposition in producer states but from rising demand. In addition to the unsustainable levels of energy consumption in rich countries, rapid growth in developing countries especially major consumers such as China and India is now turning up the heat. Even at full capacity, global oil production is unable to meet this increase in demand, and predictions of super-spike prices of over $100 a barrel have spawned warnings of global recession. The IMF has stated that the high oil prices forecast for the future will send the world economy into permanent shock.

Both China and India have been invited to Gleneagles, and government officials have confirmed that the global oil crisis is at the top of the summits agenda. Yet debate will not solve the problem of undercapacity. The refusal by rich countries to reduce their own consumption levels and the additional demand from developing countries make an international struggle over energy resources inevitable. President Bushs personal pleas to the Saudi royal family to boost production only underline how dependent the US is on foreign oil supplies.

Hence the growing tension over other sources, and in particular Iran. Following new finds in recent years, Iran now boasts the worlds second largest oil reserves (behind Saudi Arabia), as well as the second largest natural gas reserves (behind Russia). Moreover, Iran is operating well within its capacity, with considerable potential to increase its output of both oil and gas at a time when all other major producers are already running close to their limits.

China and India both source a significant proportion of their oil and gas from Iran already, as does Japan, but the US remains wedded to its isolationist policy of sanctions against the country. Bush has repeatedly included Iran in his axis of evil, accusing Tehran of sponsoring terrorism and of pursuing weapons of mass destruction exactly the same charges which prefigured the invasion of Iraq. With rising concern at US plans to attack Iran, Bushs opponent in the last presidential elections, Senator John Kerry, has openly questioned the USAs overreliance on foreign oil supplies. Speaking this April, Kerry warned: We risk being drawn into dangerous conflicts, and an already overburdened military is increasingly stretched too thin.

Yet rather than pulling the US back from the insanity of war against Iran, the G8 powers have raised the temperature by publicly citing Irans nuclear energy programme as a military threat. Following their 2003 declaration on non-proliferation, which specifically targeted Iran, last years G8 communiqué identified Iran as one of three countries (with Libya and North Korea) which pose proliferation challenges to world security. Despite Irans unilateral suspension of its nuclear programme while the UNs International Atomic Energy Agency verifies that it is being developed for peaceful purposes only, the Bush administration refuses to rule out military action against the country. Iran has responded with a warning to the US that it is playing with fire.

Challenging the G8

G8 countries can further their interests in the specialised agencies of the United Nations, within NATO (some of them) or at the WTO, World Bank and IMF. Yet G8 summits fulfil an additional function over and above these more technical discussions. As well as allowing the worlds most powerful leaders to forge personal ties and develop trust amongst themselves, the summits provide a forum for agreeing on the grand designs which will guide world politics into the future.

More than anything, however, the G8 retains a particular attraction for the major powers since it is a private members club which sets its own rules. The discussions take place in secret, immune from considerations of transparency or accountability. Attendance is by invitation only, untroubled by suggestions of democracy or broader representation. The G8 is an unapologetic statement of pure power.

Gleneagles will offer the G8 leaders an opportunity to project that power across the international stage at a time when their image is badly tarnished both by the war on Iraq and by their continuing failure to address the root causes of global poverty. Crucial to them in this task is the help of the media, granted special access to the summit on the understanding that their reporting will remain within established bounds. With media assistance, the G8 leaders will project a caring image of concern for the worlds poor, for Africa, for climate change. Journalists will read out the official press releases and move on.

This is what makes an alternative presence in Scotland this July so critical. Without a visible challenge to the hegemony of the G8, its true face will remain hidden and its power will grow unchecked. Mass actions in Birmingham, Cologne and Genoa drew international attention to the real impacts of G8 policies and the alternatives which exist. The success of those actions saw subsequent summits held away from city centres in increasingly remote locations, precisely so as to escape popular protest.

Scotland is not so inaccessible, and there are already 100,000 people expected on the streets of Edinburgh for the big Make Poverty History rally on the Saturday before the summit. Yet the threat posed by the G8 demands a more radical response than the Make Poverty History coalitions calls for trade justice and increased aid levels, however laudable these may be. More fundamentally, we need to ask how these eight politicians so deeply implicated in the deaths and sufferings of millions around the world can be allowed to wield such power over our common future.

For this reason War on Want and other more radical groups are running an open counter-summit on Sunday 3 July, explicitly challenging the world order represented by the G8 and putting forward genuine democratic alternatives for a better future. These debates will in turn form a backdrop to the weeks protests at and around the G8s gathering in Gleneagles itself. This time, as Mr Bush would say, they can run but they cant hide.

John Hilary is Director of Campaigns and Policy at War on Want