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Make Poverty History/G8 - July 2005

It’s over a week now since the G8 summit ended and over two weeks since the Make Poverty History demonstration in Edinburgh. The G8 leaders have gone home, the demonstrations are over and the eco-village (*) in Stirling has all been packed up. The stories have been published, the conclusions of the summit reported on. So why am I writing this now? Because it is vital that we don’t forget, that we don’t assume we’ve done our bit and everything is ok now. Climate change, poverty, aid, trade and debt do not get sorted in a few days. All the campaigning and demonstrating of the last few weeks and months are part of something that has been going on for a long time and will continue to do so, because the problem has not gone away. The mass public interest and action generated is a huge boost and we must keep the momentum going in whatever way we feel we can: keep reading, keep talking, keep writing, keep putting pressure on the people who make the decisions, keep demonstrating.

*If at this point you’re saying ‘what eco-village’ that’s because the media chose not to report it. It’s really interesting though, more so to many people than a bit of violence, it was a huge campsite set up on both cooperative and environmental principles. See http://www.indymedia.org for more information.

Why I demonstrated
Everyone has their own way of standing up for what they believe in and changing the world in whatever small way they can (you don’t have to be a great leader to change the world), as long as we all keep at it we can make a difference. And I know we made a difference when we protested because for the last few weeks people have been asking me about it and are interested and might go and do some reading and even get involved. That’s how anything gets started – when I was at school I read something which got me thinking about the environment and have been learning, campaigning and talking about it ever since. This is not optimism or idealism or naivety, but simple fact. It’s easy to feel helpless and I often do, it’s easy to think ‘what can I do, just one person’, it’s also easy enough to realise that a lot of people thinking the same thing then acting anyway is how things get changed. Lots of people thinking that and doing nothing is just lazy and a neat excuse to cover up guilt at doing nothing – harsh words maybe but there isn’t really time to pussyfoot around these kind of issues.

Last week thousands of ‘just one person’s in Edinburgh, in Scotland and across the world did something. I am not overly impressed at the results of the summit and have a lot of reservations about aspects of the MPH campaign and about Live8. However, I do believe that the only way to make a difference is to stand up for what you believe in and to spread awareness. I believe that had we not campaigned and written letters and demonstrated, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown may not have been able to go as far as they did – no where near far enough but a start. I find that quite hard to write as I am angry at how little progress was made on climate change and debt, and also how much the new aid is tied to conditions. However, only dwelling on the negative is as unproductive as only dwelling on the positive, neither get you very far in terms of change.

Why Make Poverty History is an important campaign
It makes me sad that a lot of people struggled to understand that all of this was about awareness raising and not just giving money, but from talking to many people over the last few weeks I think the message has got through. This is really important, people need to understand that giving money does not solve everything. It just isn’t that simple. We need to be aware of where the money is going and what it will actually do. By this I don’t mean using the excuse that most of the money given to charity doesn’t go to the needy to not give (of course you should check what percentage a charity spends on running costs, but this is usually very low). I mean starting to understand that much of the aid given by governments is tied to conditions which perpetuate poverty. I’ll be writing more on this soon but waronwant.org is a good place to start if you want to find out more.

What is the G8 anyway?
The G8 are the leaders of the world’s richest countries (13% of the world’s population), democratically elected in their own countries but not actually asked by anyone to make the enormous and far reaching decisions they do in their regular meetings. The key theme’s of this year’s meeting in Gleneagles were aid, trade and debt in the developing world and climate change – although you could be forgiven for thinking that this wasn’t on the agenda for the amount of coverage it got in many parts of the media.

Climate change
Climate change, as well as being a critical issue generally, is closely linked to poverty and is seen by many as the most serious issue of all. The most affected people will be those in the developing world. The predicted floods, crop failures, desertification and other extremes will be as disastrous as (and exacerbated by) poverty itself. Some blame developing countries such as India and China for increased climate change causing emissions. Although their emissions have been increasing at a worrying rate, they are still a long way below ours (British people produce ten times the emissions of Indians). Also, the build up of greenhouse gases is as result of the rich, industrialised world’s activities over the past hundred years – whichever way we look at it, it was our fault.

The Edinburgh demonstration
I had a really good day in Edinburgh on July 2nd. Does that sound strange? Are you supposed to enjoy yourself on a demonstration about world poverty? Why on earth not. What I enjoyed and found inspiring (in terms of being motivated to do more) was being surrounded by thousands of peaceful people who cared enough about these issues involved to get themselves to Edinburgh and try to do something about it. You are allowed to enjoy making a difference and learning about the issues you feel passionately about. I talked to people, picked up leaflets and listened to incredible speakers. Their subject matter was frequently horrific, for example a first hand account of extreme poverty caused by European agricultural subsidies which flood the market and make it impossible for farmers to make any profit from their crops. But that’s why I was there too, it isn’t all lovely and peaceful and liberal, it’s horrific. The rich world has been destroying the rest of the world for too long and it has to stop, it’s about time we repaid our debt. Yes, it’s the governments and businesses who do all this, but we vote the governments in and many of us work for the businesses. Anyway, whoever’s fault it is we are all people, we are all the same, some of us are lucky enough to be born into a privileged life and surely it’s only human to want to help those who less privileged, whether they are our next door neighbour or someone thousands of miles away.

It was the most diverse demonstration I have ever been on: people of all ages, backgrounds and political persuasions. There were first time demonstrators, protestors who have been involved in many G8 campaigns and everything in between as well as representatives of charities, NGOs, church groups and Trade Unions. The march itself was very controlled and this was a problem for some, but I was impressed by how organised and supportive Edinburgh City council had been. In fact it seemed that the whole city was with us – something I haven’t witnessed before. There were also plenty of African people there, partly dispelling my concerns about the people we were trying to help not actually being involved in it all. The idea was to encircle the city on a white band, the symbol of the campaign, but actually it felt more like we took over the city for a day there was so much going on outside of the march. Aside from all the stalls and speakers in the Meadows we saw some great breakdancing (‘Break Poverty’) and ended up at a street party, there were also workshops at the university and I’m sure much more that I didn’t see.

The rest of the week
As I wasn’t there I won’t write too much, as too much has already been written which was wrong. All I’ll say is that what my friend up in the eco-village told me and what I read and saw in the media might as well have been two completely different events. Like many people before me, I lost all faith in nearly all media that week. On Wednesday I was hearing from my friend about how peaceful the demonstration in Gleneagles was, how supportive the locals were, what a great atmosphere it was. On the six o’clock news all I saw was riot police and the few protestors who were violent. All I saw in the newspapers was pictures of riot police and black clothed protestors throwing things at them or being chased, and most of the stories barely mentioned that the majority had been peaceful. There was some violence (from both protestors and police) and this should be reported, but along with everything else. What kind of world do we live in where violence is more newsworthy than peaceful, intelligent protest? I’m sure a few interviews with demonstrators would have been far more enlightening than a shot of someone being chased by the police. Also, although I do not agree with violent protest, there was no highlighting of the fact that police were extremely heavy handed, literally and figuratively, throughout the week. Demonstrators were effectively locked both in and out of the eco-village, intimidated, searched and generally harassed and confused by police who sometimes didn’t seem to know why they were there or what they were doing. The result of this is often that people turn against the police, either as an institution (which is the effect that just hearing about it had on me) or as individuals (which is a dangerous game, it’s too easy to blame the individual for the collective action, in the same way as it’s too easy to blame one protestor for the actions of many, or assume that they all did what one did).

I beg people to look beyond what they read in the papers and remember that it is only ever half the story (if that), please don’t swallow whole everything you are told and if you are genuinely interested try to find out what really happens, you might be pleasantly surprised." - Catherine Tonge

Good places to start for a more balanced and/or truthful view of things, G8-related and otherwise:

http://www.indymedia.org.uk - genuinely independent news and views
http://www.schnews.org
http://www.waronwant.org
http://www.foe.org.uk - Friends of the Earth
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk
http://www.oxfam.org
http://www.makepovertyhistory.org

There are loads more – have a look at the links on the above site and go find out for yourself…….