Why Make Poverty History By Martin J Deane 2nd June 2005

A coach from Hull to Edinburgh will be on for the Make Poverty History demonstration, Saturday July 2nd 2005. Martin Deane and Rich Mills are organising. Prices are £22 and £18 concessions, phone Martin on 471467 for a seat. Book NOW and bring your wrist bands, placards, fancy dresses and tell them - "ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE".

Why make poverty history? Surely the poor, as the man said, will always be with us. The poor will always be with us a for as long as human relationships are organised in the way they are. "It's always been like this. This way works. There is no alternative." We have been told this for decades. Don't listen to these lies. And they are lies because it has NOT always been like this. They are lies because the powerful continue to make major decisions which MAKE IT WORSE for the world's poor.

Blair is right now involved in decision-making which will force countries open to devastating trading from global multinational companies, is involved in forcing countries to privatise their water and power production, directly leading to increased poverty. (A dear misguided (Conservative) candidate this year attempted to argue privatising Ghana's water was the ONLY WAY FROWARD.) There are choices. The Saturday following the MPH march will see 8 of the most powerful leaders in world history make decisions which will affect the majority of the planet.

Yet those 8 powerful men represent a mere 14% of the world's population. The same 14% which largely account for 45% of the world's greenhouse gases, which all the world will suffer for. Environmental imperialism "Breathe my smoke!" Will their changes benefit the majority? Almost certainly not. There may well be some gifts to Africa and some cancellation of third world debt. This would be less making poverty history and more making us lot docile. Don't let them. This demo is a pleading on the one hand but on the other it is a warning. Send your message to Tony Blair, tell him we want change to happen. The positive side of the march is an explicit statement, BY US, that we need another world, not the one we are being presented and cajoled and, yes, forced into, as they await our approval, expecting us to rubber stamp it like an EU constitution.

30,000 a day die of poverty. 10 million a year. This does not have to happen. It is a legacy of human relationships and how these were set up over centuries. It is a legacy of war, empire, colonisation, it's just that today we call it globalisation, new economics and world trade. With the political will this can be recast, overhauled, changed. Britain had and has a major part in keeping the poor in poverty. We are less than 1% of global population and yet somehow are the 4th largest economy. That somehow, in brief, is a history of injustice.

The World Development Movement has been going for donkeys years campaigning, informing, tenacious in researching the gap between what government says and what it does for the world's poor. Its present critique of Britain (PDF) is devastating - whatever Blair's blue-eyed blandishments on "Africa, Africa, Africa..." British international politics has been all about privatisation, "liberalisation" of markets, pandering to business interests. The WDM says "UK government remains one of the chief obstacles in the fight against international poverty and environmental degradation." And that the "UK's lead role in promoting privatisation, deregulation and 'free trade' has led to increased poverty and environmental degradation on a grand scale. "

"The UK has regularly imposed privatisation of public services as a condition of British aid to the poorest countries - and still seeks to do so, as noted in the 'new' strategy on conditionality issued as part of the government's current consultation on aid." What we are demonstrating for is not to merely blow a hole in Blair and the G8's business agenda, but to overturn it so that the poor and the planet are put first.

This is not only a demonstration , this is resistance, this is a fight. See you in Edinburgh? Martin hull@greenparty.org.uk www.greenparty.org.uk/hull

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