Constitutional matters
November 23, 2004
Yesterday the Queen was kind enough to come and declare the new session of Parliament open. And a splendid affair it was too - all the horses and carriages and various people with strange Norman French titles, such as Rouge Croix Pursuivant in attendance.
The whole event is organised with such impeccable timing and precision that it is easy to forget the real symbolism of it.
Last week, at the end of the mammoth debate on the Hunting Bill, the Order Paper of the Commons merely said at the end of business “Prorogation would take place”. This is less choreographed than the State opening but has a similar pattern.
The House of Lords goes into Pantomime dress rehearsal mode and the “Lords Commissioners” appear in red cloaks in rank order before the throne. The Lord Chancellor then orders Black Rod to go and bring the House of Commons to their presence. Black Rod then marches along the corridor down to the Commons, where a few motley souls are waiting, and requests (sort of half way between instructs and invites) them to come to the Lords.
Thus the only elected part of the British establishment march down behind the Speaker, and are allowed to stand at the entrance to the Lords and are addressed by Lord Falconer. He solemnly says that Her Majesty wanted to be there but cannot, as apparently has been the case for the last 50 years, but he has appointed a courtier to act for her. Falconer then solemnly reads out the Bills passed, and the Queen’s representative announces “la Reine la vuelt” to each one. Only the Hunting Bill is met with cheers, which are quickly hushed.
After a speech by Falconer on behalf of the Queen, but written by Tony Blair, the Commons are sent away and told the session is over. Back in the Commons the Speaker reads out all we have just heard and everyone goes home.
This time it is a little different. The Speaker has invoked the Parliament Act to bring the Hunting Bill into law next February since the Lords have defied the commons thrice. Only used three times in recent years on War Crimes, Age of Consent and Hunting, it is dramatic stuff.
The development of British democracy is a little slow. Magna Carta was the first infringement in the powers of the Crown. The Civil War in the Seventeenth Century asserted the independence of the Commons. The Great Reform Act of 1832 at least brought the idea of a constituent Commons. The franchise extensions of the late nineteenth century, in part inspired by the Chartists, brought the circumstances of the huge battle over the 1908 budget which established the National Insurance system. The Lords refusal of this resulted in the Parliament Act under which the Commons can act alone and the Lords no longer debating the Budget. Amended in 1949 it is now the status quo - an ultimate power for the Commons if it chooses to use it.
The Hunting Bill arouses huge emotions among those who wish to continue this “traditional sport”. The Countryside Alliance tells us it is the stuff of ordinary people who wish to pursue their innocent sport.
The people who back hunting are so ordinary that the following day they were able to mount a £2 million legal case against the Government. Interestingly, they are not challenging just the law on hunting as it will be from next February, but the right of the Commons to use the Parliament Act. A re-run of the 1908 to 1911 battle over the Budget. Or more seriously, an attempt to bring back the power of the Lords.
The well spoken demonstrators outside Windsor Castle last week represent far more than just the flowers of a ludicrous activity misnamed “sport”.
It would be a mistake to defend the current position as “democratic”. The Commons can defend itself on its own sovereignty as there is no written constitution, and therefore no legal power to over-ride it.
But this assumes it itself is democratic.
The reality is that the Commons provides the Government with its majority, but itself is the product and the presence of patronage. The Prime Minister has huge and totally unaccountable powers of patronage, and he and other Ministers can use them to appoint Ministers and hundred of other people to public office. The Royal Prerogative is probably more powerful when exercised by Ministers than by Her Majesty. In the first flush of New Labour in 1997 they talked a lot about reform. Clearly this was to be limited to the hours under which the House sat and not who set the agenda. I recall a very dusty answer from Margaret Becket, the House Leader, when I politely asked her what plans there were to bring forward proposals to ensure all decisions made under the Royal Prerogative would be subject to Commons scrutiny. “None” was the answer.
The power of patronage gives Party leaders enormous authority and can usually ensure their survival even when seen to be plainly wrong, as was Thatcher over the poll tax or Blair over Iraq.
Democracy and accountability are not just about Parliament but rights outside to expression and justice.
David Blunkett’s speech last weekend presaged an attempt to set lack of justice as a progressive cause. His assertion that we should have a special legal process without Juries and use of surveillance information for alleged Terrorist cases is very dangerous.
The experience of Diplock Courts, broadcasting bans and internment in Northern Ireland produced nothing but mayhem and conflict. A political process brought about change.
Our “Guantanamo Bay”, Belmarsh, has not brought security and tranquillity, or justice. It has denied a number of foreign nationals any access to justice and given the Home Secretary powers no politician should have; the ability to detain people without a due process of law.
Blunkett seems to think there is a public appetite for this kind of draconian measure. He is wrong and should think of his own and the Labour Movement’s history. Our Movement has always been for justice and rights, not their removal. Democracy and accountability are our protection not our oppression.
As the Queen and all the carriages passed into the Palace of Westminster, they should have reflected on Brian Haw, the peace campaigner outside. It is he, and those like him, who are greater guardians of democracy and rights, not all the sycophants that surround the trappings of power?
Inside, as usual I awaited the arrival of Black Rod and his command that we MPs “attend Her Majesty in the House of Peers”. We were elected so why should we go anywhere?
Palestine
November 17, 2004
When Presidents die, the media usually shows at least a modicum of respect and leaves the analysis of their lives until later.
As in life, in death Arafat was different. A president without a state, yet recognised by the majority of the United Nations who rose from being a Palestinian fighter in 1949 to founding the PLO in 1964. In only 10 years he was addressing the United Nations and the undisputed leader of his people.
Thirty years of prevarication by the world’s powers, and abuse by Israel meant his end came amidst deep frustration and stalemate. Israel could not defeat him yet the Palestinians were surviving amidst rubble and poverty. The whole time George Bush was telling him to “get a grip”, and even opined that “he was not delivering”. For whom and for what he never explained.
As he fell ill with an unexplained condition, the ghouls circled. As if already dead the western media started to write his obituary, and with the diplomacy that has characterised his life, Ariel Sharon announced he could not be buried in Jerusalem.
The part of the endless analyses that really riled with me were the words “failure”.
Arafat was born in 1929 in Egypt and his country, Palestine, was a British mandate. After the war the Israeli State was founded and the Palestinian people were treated as if they did not exist and had no rights. The majority in exile and overwhelmingly poor, they looked for leadership. The foundation of the PLO in 1964 provided that. The 1967 Six Day War and the later wars in Lebanon and the West Bank, showed that expansion was their only agenda. Few can forget massacres in 1982 at Sabra and Shatilla as Sharon showed his true colours, and the PLO leadership decamped to Tunis. The isolation and irrelevance that Sharon hoped for never came - indeed exile was a masterstroke politically, as the world had to wake up to the injustice
The turning point in the search for peace came in 1988 with the historic two state strategy supported by Arafat and the endless rounds of talks which gave hope, more recognition, but no solution.
Arafat was always controversial and not universally popular. I cannot forget visiting a shoe seller in Ramallah an hour before I was due to meet Arafat. The man asked why I was in Ramallah and when I told him he let off a string of expletives. He barely paused for breath as he criticised Arafat for everything, and I was to make sure Arafat knew how much he was loathed by this man and his family and friends. I even bought a pair of uncomfortable ill fitting sandals to halt the flow of invective. As I was leaving, I gently asked who he would vote for in any future Palestinian election. I then became the target of a new round of abuse as he firmly told me that he, and every true Palestinian could only ever vote for Arafat as he was “Palestine”.
In that grim room in the Ramallah ruins where Arafat is now buried, I was struck by both his ill health and lucidity. I was also struck by how relatively powerless he was. A President who could not move, and an administration that was almost bankrupt. The West Bank is bad and poor, but Gaza is worse and now ranks as among the poorest places on the earth. Unlike the majority of the media, I don’t blame Arafat for this.
I am always suspicious when Blair and Bush do anything together, and have noticed the convenience of the Palestinian issue whenever things are getting really rough in Iraq. Straight after the US elections, Blair announced that Palestine was the key, and he duly went off for yet another round of talks with the man in the White House.
The UK media, embedded with the Prime Minister on the BA chartered flight give these talks huge prominence; I suspect it received barely a mention in most US media outlets.
If this was meant to be the start of a new process of peace it was a bit bumpy. Blair talked it up and they seemed relieved that Arafat was gone. But are they serious?
If they were, surely the biggest violations of UN resolutions would have been mentioned, the illegal development of nuclear weapons, or perhaps the flouting of the World Court over the infamous wall. As I listened to the press conference I soon realised that this bit was not going to happen, so how about an immediate practicality or two? For elections to take place there has to be open access to information, free movement for the campaign and candidates to meet their people.
In an occupied country, with Gaza and open prison, there is no movement. With Marwan Bhargouti in prison, there is hardly free choice. Uri Avnery, of Gush Shalom, in Monday’s Morning Star, explained how Sharon will do everything to try and halt the elections and put the blame on the Palestinians.
Uri is right and as a very minimum there must be a removal of Israeli troops and the restrictions. But there is the eternal, wider issue.
Ever since its foundation, the United States has given enormous support to Israel and underwritten everything it does by arms sales and financial support. More UN vetoes have been cast by the US to defend Israel than any other issue. If there are to be free elections, then there must be a change of approach by the US, and Britain.
In the week since Arafat died, there are precious few signs that there has been any change at all. His power and authority will not be replaced and outside attempts to prevent any independent succession will show the world the reality of the White House declarations.
Few in the West realise just how potent and powerful the issue of Palestine is. The crass injustice done to the Palestinian people is an allegory for the way in which the poor of the whole region see themselves. War comes from injustice. Anyone who doubts that should listen to the youth of Jenin and Nablus, who have had enough of humiliation and restriction; or listen to the families in Rafah whose homes are expended by bulldozers to create a “security zone”. The Right in Israel seem never to understand that the insecurity of life for the millions of Palestinians is their insecurity.
Parliamentary defence matters
November 15, 2004
(From Labour Left Briefing)
I sometimes think the best guide to Parliamentary life is a cursory reading of Harry Potter. It has all the attributes - a public school atmosphere, an old building, lots of strange characters and corridors that lead nowhere, and staircases that end in sealed doors. There is even reputed to be a periscope in the basement so that the Victorian boiler stokers could view the chamber, and see how many Honourable Members were asleep and damp the fires a bit.
The parallels do not end there. Observing Ministers making statements and answering (or not) questions is a science in itself. Although here the Kremlin watchers of the 1950s onwards would be able to decipher the seating order and body language to find whether Gordon was really going to follow Tony, or not.
New Labour seems to like wars. Something few of us suspected when we just thought they were right wing on economic matters, and Victorian on social issues. On international issues they are a strange combination of Palmerston’s foreign policy, and the American neo-cons’ obsession with rooting out enemies. George W appears to have been told that Saladdin defeated the Crusades and decided it was retribution time. What a shame his father never gave him a copy of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
The last few weeks in Parliament have been dominated by Iraq and the Middle East; indeed, the past three years have been dominated by this.
After 9/11 Tony Blair fairly easily convinced most Labour MPs that a war against Afghanistan was justified. A few of us opposed it and are no longer condemned for that. Thousands are dead, Bin Laden still at large, cluster bombs keep on exploding all over, and a record poppy harvest suggest it is hardly the paragon of democratic virtue St Anthony promised.
Iraq was different. I recall arriving in Parliament at 7.30 in the morning in September two years ago to be first in the queue to get a dossier on the fabled Weapons of Mass Destruction. I rushed off the give a copy to Glen Rangwala and sat down in a basement corner to read it. After a few minutes I realised I would be better off at home enjoying tea, toast and homemade jam, or even better, picking fruit to make it.
Any serious commentator had doubts about all the material offered, and expressed them. Blair was convincing in the Chamber, and even more convincing in the Parliamentary Labour Party. His acolytes parroted the ‘threat’ of Iraq and the need for ‘action’. The Evening Standard duly obliged with appropriate screaming headlines and maps of where the weapons would fall within 45 minutes. Even I was shocked by this whole process of naked nonsense being produced as ‘fact’, even with a CD Rom to back it up.
We have now had two years of this process. A leak, followed by a rumour followed by a statement followed by a vote or declarations of loyalty and then another disaster.
The past month has been extraordinary.
Labour Conference was heading for a vote on the principle of troop withdrawal and we were defeated by an intense lobbying exercise and misinformation.
In Parliament it has been much the same over troop deployments.
Mid October the stories emerged of a US request to have British troops in the US zone of Iraq; (note, a US REQUEST) followed by denials from the MoD. Then at the PLP Tony Blair made a speech asking us all to “move on from” Iraq. Those few of us called to speak who are anti war receive a stony or mildly abusive reception. In his reply to the debate (actually 20 minutes between Blair’s 15-minute opening speech and 20-minute reply), the Prime Minister brought up the “leave Saddam in power” argument; like we had spent the 80s in the Saddam Hussein Friendship Society. He did ask us not to talk to the press about all this. Alice Mahon and I considered this as we walked to the studios at 4 Millbank and it was probably eight minutes after the meeting before we were on air. Restraint, I think.
On Monday October 18th, with the warmth and joy of the European Social Forum Rally ringing in my ears, I went to Parliament to hear Geoff Hoon. Hearing him made me long to be with the anarchists who thought no Parliamentarian should even be allowed in the ESF. He told us that his mind was not made up about British troops, that the Defence Chiefs would be looking into the logistics etc etc. For the first 49 minutes he held the line then two things happened. An MP actually supported him (Tory Quentin Davies) and in reply to Jenny Tonge (Lib Dem Richmond Park) he said not to agree would be letting down an ally and he would never do that! I was called and asked about where the British soldiers would go and was told “not Fallujah”. His next answer confirmed that he was to allow US troops to go in - I assume British troops were to guard the mess and clean the place up before their return!
Two days later Blair blathered his way through Prime Minister’s Questions but a sea change had happened. Alice Mahon tabled a motion on troop deployments and got 60-plus MPs signed up straight away. Stop the War swamped the Palace the modern way - emails, faxed and phone calls. Pro-war MPs, feeling the local electoral heat, had suddenly found a way of being critical of Blair, and a vote looked a possibility, if a distant one. Then up popped Michael Howard to promise support and no vote.
On Thursday, Hoon told us the Black Watch would be home by Christmas and that it was all about the Iraqi elections. The annual defence debate veered between Iraq and troops, regiments and their cap badges and lots of new weaponry and pride in a Labour Government increasing arms spending. Oh, for the days of arms conversion and peace.
Harry Cohen, Llew Smith and I raised the nuclear issue and the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and were treated like unwelcome guests at a family reunion. Junior Defence Minister Adam Ingram seemed happy when Julian Lewis (sometime Labour entrust) and Nicholas Soames (bon viveur and sometimes Tory front bencher) shouted abuse at us.
I was pedalled home depressed and angry. How many Iraqis have to die for Dubya’s vanity. I got a call from Al Jazeera: would I do the 9 o’clock news to give a British view of the debate. You bet I did.
At last I was out of the Muggle world.
Blair and the world
November 10, 2004
After each European Council of Ministers, Tony Blair has to report to Parliament on the decisions made – this is the sum total of scrutiny of this very important body.
On Monday, Blair arrived on cue and duly ploughed through his statement and was straight into his least favourite subject, Iraq. He expressed condolences at the death of the Black Watch soldiers, and then went on about the need for action against the insurgents in Fallujah. Ironically, he seems ignorant of the use of the word “insurgent” to describe the fighters in the city. If they are insurgents, what are the US soldiers and their helicopter gun ships? He managed not to mention, until prompted by dissident Labour MPs, that Kofi Annan, no less, had written strongly against the proposed attack on Fallujah.
It is worth recalling the circumstances of this extraordinary letter. After the US/UK invasion in 2003, the UN Security Council voted to recognise the new administration, and in that sense the Alawi Government has UN recognition.
Kofi Annan’s letter is very clear. He supports the electoral process in Iraq, but expresses concern “at the prospect of an escalation of violence, which I fear could be very disruptive for Iraq’s political transition”.
Annan must be aware, as any thinking person is, that all wars end in some form of dialogue. His letter clearly states “the problem of insecurity can only be addressed through dialogue and an inclusive political process”.
Tony’s answer to this issue is another round of justification of US policy until Alice Mahon pointedly asked him if the policy was now “bomb a city every month”. His response to this was an extraordinary attempt to criticise the assessment of 100,000 deaths of Iraqi people as being too high. Shouted responses as to “how many then?” were not forthcoming.
Tony helpfully told the European Council that George Bush had won the election and that they had to get used to it. To emphasise his own special relationship with the US, President Tony will be the first to arrive in Washington with his personal congratulations, and apparently, a determination to renew a peace process in the Middle East.
It must be comforting to Yasser Arafat on his sick bed to know that George Bush is thinking about his “soul” and that Ariel Sharon, using his famous deft diplomacy, has announced he will not allow him to be buried in Jerusalem. Last time I was in Jerusalem, Temple Mount was clearly in Palestine.
I cannot be the only person to find the constant analyses of Arafat’s failures that accompany every medical bulletin to be distasteful. In illness, and unable to respond he is attacked and all Palestinians reminded that they are designed to be a subject people.
I look at it another way. Arafat founded the PLO and has been its figurehead; without it the Palestinians would have been forced into subjugated exile. They have not won their independent state and it is essentially the US unconditional support for Israel that has prevented this happening.
Will the Blair visit to Washington bring results? Israel is a consensus issue amongst the US political elite. Much as the rest of the world wanted a Kerry victory, or at least a Bush defeat, his policies on the Middle East were largely the same as Bush.
There can be a danger in looking at the world through the prism of CNN and today’s issue. News can happen without CNN being present or indeed even knowing about it.
What caught my eye over the weekend was the bizarre pictures of Karzai of Afghanistan visiting Musharraf of Pakistan. The flags were flying, the honour guards were in place, the kerb stones were a brilliant white and the journalists were tame.
This was presented to the world as two great democrats coming together to show how things have changed. Over to the west Alawi no doubt dreams of the same kind of reception and relationship. Are we seeing a rather ridiculous spectacle of US appointed leaders claiming independence whilst sitting on a powder keg, or are the plans of the Project for a New American Century slipping into place?
Between the Pakistan/Afghanistan axis and Iraq lies Iran. The history of Iran has always been fascinating from its Persian days through to the British occupation and influence and then the election of Mossadeq and his overthrow in 1952. The overthrow of the Shah in 1979 ushered in a brutal revolution. As if the wars with Iraq and the repression did not cost enough lives there is another threat.
Iran has a civil nuclear power programme, which in law it is entitled to. This has been transformed into a nuclear weapon threat by the very power that has its own massive capacity to destroy, the USA. The threats being made to Iran by the American right sound all too familiarly like the WMDs Iraq was supposed to have.
It does not take a late night conspiracy theorist to look at the map of the region and see where oil lies, where pipelines go, where the US bases are and which countries they do not have any influence over. That alone should make anyone very wary of the attacks on Iran.
The re-election of Bush is obviously a great disappointment. That his dangerously simplistic message should encourage sixty million people to vote for him, apparently on “moral” grounds. I am not sure which these are; the death penalty, Abu Graib, Guantanamo or the massive arms bill he has dumped on every American family. However the high turnout and the close result mean that more people voted for the apparently “dangerous liberal” Kerry than ever voted for Reagan so there is some cause for hope.
I enjoyed the web jokes over the weekend about the United States of Canada which extended its tentacles down the East and West Coasts and enveloped the great lakes leaving “Jesusland” down to the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe it would be more profitable for world peace if we all strengthened our relations with the US peace movement and worked for a common goal. A world without war and with justice. Are we spectators or actors?
Angola view
November 3, 2004
High above the southern end of Luanda’s vast natural harbour, the brilliant white of the Fortaleza stands out in the sunshine. This Portuguese fort provides more than just an astonishing view, a veritable history of a country. The natural harbour attracted the Portuguese adventurers in the 16th century, indeed Vasco Da Gama’s statue is there, as are many larger than life religious figures, to ensure Christianity came in the form of power across the seas. Look southwards towards Namibia and the Southern Oceans and the view is dominated by the vertical space-rocket-like outline of the Netto Memorial; a tribute to the hero of the independence struggle against the Portuguese, and the new state of 1975.
Look North East, and the shimmering waterfront and its relatively well kept buildings dominate: the centre of the slave trade for Portugal’s treatment of the African people and their export to the plantations of Brazil. Across to the right the skyline is dominated by the construction of a vast US Embassy, the current power in the world. Behind that on the unstable hilltop live tens of thousands of people in favelas surrounded by uncollected rubbish, and dominated by fetid pools of water where the mosquitoes breed.
In the fort itself the modern history unfolds, with rusty old armoured cars and weaponry; captured US-made South African weapons of the bitter war against the apartheid state. Alongside were solid and functional Soviet Weapons from the 1970s and 1980s. Pride of place went to an old Soviet jeep that Fidel Castro used, on his visit to demonstrate the crucial support of Cuban brigades.
Angola has certainly had visits from the world’s arms bazaars; one way and another arms dealers have made a lot out of Angola.
On my first day in Luanda I met the Parliamentary Commissions dealing with External Relations and Economic matters. As I listed the horrific statistics on infant mortality, life expectancy, dislocation and landmines, I asked the obvious question. Antonia Fonseca, our Chair and MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) deputy, spread his hands out and simply said, “In Angola everything is a priority”.
Around Luanda it is very easy to see the effects of war dislocation. A city of 600,000 transformed into a metropolis of four million. Services unable to cope and everywhere the displaced living in makeshift homes or tents. Many children are not in school, and those that are, get one out of a three shift system to maximise use of buildings and teachers. For a country where the majority of its population are under eighteen and illiteracy very high, (but still lower than the Portuguese bequest of 1974), this is disastrous. The twenty first century needs people who can read and write.
Outside Luanda the appearance is of greater order and progress, but this can be deceptive. Bob Hughes (MP) and I travelled to Kuito, 500 kilometres south of Luanda in the war torn province of Bie. This grandly laid out colonial town blinks in the sunshine, and with half closed eyes the visitor can imagine its colonial grandeur of fine buildings and churches, with tended parks and public places. Then open your eyes to reality. Every building, bar none, is marked by bullet and shell damage, many are collapsed, and all are askew; the only signs of life belong to a few trying to survive in the rubble with washing hanging out.
Kuito saw the worst of the fighting during the long struggle against the US and South African backed insurgents from 1975 onwards. The ceasefire of 1992 brought hope, only to be dashed by the diamond funded Savimbi insurgency, which ended with his death in 2002 as the head of the remnants of the UNITA forces that refused to accept the 1992 election result.
Just south of Kuito is a broad, dusty road recently cleared of land mines wherein lies hope. This hope is a massive new wall around a cemetery. The 7,000 bodies found in the rubble have been carefully taken there and tenderly re-buried in the style of European and North African war graves from the first and second wars. This is not, however, a place of victory, but one of reconciliation. UNITA and MPLA combatants laid down together in an act of reconciliation. This is remarkable anywhere, but only two years on - astonishing.
Returning to Kuito, the freshly dug land and traditionally built new homes show a faith in the future. Food production leapt by fourteen per cent last year, as landmine clearance and returnees were able to plant this very productive land.
The hospital in the city, run by a combination of Medecins Sans Frontiere, the International Red Cross and the Ministry of Health, is short of everything. The sight of a 14-day-old baby dying of gangrene from an infected wound would be unthinkable in Europe. In Angola it is a sad inevitability. Cerebral Malaria is a killer, and despite the treatment and research done by MSF, creditable clean water and sanitation would bring dramatic improvements. With only a handful of doctors in a province of nearly three million scattered over 70,000 square kilometres, a hospital is a complete unknown.
But Angola is not a poor country: low population density on fertile land endowed with water, oil and diamonds, its potential is enormous. The potential of the resources has, in a sense been unlocked. Heavily in debt to pay for the war, and oil companies that repay their own investments first, the actual benefit to Angola of the current record oil prices appears to be limited.
Every minister and NGO I met, asked when the Donor Conference would be held; they justly pointed out that all other scenes of post conflict reconstruction had received benefits from a donor conference. Even Iraq, which is nowhere near being post conflict, has had a donor conference.
Next week the International Monetary Fund are due to visit Luanda for the second time. Their first visit reached no agreement, and negotiations will be tough. One hopes for a donor conference and a comprehensive strategy to conquer illiteracy and poverty, but also for an outcome that respects Angola.
As in nearly all of West Africa, colonialism and the slave trade left the social infrastructure damaged. Portugal fled after a brutal colonial war and the 1974 overthrow of fascism; in that flight went all the technical and professional workers. With an empty treasury, and bereft of technical skills, Angola has since had nearly 30 years of war and therefore deserves recognition of its problems and achievements.
Last Saturday morning I met a dedicated and formidable group in the midst of the worst slums of Luanda. A water standpipe committee who not only laboriously collate the accounts of their standpipe, but also use their collaboration on this basic need to campaign to collect rubbish, drain their streets and develop creches. This work, part of the British supported Luanda Urban Poverty Programme, was impressive, as was my previous call, to a workshop making locally designed concrete latrines. Clean water in, and sewage safely disposed of will save lives. Without this all the other priorities are impossible.
