International policy
March 30, 2006
(From Socialist Campaign Group News)
British politics, uniquely, has been dominated by international politics for the past five years. The attack on the World Trade Centre was a uniquely awful event; it obviously attracted mega publicity around the world.
Most Governments expressed sympathy and support and called for restraint by the USA. Tony Blair went further and faster than any other leader in rushing to the USA and promising George Bush full support in anything he wanted to do, and later, ominously, offered to pay a blood price for this support.
Four and a half years later that blood price has been paid for via the deaths of over 100 British soldiers, 2,000 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans. The detainees of Guantanamo Bay have suffered an abuse of their basic human rights and torture in a legal void.
It does not end there, as 5,000 British troops are going back to Afghanistan to free up Americans who continue to occupy Iraq. Their mission is to try and control southern Afghanistan: a mission that failed in the nineteenth century and the twentieth and could well lead to a long and bloody conflict, with Britain once again on the side of the USA to ensure the Project for a New American Century survives.
Blair’s obsession with Iraq and his support for Bush has forever damned him in history as the Labour leader who turned his back on the Party’s internationalist traditions. However much he might claim, bizarrely, to the Australian Parliament, that he will tough it out, it is the Labour Party that has been hurt politically by this.
Having been involved in every Parliamentary debate and vote on Afghanistan and Iraq, the most depressing thing is the three party consensus that exists most of the time.
The Tories, then led by Ian Duncan Smith enthusiastically supported Blair in the key vote on March 18th 2003. Indeed it would be hard to forget Tory MPs blinking with disbelief as they were out-done in the phony patriotic stakes by New Labour.
The Liberal Democrats have made much of their “opposition” to the war. It is true they did vote for the amendment saying that “the case for war has not been made” in 2003, but they failed to vote against the principal question a few minutes later. In the months that followed they supported the presence of British troops and have not supported calls for their withdrawal since then.
The Stop the War coalition has become a huge force in British politics, and it is a coalition which includes all Left groups, Labour Against the War, and some Liberal Democrats.
In Parliament the main anti-war voices have been Labour, and some of the PC and SNP MPs.
The Tories actually propose a new generation of nuclear weapons, and so far the Liberal Democrats have not managed to say that Trident should not be replaced.
The Labour Party has suffered from the war, and overwhelmingly ordinary members are opposed to it, as are the vast majority of Labour voters. But if voters and members walk away in disgust, what is the consequence? It is not a Left alternative Government or Council, but handing power to the Right in the form of the Tories or the Liberal Democrats to pursue their own agenda.
The Tories, despite the Cameron soft focus image, are the party of social division and privatisation. The Liberal Democrats have never been of the Left, are anti Trade Union, and under Campbell are in favour of privatisation of the Post Office.
The danger to Labour is not from the other parties, but from a pro war leadership and the refusal by that leadership to listen to ordinary people.
The Pensions dispute is based on a dangerous myth that an increasing elderly population is a good pretext for abandoning a fundamental principal that the society as a whole should care for people, and that in employment the employer, as well as the worker, should pay for occupational pension schemes.
The Socialist Campaign Group exists to campaign for social justice and for the Labour Party to be true to its roots. By winning the policy arguments on peace, social justice and economic power, the Party will get the leadership it deserves.
Karachi Road
March 29, 2006
On Sunday at a packed sports centre in Karachi the World Social Forum (WSF) came into its own.
Six dancers on the stage wheeled and whirled around in white shirts; four pulled off their shirts and revealed black shirts marked WTO, WB, MNC, and IMF and started attacking one poor man in white. He was then offered a complicated rope lattice like a trussed up hammock, following which he was ensnared on the middle whilst the four dancers of the apocalypse held their ropes fast. Enter our hero in white shirt with World Social Forum on his back who danced brilliantly with his long red baton and then did a stage fall. The crowd groaned and as he rose the baton became a spear and he dealt with the four nasties one by one, who then transformed into united campaigners for justice, and freed the hapless peasant from the ropes. United at last the dancers sang “We shall Overcome” in Urdu.
Earlier in the day the same sports centre was filled for an historic debate and discussion about Kashmir. The event was billed to start at 9.30am and finally got under way at midday when the speakers arrived, accompanied by hundreds of noisy flag waving supporters, and took the stage.
The significance was that Kashmiri leaders from both sides of the line of control were present on the same platform. They were all supposed to make short five-minute speeches but the contributions lasted for four hours and brought to a wider audience the pain, suffering and tribulations of Kashmir. The earthquake has killed tens of thousands, wrecked communities, roads and schools. The relief effort whilst heroic in many ways has been inefficient and mired in accusations of corruption, but it has caught the popular imagination.
Essentially the debate is about partition and conflict. The line of control divides the region, it is one of the most militarized places in the world, and has seen enormous spending by India and Pakistan on weapons, and encouraged the development, by both sides, of nuclear arms.
Speakers included the former Chief Minister of (Pakistani) Kashmir and those who had been supports of Sheikh Abdullah, the former Chief Minister of (Indian) Kashmir. Miraiz Farooq made a statesman like speech in his role as Chairman of the All Parties Conference. He complained at the slow pace of the “confidence building measures” of both national Governments and opposed de-linking Kashmir from the on-going peace process.
The point was made by speaker after speaker, and emphasized by the JKLF (Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front), that thousands are dying, that the Indian Army occupies and the abuses of human rights are appalling.
The significance of the meeting and the development of a movement of autonomy in Kashmir show the value of the WSF and the decision to meet in Pakistan.
The sports complex where the last of the 2006 polycentric forums are being held, the earlier ones in Latin America (Venezuela) and Africa (Mali), was filled with Union groups, landless peoples’ movements, peace organizations and womens’ organizations. Pakistani progressive groups, having endured years of military Governments, have welcomed and used the democratic space of the WSF to push their causes.
On Sunday night, in one of the huge tents erected for the forum, the Pakistan Workers Federation, representing both employed and informal workers vividly outlined the problems of organizing. The Musharraf Government, at the behest of the USA has developed security laws to a new pitch, including making 90,000 railway workers part of the “Defence Line”. Ordinary people and organized workers pay the price of the Government’s support for the US policies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The theme of the Conference is anti war with vivid descriptions of the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it is more focused on the issues of South Asia than anything else.
South Asian unity is a prize that could deliver disarmament, development and justice. The internal conflicts in all the countries are being given a full airing in Karachi; in each country there have been attacks on civil rights and organisations, overall the level of military spending is huge. In the global picture the USA sees the post cold war atmosphere and their absurd “war on terror” as a golden opportunity to extend influence that was impossible before 1990.
The World Social Forum is a fascinating phenomenon. It has successfully brought together huge numbers of people from the political Left, the Trade Unions and a bewildering variety of social causes. It gives real bite to the cause of internationalism by giving space to people who would not otherwise have it. This forum, like the huge one in Mumbai two years ago is filled with the very poorest landless people hoping for support and desperate for change. These people are the victims of oppressive Governments, unfair land ownership, and the cruelty of World Trade Organization policies. In just the same way the industrial workers of South Asia and Europe who are losing their jobs on the alter of globalization are victims, or for that matter, the systematic attacks on the social protection systems of Western Europe are victims. A world dominated by the economics of wealth and greed is not sustainable in a social or environmental sense.
Post 1990 the free market obsession of the American Right has tried to have it all their own way and the development of the alternative pole of public opinion has been slow. But the pressure over World Trade talks and more obviously opposition to the military policies in Afghanistan, Iraq and the threats to Iran have changed all that.
The WSF has provided space for people to meet and talk and be inspired and it continues to grow. The next forum will be in January 2007 in Nairobi, Kenya. From that there is the chance of developing a sense of coherence in making another world possible. To defeat the free market arguments at the World Trade Organization and the madness of the project for a new American century maximum unity is necessary
There is a wonderfully tolerant atmosphere in Karachi. On Saturday evening three of us were recording an hour-long discussion programme in the open about the WSF. We stopped the discussion many times to allow for a landless peoples march to go by, the prayer call and a demonstration by people from Baluchistan. Life at the WSF is a constant demonstration. Long may it continue.
South Asia peace
March 29, 2006
(From Labour Left Briefing)
Mumbai is an enormous and heavily polluted city. Its centre has been the focus of enormous controversy as the once mighty cotton mills have closed one by one, its manufacturing centre followed suite, and the working classes heavily unionised communities split asunder as a result.
The dispossessed poor eke out a living in the city’s shanty towns and try making a living from being day labourers or street vendors. Their living standards are low and falling.
Yet the city is also the centre of the film phenomena of Bollywood and is advertised as the financial capital of one of the fastest growing economies. Sleek cars slowly move through the city surrounded by noisy auto rickshaws and the occasional handcart. The rich and successful looking at the poor through tinted windows.
India is changing fast; globalisation has hit as successive Governments have “opened” the economy; a euphemism for Indian industry no longer having a protected market, and unemployment follows.
The aspirant middle class obsession with waterfronts and loft apartments affects India too. The jobless mill workers are being told the future for Mumbai is new roads and good quality housing in place of the mills. The poor, it seems, simply don’t count in the planners dreams.
Slightly further out from the centre the rapid expansion of Mumbai is obvious, with polluted streams tuned into rat infested open sewers, and near my hotel a huge series of sheds housing buffalos who are tethered and fed for their milk. Their land has been built on and only the cattle sheds remain where hard working cattle hands rent a spot for their animal and make only 45 Rupees a day (£1=80 Rupees).
Focus on the Global South is a campaigning group based in India, Thailand and the Philippines who analyse and campaign on a whole range of political and economic issues. To continue this work they brought together activists from all the countries of the region and a small number from Europe and the USA who spent three days hearing reports and analyses of the region.
The whole subcontinent is a product of the hasty 1947 partition. India divided with Pakistan in two parts. Now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh with Nepal and Sri Lanka make up South Asia.
Two countries, India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons and huge economic and social issues to contend with. Nepal has a civil war, Bangladesh a spate of killings and human rights problems, and Sri Lanka has a well publicised conflict over the demands of the Tamil people.
Into this mix there has been a sea change in foreign policies and approaches. Traditionally Pakistan was seen as pro US but with good relations with China. India pro Soviet and ever since the 1962 war has had a tense relationship with China. The US has only developed a real interest in India since the break up of the Soviet Union. Their demands are military and economic. The relationship with Pakistan has sunk to new depths of subservience with only muted complaints when American bombers destroyed villages on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border. The reception the Government of India accorded Bush on his visit indicates just how far the Indian economy has moved in the American direction. Nevertheless hundreds of thousands turned out in Delhi and Hyderabad to protest at the warmonger’s presence.
The conference discussed the effects of the World Trade Organisation’s Open Markets policy, which encourages food dumping and privatisation of services. A group I met from Tamil Nadu gave a graphic description of the pollution caused by the over-bleaching of cotton garments, the appalling wages, and anti Union employers in the industry which turns out pristine goods for high street names. Wages fall in order to compete with Bangladesh, whose wages fall to compete with China. The market brutality creates massive gaps between the richest and poorest. The IMF think this it is a success.
The conference brought together the economic and social issues but also analysed the conflicts in Nepal and Sri Lanka, and the nuclear arms issue between India and Pakistan. India and Pakistan’s support for the US over Iran has provoked outrage, but from Bush, the offer to India of nuclear know-how. The hypocrisy of opposing Iran, which has signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation treaty, whilst rewarding India, which has not and which actually has developed weapons, will not be lost on other countries.
The declaration formulated at the conference was firmly against the war in Iraq and any attack on Iran, looked for South Asian unity and peace, and opposed the economic agenda the US and the world institutions is trying to force on the reluctant region.
The world’s business press might be full of stories of rapid economic growth and new wealth in India. The massive protests against the Bush visit tell a different story.
The riddle in the sea
March 22, 2006
Until 1974 the Western Sahara was a Spanish colony.
With the decline of Franco’s fascist regime and the thirst for independence from the Saharwi People, the Spanish left this mineral rich and sparsely populated land. One of Africa’s last colonies was history, and in common with all the other decolonisation processes it should have become independent.
An International Court advisory ruling in 1975 concluded there were no ties with Morocco or Mauritania, and that the colony should therefore be entitled to its independence.
Independence was thwarted because the Moroccan army was allowed in by Spain. Using sophisticated American supplied weapons they eventually forced the Saharwi people out of their desert land. King Hassan himself led new colonisers in, and to show that the ancient rules of conquest were not dead he had a sand wall constructed. In place of the turrets of mediaeval battles he placed machine guns, spy cameras and surrounded it with land mines. They are still there today.
The Saharwi people were forced out, and established refugee camps in Algeria from where they continue the battle to try and win back their homeland. They also gained an impressive array of international support, with seventy countries recognising the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic. It is a full member of the African Union.
By 1991 a ceasefire was agreed which should have been followed by a UN sponsored referendum to enable the people of the area to choose their own future. Protracted negotiations followed on who should vote in this, with Morocco insisting on the colonisers being enfranchised to out-vote the dispossessed occupants of the camps. The referendum has yet to be held. Morocco occupies most of the area and has denied the refugees the resources it should bring. The UN made the strange choice of James Baker, former Secretary of State in the USA, to be the General Secretary’s envoy to resolve the matter. He brokered an agreement which would allow Moroccan administration, a right of return, and a referendum in the future. The Polisario Front reluctantly accepted this as being the only viable offer, only to then see it rejected by Morocco. Thus a new stalemate has ensued, with the UN apparently unable to move forward whilst Morocco has embarked on a diplomatic offensive to gain support for their unsustainable and illegal position as an occupying power.
Nations that occupy another do so out of national aggrandizement and a perverted sense of nationalism, or in search of economic power, or both.
In the case of Morocco and the Western Sahara, it is a bit of both. King Hassan whipped up nationalist fervour in order to mount the invasion, and his successor has attempted to maintain it ever since.
The land is mainly desert but contains enormous phosphate deposits, a high chance of large oil and other minerals, as well as land. It also has an enormous length of Atlantic coast which is teeming with fish. At present the area is illegally fished by Morocco, but could be opened up to European trawlers if the planned agreement is approved by a majority of EU member states.
Last Friday this issue was raised in Parliament. I tried to extract some undertakings from the British Government that it would respect the 1974 UN Charter of Economic Rights and the International Court. The UN declared, in 1974, that “No state has the right to promote or encourage investments that may constitute an obstacle to the liberation of a territory occupied by force.”
This means that anything south of 27 degrees 40 minutes parallel is in Western Sahara and should therefore not be touched. Morocco is desperate to gain agreement with the European Union which would mean a huge step towards approving of its invasion of the Western Sahara.
Ironically, in 2004 the USA concluded a free trade agreement with Morocco which specifically excluded the Western Sahara. Maybe they should not have concluded the agreement at all in view of Moroccan behaviour but they did at least respect the UN position on decolonisation.
The EU shows no scruples at all. It prays in aid the (illegal) 1975 Madrid accords when the dying Franco regime gave the Western Sahara to Morocco, and refuses to put a southern border on the fishing limit. The chief EU negotiator, Cesar Deben, quite falsely claimed that the Western Sahara waters were “under Moroccan administration” and therefore the EU should be allowed to fish there.
These are not obscure arcane legal arguments, but quite literally life and death for the Saharwi people.
Very powerful French and Spanish fishing interests are eying up opportunities for massive profits. Overfishing in the North Atlantic, Mediterranean and North Sea make the prospect of the huge stocks off the coast of Western Sahara literally mouth watering. Their Governments have duly obliged and are pressing for the ratification of the agreement.
Such ratification would fly in the face of the UN Under Secretary for Legal Affairs advice on mineral extraction in 2002, when he warned that “if further exploration and exploitation activities were to proceed in disregard of the interests and wishes of the people of western Sahara, they would be in violation of the international law, principles applicable to mineral resource activities in Non Self Governing Territories.”
It is now up to the EU member states to vote down the Agreement and thus recognise the legitimate claim of the Saharwi people to their land and livelihood. If, however, they support the agreement they will be acting illegally and showing contempt for the expelled population and their dreams of returning to their own land.
165,000 people have lived for 30 years in the misery of the camps in Algeria, which can be bitterly cold on winter nights, and with summer temperatures that rise to fifty degrees. Little water and poor soil have made life difficult. Despite this they have survived on a mixture of international aid, ingenuity and political unity. The camps are well run with good education, rights for women and good health care. They are, however, still camps, and therefore a form of torture. The occupants will gain nothing from the “right” of wealthy European companies to take their fish. This agreement, if approved, will pave the way for more exploitation of other resources.
So far Britain has placed a “reserve” on its position. There is still time to oppose, and for supporters of the Saharwi people, to encourage others to do the same.
Human rights
March 15, 2006
On Monday the UN Human Rights Commission met for the start of its normal six-week spring session in Geneva. The session lasted five minutes whilst, by consensus, the Council Members of the Commission agreed to adjourn for a week.
This was not out of any wish not to meet, quite the contrary, but because of negotiations going on thousands of miles away in New York.
At the heart of the problem lie the aspirations of the UN charter, the work of the Human Rights Commission and the wish of the USA not to have an intrusive watch dog.
Last September the meeting of all heads of Government of the UN in New York eventually agreed a set of priorities for the UN, after huge swathes were cut out on the insistence of the US ambassador John Bolton.
Bolton only got the position by direct appointment from president Bush who was able to use the Congressional summer break to circumvent the tedious hearings against him that were being held.
Bolton lost no time after arriving in New York to inform the world the UN had no function in disarmament, peace or development. He was prepared to accept a series of aspirations but fundamentally thinks the 21st century is Pax Americana.
The US and many other governments have long had suspicions about the role of the UN Human Rights Commission.
Their suspicions are mainly that it elects its own council and gives space to non-governmental organisations to speak up about abuses in their own country.
This provision is within the terms of the UN tradition, that civil society should have a say in all matters pertaining to them.
This has frequently led to flare-ups when civil society groups from Palestine criticise Israel, or Human Rights Groups in Colombia make the long (and expensive) journey to Geneva to raise their wholly legitimate concerns and demands. The national governments have a right of reply, and the Council members get even longer to reply to or justify the position.
The Commission can, and frequently has, appointed special rapporteurs who can look at huge areas of discrimination and report back to future sessions. The Commission also has a related session on the plight of indigenous peoples.
It is a slow and cumbersome system but there is clearly a need for a body that the un-represented and dispossessed can appeal to.
It took Herculean efforts to persuade the Millennium summit in South Africa to look at issues of discrimination based on work and caste descent. It is exactly the kind of issue that should be addressed by the UN.
Due to uncertainty over the activities of the UN body, a parallel session on caste discrimination had to be moved to the offices of the World Council of Churches.
The current impasse is a result of the objections the US raised to the Annan plan last September. In the draft put forward by the Secretary General he envisaged the creation of a Human Rights Council that would be “responsible for promoting universal respect for the protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all …..”
It also called for the new Council to “address situations of the violations of human rights, including gross and systematic violations and make recommendations thereon”. It also hoped that Human Rights would be mainstreamed in the UN.
The Security Council could not agree on this so referred it, unusually, to the 191 member General Assembly, to ensure its establishment.
The plan to create a 47 member Human Rights Council had widespread support and would require its members to have their own records scrutinised. Bolton, on behalf of the USA opposed this and thus blocked its passage.
Having staved off the new system, the US then asked that the Commission in Geneva not commence its work but postpone it. At present this postponement is for one week but there is no guarantee that the New York negotiations will succeed.
The worst case scenario is that there will be no Commission, no Council and therefore no work by the UN on Human Rights at all. If this happens it would be a first in the 60 year history of the UN.
Jan Elliason, the President of the General Assembly, has tried to gain agreement but at each turn is blocked by the sinister machinations of John Bolton.
It could be that the issues to be discussed in Geneva which include Guantanamo Bay and torture, were too much for the US. There are other issues that are equally embarrassing to other governments such as Russia or India on the agenda.
However, there is a huge and wider issue that is in danger of being lost. There have traditionally been two strands to human rights debates between those who see it in “western” terms of individual rights in society, and those who see it only in collective terms. The Human Rights Commission has usually looked both ways in this and sought to involve all member states. Governments do use the UN system to deflect or denigrate critics, but a serious human rights body has to be robust and deal with this, whoever the Government is. The Human Rights Commission is not perfect and indeed some of its election results have been strange, but it has provided a forum for exposing abuses in all countries in the world.
On Monday in the House of Commons the Defence Secretary John Reid was irritated that issues of the behaviour and unpopularity of the occupying forces in Iraq was under scrutiny. He asserted at one point that it was difficult for armies to deal with the wars of the 21st century with 20th century rules. This is exactly the argument used by the US to defend its position on the gulag of Guantanamo Bay, a place with no legal basis for even the US occupation since a pliant client Cuban Government of 1899 agreed the lease. Its dubious legal status is made worse by its imprisonment of un-charged foreign nationals by the US who suffer torture and privations that so many governments around the world seem to find difficulty to condemn.
Reid probably did not realise it but failure to close down this obscenity will pave the way for a new law of necessity whereby any Government can use the argument about “asymmetric conflict” to deny human rights to any group of citizens it finds objectionable, or who are campaigning for fairness and justice.
The chicanery of New York and Geneva is more serious than just another diplomatic row. Without some form of Human Rights machinery many abuses will continue and the voiceless and dispossessed will be denied even this imperfect vehicle. It seems that the Bush regime is quite content with that.
Global fairness
March 8, 2006
Next week is Fair Trade Week. Campaigners will be out in force to encourage shoppers to do their bit by purchasing Fair Trade goods and trying to influence what national Governments can, but rarely, do to try and bring about a sense of fairness.
The last time the issue of trade justice and fairness hit the headlines and streets in a big way was only eight months ago in Edinburgh. The huge Make Poverty History event attracted thousands and was welcomed by Ministers and generally approved of by Ministers. The G8 then fudged the issue by agreeing some debt write off as a proposal, and some semblance of fair trade, but fell well short of the West giving up its pre-eminent control of the world’s trading systems.
The whole show then moved to Hong Kong where the World Trade Organisation met to discuss the next moves after the failure of the earlier Cancun talks.
The talks in Mexico failed, after a concerted effort of poorer southern countries led by Brazil, India and China protested at western dumping practices of surplus agricultural products which wrecked local markets and economies and served only for European and North American Governments to fatten the richest farmers with subsidies.
The talks collapsed and the West was forced to re-think the strategy.
As Hong Kong loomed there was intensive lobbying by the aid and trade groups in solidarity with the poorest producers. In return the EU and the US were asked to cut farm subsidies and thus produce a scenario where it would be possible for the poorest nations to develop their agriculture. In debate Ministers and the EU Commission claimed that the rest of the world had to “give something”, as if the negotiations were part of some equal and level playing filed between protagonists in normal negotiations.
There was nothing fair or equal in any of this. For the West the real prize was not preserving agricultural subsidies but using it as a bargaining counter for what they really wanted.
The strangely named NAMA, which stands for Non Agricultural Market Access, was the real prize. This concept was in reality a rehash of what was floated in the earlier attempts at WTO agreement. Namely the requirement of the poorest members of the WTO to open their internal economies to western companies. The resulting privatisation and takeovers are what the western economies were always after.
This came about because the unity of the poorest countries became strained. The leadership of India, Brazil and China had different agendas and needs from some of the others, and pressure resulted in reluctant acquiescence.
Global capital is a brutal force. The whole WTO system is stacked mainly in favour of the capital rich and technically advanced companies of the West at the expense of the poorer southern countries. The system of job movements serves the richest very well; as technology advances the more manual tasks are transferred to low wage and unorganised workers in the poorest parts of the world leave the West to be the consumers of the goods whilst the pollution and poverty happen somewhere else.
At the South Asia Peace Conference in Mumbai I recently attended, I bought a small and very simply produced pamphlet produced by a group called Community Awareness Research Education. This brief report by S M Prithiviraj is entitled “Overview of Working Conditions in garments Factories producing Major American Brands”. I had the privilege of a discussion with the author, and heard at first hand of the situation in the Chennai region of Tamil Nadu.
The intensity of the industry and low prices paid by contractors for work on brand name garments has appalling effects on the environment and on working conditions. Pollution from bleaching and dumping of production waste has done huge damage to the environment, ruining farming, harming water supplies and damaging farming.
The pressure of the low prices has produced some awful working conditions.
The report found that contrary to the Fair Labour Associations code of conduct there were forced labourers. At some times of the year workers were forced into 90 hour weeks, due to pressure of time the workers then used their own children to complete garments to meet the Christmas market. Many of the workers are migrants who are “housed” in company hostels they are not allowed to leave.
Child Labour has reduced a little due to pressure but 12 to 14 year olds working was still common.
For unskilled, mainly women workers, the pay rates range from 40 to 70 Rupees per day (current exchange rate is 80 Rupees to the Pound). Most of the workers are young and married women are not wanted. Those from the lowest castes do the worst and most menial tasks, which are often the most dangerous.
Health and Safety was found to be slightly better in the factories than with outside piece rate workers.
Despite all the difficulties there, area Trade Unions have succeeded in organising workers clandestinely. In one district, Tirupur, the Unions have agreed a regional pay scale. The employers have hit back by trying to shift production outside the area.
The enormous battles being fought in Tamil Nadu are repeated in many other places; indeed they are the same battles that were fought in London, Leeds and many other places in the 20th century.
The Tamil Nadu experience is one end of a chain. Low paid and exploited workers producing brand name goods for a contractor who then sells them on to the big name. They are shipped to the smart stores in the centre of all the big cities and bought for enormous sums. T shirts for over £30 bought by young people for the name. Not by rich people but poor people desperate to fit the advertiser’s image.
At one end of the chain, pollution and poverty; the other over pricing and exploitation. Somewhere in the middle are huge profits made by household names with all the skill of Pontius Pilate who say child labour and pollution are nothing to do with them. They just buy from contractors.
To win fair trade we need fair working conditions and that can only be guaranteed by strong unions and genuine solidarity.
Peace Mumbai
March 1, 2006
Mumbai is an enormous and chaotic city. It represents the aspirant wealth of the new money that the Indian media are so keen to talk about. The illusion of Bollywood with its ephemeral wealth provides millions with fleeting glimpses of unattainable life styles, and it provides all the daily drama of Indian cities, from choking traffic and pollution to the incredibly skilled and hard working craftsmen in small enterprises trying to eke out an existence. Unemployment and poverty demonstrate that the globalised economy has wasted many of the huge industries that made the city a byword for manufacturing in the post independence economy of India.
Whilst levels of poverty are horrific in the main cities, it is worse in the countryside as farmers try to make ends meet and compete with the unfair forces of the global market place. The news carries stories of large numbers of proud farmers being forced to commit suicide as their livelihoods ebb away. Land struggles between small and poor farmers are aplenty, with the agri-business being promoted to match the models of development being imposed by the world’s financial institutions.
The effects of the Tsunami are still felt in many places, with the destruction of coastal communities. Aid distribution has not been fair; the opportunism of the tourist interests has forced communities to move inland to make way for the well financed hotel and marina developments. There is a grim truism that the poorest were hit the hardest and still suffer the most.
Peace Mumbai is an initiative organised by Focus on the Global South in order to bring together the issues of globalisation of the economy, destruction of the environment, social needs of housing and health, with the enormous issues of war and peace in the region; the grim link of liberal economics with war.
Organised on the eve of George Bush’s visit to India and Pakistan, the conference was attended by several hundred activists from South and South East Asia.
The Conference declaration noted that the “War against Terror” was in reality the dubious agenda to promote US military and nuclear interests.
The declaration also noted the strong cultural, social and political links which gave the opportunity to present an alternative to the Neo Liberal, militaristic and corporate path that governments in the region are increasingly choosing.
The conference was dominated by the threat of war in Iran that the Bush visit underlines; on top of the chaos of Iraq and the growing intensity of the fighting in Afghanistan.
The region is in the midst of a huge political effort by the USA to ensure the war will increase military and economic influence throughout the region.
This pressure is many faceted and overt. Pakistan has been given large loans and grants to increase its already huge military expenditure, as a reward for supporting the US in Afghanistan and Iraq. Such is the pressure from the US that even the “mistaken” bombing of Pakistan’s villages by the US from Afghanistan brought little response beyond an apology and understanding from Pakistan’s government. The opposition to the Bush visit is enormous and has united many disparate forces.
Indian opposition to Bush comes from an enormous range of forces, from the Parliamentary Left led by the communist parties, to those who are suffering the crude effects of the imposition of free market forces.
Thus the visit brings about an intensity of debate about the direction of the whole region. 50 years ago the non aligned movement was founded at the famous Bandung conference. India, under Nehru was the lynchpin of the movement which united most of the world’s poorest nations as a force for peace and disarmament. Post Cold War it is ironic that levels of military expenditure are now higher and rising. Indeed the whole pressure on South Asia by the US is to increase spending and develop a massive military counter-weight to China.
All this in a region that suffers great levels of poverty and is told that the way out is to adopt the tried, tired and failed policies of the World Bank in market forces, as a way of promoting development.
Ironically the US intensity of interest on the whole region has the perverse effect of also providing a platform for open discussion of the many problems of the area, and thus bringing about a new unity of purpose.
An intense discussion about Sri Lanka at the conference charted the grim decline into the war of the past two decades. Delegates from Nepal, where the King is desperate to hang on to power, were sharply critical of the role of the USA and Britain in supplying arms which have been used against the popular movements. Human rights abuses and a yawning gap between the richest and poorest of the region are a motor for instability. The conference showed another way.
As a conclusion, there was agreement to seriously promote economic policies not led by the market and Neo Liberal free for all methods; but regional cooperation to address the agrarian crisis and of inter state issues such as Kashmir or the water supply problems.
In an era of a grim march towards nuclear re-armament, the conference called for a nuclear weapons free South Asia. Since both India and Pakistan have weapons and have spent huge resources on their development, this is a welcome step forward.
Nationalism is a potent force and in the region this is often divisive; this conference instead called for citizenship and cultural identity “as South Asians” which is “a heterogeneous multicultural and mutually respectful”.
The problems of lack of access to education for many, lack of clean water and effective health care cannot be dealt with whilst the burden of military expenditure continues to grow. The rules the World Trade Organisation wishes to impose on Non Agriculture Market Access restrict the power of national Governments to address these problems other than by privatisation and the exporting of profits to distant global companies.
Peace Mumbai is a serious attempt to bring all the issues together. A world of war and militarism cannot provide for the needs of the people.
