MAKE POVERTY HISTORY

RMTnews :: june 2005 26 T he eyes of the world will be on Edinburgh in July. It is expected that at least 200,000 people will gather here, each one determined to Make Poverty History. It will be the biggest political protest the city has ever seen. As a local Member of the Scottish Parliament, I am aware there is growing excitement in the city tinged with a degree of cynicism about whether the G8 will take any heed of the mass protest. I have been on Princes Street each Saturday lunchtime, campaigning, and have no doubt that a huge majority of the population support the aims of Make Poverty History. “Bush, Blair and Berlusconi think nothing about spending billions on war but refuse to spend coppers fighting hunger, disease and poverty in the third world,” I point out via loudspeaker and people nod, or wave and sign the petitions. “The agenda of the G8 is not the agenda of the peoples’ of the world,” all agree. The optimism about the protests in July is in stark contrast to the belief that the G8 leaders will do little to address the poverty in any meaningful way. Which of course leads to the question, will the G8 leaders take any more heed of this protest as they have previous ones? Looking at their past record, you can’t be optimistic. Take the targets they set for aid. Thirty years ago they aimed to donate 0.75 per cent of GDP to third world. Their record as been risible. In the meantime 30-40,000 children die daily from preventable diseases and starvation. But I am full of hope about what the protest movement can achieve. The ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign has inspired millions. Kids are wearing their wristbands in all the schools I visit, and in the youth clubs and in the football crowds. The G8 Alternatives group which is hosting an alternative summit in Edinburgh at the same time as the G8 are at Gleneagles contains a wide diversity of organisations but holds one in belief in common - that the G8 are in fact responsible for the system which perpetuates the poverty in Africa and the third world and is responsible for the deterioration in our global climate. Malcolm X, the famous black US leader, once said of the struggle in the 1960s: “you can’t have capitalism without racism”. I believe that, similarly, you can’t have capitalism without poverty. And so if you want to make poverty history you have to eradicate the system which creates it - make capitalism history too. The G8 Alternatives movement shares that view and the meetings in recent weeks have been packed to the rafters attracting literally hundreds to the organising meetings, all full of optimism and a spirit of determination and boundless energy. It has the same spirit the anti-war protests had two years ago. Over the ‘July days’ G8 Alternatives will host a wide variety of discussions, forums, concerts, socials and protests in Edinburgh and around Scotland. There will be protests at Scotland’s home for weapons of mass destruction –the nuclear submarine base at Faslane on the Clyde, at Dungavel detention centre in Lanarkshire which imprisons asylum seekers and of course at Gleneagles itself. I will be hosting an opening rally on July 1 in the Queens Hall in Edinburgh with George Galloway, Haida Guiliani whose son was killed by the police in Genoa, Rose Gentle whose son Gordon a young soldier died in Iraq and Italian left-wing leader Fausto Bertinotti. In a debate in the Scottish parliament last week I said that I believe Gleneagles 2005 may well leave behind something the G8 leaders never envisaged, a re-invigorated mass movement with the potential to change the world. Colin Fox, Scottish Socialist Party Convenor MAKE POVERTY HISTORY-be part of history