http://www.makepovertyhistory.org http://www.tjm.org.uk These pictures are from the Nottingham Event. St Peters Church, Nr Broadmarsh
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Trade Justice believe everyone has the right to feed their families, make a decent living and protect their environment.
But the rich and powerful are pursuing trade policies that put profits before the needs of people and the planet.
To end poverty and protect the environment we need Trade Justice not free trade.
The UK Government should:
Fight to ensure that governments, particularly in poor countries, can choose the best solutions to end poverty and protect the environment.
End export subsidies that damage the livelihoods of poor communities around the world.
Make laws that stop big business profiting at the expense of people and the environment
Press Release
14 April 2005
Biggest mass protest of election campaign says parties must go further on anti-poverty pledges
World poverty and environmental groups descend on Whitehall Friday 15th April to show strength of public concern on the UK's role in global trade.
Public concern on international trade will be demonstrated as thousands mobilise for a mass rally on trade justice this weekend.
People are traveling from across the country to be in Westminster and Whitehall on Friday evening for 'Wake Up to Trade Justice' - a night-long vigil and protest to ensure that all political parties know the strength of the public demand for trade justice not free trade.
The vigil, organised by the Trade Justice Movement as part of a Global Week of Action for Trade Justice, will start with a special celebrity-supported event at Westminster Abbey.
Participants, led by representatives of Trade Justice Movement organisations - which represent nine million UK voters - will then form a 'Human White Band' around Parliament Square, the symbol of Make Poverty History, highlighting the policy changes on trade the campaign is demanding the parties adopt.
The activists, public and celebrities will then proceed along Whitehall for a candle-lit vigil, including a mass 1-minute's silence at midnight to mark the millions of lives being destroyed worldwide by unfair trade laws. A night of film, music, debate and education at venues around Whitehall follows.
The event is set to culminate in a dawn procession before Trade Justice campaign delegations meet representatives from the three main political parties.
Glen Tarman, Trade Justice Movement coordinator, said:
"The British electorate is rightly concerned about the economy, health and education - but not just in the UK. The free trade policies the rich countries are pushing on the developing world are robbing people of health and education services and promoting economic insecurity for communities on a global scale."
"This is a wake-up call for political leaders of all the main parties - if elected, they must make sure urgent action is taken if we are to have justice in international trade and start to make poverty history in 2005. We are making world poverty a doorstep issue."
"All the parties claim to be concerned about apathy towards politics especially among the young. Yet thousands of potential voters are coming to Whitehall to demand the parties address their concern that Britain's trade policies do not hurt the world's poor and the planet. The parties would do well to listen."
The Trade Justice Movement has called on all UK political parties to make public statements setting out their position on stopping the push for poor countries to open up their economies at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and through other forms of international pressure.
Around the world millions of people in more than 80 countries are taking to the streets in the Global Week of Action running from 10-16 April - calling for trade justice to help lift people out of poverty.
For further information:
Sarah Finch 07870 823485
Trade Justice Movement 020 7523 2417 www.tjm.org.uk
Notes for Editors:
1. Wake Up to Trade Justice on 15/16th April is a celebrity supported all-night carnival of music, art and protest. See www.tjm.org.uk.
2. The Trade Justice Movement is a coalition of 67 organisations including aid agencies, environment and human rights campaigns, fairtrade organisations, trade unions, and faith and consumer groups.
3. Trade Justice is one of the key calls of MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY, the UK's largest ever anti-poverty mobilisation already supported by 400 UK organisations.
4. The Global Week of Action is the biggest mobilisation yet on trade, with events in every continent, including all of the G8 countries. Thousands of events, in both rich and poor countries, include demonstrations, petitions to governments and institutions such as the IMF and World Bank, voting for trade justice, street theatre and marches. Over a hundred events have already taken place across the UK. For more information see www.april2005.org/media.
5. Opinion polls show international poverty ranks high (eighth) among the most important election issues, above Europe, transport, Iraq and interest rates (Economist, 9th-15th April: Sources MORI, ICM, Populus, YouGov). For the first time in a UK election the leaders of all three main parties have pledged to make keynote speeches about world poverty on the same day (24 April).
6. The Trade Justice Movement is calling on the UK Government (whichever party takes power) to ensure that developing countries can choose the best solutions to end poverty and protect the environment. The coalition has written to the leaders of the major parties demanding they adopt policies to stop forcing trade liberalisation on developing countries in areas including industrial tariffs, trade in services and agriculture.
The letter can be read at: www.tjm.org.uk/wakeup/letter.shtml.
____________________________________________
ALAN LODGE
Photographer - Media: One Eye on the Road. Nottingham. UK
Email:
tash@gn.apc.org Web:
http://tash.gn.apc.org WAP phone
http://wappy.to/tash My Blog
http://tash_lodge.blogspot.com BroadBand
http://tash.dns2go.com Member of the National Union of Journalists [No: 014345]
____________________________________________
"It is not enough to curse the darkness.
It is also necessary to light a lamp!!"
___________________________________________
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Comments
Hide the following 4 comments
Well Done
17.04.2005 09:25
Has an overdraft
Re: Has an overdraft
17.04.2005 11:39
People are dying, people are starving, people are lacking access to clean drinking water, and you think these impoverished people should be handing over their non-existant money to us spoil rich kids in the west. Well fuck you.
The debt is completely unpayable. If it is never cancelled then it will never be paid back, simple as that. These countries are totally UNABLE to pay back even the INTEREST they are being charged. It's a matter of life or death and you think that because you got to go on some spoilt rich-kid backpacking tour around one of these countries that those people must continue to be enslaved to the likes of you and me. Fuckwit.
Yes you have an overdraft and are expected to pay it back.
But if you were UNABLE to then you would be declared bankrupt and be allowed to start again. OK you'd have a dodgy credit rating and find it hard to borrow money for a while. But that's better than starving isn't it.
Did the impoverished people of the third world give their governments permission to borrow that money and spend it unwisely? Most of them don't even live in democracies. And when they do, the government promises one thing and does another so it's not true democracy. So why should those people have to die because their governments were / are corrupt / incompetent?
A lot of that money was not only borrowed corruptly but lent corruptly. The world bank lent billions of dollars knowing full well that it was going straight into leaders' swiss bank accounts. And yet today the ordinary people of those countries are expected to pay - often with their lives.
But because you financed your trendy little gap year with a student overdraft that gives you the right to demand that the poor hand over money that they don't even have.
By your logic, Germany would still be in debt from the first world war. Germany would probably be at the same level of development as Bulgaria right now. When debts are unpayable, they have to be cancelled. That's not to say no strings should be attached. Strings should be attached. Strings like accountability and transparency. Strings that should NOT be attached include forced privatisation and reduction of labour and environmental standards...
Debts are stopping these countries from developing. If we cancel their debts it is an investment for our economies. The countries will be allowed to develop and people there will be able to afford to trade more with us and that will help us too. That's not WHY we should cancel them. We should cancel them because it's fucking out of order not to. But it's worth noting that we do stand to gain rather than lose, so even just going on (enlightened) self-interest, those debts should be dropped.
BUT THE MAIN POINT I WANT TO MAKE IS THAT YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT. THIS ISN'T THE DROP THE DEBT CAMPAIGN THESE PROTESTERS ARE BANGING ON ABOUT - THIS IS THE TRADE JUSTICE CAMPAIGN WHICH IS ABOUT INTERNATIONAL TRADE RULES. SO YOU'RE CLEVER LITTLE ATTACK IS THE EQUIVALENT OF SAYING TO SOME FREE TIBET PEOPLE "YOU'RE SO WRONG - KURDISTAN MUST NEVER BE FREE, HOW DARE YOU TRY TO SAY THAT THERE SHOULD BE AN INDEPENDENT KURDISTAN" - IF YOU WANT TO DISAGREE WITH PEOPLE AT LEAST MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHICH ISSUE THEY ARE ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT - THAT KIND OF HELPS.
bloke
debt
17.04.2005 13:30
debt.... you need to ask yourself where the debt actually is. western nations have profited for three centuries by exploiting the peoples of africa, the middle and far east. loans for development at massive interests, which have been designed to be unpayable so they continue indefinitely, have been part of this profiteering. ask any banker.
these countries have no debt to us. we, on the contrary, have a massive debt to them. it is only the utterly fanciful belief that we have a right to pursue our present national lifestyle habits as others suffer in poverty or misery abroad that allows people like brown, bliar and their imc reading friends to argue that poverty and injustice can be tackled through showcase reform packages while the labour and tory parties continue with lawmaking for greater free market expansion.
let's just get this straight: free market capitalism is about +degradation+. it is about +exploiting+ people and nature for maximum profit at minimum cost. it is greed in a shiny suit carrying a text book rationale. that sounds kind of picturesque. but see yourself as a whore in a bangkok brothel or an orphan kid collecting rubbish to sell from a tip in a rio barrio or a mumbai slum and then try to talk about how good the free market is.
free market capitalism is only held up by self made proclamations about its own inevitability. we are told, we are conditioned by lifestyle to believe, that there is no alternative. meantime populations around the world are held at bay by gunpoint or by the lies of national media so the system can function. it is an appalling system. we should all be appalled – enough to demand the cancellation of all 3rd world ‘debt’ and to work for the end of the free market. because it isn’t inevitable.
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well done
19.04.2005 00:38
Coaliton Bod Sheff.
coalition bod