Make Poverty History event in Swindon – pics and report

More photos

and posting it on Indymedia.

Bit harsh and purist Mickey.

You infer that the activity is of little or no value. Do we not have to work from where people are at? The considerable support that this event gathered from residents of Swindon is surely to be acknowledged.

Perhaps you could expand upon your seemingly harsh view that the reporter and all involved were following Blair. The record on a number of political action by some of the people involved shows the opposite. (You were not to know that). Swindon is not full of Toadies.

I look forward to the explanation you give for your dismissive remarks.

It would be particularly helpful if you could find the words to expalin your thinking, and the evidence behind it, in terms that are understandable to people who do not usually get involved in political action ie the majority who have to be won over if there is a chance of significant change towards equity.

Thanks

Tony

There is one particular country that is greatly impoverished since a couple of years. It is called Iraq. People are dying like flies over there due to poverty today (not only due to direct hits by bullets and schrapnels).

Need I say more ?

Need I really speak about Geldof, Bono, Madonna and the magazines Hello and OK ?

Look at the pics and try to understand why those people are on them.

An assault on Africa is planned. That's all it is.

>> Michael Wills, new-Labour MP for Swindon North, turned up briefly for a photo opportunity with the mayor, but didn’t stick around for the group photo. >One of those who signed was Anne Snelgrove, Swindon South’s new-Labour MP, who can be seen in the big group photo, albeit partly hidden behind a member of the public.<<

"But when the Evening Advertiser asked Anne Snelgrove whether she supported the decision to go to war she again refused to be drawn.

"My answer is that I think we should move on. I have said that in public meetings and I will no doubt be saying it again. I also wasn't in parliament at the time.

"I am really glad the Iraqi people have had free and fair elections. In 1991 (during the first Gulf War) I do not think we went far enough."

 http://archive.thisiswiltshire.co.uk/2005/4/27/88126.html

Do you get it Tony Hillier ?

Thank you Tony for your support. I also would be interested to hear exactly how Mickey thinks this works for the Blair agenda, when he was probably hoping that everyone'd forget about poverty after the G8. MPH may not be as radical as many of the campaigns featured on Indymedia, but it is a very worthy cause all the same.

Sorry I cocked up with my previous post. This was missing :

>> Michael Wills, new-Labour MP for Swindon North, turned up briefly for a photo opportunity with the mayor, but didn’t stick around for the group photo. <<

Michael Wills voted very strongly for the Iraq war.

Michael Wills voted very strongly for introducing student top-up fees.

 http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/michael_wills/north_swindon

Also, "Helping Africa" was the very subject of the G-8 summit in case you forgot it. It has been trumpetted enough everywhere.

Let's move on as Anne Snelgrove and Tony Blair said. We are helping Iraq since a couple of years and now we are going to help Africa.

Please spare me your blindness.

Worth a look:

Critique of Live8 & corporate involvement:
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/07/318036.html

Critique of (lack of) debt cancellation etc at G8:
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/07/318106.html

Lefty US critique of Africa debt/G8/Geldof
 http://www.counterpunch.org/rodino08012005.html

Oops, I think there was a slight time-lapse yesterday - Mickey's comment "tony hillier" wasn't showing on this article when I started composing my comment "Blair agenda?", otherwise I'd have written a different comment.

But thank you Mickey for explaining yourself. You are quite right in pointing out that Michael Wills was a keen supporter of invading Iraq, and also that Anne Snelgrove prefers to repeat the party line rather than state an opinion on the subject. I suspect that if she'd been our MP in March 2003 she'd have followed the party line and voted for war just as her predecessor Julia Drown did.

In fact, Swindon Stop the War wrote to Anne Snelgrove when she was selected as the Labour candidate for Swindon South, to assess her views on Iraq and related matters. As far as I know, she still hasn't replied.  http://www.swindonstopwar.org.uk/docs/SSTWC_letter_anne_snelgrove_2004-11.pdf

Swindon Stop the War also sent a questionnaire to all the candidates in Swindon North and South before the general election in May. Neither Anne Snelgrove nor Michael Wills replied.  http://www.swindonstopwar.org.uk/2005election.htm

I don't care whether Blair says (and Anne Snelgrove dutifully parrots) that we should "move on" and forget about Iraq, I haven't forgotten what has been done in my name and with my taxes, and I think Blair and his masters in the White House should be brought before an international court and held accountable for their war crimes.

I think we'll find that you, me and Tony are all agreed that invading Iraq based on a lie was utterly wrong, costing (hundreds of) thousands of lives, billions of pounds that could have been spent on constructive things instead, and has provided a perfect recruiting ground for terrorists. There's a Stop the War demo in London on the 24th September, with a coach going from Swindon -  http://www.swindonstopwar.org.uk/events.htm - see you there?




Back to Make Poverty History. I am well aware that the MPH campaign was co-opted by Blair and co to give the impression that the aim of the G8 was to put an end to poverty and global injustice, and it turned into a bit of a celebrity bandwaggon. I am also aware that the real aims of the G8 were to ensure that the rich and powerful few maintain and increase their stranglehold on the rest of the world. And then there was all that guff about "good protestors" (the ones on the state-sanctioned march) and "bad protestors" (anyone who wanted to do anything other than attend the state-sanctioned march).

The G8 was never going to Make Poverty History. The world's most powerful leaders need to seriously change their attitude, but so also do the ordinary public, chosing the more expensive fairly traded goods rather than the cheap exploitation goods.

But does that make it wrong to support local MPH campaigners or report their event on Indymedia? At least those people who organised the stall in Swindon were doing SOMETHING, reminding people that the problem hasn't gone away. They could have just stayed at home watching drivel on the telly, but instead they were giving up their spare time, so I was happy to take some photos of them for Indymedia, especially seeing as the event seems to have gone unnoticed by the Swindon Advertiser. I believe the free monthly Swindon Link magazine will be covering the event in their next issue though:  http://www.swindonlink.com/



And on to the MPs. I was hoping to show how Michael Wills was using the event as a cynical publicity stunt, by the way he turned up long enough to have his photo taken and then disappeared again. Maybe that didn't come across too well in the report - it was rather brief after all. However, I gave him quite a hard time when I covered the previous MPH event in Swindon, shortly before the general election, where he was somehow booked as the headline speaker. Very odd considering that he's more into Free Trade than Fair Trade, and makes his Tory opponent in the election seem almost left-wing by comparison. Here's a quote:

"What Mr Wills neglected to mention is what he's actually doing about this situation, or what he's managed to do about it during his eight years as MP for Swindon North. The cynical voice in my head points out that maybe all he's done is researched the facts of the campaign well, put together a polished speech, and firmly identified himself with the campaign in people's minds just in time for the general election." Read more:  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/04/308871.html

I provided what I believe to be an accurate report of the MPs' activities around the stall - Michael Wills turned up for a photo and disappeared again, and Anne Snelgrove stayed around a bit longer and signed the big board (which Wills didn't do). I prefer to provide the facts as I observe them, and let people draw their own conclusions. Maybe I should have made more of this and explicitly pointed out that neither of them were actively taking part, drawing people in to the stall and decorating them with white ribbon. Maybe not. I don't know.

In the end, the main aim of this article was to get some photos of the day on-line where people could see them, and the words were just to provide a bit of context for the photos (better than just posting a load of photos without any explanation at all).



The issues of poverty, war, terror, environmental destruction, globalisation and others are all interlinked. War causes poverty, and poverty makes people easier to recruit into wars. Terror feeds off both poverty and war. War causes massive environmental damage, and the corporations who are recklessly consuming the earth's resources and polluting its air and water are often the same ones which make massive profits from wars and from exploiting the poor. And so it goes on. I could try to make these links every time I post photos to Indymedia, but I'm just someone with a bit of a knack for taking photos rather than a literary master. For the time being I think I'll stick to photos, and let others with better skill with words write the in-depth articles.



And finally, thankyou MH for the links - worthwhile reading for anyone who is still under the impression that the G8, Live8 etc achieved anywhere near what was required of it.