The debt we owe the debt campaign

The Jubilee movement is special to millions of people who cut their campaigning teeth on it and learned from its success Last week I was at a leaving do for Stephen Rand who left the Jubilee Debt Campaign after 10 years as co-chair. It was a moment for a bit of nostalgia. Stephen is one of a number of people who have been with the Jubilee campaign since its beginning in the mid-1990s. People remembered how he got the first major charity, Tearfund, to send out a circular to its supporters in 1996 asking them to send money not to Tearfund, but to the Jubilee 2000 campaign. That was one piece of a massive jigsaw that made Jubilee one of the most important global movements for justice of our time. We chatted about the mass rallies in the late 1990s in Birmingham and Cologne, where a petition of 24m signatures was handed to the G8. We remembered the reconstituting of the campaign in 2001, and how it played a leading role in the Make Poverty History campaign, when more debt (this time the multilateral debt owed to the World Bank and the IMF) was cancelled. There are many reasons why the Jubilee movement is so special for so many of us. First, it worked. For many years the economists of the World Bank and the British treasury had told us that debt simply could not be cancelled. It was a moral hazard. There were rules. But they hadn’t reckoned on the moral power of the human chain around the Birmingham G8 in 1998, chanting for debt cancellation – famously audible to the negotiators in their conference rooms. When debt cancellation finally became a reality for some countries, it led to increased spending on health and education, saving and improving millions of lives. Second, the political consequences were often as important as the financial ones. It was while working on debt that I learned to judge campaign outcomes not just in financial terms, but in terms of power relations. The cancellation of debt, especially the second tranche of multilateral debt in 2005, meant that many countries regained some autonomy, and were more able to stand up against the pressure of donors when they tried to impose wrongheaded economic policies. There were political costs too. The conditionality attached to debt relief was damaging, and many southern partners were unhappy with the deal. But, overall, it was a deal worth doing, because apart from its immediate results, it shifted our understanding of what it means to campaign on international poverty. This is the third reason it was (and is) so special. There is an apocryphal story about Clare Short (the UK’s development minister at the time) joking with Africa campaigner Bob Geldof that the British public would never understand a campaign on a complex financial issue like debt. They were wrong. When the leaflets started going out, when the talks started to be given in church halls and scout huts, the British people were shocked to learn about the injustice that their country was inflicting on the world’s poorest people. They got it. It was the first time UK charities, working with others across the world, had gathered en masse to fight against global unfairness. It was a paradigm shift. MPs elected in 1997 and 2001 were the Jubilee generation, and it still shows in the UK’s relatively progressive aid policies. Without the extraordinary success of the Jubilee 2000 campaign, would the more complex Trade Justice Movement have been possible? The same message of unfairness was at its heart. And it also led to significant shifts in policy, although not the radical changes that we all know are ultimately so hard to achieve. Debt movements had existed for much longer in developing countries. It was Fidel Castro who first brought the prospect of debt cancellation to international prominence in a series of meetings and interviews as long ago as 1985. But the Jubilee brand was so powerful that at the turn of the millennium many autonomous southern campaigns joined under its banner, becoming Jubilee South , and constituting an important global voice for justice. In a bold and pretty convincing reordering of the conventional approach to finances, Jubilee South claims that far from being debtors, the developing countries are creditors – after centuries of pillage, decades of unfair trade and harmful aid conditions, and now climate injustice. There is still a lot more to do, which is why the UK’s Jubilee Debt Campaign is still campaigning, along with the Jubilee USA Network and a host of other affiliated movements. As a consequence of its work against vulture funds, whereby private companies buy up developing country debt and force them to repay it, a bill has recently been passed in Britain to make this pernicious practice obsolete. This month, the House of Commons will vote on whether to support measures to make the Export Credits Guarantee Department (which the debt campaign describes as the “Department for Dodgy Deals”) more accountable to parliament and the people it affects. At a time when mass campaigns on global injustice seem like ancient history as rich countries themselves struggle with deep financial problems, we should remember the great moments in the history of the Jubilee debt movement. We need to find that spirit again from somewhere. What will be the next Jubilee 2000? What will be the next Make Poverty History? It was good to see Stephen again. He is just one of millions of people who got involved, stayed involved, and played his part in making the world a better place. Debt relief Protest Aid Jonathan Glennie guardian.co.uk

Posted by on April 20, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.