Reject the Call for a “New International Partnership”!

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Gordon Brown at the UN:
Reject the Call for a “New International Partnership”!

At the end of July, the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, set out some of his thoughts on international development in a major speech to the United Nations. The aim was to signal that Brown’s government is taking the lead in reaffirming the need for international commitment to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, which were adopted in 2000 with the declared aim of reducing world poverty by 2015.

            The main theme of Brown’s speech was the need for what he called a “new international partnership” of governments, business and concerned individuals, a “coalition of conscience” of those who, he claimed, had the resources to rid the world of the scourge of poverty, economic dependence, disease and other ills. He did not analyse that these ills are essentially a product or consequence of the global capitalist system. Not surprisingly, Brown, who made most of his comments in relation to the African continent, did not refer to the nature of the exploitative economic and political relations which characterise the modern world, nor did he mention Britain’s historical colonial and neo-colonial role in Africa. Rather, he sought to present Africa’s predicament as a matter that could be solved simply by the agreement of the “coalition of conscience”. He argued that it was in everyone’s interest, and particularly in the interests of big business, to solve Africa’s problems, in order that  that the continent could be more fully integrated within the global economy. It can be said that Brown like his predecessor continues to present the interests of the big monopolies in international affairs as the “humanitarian concern” of all.

            Of course Brown had to acknowledge that agreements that had been made in the past, even after the adoption of the UN Millennium Goals, which Britain, the G8 and other countries agreed to in 2000, and which also intended to “develop a global partnership for development”, had not been kept. The UN Millennium Goals were also based on the premise that agreement at the UN and pious declarations would solve the problems faced by the world’s poorest countries. However, as Brown admitted in his speech, although these goals were set with the aim that they should be reached by 2015, in many areas very little progress has been made. He therefore concluded that there is now “a development emergency which needs emergency action”, and he called for an emergency meeting to be held next year which could report to the UN.

            Brown called for “an international system that is truly fit for the 21st century agenda”, but it is clear that he had in mind the agenda of big business and neo-liberal globalisation. The government is both unwilling and unable to recognise that the problems facing the world are an inevitable consequence of the very system that it champions. The acknowledgement that the world possesses both the wealth and the expertise to tackle these problems but is unable to do so is the greatest indictment of this system and the criminal zeal with which Brown and his government defend it.

            In his speech, Brown made a big deal about the lack infrastructural development and the problem of environmental change in the world’s poorest countries, as if his government was in no way responsible. But while weeping crocodile tears over the fate of the world’s poorest countries, Brown has, for example, been one of the architects of the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF), created in 1999 by the Labour government and the World Bank. The PPIAF, of which the British government is the largest donor, promotes the privatisation of water and other utilities throughout Africa, and in many of the other poorest regions of the world, to the detriment of the impoverished inhabitants and the environment but very much the interests of the big monopolies.

            Brown’s recipe for tackling the world’s economic problems is largely based on the demand for “public-private partnership”.  He arrogantly lectures the world on the need for adequate health services even though he is unable to provide such a service free and at the highest level in Britain, where the NHS is increasingly run in the interest of the big monopolies. But while demanding that more health service professionals should be trained in Africa and quoting statistics to show how few doctors and nurses exist in African countries, Brown was unable to acknowledge that the nature of the NHS is a major factor creating the conditions for the “brain drain” of health professionals from Africa and elsewhere. 

            It can be said that that his lecturing the world is as insulting and patronising as his lecturing the working class and people in Britain on “working together”. The people are not fooled and can see that working together to implement the agenda of the monopolies can never be a solution when the neo-liberal agenda of privatisation, monopoly dictate and domination of world markets is itself the problem. Brown presents his demand for a “genuine partnership between governments and markets” as part of a moral crusade to rid the world of poverty. But this partnership, which is in fact the dictate of the monopolies, is the source of the world’s problems and can never be their solution. Rather the world’s peoples must empower themselves to become the decision-makers, remove the dictate of the monopolies and their governments and place themselves at centre stage. WDIE calls on the working class and people of this country to take up this agenda of empowerment, not hold back and to organise on the basis of their interests in unity with all those struggling for an end to exploitation around the globe.