Gordon Brown the Magician?

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Conference on "Making Globalisation Work for All":
Gordon Brown the Magician?

On Monday, February 16, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown hosted a conference at the Treasury entitled " Making Globalisation Work for All". The conference was attended by representatives of government and NGOs, religious and other organisations and was addressed by several keynote speakers, including Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, the President of Brazil, Jim Wolfensohn, the President of the World Bank, the activist and musician Bono, Gordon Brown himself and Secretary of State for International Development, Hilary Benn.

The speech made by the Chancellor was chiefly notable for the fact that it presented a picture of total failure by the big powers and the major international institutions in particular to make "globalisation work for all". The Millennium Development Goals, the 15-year plan to reduce global poverty, set by the UN in 2000, are at the present time unlikely to be reached. The first goal, of gender equality throughout the world in primary and secondary education, should have been met by 2005, but current predictions are that it will not be met even by 2015. Indeed if current trends continue Sub-Saharan Africa would not achieve universal primary education before 2129. Similar dire predictions also exist in such areas as healthcare, where it is likely that Sub-Saharan Africa will reach the target for reducing infant mortality by two-thirds not in 2015 but in 2165. It is today estimated that over 1 billion people in the world still survive on less than $1 a day and so many parts of the world including parts of Europe will fail to meet the target of halving poverty by 2015. In Africa it is predicted that this target will not be met until 2147.

But Gordon Brown could offer no explanation at all for such global inequality and misery, not why it was to be found in some parts of the world and not others. Rather he pledged to make Britain’s presidency of the G8 in 2005 a "Development Presidency" and spoke of the need for a new "Marshall Plan" and "a new global economic and social order grounded in both rights and responsibilities". Gordon Brown envisaged "making globalisation work for all", mainly by encouraging greater capital investment into poorer countries, while greater effort is directed towards creating an environment which can attract such capital both from "aid" donors and the international capital markets. In other words a continuation of the approach that has already created such instability and inequality.

The fact is that Gordon Brown and the Labour government cannot solve the effects of globalisation and the serious economic problems relating to education and health care in Britain, so there can be no grounds on which can they arrogantly preach about the solutions to global problems. What is more there is a singular lack of recognition that Britain and the other major powers have any responsibility for the economic, social and other problems that confront the world, the legacy of centuries of colonial exploitation and oppression for which, first of all, reparation should be made. The crocodile tears shed by Blair, Brown and others cannot hide the fact that globalisation, which operates in the interests of the big monopolies and financial institutions, cannot be made to work for all, and that economic inequality is not diminishing but growing in the world.

If Gordon Brown could make neo-liberal globalisation work for anyone other than the rich, what a magician he would be! But, as the Chancellor’s facts themselves demonstrate, he cannot even conjure up the illusion of equality. Instead, the proposals advanced by Gordon Brown are a means to maintain inequality and, under the guise of humanitarianism, to create the conditions for further intervention in the affairs of the world’s poorest countries.