Following July's mayhem in London, it seems logical to conclude that
terrorism is alive and well and that all the sacrifice, effort and
expense of fighting it tooth and nail has produced little effect. The war
on terror is unwinnable, when will we learn to accept that? Once again,
of course, it was the uninvolved whose blood was shed: people going about
their business, shoppers, tourists, commuters.
Meanwhile, the not quite so uninvolved were gathering in Scotland for one
of the most cynically pointless exercises the world of politics has
devised, the G-8 summit.
Billed variously as a conference of the eight strongest economies in the
world (strangely including Russia and Italy) or as a get-together of the
eight most powerful leaders in the world (even stranger: this includes
the lame duck Bush, the cooked goose Schröder, the well over the hill
Chirac, the man-in-the-dock Berlusconi and the man-without-a-voters'-
mandate Blair).
An ambitious agenda for the G-8 had been drawn up: the abolition of world
poverty, starting with the world's poorest continent Africa (sorted on
the Thursday) and the biggest problem facing the entire planet: climate
change (tackled on the Friday).
Both subjects, are very close to Tony Blair's heart; he was one of the
first men to wear a plastic bracelet with the legend "Make Poverty
History", while images of melting ice caps and the flooding of all his
favourite holiday destinations pervade his worst nightmares.
To make poverty history, the first thing you need is a proper definition
of the word. Not as easy as it seems; merely putting it at earning less
than a dollar a day misses the point entirely. There are people in the
slum areas of major cities in the West who are rightly regarded as poor,
even though their income consists of much more than one dollar a day.
Poverty is relative to the environment in which it exists. In the
privileged industrialised world, we are taking far too linear an approach
to the subject, defining poverty simply as an absence of money and the
things it can buy.
The subtext is: poverty makes people unhappy, so give them money and
things - mobile phones, apparently, are good - and put a smile on their
faces. This does not explain TV images of African children who, despite
extreme material deprivation, have laughter and an urge to sing and dance
as second nature.
We might also be mistaken in believing that the poor of the Third World
all aspire to western, wasteful levels of affluence. It could well be
that the mere freedom from hunger and disease - so easily remedied -
would be enough for them, so they could pursue their own lifestyle rather
than ape ours.
The fear that, in the near future, over two billion Indians and Chinese
might for the first time climb behind the wheel of a second hand Renault
Clio and send CO2 emissions through the roof while driving to McDonald's
is probably unwarranted.
Will poverty ever be history? No.
The poor, as Jesus said, will always be with us. What's more: they should
be, because the poor perform a crucial social function. They are the
people who make the better off feel better off and the rich feel rich.
Not much point in putting down the top of your ****sche Targa and go for a
spin in the inner city if there are Maseratis, Ferraris, BMW's and
Lotuses in every driveway.
No light without darkness, no beauty in the absence of ugliness, no
innocence without guilt. No wealth without poverty.
So what can be done to help the poor of Africa and elsewhere? Writing off
huge amounts of debt may sound a good idea, but since this is money we'd
never get back anyway it's an empty gesture. Political number-crunching
about billions of this and billions of that is pointless.
More helpful, I think, would be some of the following: letting them have
life-saving drugs for free, so they don't die in their thousands of AIDS
and curable diseases; helping in setting up a modern agricultural
infrastructure so they can feed themselves; giving them a fair crack of
the trade whip by buying their produce at the going Wealth and poverty
price, instead of killing their farmers off by dumping our excess in
their markets; refusing to sell arms to their governments, all of these
would improve things. A bit of regime change here and there, we're good
at that.
Ultimately, it's not us in the West who can make poverty history; it's
the world's poor who must narrow the wealth gap themselves. Their dignity
demands it. All we can do is help create the conditions in which their
efforts can succeed.
--
T Moore
N E Manchester, England
http://sitemenu.tom-moore.com/
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