International Socialist Resistance

ISR - getting our message across

INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST Resistance (ISR) members have just returned from a week of protests at the G8 talks.

180 ISR members were at a week-long camp. The ISR and CWI contingent dressed in red, waving red flags and chanting political slogans got a lot of attention from passers-by and the media.

ISR national organiser SARAH SACHS-ELDRIDGE draws up a balance sheet on those events.

EVEN BEFORE it started, we knew there was a real desire amongst millions of people to put pressure on the G8 to make poverty history. But people are extremely cynical about whether the governments of the world's eight richest countries had either the motivation or the ability to change things.

Our job was to link up the two sides - the will for change and the question about who would do it and to put forward a programme for ending the nightmare of poverty and war. We explained that that meant ending capitalism.

The demo organisers tried to create the impression that a desire to end poverty was not political. However the marchers saw that decisions such as whether to spend a trillion dollars on arms and war are political!

We have been building support for these events for months - at schools and colleges, on the streets, at gigs and local events. We wanted to help ensure the demo was a show of strength, a show of the determination and international solidarity felt by the majority of people.

Questioning the system

When so many people are starting to question why such poverty exists alongside such wealth it will eventually lead to a questioning of the system of capitalism. And for some that will lead to the search for an alternative.

We aim to take up that challenge of putting forward a programme and strategy for the struggle for socialism, where the massive wealth would be taken into democratic public ownership and planned according to what is needed - not for profit.

What people who saw us won't have known was that our red block was formed by hundreds of young people most of whom had never met before.

To me it was a small illustration of what it means to be organised politically and internationally. We could work together because we'd set ourselves the common aim of raising socialist ideas. At the camp, at the Gleneagles demo, at every part of the events we participated in, the ISR and CWI contingent were clearly and explicitly prepared to discuss, debate and argue for a socialist alternative.

The G8 were completely incapable of making any meaningful change. Now we can see the likelihood of increasing attacks on our civil liberties; now we can see the growth of struggle against neo-liberalism both in Europe and in Latin America. We were quite right to strain every muscle to get our ideas across!

ISR website: www.anticapitalism.org.uk

Poor deal for the poor

BOB GELDOF may have given the G8 meeting of top capitalist nations "ten out of ten" for what they promised on aid. Few people agreed with him.

The rich nations involved in the G8 claimed they'd doubled their aid, agreeing a $50 million (£28.8 billion) aid deal for the ex-colonial world but it's for 2010 - five years' time.

Even Oxfam, seen as close to Blair and Brown say that very little ($15-20 billion) of this aid is new - it's mostly recycled money already pledged in existing aid budgets.

The headlines said that 18 of the world's poorest countries would have their debts 'forgiven' - debts to the World Bank/ IMF that is, not debts to private banks. And only countries which accept harsh IMF/World Bank 'conditionality' will be eligible for debt relief.

World capitalism, in particular the G8 countries and the world's greediest bankers, wants to use this 'conditionality' to force developing countries into boosting private-sector development and attracting foreign investment. Meeting people's social and infrastructure needs will be seen as 'unaffordable' extras.

No progress on climate change

EVEN THE modest hopes for agreement at the G8 on tackling climate change seem to have been dashed. George Bush, representing the biggest and most polluting economy, got the final communiqué on climate change watered down enough to please his big business backers.

Bush's best friend Tony Blair used to talk about climate change being a "threat". But the G8 communiqué talks of climate change being a "serious long-term challenge". And "challenge" is definitely George's way of describing how to deal with the consequences of capitalism pushing the planet towards disaster.

The Kyoto Protocol, ratified by all the G8 countries except the USA, calls for greenhouse gas emissions to fall within the next five years. But the G8 statement only says that emissions may need to fall at some future time "as science justifies."

And dealing with greenhouse gases is urgent. Leading climate scientist John Schellnhuber recently called for 25% emissions reductions for G8 countries by 2025. The G8 nations account for about 45% of global carbon dioxide emissions.

So the G8 has even watered down the Kyoto Protocol's inadequate provisions!

Capitalists cash in on greed

WHILE EMERGENCY service workers and others such as building workers across the capital put themselves out to help the wounded by donating blood and aiding and comforting people, many in the capitalist class just went in for blatant profiteering.

Phone giant Cable and Wireless cashed in on the grief of families and friends by charging up to 50p a minute on the missing persons' hotline. Over 200,000 calls were made on that 0870 line in the first few days. Cable and Wireless has a £3.2 billion annual turnover and profits of £377 million in the year up to March. Its chief executive drew a salary of £1.9 million.

LONDON'S STOCK Exchange traded half as many shares again on the day of the bombings as on an average day. Two of Britain's largest companies, BP and Vodafone, took advantage of a sudden slump in their shares' market value.

BP bought back 7.4 million shares - many for a bargain basement 601p. Vodafone also paid out £74 million to buy back 55 million shares at 135p each - the day before they were 139p and they were banking on share values bouncing back.

BP's net profit for the first three months of 2005 was £2.87 billion, up 29% on the same period in 2004 while Vodafone's profits before tax and exceptional items grew to £10.3 billion.

HUNDREDS OF City and West End workers had to spend the night in big London hotels after the bombings. Some hotels blatantly took advantage of accommodation shortages to charge as much as three times the already exorbitant normal charge. These hoteliers were operating on traditional capitalist supply and demand economics to make huge profits.

G8 archive pages

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