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The Anti-Globalisation Movement and Trade Unions By Richard Burgon November 2002 The Anti-Globalisation "movement" has excelled at pointing out the world's injustices but has failed miserably to offer any realistic solution. Rather like a quack doctor, its diagnoses of ailments – world poverty, exploitation, unaccountable corporations assuming more power than democratically elected governments – are spot on, but its prescriptions remain vague or even non- existent. It is wishful thinking on the part of the Left to see this "Movement" as having any unity of objective or analysis. Whilst the British Labour Party was admittedly founded by a coalition of Trade Unionists, ILP members, SDF Marxists and Fabian middle-class intellectuals, this was a diversity that added strength to their common goal of furthering the interests of the working-class through Parliament. Unlike the Labour Party's inaugural gathering in Memorial Hall, London in 1900, the protests at Seattle, Prague, Genoa and London saw a melee of disparate and even opposing activist groups, not a unification of complimentary yet distinct political outlooks. One committed campaigner (and veteran of Prague, Genoa and Seattle) was keen to point out to me that "I would never call myself an 'anti- globalisation' campaigner – a campaigner for 'different globalisation' would be more accurate." The hotchpotch of Anarchists, Environmentalists, Trotskyites and others present with her at these protests, would be unlikely to subscribe to her self-definition. The only thing that unites them is that they are appalled by the world's injustices. But so are all decent human beings, activists or not. It's becoming a widely-held opinion that the disparity and lack of focus of this "movement" is threatening its very being – whilst a recent New Statesman article asked "Whatever happened to No Logo?", going so far as to declare "the movement has dropped well below the public's radar, and talk of its death is in the air", one of the movement's key writers, George Monbiot, admits that "what we need now is to move from being an opposition movement to being a proposition movement". Where then should these young activists, appalled at the inequalities and injustices in the world, find the unifying focus and solution they require? The answer can be found by looking back to May Day 2001 in London. The answer was not to be found amongst the "Wombles", the smashed glass or the chanting anarchists. Even the mohawked statue of Churchill had nothing to do with it. The answer was merely a couple of miles away in the very same city on the very same day – the TUC May Day Rally. In their new book, Imagine, Tommy Sheridan and Alan McCombes are right to liken the factories of Jakarta, Bombay and Mexico City to those that existed in Central Scotland, the north of Ireland and northern England a century ago. Those active in the "Anti-Globalisation" movement should take note of this comparison, for within it lies a clue to a viable future for their cause. The British Trade Union Movement's past offers the blueprint for the developing world's future and in doing so also demonstrates that in the present the Labour Movement is British politics' best vehicle for radical social progress, both at home and abroad. The discrimination against Trade Unionists in the world's poorest countries where workers toil for slave-wages in slave-conditions to produce the goods that are branded and sold for exorbitant prices in our own high-streets is the same discrimination that undermined British claims to "civilisation" in the industrial revolution and beyond. It is also inspired by the same greed for profit at any (human) expense. Sadly these countries already have their own Tolpuddle Martyrs and Featherstone Massacres. They now need their own legally enforceable Trade Union rights and powerful Trade Unions. They need their own Labour Parties. Beyond this, social justice under global capitalism requires global trade unionism. If those involved in the "Anti-Globalisation" movement are serious about building a fairer global society then here is the focus that they so lack. They should concentrate their efforts both on supporting burgeoning Trade Union Movements abroad such as the Brazilian MST and should apply themselves to the hard graft of lobbying the International Labour Organisation to make serious moves towards fairer working conditions throughout the world. GMB General Secretary John Edmonds is quite right to argue that the first-step is a permanent ILO-WTO working group to "propose mechanisms to integrate labour rights into WTO rules and trade agreements". Activists should also turn their attention towards the International Trade Unionist Federation as a means of working towards truly global trade unions. Naomi Klein, author of the "Anti-Globalisation" Movement's most influential book, No Logo, was perhaps suggesting something akin to this when in a hitherto unprinted section of my published interview with her, she commented that "unions in north America are seen as only interested in protecting the interests of their own workers even at the expense of workers around the world. But that's changing too it is only through those changes that the Labour Movement has any future". It's a sad fact that young people are far more likely to be politically active in the disparate "Anti-Globalisation" campaigns than in the traditional British Trade Union Movement. Yet the Labour and Trade Union Movement offers a viable focus and goal for those who, like the committed young campaigner I talked to, are not, despite being labelled as such, "anti-globalisation" but are campaigners for a fundamentally "different globalisation". And we need to add passionate young members to our ageing and increasingly disillusioned ranks. Just as the British people claimed Parliament for their ends rather than the ends of a selfish aristocracy, the task of our time is to claim the institutions of the global market economy for social and economic democracy. If the Labour Movement reaches out and puts it case forward, many of these young activists may find our road can be a shared one. Richard Burgon is a Catalyst Research Associate. |
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