the poverty of sanctity
WORKERS, SEPT 2005 ISSUE
One of the Make Poverty History campaign's demands is "make laws to stop big business profiting at the expense of people and the environment." This reveals the naivety, not to say connivance, of those behind the campaign. Big business exists in order to profit at the expense of people. It has no other purpose. No law is going to stop it doing what it depends on doing.
The government is trying to exploit this campaign, covering itself with the odour of sanctity. But what is it really doing?
At the World Trade Organisation, the Labour government led the EU, in alliance with US financial companies, in drawing up the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), whose purpose is to enforce private capital's access to whatever it defines as services. This covers just about everything, including schools, hospitals, social services, energy, food supply and 157 other areas. The European Commission confirmed, "GATS is...first and foremost an instrument for the benefit of business." GATS would impose privatisation everywhere, overriding nations' sovereignties.
The EU has identified those countries that oppose GATS and is whipping them into line, with the Labour government's full approval. This is what Labour is really doing, behind the clouds of saintly rhetoric. Have we not yet learnt that the Labour government is committed only to maximising big business's profits?