by Tony Benn
We must consider also what the World Health Organisation says about the health of the world. One-fifth of the world’s children live in poverty; one-third of the world’s children are undernourished, and half of the world’s population lack access to essential drugs. Each year, twelve million children under five die, and 95 per cent of them die from poverty-related illness; more than half a million mothers die in childbirth, and more than one million babies die of tetanus. What contribution have globalisation and free trade made to solving those problems? The theory that wealth trickles down and that the richer Bill Gates gets, the richer people in Asia will get, is one of the most ludicrous illusions that could possibly be imagined.
What the Secretary of State did not say is that the one thing that globalisation has done is to make multinational companies more powerful than countries. That is why so many Third World countries are worried. Fifty-one of the largest 100 economies in the world are now corporations: Mitsubishi’s is bigger than that of Indonesia; General Motors’s is bigger than that of Denmark; Ford’s is bigger than that of South Africa; and Toyota’s is bigger than that of Norway. The sales of the top 200 corporations are greater than one-quarter of the world’s economic activity.
Multinational corporations want free trade because they are trying to get governments off their back so that they can exploit the profits that they can make with the minimum of interference. They think that global capitalism and free trade will end redistributive taxation and, although this has not been mentioned so far, gradually turn health and education into market-related activities.
A restricted paper circulated to World Trade Organisation delegates was brought to my attention by one of the Members of the European Parliament who received it. It asked, ‘How can WTO members ensure that ongoing reforms in national health systems are mutually supportive and whenever relevant market-based?’
It will not be long before some countries can say to others, ‘You are discriminating against us because you have a health service and our workers have not, so you must cut back your health service so that you are not taking unfair advantage.’
The Secretary of State for International Development [Clare Short]: There are many myths about the WTO, partly because the negotiations are so complicated that people can make up anything that they like. There is an agreement on trade in services. Some developing countries need banking and other financial services to get their economies going, but the agreement says that each country will open whatever sectors it wants to the market, and there is no compulsion for it to open any sector that it does not want to open.
Mr Benn: There may be no compulsion, but the WTO would like health to be market-related.
Clare Short: No, that is not true.
Mr Benn: Well, it said so in the document, and my right hon. Friend must have seen it.
This is a debate marking the end of the millennium, and I do not want to get into a party argument at all; I want to try to understand what is happening. Not long ago, Richard Whelan from the Institute of Economic Affairs said, ‘Africa should be privatised and leases to run individual countries auctioned off.’
That is serious. In the Financial Times, James Morgan, the BBC economics correspondent, said:
If some countries, especially in Africa, were to be run along the lines of commercial enterprises rather than states, investors might find them much more attractive.
That is what the multinational companies are thinking about.
When the Secretary of State drew a comparison with the Luddites, he reminded me of the leading article in The Economist on 26 February 1848 – a year or two before I entered the House – in which the slave trade was discussed. The article said:
If in place of entering into Treaties for the suppression of the Slave Trade, we made conventions to ameliorate the conditions of the existing race of slaves – to establish and regulate on unquestionable principles the free emigration of Africans … we might, with a tenth of the cost, do a great substantial good to the African Race.
I can imagine Ofslave being set up, with Chris Woodhead in charge, naming and shaming the captains of slave ships on which the sanitary arrangements for slaves are inadequate. For God’s sake, surely we must take some account in this debate of the worry of the enormous number of people in the world who have not got rich through free trade.
Global capitalism empowers companies to move money freely, but it does not allow workers to move freely. If someone owns a factory in London, but the wages are so high that he cannot make a profit, he can close it and open it in Malaysia, where wages are lower. If, however, someone from Malaysia tries to come to London where wages are higher, immigration laws would keep him out.
Globalisation has nothing to do with internationalism. At least in the European Union there is a free movement of capital and labour. We are not talking about letting workers move in search of higher wages, but only of companies moving in search of higher profits. Global capitalism allows big business to run the banana republics. It involves risks to the protection of the environment, and we are told that it is inevitable.
We have had free trade in Britain for a long time, but it has not solved the problems of poverty automatically. There was terrible poverty in Dickensian Britain and, even today, the gap between rich and poor is wider, even though Yorkshire cannot impose bans or tariffs on goods from Derbyshire …
Let us look at the matter from another point of view that is all the more important. Global capital is eroding political democracy. Power has already been transferred to Eddie George [Governor of the Bank of England]. I do not know which constituency he won at the election; I could not find his name anywhere on the list. None the less, he has more power than the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The European Central Bank will have more power than either of them.
None of the representatives of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the WTO is elected. Who elects the Secretary-General of NATO and the Director-General of the WTO? Nobody. Our political democracy has been decapitated in the interests of worship of money. As Keir Hardie said at the beginning of the century, we must choose between worshipping God or Mammon, and there is no doubt on which we decided.
That brings me to another matter. People outside the House know that there is a massive coalition in this Parliament in favour of capitalism, and they are therefore becoming cynical and disillusioned with the political process. One of the reasons why people do not vote is that they think that there is one view inside the House – that all the leaders are huddling together in coalitions and patriotic alliances – and that they are excluded from it.
The minister who made that point clear [Peter Mandelson] is now the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. He said in Bonn on 3 March last year, ‘It may be that the era of pure representative democracy is coming slowly to an end.’ That was a more candid account of what is happening than the praise of trade in this debate.
The Prime Minister [Tony Blair], if I may quote him with approval, said when Leader of the Opposition during a debate on the Halifax summit in June 1995, ‘Is not the central issue the revolution in the globalisation of the financial and currency markets, which now wield massive speculative power over the governments of all countries and have the capacity seriously to disrupt economic progress?’ [Official Report, 19 June 1995; vol. 262, c. 23–4].
That idea inspired many of the people who went to Seattle. The churches were there, many concerned about world poverty; there were environmentalists, animal-welfare groups, trade unionists and those who campaign for the cancellation of Third World debt. All were immediately denounced as anarchists, extremists, members of the mob, and so on. The police in Seattle put up a pretty good show of organising a Tiananmen Square operation without the killings. When I saw the police in their Star Wars outfits and the arrest of 500 people who wanted only justice for their own people, it gave me an indication of what it is all about.
The Internet plays a very important part in these matters because, throu
gh it, all the groups sent out their messages. They could not get their messages across through Rupert Murdoch, CNN or the BBC, but they could communicate directly. They have no leaders to be demonised by the press; groups turned up with their own faith.
In the next century, people want cooperation and not competition in self-sustaining economies, working with other nations. They want security in their lives – and that does not mean more nuclear weapons. They want to plan for peace as we have always planned for war, with a single-minded determination to meet our needs. They want democratic control over their own destiny. That is the real lesson that this century must teach the next one.
I shall finish with a quote that, in a way, sums up what I feel on this issue:
We have lived so long at the mercy of uncontrolled economic forces that we have become sceptical about any plan for human emancipation. Such a rational and deliberate reorganisation of our economic life would enable us, out of the increased wealth production, to establish an irreducible minimum standard which might progressively be raised to one of comfort and security.
Those are the words of Harold Macmillan in his book The Middle Way. I sat in Parliament with that man – the great-grandfather of the Wets, who was well to the left of the present government.
If as a democrat, an internationalist and a committed socialist I may endorse that view, I suspect that I would be doing so with the support of most people in the world, who do not benefit from the worship of money that we have been celebrating in this strange religious festival that we call a debate.
6
Justice
The problems facing single parents, who were to be denied a portion of their income by the new Labour government, and the denial of the right of women to be ordained in the Church of England, formed the subject of speeches made in 1997 and 1993 in the Commons. I am particularly pleased that the ordination of women was finally agreed upon by the Church, because it was a cause to which both my parents were strongly committed.
HOUSE OF COMMONS DEBATE ON THE SOCIAL SECURITY BILL, 10 DECEMBER 1997
I JOINED A Parliament in 1950 that had taken over a Britain that was battered, bombed and bankrupt. That Parliament’s first action was to treble the widow’s pension from ten shillings a week to twenty-six shillings a week. That bankrupt nation introduced a free health service, and did not have much of a problem with the welfare bill when unemployment was so low, because we were building houses and hospitals and recruiting teachers and nurses.
I was a minister in subsequent Labour governments that brought pensions into line with earnings. I am very proud of that. As Secretary of State for Energy, I also introduced a scheme to ensure that everyone on benefit had a 25 per cent cut in their winter fuel bills, regardless of the temperature. All that is dismissed as old Labour, but I am very proud of it. The arguments for the bill, which have been well rehearsed, run counter to the beliefs that I have and that the Labour Party had – the beliefs that brought me into Parliament and led me to join the Labour Party on my seventeenth birthday in 1942.
I must say, very respectfully, that the government have not taken a hard decision; they have taken the easiest decision possible, hammering the poorest people who have no bargaining power. They have ring-fenced the richest people, promising them that there will be no increase in income tax. Anyone who has had experience of single parents – up to a couple of thousand have been to my surgeries over the years – knows that the children of split families are affected by their circumstances. They want their mother or father close to them when the other partner leaves. We are going back to the Victorian concept of the deserving poor, who want work, and the undeserving poor, who prefer to look after their children.
I am opposed to the philosophy of the bill. Every argument that I have heard from the Front Bench has convinced me more and more that this is a bad measure …
I have found today’s debate fascinating, because politics has come back to the Chamber of the House of Commons. Some of us, including me – I make nothing of that – want hon. Members to say the same in opposition and in government. We want some attempt to be made to assess the rights and wrongs of matters, rather than decisions being taken on the basis of an economic analysis founded on some requirement to be competitive and productive. The cuts that the Cabinet made twenty-one years ago cost us the 1979 election. Denis Healey, who is an honest man, has admitted that those cuts were unnecessary.
I do not ask anyone else who has not had my experiences to follow me into the Lobby if there is a vote, but I shall vote against the bill, because this is what Parliament is about. If we separate this place from the concerns outside, there will be a price not just for the party of which I am proud to be a member, but for the reputation of the parliamentary process, as people become more and more despairing because their concerns are not being listened to.
HOUSE OF COMMONS DEBATE ON THE ORDINATION OF WOMEN IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, 29 OCTOBER 1993
Conscience is not the exclusive property of men. Many women moved to service in the Church have waited most patiently, not for five years but for seventy or more.
During the last world war, the Bishop of Chekiang ordained Miss Lee Timoi to give Holy Communion in that province of China. At the end of the war, the Church of England said to the Bishop, ‘If you do not remove her orders to prevent her from giving Holy Communion, we will stop giving money to the Church of China.’
We are discussing human matters because matters of faith are deeply entrenched in the human soul. I had more happiness from seeing the young women outside Church House embracing each other when the news of the vote in the Synod [approving the ordination of women] came through than I have had from many of the decisions taken by this House over many years. Women have waited patiently for ordination. I have met – as I am sure others have – young women training for ordination, yet without any knowledge of when they would ever be ordained in the Church of England.
The arguments used by the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal [John Gummer] – who, dare I say, has no theological qualifications – to persuade Parliament to turn down the Measure were absolutely invalid. As the Second Church Estates Commissioner, the right hon. Member for Selby [Michael Alison] said, the Anglican communion worldwide has already accepted the ordination of women. Bishop Harris – a woman – is an Episcopalian bishop in America and she may come to the next Lambeth conference. Is that a breach of the unity on which we are so often lectured? A year or two ago, I met an American woman who had been ordained into the Episcopalian Church and she gave Communion in this country. That is one reason why I ask what offence would be committed. When she gave Communion, an Anglican vicar approached the Communion table and bit her on the thumb when she administered the Sacrament to him.
We must recognise that at the heart of this debate, however it may be covered up in theological terms, is prejudice against women and the attitude that they are not human beings. The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal, says that the great thing about the Church of England is that it is comprehensive. What is the price of being comprehensive if the Church will not give women the opportunity to serve it through ordination?
As I have said, matters of faith are deeply felt. I have a great respect for people of all faiths. So few people believe in anything today that when we meet people of conviction, of any sort, we must respect them. The hon. Member for Maidstone [Ann Widdecombe] has, I believe, left the Church of England. Of course, it is a fact that in America many Roman Catholics joined the Episcopalian Church when it ordained women. The hon. Lady must not rule out the possibility that, as a result of the ordination of women, Roman Catholic women will join the Church of England so that they, too, can be ordained …
I am not making any theological argument, because I do not pretend to believe in anything more than the priesthood of all believers. I have never believed in bishops, any more than I believe in regional organisers. All organisations in the world begin with a burning faith and end up with a bureaucracy more
interested in burning and expelling people than in the faith that brought them into being. I will not go into that in any greater detail.
Should Parliament decide this matter? Of course, in law it must, because the Church of England is a nationalised Church. It is our oldest nationalised industry. The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal, said that Henry VIII nationalised it so that it could be a Church of the people. In fact, he nationalised it because he had a row with the Pope, who was imposing too much taxation on Britain. The King wanted the tax instead of the Pope. It was what one might call a value-added tax argument in theological terms.
Do not let us be told that it was because, in the Tudor settlement, the King suddenly was moved to provide spiritual comfort. There is not a word of truth in that.
The Act of Uniformity has been very brutal in its implications. A Revd William Benn – I do not know whether he was an ancestor, but I hope to God that he was – was ejected from his living in Dorchester in 1662 under the Great Ejectment because he would not accept the provisions of the Act of Uniformity. Everyone knows that the Church has been most intolerant as a nationalised Church. At one time, Catholics and Jews could not sit in the House. Everyone must know the story of Charles Bradlaugh who was elected to represent Northampton. He said, ‘I cannot take the oath because I am a Humanist.’ The House said, ‘Sling him out.’ There was another election and he was returned again, and the same thing happened. On the third occasion – being a reasonable, moderate man – Bradlaugh said, ‘All right, I will take the oath.’ The House told him, ‘You can’t, because you are not a Christian.’ At that point, the Speaker intervened with the sort of discretion that only Speakers have and said, ‘I instruct the hon. Gentleman to take the oath.’ The Church of England should not be presented historically as anything other than it was – a state Church which was sometimes enormously intolerant, but which has gradually come to recognise that there are other views as well.
