National campaigns for global change
‘I know a big tent when I see one,’ said President Bill Clinton, after he met with Jubilee 2000 in late 1999. The American president was one of many to highlight the breadth of the debt campaign as one of its greatest strengths.[1]
It is a little too early to judge the effectiveness of the international Jubilee 2000 campaign. We know that at the end of 2002 about $34 billion of debts had been written off (instead of the $68 billion promised) and that debt payments by a very few countries has fallen dramatically.[2] In addition, there is now a degree of consultation with civil society in debtor nations around so-called ‘poverty reduction’ strategies. On the other hand, not enough debt relief has been provided to return a single country to sustainability; aid flows have fallen; and the IMF insists on using the debt relief programme to deepen and widen its deflationary economic programmes. So the jury is still out.
However, there can be no doubt that Jubilee 2000 was extremely effective in quickly mobilizing and uniting a wide range of social forces to place intense global pressure on leaders of the rich countries and officials in international financial institutions. We were also successful in uniting and maintaining unity among the diverse elements that made up the global social movement for debt cancellation – a movement that had been in existence long before Jubilee 2000 was launched.[3] How did we do that?
Developing the campaign
Formulating our objective
First, we looked around for a very simple campaigning objective. While thinking about this, we were approached by one Martin Dent, who suggested that the coming millennium, linked to the biblical concept of jubilee, might be a suitable framework for a campaign. He was right. The jubilee concept is a profound one: it calls for periodic correction to injustice, by ensuring that every seven times seven years (in the fiftieth year, the jubilee year) debts are written off, slaves freed, and the land restored to its rightful owners. Furthermore, the whole of the Western world was about to mark the turning of the millennium with big gestures and projects. There could be no bigger or more meaningful project than the writing off of the unpayable debts of the poorest countries. Linking these two formed the basis of the campaign.
Analysing the problem
Second, we made a very deep analysis of the problem of unpayable debts. We compare this process to the task of a diamond-cutter – someone who may study a diamond for two years before cutting the diamond with one confident stroke. We knew that the problem had to be studied in such a way as to produce a multi-faceted analysis that was ‘true’, as the correct cutting of a diamond reflects its true brilliance. We were wary of the widespread northern approach: that ‘these countries have got their finances into a muddle, let’s bail them out’. But sceptical too of the approach of some in the South, that the North was wholly responsible for the crisis. However, the more we looked into the problem, the more conscious we became of northern culpability. At the same time our partners in the South were urging us not to cancel the debt, for fear that the gains would go into the pockets of corrupt elites.
The formula we came up with, which can be crudely summarized as co-responsibility for the crisis, empowered civil society in both the North and the South. In the North we were able to help campaigners get a grip on export credit guarantees and geo-political lending by their governments. Instead of feeling powerless about what was happening in the South, or in global forums and institutions, they could confront their elected politicians and demand action at home. Similarly in the South, campaigners made the issue of their country’s foreign debts public. Through the churches, trades unions and NGOs, a wide swathe of society was made aware of the share of government budgets and government assets being transferred abroad, to much richer creditors.
Identifying our target
Finally, we were clear that the civil servants that staff the multilateral institutions were not a major target. We were determined to apply pressure on the real decision-makers, their employers or shareholders, the elected politicians of national governments. By far the most powerful of these are the G7. So we mobilized the first massive anti-globalization protest at a G7 Summit, the Birmingham Summit of 1998.
Global or national?
Managing a global campaign was not easy. We were aware from the start that there would be ‘political’ problems; that we would be subject to takeover by far left groups; that the most vocal would probably dominate the campaign; and that there was potential for endless, fruitless and divisive international bickering. So we decided not to form an international committee. Instead, abiding by the principle that global players are best influenced at home, we encouraged all those who wished to support the simple principles outlined in our global petition (for ‘the cancellation of the unpayable debts of the poorest countries by the year 2000 under a fair and transparent process’) to organize themselves at national, and perhaps regional, level. While we understood the importance of having a common theme; logo and appeal, we wanted every national campaign to take on a national identity – one which would resonate widely with the people of that country. So Jubilee 2000 was never copyrighted; campaigners could use the theme if they wished, but they could adapt it too. And that is what happened. Highly successful campaigns in Peru, Bolivia, Britain, Japan and other countries all took on a very different character.
In short, we tackled global institutions by uniting at a global level around one simple theme, but we actually concentrated our energies on change at the national level. In Britain, where we mobilized hundreds of thousands of people around the campaign, opinion polls registered changes in national public opinion. A CAFOD survey by pollsters MORI in June 2000 showed that 50 per cent recognized the name 'Jubilee 2000' – an astounding figure for a young campaign with no advertising budget. By the end of the campaign, CAFOD opinion polls were showing that two-thirds of the British population supported our goals.
The result was that the British Treasury, led by Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, took a leadership role in international forums. Supported by Bill Clinton and Gerhard Schroder, they signed the historic Cologne agreement of 1999 – to cancel $110 billion of debt owed by 41 of the poorest countries.
‘Walking alongside the river in Cologne we came across a small mountain of boxes on the pavement. They were labelled with numbers and place names – 110,000 signatures, Brazil ... 333,000 signatures, Bangladesh ... and so on. We had all signed the Jubilee 2000 petition, and encouraged Baptists around Britain to do the same. It had seemed the most ordinary of actions. But now as we looked at the boxes drawn together from around the world that simple act took on new significance. Here were the names of the poor and the privileged side by side in a common search for justice, made strong through partnership with one another, and witnessing to a unity that was powerful enough to challenge the prevailing economic structures.’
Graham Sparkes, Baptist Union of Great Britain.
1 Taken from the final Jubilee 2000 report The world will never be the same again, edited by Marlene Barrett and Lucy Matthew. See www.jubileeplus.org/analysis/reports/world_never_same_again/what.htm
2 For more details of progress on debt relief go to www.jubileeresearch.org/hipc/hipc_news/latest190902.htm
3 For more on the depth and breadth of this movement go to www.debtlinks.org
Ann Pettifor is Director, Jubilee Research at the New Economics Foundation, London. She can be contacted at apettifor.jubilee@neweconomics.org
