G8 SUMMIT: G8 Versus the People

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Dipankar De Sarkar

BIRMINGHAM, England, May 15 1998 (IPS) - This industrial city is a study in contrasts as it plays host to the ‘G8 Summit’ of leading economic nations and Russia and a counterpoised ‘People’s Summit’ this weekend.

The contrast is between the drab meeting of leaders from the G8 nations and the vibrant gathering of citizens’ groups who say they do not, and will not, share their leaders’ market-oriented vision of the future. That difference in style and substance makes clear that there are two Birminghams this weekend, just as there are the two worlds of the rich and poor.

Talks among delegations from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States are taking place in the midst of the tightest security in the city’s living memory. More than 1,000 armed police have been deployed. Security vans and barricades ring the downtown summit venue and speedboats have been positioned in placid canals used to the sight of houseboats.

Evidently, that wasn’t enough to prevent the summit’s first bomb scare which occurred before any of the leaders had set foot in Birmingham. Police Thursday exploded part of a car found abandoned in a trading estate near Birmingham’s international airport.

Elsewhere in the historic city, there’s a party going on as hundreds of ordinary people gather all over Birmingham for a series of alternative events that have now become ritual to the annual leaders’ summit. According to organisers, people are coming in by bus, river-boat, bicycle – and on foot.

Already, they have created a ‘People Power Site’ – a deserted plot of land transformed into a blooming organic garden. British Prime Minister Tony Blair was supposed to have visited the site Friday morning but stayed away, according to Ed May of the New Economic Foundation, one of the alternative summit’s main organisers. The group previously had turned down a request by the leaders’ wives to visit.

They have their own newspaper, internet site and a series of seminars and workshops running from Friday and culminating in a closing rally Sunday. Scheduled participants include such Third World luminaries as former Tanzanian President Julius Nyere and Graca Machel, former Mozambican education minister and author of a recent United Nations study on the effects of armed conflict on children.

On Saturday, thousands of people are expected to form a six- mile human chain around the Birmingham International Conference Centre, site of the leaders’ meetings. Their formation will symbolise the “chain of debt”, according to the Jubilee 2000 Coalition, an umbrella for 70 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) urging wealthy governments to write off unrecoverable loans to poor nations.

Such alternative events used to take place at what was called ‘The Other Economic Summit’ (TOES), held since 1984 to counter the ‘Group of Seven’ industrial powers’ economic mandate. But when the G7 began discussing overtly political issues such as Bosnia in 1995, and then became the G8 by admitting Russia to those political discussions, activists involved with TOES were at a loss to respond effectively.

This year’s ‘People’s Summit’ has ended that difficulty, activists say. “It made good sense to call this the People’s Summit,” according to Jakov Von Uexkull, TOES co-founder and organiser of the yearly Right Livelihood Award, commonly referred to as ‘the alternative Nobel peace prize’.

“The G8 don’t have legitimacy for what they’re proposing,” Von Uexkull argues. “It’s the imposition of a small group on everybody else.” He insists that “we would win” if NGO and G8 proposals were given equal play by the media and were then put to a free and fair public referendum.

Some of the radical edge of previous years appears to have been blunted, with NGOs seeking to engage the gathered policial leaders in a dialogue – and the British government, as host, stepping forward as a willing partner.

“This time there is a direct link between the two summits – we have direct links with the officials,” said Mayo. “On debt relief, (British Chancellor of the Exchequer) Gordon Brown has come aboard with the Jubilee 2000 Coalition,” he noted.

Britain would respond to the debt-relief advocates’ calls, government spokesman Alistaire Campbell told reporters. “Strange as it may seem, given the Jubilee 2000 petition is a protest, we actually welcome it.”

Such cozying up to government is not an easy thing to do for NGOs – bodies that pride themselves for being the perpetual opposition – and some activists are suspicious of officials’ motives in moving closer to the groups.

“When I hear of offers from the British government to co-opt NGO positions in government policies, it does look like a public relations exercise, says Von Uexkull, adding: “They haven’t really moved closer to our agenda.”

But those concerns seem to mean little to the many hundreds of activists bidding to take over Birmingham’s thoroughfares for a huge street party.

“Roads will be blockaded, sound systems installed and lampposts, tarmacs, railings and walls decorated in a mass occupation and transformation of an undisclosed location,” says a member of the popular direct action network, Reclaim the Streets, which has been holding high profile blockades across Britain, protesting development projects that are seen to harm public interests.

Their slogans include ‘Global Ecology, not Global Economy’, ‘Cooperation not Competition’ and ‘Gyrate, Not G8’ – all delivered with music, dance and celebration.