CAMBRIDGE
http://www.makepovertyhistory.org
CAMBRIDGE
Cambridge, c.1750
Wilfus: You know, this slavery thing’s a jolly bad show, it must be terrible for those slaves.
Benedict: Indeed, indeed, Wilfus, shame nothing can be done about it.
Cambridge, c. 1900
William: Odd, isn’t it, how women still aren’t allowed to vote?
Benjamin: Yes, but that’ll never change, will it?
Cambridge, c. 1995
Bill: Did you know that most developing countries owe us so much money that they have to spend more on debt repayments than on their health and education budgets put together?
Ben: Really? How terrible. I wish we could do something about these issues, but they’re all controlled by international politics and there’s nothing we can do which would ever have an effect on politicians.
You get the point? Nothing in this world has ever improved by people sitting on their backsides and doing nothing about it. In fact, in many cases that’s exactly what’s prevented things changing for the better.
Of course we can’t guarantee that this will work, but does that mean we shouldn’t stand up and speak out for what is right? What we can guarantee is that if no-one thought it would work and everyone did nothing, then indeed nothing would happen. The possibility here is so exciting, so amazing, that surely it’s worth trying as hard as we can to achieve it?
But this isn’t just hopeful idealism – we know that this campaign can work because we are already making progress. The UK government and others have already made some commitments (see here and here), and they keep telling us that they think these issues are important. There is now sufficient international understanding and will that ground-breaking developments this year are a real possibility. Of course we’re not so naïve that we think that we can make everything fine by the end of the year, but we can create a movement that becomes unstoppable, so that justice for the world’s poor becomes just a matter of time. We’re not promising easy and simplistic answers: global economics is complicated, and it will take careful negotiations to derive trade rules which are genuinely fair towards the world’s poor (certainly more complicated than unmitigated free trade); but many of the potential solutions to poverty are well known and have been for years, all we need is the political will to let them happen.
“But what about Iraq? Governments never listen...”
I’m afraid you’re totally missing the point. By the time you started demonstrating against the war, the decision had already been taken (and, like it or not, at the point when we went to war most people in Britain weren’t actually against the war – the marches may have been big, but they still represented a minority viewpoint).
MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY however isn’t about trying to stop something in the two weeks before it happens; it’s about making things happen that have never been done before – and we’re not going to shut up until they actually happen. Also, these are not controversial issues – the changes we are asking for are all things that most people think are a simple matter of justice. In fact they’re so obvious that most people don’t even think to do anything about them. What we’re calling for is for everyone who agrees with us to stand up and be counted. We think that the response will be so overwhelming that politicians will have to do something about it.
A much more suitable parallel is with Jubilee 2000. 10 years ago no-one seemed to know or care about the burden of debt owed by developing countries, but a concerted effort by a relatively small group of people thrust the issue into the global consciousness and led directly to the start of debt cancellation. So far $49 billion has been cancelled. This is still a small fraction of what Jubilee 2000 was originally calling for, which is why debt cancellation is included in MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY’s demands, but $49bn is still $49bn, and it has led directly to 10 million more children going to school, millions more people with access to water, and many other improvements. This came about purely because some people stood up and said, “This is wrong”. Imagine how much more could be achieved if MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY achieves all its goals. Can you afford to sit by and risk not taking part?
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“On debt, in Jubilee 2000 and in all the organisations that campaigned on debt, by your actions, working together, you achieved more in one or two years than governments acting on their own would have achieved in a hundred years.”
“So don’t let the cynics tell you aid doesn’t work, that governments can’t make a difference and that all politicians are the same: what doesn’t work is doing nothing.”
- Gordon Brown