ASKING UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTIONS

Morning Star - October 2001

Caroline Lucas, Green MEP for the South East, will be contributing a monthly column. In the first piece today she looks at the unfolding international crisis, and the role of the EU as a force for change.

So, 26 days after the attack on the twin towers, the counter-strikes have begun. We have seen the flashes of light against the night sky, heard the explosions, and witnessed the grim appearances of George Bush and Tony Blair, promising a relentless campaign. Amid the chorus of approval and self-righteous enthusiasm, there is a danger that the voices of dissent will be drowned out. Yet those voices are more necessary than ever.

Nothing can excuse the outrageous attack on the US, which was a crime against humanity. Yet if our aim is to put an end to terrorism we need to examine some of the causes that lead to an environment where terrorism becomes possible, rather than responding with yet more violence, while hypocritically elevating it into some kind of grand moral purpose.

Our own history is full of examples of violence against non-Western countries - we need look no further than the bombing that still goes on in Iraq today, or US policy in the Middle and Far East. On the very day of the horrific attacks on the US, Britain hosted an arms fair to sell yet more deadly weapons to anybody who can come up with the cash. Bin Laden and his network which today the US is so concerned to destroy, once received its finance and military training from the CIA, so that the US could fight a proxy war against the former Soviet Union. The world did not change when the Twin Towers were destroyed. This was one more horrifying and unjustified attack against human life, perpetrated by one more group of people pursuing policy by other means. Yet the world is ready for change and it is ready for peace. To achieve this we need to understand and put an end to the violence of our own economic, military and foreign policies.

This means we must address the appalling inequalities present in our world. Western economic policies and institutions maintain a system which allows just 200 multinational corporations to have a combined turnover equal to more than a quarter of the world’s wealth and at the same time turns a blind eye to over 10,000 children who die every single day from under nourishment and disease. Our foreign policies support sanctions that kill 5,000 children a month in Iraq and we continue to trade arms to countries when we know that they are being used to kill innocent people. This cruel hypocrisy must stop. More than ever, we need to set up an International Criminal Court and bring the perpetrators of the recent bombings and other acts of violence to justice. By escalating the violence, more innocent lives will be lost and the root causes of terrorism will remain. Desperate acts of violence are committed by desperate people. We must recognise our role in allowing such desperation to occur and in doing so move away from aggression towards a more compassionate, peaceful and fairer world.

To its credit, the European Parliament has at least been discussing these issues regularly since 11 September.

But getting the balance right between fighting against politically inspired violence and upholding civil liberties is far from easy. Last Wednesday in Strasbourg, the Parliament adopted an anti-terrorism regulation in great haste. A number of MEPs, including myself, felt that this particular recommendation got that balance wrong, and therefore reluctantly voted against it. For example, we were asked to take sanctions against a list of 27 organisations suspected of carrying out terrorist activities without any explanation as to the basis under which they were chosen, who or what they are (and why they contain only Arab or Muslim names), and without any reference to safeguards if one of these organisations or persons are wrongfully accused. Moroever, in the absence of a precise definition of what is considered to be terrorist activity, the scope for further infringements of political freedom is high.

However, I do not believe that the most effective use of my role as an MEP lies in dotting "i"s and crossing "t"s in Strasbourg, but in helping to build understanding and adoption of Green politics in the UK. I strongly believe that the best chance for change occurs as a result of the creative interface between inter and extra parliamentary activity. One of the strengths of green politics lies in combining citizens’ actions with the parliamentary process, and for me it is critically important to be involved in both. For example, I have both protested (and been arrested at) the Faslane nuclear submarine base during a mass protest against nuclear weapons, and tried to get the issue of the illegality of nuclear weapons onto the agenda in Strasbourg. I have been a member of the EU’s delegation to the World Trade Organisation’s Ministerial Meeting in Seattle, and taken part in the street protests outside it. Indeed, it was a fascinating, and perhaps unique, experience - at one moment, to be part of the demonstrations on the streets, at the next, to pass through into some of the official meetings, taking the politics of the street into the parliamentary process.

I believe my role is to continue to ask uncomfortable questions inside the corridors of power. And perhaps nowhere is this more needed than in the blind adoption by the EU of economic globalisation as a force for good. Business leaders in the EU recite three mantras: ‘more liberalisation’; ‘more privatisation’; ‘more deregulation’. Over the past ten years, a wave of mergers and acquisitions has resulted in much greater corporate concentration, blessed by the Brussels mandarins. In 1997, a record US $384 billion was spent in European mergers, an increase of almost 50 per cent in one year. Economic and Monetary Union - the euro - is encouraging this trend because of its emphasis on standardisation. This suits corporate interests far better than national or local governments planning their own economic policies to protect their citizens. It is therefore the workers who lose out. Some analysts suggest that one in twenty industrial workers could lose their jobs because of the mergers and downsizing caused by the single currency. This trend leads to insecure employment and a massive increase in the ecologically destructive long distance transport of goods. At global level, the EU’s zealous pursuit of a new Round of trade negotiations at the WTO will advance the liberalisation agenda still further.

The European Union was built on the rubble of the Second World War, in an attempt to promote peace and prosperity through a free trade project. However, free trade has now become an end in itself. The EU, centralised and bureaucratic with a neo-liberal agenda at its heart, is incapable of effectively confronting the real problems of today, such as climate change, the threat to democracy from multinational business, or the global injustice that is leading to mass migrations of people and the rise of violent fundamentalisms across the world. Clearly a new "big idea" for Europe is required. For Greens, that idea means a bolder more ambitious vision of genuine stability and co-operation in which nations and regions reclaim control of their economies and communities. A Green ‘Europe’, and a Green world, means unity-in-diversity, achieved by popular consent, not centralised uniformity at the behest of corporate power.