| After
the WTO fiasco at Seattle, many neoliberal commentators set about rewriting
history. They said, somewhat improbably, that the US had emerged victorious
and Europe and the countries of the South had lost out, Europe because
it had not managed to table new rules and the South because it had failed
to get more markets opened in the North. In fact, despite suitable noises
from President Clinton, the failure of the trade talks shows the limits
of Washington's power in the WTO, where for the first time delegates from
the South turned the consensus rule to their advantage. As for the Fifteen
and the European Commission, it is true that they had wanted to extend
the agenda, but only in order to deregulate more areas for the benefit
of their own multinationals. The true victors at Seattle are the citizens'
movements. They have struck a blow against the proposal to use trade as
a means of general deconstruction of all collectives and governments of
the South, of whatever persuasion, that have now staked a claim to full
partnership in the future. This is the birth of world public opinion. What
we need now is national and international recognition of the peoples' elected
representatives. - B. C.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The
civic movement's success in Seattle is a mystery only to those who had
no part in it. Throughout 1999, thanks primarily to the Internet, tens
of thousands of people opposed to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) united
in a great national and international effort of organisation. Anyone could
have a front seat, anyone could take part in the advance on Seattle. All
you needed was a computer and a rough knowledge of English. The main rallying
point was the StopWTO Round distribution list. This put people in touch
with the whole movement and enabled them to get their names on other more
specialised lists. Among the most useful were those of the Corporate European
Observatory in Amsterdam - unbeatable on the links between lobbies of transnational
firms and United States or European trade negotiators - and the Third World
Network and its director, Martin Khor, with its detailed information on
the positions of Southern governments and everything that was brewing at
the WTO's Geneva headquarters. A number of institutions published regular
information bulletins: the International Centre for Sustainable Trade and
Development (ICSTD) in Geneva, the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy
(IATP) in Minneapolis, and Focus on the Global South in Bangkok. Many enthusiasts
from various countries, like retired Canadian trucker Bob Olson, located
and circulated vital items of information from all over the web.
Add
to this the frequent Internet updates on national anti-WTO movements in
Europe, Australia, Canada, the US and India, and the slightly less frequent
updates from Africa, Latin America and Asia, and you begin to have some
idea of the volume of information available and the work of thousands of
militants-turned-experts - conferences, symposiums and seminars, leaflets
and articles, interviews and press releases.
Army
of equals
In
France outstanding work was done by the Association pour la taxation des
transactions financières pour l'aide aux citoyens (Attac), whose
international meetings in June 1999 - including a high-profile WTO element
- were attended by delegations from 80 countries (1), and by Coordination
pour le contrôle citoyen de l'OMC (CCC-OMC), which covers 95 organisations
including the Confédération paysanne, Droits Devant!, the
Fédération des finances CGT, and the FSU, and has the political
support of the Greens, the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (LCR)
and the Communist Party.
In
the international division of work prior to Seattle, Friends of the Earth
in London had undertaken to gather signatures from 1,500 organisations
in 89 countries calling for a moratorium on the trade negotiations and
a complete review of the operation of the WTO with full citizen participation.
Mike Dolan of Public Citizen, an organisation founded by Ralph Nader in
Washington DC, had been busy on the ground in Seattle since the spring
of 1999, locating and booking the venues that would be needed to accommodate
a huge number of meetings. In San Francisco, the International Forum on
Globalisation was putting the finishing touches to its 26-27 November teach-in,
at which speakers from all the continents took it in turns in turns to
address an enthusiastic audience of 2,500 crammed into the Bennaroya Symphony
Hall.
For
months thousands of people had followed training courses in non-violent
protest organised by the Direct Action Network (Dan) (a collective of environmental
and political activists). In the run-up to the WTO meeting, the Dan repository
at 420 East Denny Avenue, Seattle, had become the focus for an army of
equals. Separate teams had been formed to take charge in each of the 13
sectors surrounding the conference centre. Their members, all prepared
to be arrested, were in place at 7 a.m. on the first day and blocked the
opening session.
Artists
had set to work well in advance on huge puppets and models that lent a
festive air to an otherwise deeply political event. Students from dozens
of universities, including nearby Washington State University, returned
in force to the American political scene, concerned by the damage to the
environment and the exploitation of third world workers and children (as
a result inter alia of a campaign against sweat shops called Clean Clothes).
Even
more surprising, in the light of recent US history, was the Sweeney-Greenie
alliance named after John Sweeney, the leader of the powerful trade union
group AFL-CIO, and the Greens. Ever since the Vietnam war, trade unionists
and environmentalists had been on opposite sides of the political fence.
For organised labour, ecology was synonymous with leftist policies and
unemployment. They sank their differences, however, and made common cause
against the WTO. For the first time pacifists and human rights campaigners,
too, were disturbed by the harmful consequences of globalisation and joined
in the anti-WTO movement. And Via Campesina, a network representing peasant
movements in 65 countries, also had a date in Seattle. This coalition of
the century was completed by many foreign delegations, the two largest
being those from France and Canada.
In
short, everyone was ready except the police, who looked like something
out of Star Wars and acted in a was that was quite over the top. There
is evidence, often backed up by photos or videos, of police provocation,
coercion and collusion with 'anarchist elements' that were in fact simply
hooligans and wreckers.
Whole
districts and blocks of buildings, old people and children, were attacked
with pepper and other (as yet unidentified) gases. Five hundred and eighty
people were arrested, and many of them were roughed up and kept in solitary
confinement for more than 48 hours in defiance of the American constitution.
Millennium
Round stillborn
Thanks
to Washington's intransigence on agriculture and Europe's wish to add a
raft of new items (investment, competition policy, environment, public
contracts, etc) to the agenda; thanks to the revolt of representatives
of the South, outraged at being excluded from the negotiations [see Seattle
Turning Point: The Day the South cut up rough by Agnes Sinai. Le Monde
diplomatique, January 2000]; and finally thanks to the protest movement,
the Millennium Round was stillborn. However, the WTO still has a remit,
under the decisions taken at the Marrakesh ministerial conference in 1994,
to resume at any time discussions on agriculture and services, including
health, education, and 'environmental and cultural services', whatever
that may mean. The Trips agreement on intellectual property is also to
be reopened, including the patenting of living organisms [see Defining
the World's Public Propoerty: Who Owns Knowledge? |
