[The Guardian] 11.45am update Fair trade rally to lobby Westminster
Matthew Tempest, political correspondent Wednesday June 19, 2002
Up to 10,000 people are expected to protest outside parliament during prime minister's questions today in a call for fairer trade with developing countries.
The demonstration, organised by a new grouping of charities, aid agencies and campaign groups, will be led by the rock band Radiohead, and is expected to be the largest ever lobbying of Westminster on the issue of fair trade.
The afternoon will culminate with a Mexican wave across parliament square, after protestors have met with their local MPs ahead of prime minister's question time. Mr Blair is also expected to meet the leaders of the demonstration.
The alliance - known as the Trade Justice Movement - took its impetus from remarks made by the prime minister himself during his visit to Senegal earlier this year.
There, frustrated by anti-globalisation protests against the G8, the World Bank and OECD, Mr Blair said ordinairy people should be campaigning against poverty in Africa - a place he called "a scar on the conscience of the world" during his Labour party conference speech last year.
The pressure group wants the rules on international trade rewritten to favour the world's poorest communities and safeguard the environment.
Andrew Pendleton, of Christian Aid, said: "People in Britain care passionately about the plight of the world's poorest people and about the environment and they will demonstrate this to their MPs on June 19.
"This event will not only show politicians that they have a clear mandate from voters in the UK to act to change international trade rules, but it will also show how people can use peaceful, democratic means to make their point."
The trade secretary, Patricia Hewitt, said that the government shared many of the protesters' concerns.
She said: "We believe in globalisation with a human face. We very much share the Trade Justice Movement's view that international trade rules should work to the benefit of developing countries.
"We greatly value the contribution of NGOs [non-governmental organisations] and their supporters in achieving this.
That's why I met representatives of the Trade Justice Movement last week and why the prime minister and trade minister, Baroness Symons, will meet them today to discuss the issues first-hand.
"I welcome today's rally wholeheartedly. If its success were replicated in every country round the world, imagine the momentum we would have for change."
Britain had fought hard for the interests of developing countries to be put centre-stage at the recent Doha world trade summit and was campaigning for reform of the EU common agricultural policy which would allow greater access to the European market for poorer countries' products, she claimed.
Ms Hewitt said she would today tell MEPs in Brussels that it was time to bring down "protectionist barriers to trade" and reduce subsidies to rich European countries' agricultural sectors.
"The $350bn [£250billion] per year spent in rich countries on supporting agriculture would be enough to fly their 41 million dairy cows around the world first-class one-and-a-half times," she said.
"We very much agree that trade rather than aid is the best route out of poverty. Developing countries' incomes could increase by $150bn [£100bn] a year - three times the value of all current aid flows - if a 50% reduction in protectionist measures were achieved."
Protesters will form a giant queue to lobby their MPs, which organisers predicted would stretch all the way from Westminster, across Lambeth Bridge and along the embankment on the south of the Thames. Rickshaws were being provided to ferry MPs to meet their constituents.
A giant poster of Mr Blair dressed as a third world basket-weaver, under the slogan "Would you still say world trade works for everyone, Tony?" will be towed down the Thames on a boat.
Following prime minister's questions in the House of Commons, Radiohead - who are supporting the campaign - were set to start a "Mexican Wave of noise".