Roundtable: Building a Progressive Response to Globalisation

No question confronts progressives today with greater urgency than how we should respond to global inequality and injustice. In this, our first roundtable, five leading global campaigners and thinkers discuss answers to the question. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is a leading newspaper columnist and broadcaster; Denis MacShane is a British Member of Parliament, Chair of the Fabian Society and a minister in the British Foreign Office; Alison Marshall is Director of Campaigns at the aid agency, CAFOD; Martin Shaw is Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sussex; and Henry Tam is Fellow of the GLOBUS Institute for Globalisation & Sustainable Development at the University of Tilburg. Adam Lent, Editor of Fabian Global Forum, chaired the discussion.

Adam Lent: We'll start by talking about immediate problems. Right wing populism has had electoral successes recently in Italy, France, Denmark, Belgium, Austria and, of course, Holland. Do you think there's a pattern of a right wing backlash against globalisation emerging across Europe? And, if so, how can people who have a progressive attitude to globalisation actually challenge that development.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Well you certainly don't capitulate to it, which is what it seems to me social democrats are busy doing. That is going to be a greater danger than the 13 per cent in France or the madness in the Netherlands, which isn't going to last beyond the next couple of years. It seems to me that what has always been a danger in the past is mainstream conservatives using these moments to steal the clothes of the extreme right and make them respectable. What is new and wrong, completely wrong, is that social democrats are now doing it. That's not going to help anything. You don't destroy these forces by becoming like them. So I think that's the big challenge, how to get social democrats to act without this panic.

Denis MacShane: We have to face down the Le Pen right but they are not an overwhelming force unless the democratic left starts infighting. Some of the recent election results in Europe show the right using the anti-globalisation rhetoric of rejection from the protectionist left. There are historical parallels. When any economy goes through a process of modernisation which is painful for people we usually see a severe critique from the left, sometimes as in the 1930s or at Seattle or Genoa, justifying street violence and the right accommodates to that.

I am happy to be listed as a social democrat. I want to restore the centrality of a modernised social democratic discourse in Europe. That requires a massive rethinking of European left politics and the electoral defeats of the last 12 months make this process more urgent. But if social democracy tries to adopt the language of or adapt to the sectarian, anti-modernist or protectionist left we will lose even further support.

Adam: You both suggested there that this recent rise of populism is something quite temporary, but if it is genuine response to globalisation, could it not be more permanent?

Martin Shaw: Well I think that's a big 'if'. It doesn't seem to me that it's accepted that it is connected very sharply to globalisation. You have to see it partly in the context of September 11th. I think what we should be more worried about is the mainstream right - Bush, Berlusconi etc. - who really who are now very much in the ascendant. If we're unlucky Britain will be in an isolated position soon as a lone country with a social democrat government. And then we have to confront a whole range of issues around creating viable democratic institutions at global, international and regional levels and around the entrenchment of human rights on a world-wide scale. Included in that is the question of how we create the possibility of free movement of people across the world in a way that doesn't actually destabilise the world system. Those sorts of issues are where the social democrat agenda ought to be and they are issues which are very different from those of the mainstream right and of the protectionist left.

Denis: The elections in Europe which have seen the rise of the right were not fought exclusively on an anti-immigrant ticket. In the Netherlands, Fortuyn attacked Europe and "foreignness". Le Pen got his vote by campaigning against what he called "Euro- globalisation." He got the biggest share of the workers' vote - the proletarian vote of anger and discontent that used to go to the Communist Party. The question is : do you pander to a view that by talking in ultra left terms the proletariat will vote for you or by talking in classic right-wing anti-immigrant terms you will get their vote? My answer is no. If the left moves further out to the left it will alienate the electorate and if we try to talk like rightists we will always be outflanked by real race-obsessed right-wingers. That is why I fear a re-run of the 1930s with the left against the left.

As a modernist and as a political secularist the way forward has to be based on rationality. That will mean seeking to manage globalisation. If you move into a nation-first rejection of globalisation that is dead-end politics. People movement, like movement of capital and goods needs to be controlled and channelled. The tough negotiations are over how you control these post-national movements. An open economy and an open society needs globalisation and the anti-globalisers of the rejectionist left and the nationalist right need to be defeated in political argument.

Yasmin: But at the moment all globalisation is doing is benefiting the already advantaged. If you really want to be globalised, if you mean what you say, then you are going to have to free-up trade a lot more. The globalisation I would be for would be a freeing-up much more of trade in the north and the south and actually freeing up the right to travel to work. Most people don't want to pack up and make new lives forever in a new country, they do want the opportunity to come in and work for three or four years and then go back home. We have made that legally impossible in Western Europe. So I believe in that globalisation, actually The Economist's model, which is right wing but at least it's fair.

Adam: The neo-liberal approach to globalisation and global trade is one that's reasonably well defined, their forces are well marshalled. Equally on the anti-capitalist, anti-globalist extremes there's also a growing sense of coherence and of a clear vision of what they're demanding. But when we look at the wide range of people who have a more progressive attitude to globalisation, they reside within NGOs, within a variety of different campaign groups, within faith communities, within the Labour movement, within social democrat parties - there doesn't seem to be the sort of coherence and integration of these different forces and different visions that there is on the extremes. Do you think that some greater unity and coherence is a precondition of being effective, and, more importantly, can that unity actually be achieved?

Alison Marshall: I've got a yes and a no for different parts of your question. Yes, we can achieve greater coherence and, as I say, we're doing that right now with, for example, the Trade Justice Movement, which is an umbrella of NGOs who are working on trade themes, pulling in faith groups and unions as well. But that's not to say that we're ineffective when we're not all together under one umbrella, because we have a lot of different targets in a lot of different places. You need different means to get your message through - advocacy and lobbying in one place, mass mobilisation elsewhere. So the more individuals and groups can play to their own strength the more effective you're going to be.

Adam: One point of tension between the NGOs and the labour movement has always been the issue of protectionism, and theoretically the labour movement being in favour of great protectionism for the EU and northern markets, and the NGOs and campaigners arguing ever more firmly for bringing down barriers. How do you feel that plays out when you're trying to put together a coherent argument for, say, trade justice?

Alison: I'd say to a certain extent we've moved on from that position. Trade unions are joining with us in the Trade Justice Movement. They are aware that often the real issue is how governments respond to unemployment and restructuring. There is also growing recognition we can be in a win-win situation. The huge growth of the Asian tigers did not slow growth elsewhere. It's common sense that if people have more disposable income to spend in other parts of the world then there can be a rising demand for things that countries in the developed world can supply also.

Henry Tam: I think the notion of power is very important here. What has been a core theme of successive progressive thinkers and practitioners throughout different centuries is how to make the distribution of power fairer in society. I think many people in different parts of the world are still trying to develop these values. This is what potentially could really unite different progressive movements. It is the way power is executed today which causes all kinds of problems for people living in other parts of the world, and when they try to deal with it by moving to other countries to find jobs or develop their economies in sustainable ways they are marginalised. We should define what we can all do respectively within our movements to contribute to this wider agenda of a fairer distribution of power across the world.

Adam: Is there a problem though with trying to build that vision of a fairer world in that in many ways we are looking back to what was achieved in the 20th century by progressive governments working almost entirely on a national basis? They had the benefits of very firm governance structures and a much stronger sense of community than exist throughout the world today.

Martin: The social democratic tradition is entrenched in Europe and it has been very successful at working through national state structures. Similar structures have been expanded and consolidated in other parts of the world, but they are often very authoritarian and the struggle is still very much one for democracy and national community. So on a world scale we have a situation where the local institutions of power are not necessarily very friendly towards the rights of the poorest and the people who are in the weakest position. What's going on at the moment is partly that local structures are being changed through democratic movements and at the same time we're starting to extend global structures. The key issue is how to bring these two processes together and how to connect them with the larger questions of economic and social justice.

Denis: We have an unreal perspective on continental Europe in our country. Social democracy, particularly its trade union variety, was internationalist in rhetoric but nationalist in practice, with a few exceptions in the Nordic countries. Tony Blair's criticisms of EU and north American agro-protectionism articulate a new progressive internationalism. Britain has the only parliament and government in Europe which has a number of British African, British Caribbean and British Asian MPs and Ministers. We can take some modest pride in that. The real challenge for 21st century progressive politics is to have an effective practice of internationalism. It is interesting to note that in the European elections the extreme right have done best where the trade unions are the weakest. France has fewer than one million employed workers in trade unions compared to eight million in Britain. We need more institutions that can speak for the poor and marginalised in Britain and Europe but only electoral politics can make the laws and drive government policy in a progressive direction.

Yasmin: One of the alarming things when you listen to conversations living in the west and not coming from the west, which is my position, is that it all seems completely unaware of how the rest of the world is looking at us. There are no attempts made at all to equalise our dialogue with the rest of the world let alone our power over them. You know, nobody's fooled by the things we say, they see what's going on, they see we have one rule for Israel and we have one rule for Iraq, they see through this and they communicate it with each other, and I think those issues really haven't been grasped yet.

Denis: But who actually represents the unrepresented. Their NGOs and NGIs - NGIs being non-governmental individuals - the celeb globe-trotters who always claim they are speaking for the third world? There are people in the North who say : "I know the hidden world of the poor in the South. I, the well-known personality in London or New York or Paris, can declare in my columns in the Independent or the Guardian or in my books what is really going in the world and why democratic political parties in government are always wrong." The question of representivity is a big problem.

Alison: Sure and who speaks for who is a big question of power. One can rejoice in the power of the internet to allow the dispossessed and the poor to speak for themselves, which is something new. The World Bank did a study called Voices of the Poor and they did find that church institutions, community groups, grass roots types NGOs often were able to represent the people.

Yasmin: Take Palestine. What we've seen in the last few years is a complete collapse of any progressive movement in Palestine because our world politics has supported an Israeli government in a completely objectionable way, which in turn has helped Arafat not only survive but grow in popularity, and has marginalised the very people who would've made a difference. So you can see a microcosm of what I am talking about, that this talk is all very well but unless we sort out our politics and our hypocrisies, we're failing to do the very things we need to do.

Denis: This is the rhetoric of denunciation. I was very good at it once but now I am a boring politician responsible to my electorate. In Rotherham, for example, they want to export steel to America but my friends in the US Steelworkers Union think they are supporting fair trade by obtaining protectionist rules from Congress that could cost steelworkers' jobs in South Yorkshire. As a Minister, I work in Latin America where many crops now have a GM element. Latin American peasants would like to export to north America and to Europe but all the so-called "progressive" anti-globalisation crowd in Britain, and especially in France, say that having anything to do with GMOs is to sup with the devil. In effect, they are telling Brazilian and Argentine farmers to take a running jump. Of course we need a fairer WTO but in the meantime the peasants of Latin America are excluded by the anti-globalisers from the rich markets of the world. So they give up, or worse get sucked into drug production or turn to guerrilla terrorism.

Martin: I think there is a broader point here really, and it is that national political conflicts can easily take over from the economic and social justice agenda that we would all like to promote. Armed conflicts, which occupy a very large number of places across the world, are where the voices of the poor actually get hijacked both by governments and by armed movements and the issues about justice really do get squeezed out. And somehow I think this is one of the things that social democratic theory has always been rather weak on, it hasn't understood that you have to actually get these security issues into the frame.

Denis: This is a very important point. 20th century social democracy was nervous about security issues. The politics of non-intervention remains a powerful element of left thinking in Britain as elsewhere. We saw in the Balkans in the early 1990s an unwillingness to accept the need for military intervention that allowed several years of free reign for Milosevic's death squads. But look at places like Sierra Leone or East Timor where British military intervention has made a difference. We have broken the Taliban in Afghanistan which means women can now teach in schools and children can get an education. It is a revolution in left thinking that peace in the world requires military presence and a properly armed and trained military capability and that includes a defence industry which exports. If Britain and Europe cease to be have a military capability the US will totally dominate in the military sphere and we will become vassals not partners.

Henry: I think one of the key elements in this is actually how can international network organisations work on the US government. I think past historical experience is that if you want things to change successfully, you go to where the power is, and in world politics the US Administration is basically where that power is. Progressive forces across the world have to start thinking how they can actively organise in a way to change US political opinion. I think this is almost the number one question of how to bring about global change.

Adam: In his conference speech last year Tony Blair outlined his vision of a more progressive approach to globalisation, feeling that some of the momentum from the horror of September 11th could develop in a positive direction with the right approach. But given the US Administration's willingness to continue with its unilateral approach I wonder if that vision has really taken a fatal battering. And do you think a victory for Bush in the next presidential elections would basically mean that any progressive vision of globalisation would be delayed for many years ?

Yasmin: Well since he wasn't elected the first time, one hopes he's properly defeated next time. I am extremely disenchanted with the US although I completely supported what they did in Bosnia, and Afghanistan actually. The future may just lie in Europe becoming more grown up and I think we have real potential here to be the third force and in some ways a really progressive force, because there are values in Europe which are embedded now because of the Second World War. You know, you go anywhere in Europe and there is a language which is understood, which is not common to the language you hear in the United States. That I don't think is properly realised and I wish we would actually reform the EU and begin to be more responsible. Muslim countries trust Europe, they do not trust the US, that's a very important point, and trust is something you can't just tell people to do. Also, whether we like it or not and however unfairly we play this globalisation game, India is coming up rapidly economically. If India and other countries could talk more positively and use the European Union model, for example, to have blocs then you might re-adjust this horrific over-investment of power in one country, which is not good for anybody, not good for the US either. But I am talking very long term now.

Denis: Let me agree with Yasmin. In the last ten years 40 per cent of all the world's economic growth has taken place in one country - the United States. It is shaming that Europe, after five years of social democratic government, is still a region of mass unemployment. It is shaming that Europe has refused to take the decisions to return work to the working class and it should be no surprise if workers vote for other parties as a result. There is one exception and that is social democratic Britain. So can we get a Europe as a coherent federation of nation states acting with one voice to create jobs and in other spheres? This will mean accepting responsibility in the security and foreign policy field and taking hard decisions about defence expenditure and co-ordination which a number of European states shy away from. I refuse to join in the modish anti-Americanism one gets from Will Hutton, or the Guardian or New Statesman. The America of Ronald Reagan was imposing tough sanctions on South Africa at the same time as Margaret Thatcher was rolling out the red carpet for the apartheid bosses. The women's and civil rights movements in America are strong and a model for Europe. America in the last 20 years have taken in 20 million legal immigrants and twice or three times as many so called undocumented or illegal immigrants and given them new life and hope. Compare that with the rabid anti-immigrant treatment of foreigners in our tabloid press. America imports each day millions of dollars of goods from Europe and Asia - each one of those imports a job for someone in the world. We would be mad, literally bonkers to allow anti-Americanism to become a guiding principle of left politics over the next few years. If America really isolates itself, really goes unilateralist then all of us in Europe as well as in Latin America, Africa and Asia would suffer. Without America, Milosevic would still be butchering people in the Balkans and Bin Laden would still be operating from Afghanistan. I am not prepared to sign up for the anti-Americanism that is growing amongst many of my comrades on the left in Britain.

Martin: I agree with Denis that we can't do without America, I mean a progressive vision without America is not possible. America is still so central, so powerful that we need to work with it, but at the same time, especially under the present Administration, there are many things that are quite disturbing. Although I agree with Denis about the importance of American military power, I think we still must have the right to be critical of the way in which they use it and to be sceptical about, for example, the attack on Iraq which is being widely mooted. I think America has to be accepted but Europe does have a very specific role to play and I think this is where social democrats can maybe make the biggest impact.

I think Yasmin's right that Europe does represent something different in world politics. I'm not very optimistic in the short term about how far the model of Europe can be exported to Asia or Africa or even Latin America, it seems to me that when we look at states in those regions and we look at the ways in which they rule their people and the ways in which they are prepared to use military power against each other then we have to be extremely worried in the short to medium term about how things are going to develop in many non-western regions. But if there is going to be a possibility of progressive globalisation, Europe especially and the west more generally must use its voice and its influence to help address the democratic deficits, the security deficits, the economic and social justice deficits in the non- western world.

Alison: If globalisation is truly global then it's way way bigger than Bush and his election. But for a supporter of CAFOD, we believe in democracy so people must exert pressure for change in the US by asking their MP to put pressure on their own government. We have to be aware that it does come through our own government, you can't just go directly to the US.

Henry: If Bush does get back in, ironically it may even actually help to galvanise progressive people in America. Because one of the great difficulties in trying to influence change is that many of the leading progressives in America still think of the progressive agenda only in terms of America itself. I've edited various essays with American colleagues and they're still talking about "Right, how are we going to change things in this state or that part of American industry?". They still don't realise that if America is going to have a future they must engage with the rest of the world. So I think to make the European Union strong is very important, but it cannot be an end in itself, that must in turn still be part of a wider strategy to hopefully get the European Union to lean on the American administration in the right way.

Denis: What we are seeking to create is international rule of law. Rule of law can be either progressive or it can be reactionary. But at least rule of law is greater than the passions and will of individuals - whether individual beings or individual states. All democratic states have been shaped by embracing rule of law. The United States, most profoundly, proclaims itself as a nation based on rule of law not rule of men. I am confident - though I wish it was a stronger confidence than I have at the moment - that ultimately the United States will realise that global rule of law is in the interests of America.

We have to accept supra-national bodies like the EU, or the WTO, or the International Criminal Court and accept their decisions even if as a nation we would prefer other views to prevail. The anti-globalisers like the steel and agro-protectionists in the USA dislike the WTO and insist that the egoism of the nation or the particular community should have the right to exclude what it doesn't like. George Bush and George Monbiot share a dislike of products or services they don't want to be sold in their ideal of a perfect community - one based on exclusion not inclusion, one based on a claim to speak the truth rather than the social democratic view that truth is something we search for not something we righteously possess.

Alison: The movement of NGOs is growing, we've seen that very clearly with the debt campaign. One element of good news is that Bono, the pop star who came on board to popularise the debt movement, is taking senior members of the US Administration to Africa to really highlight the suffering of people there, and that's in advance of the G8, so we've got a global movement of NGOs which is engaging at the very highest levels with the American Administration. I think that's a great tribute to all the work of the people throughout the world for that kind of a vision. And the thing that I'd really like to end with, and we'd probably all agree, is that if September 11th is to really mean something for America, it must be that we now recognise that national security means nothing in this world for any nation unless it means international security simultaneously.

Placed on Fabian Global Forum, June 2002.