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one moral universe: the case for action on global poverty
The Smith Institute The Smith Institute is an independent think tank that has been set up to look at issues which flow from the changing relationship between social values and economic imperatives.
If you would like to know more about the Smith Institute please write to: one moral universe: the case for action on global poverty Based on the 2004 Pope Paul VI Memorial Lecture The Director The Smith Institute Given on behalf of CAFOD 3rd Floor Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown MP 52 Grosvenor Gardens Chancellor of the Exchequer London SW1W 0AW Wednesday 8 December 2004 The Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, Westminster Telephone +44 (0)20 7823 4240 Fax +44 (0)20 7823 4823 Email [email protected] Website www.smith-institute.org.uk
Designed and produced by Owen & Owen 2005 THE SMITH INSTITUTE one moral universe: the case for action on global poverty
Based on the 2004 Pope Paul VI Memorial Lecture Given on behalf of CAFOD Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown MP Chancellor of the Exchequer
Wednesday 8 December 2004 The Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, Westminster
Published by the Smith Institute ISBN 1 902488 91 1 © The Smith Institute 2005 THE SMITH INSTITUTE
Contents
Preface: morals, values and progressive politics By Tony Pilch, Researcher, the Smith Institute 3
An introduction to the CAFOD Pope Paul VI Memorial Lecture By Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster 10
One moral universe: the case for action on global poverty By Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer 13
Recent publications 34
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Preface: morals, values and progressive politics Tony Pilch, Researcher, the Smith Institute
The Smith Institute is an independent think tank, which has been set up to undertake research and education in issues that flow from the changing relationship between social values and economic imperatives. In recent years, the Institute has centred its work on the policy implications arising from the interactions of equality, enterprise and equity.
The Smith Institute is delighted to be publishing the CAFOD Pope Paul VI Memorial Lecture delivered by Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer, on Wednesday 8th December 2004. In this landmark speech, the Chancellor makes an impassioned argument for international action to resolve the plight of the world’s poorest countries. The case for a renewed determination amongst the international community to tackle global poverty ranges from reasons based in the increasing interconnectedness of the world’s nations, to justifications rooted in ethical imperatives and the common moral sense. The Chancellor calls for a new ‘covenant’ between the richest and the poorest nations borne not only of ‘enlightened self-interest’ but of an appreciation of our shared humanity and the imperatives that flow from a common understanding of justice. By bringing the economic case for aid, trade and development together with the demands for global justice, the Chancellor makes a powerful call, not only for concerted effort on the part of the richest nations to engage with the worlds poorest, but also for a new politics where economic and political aims are underpinned by our mutual humanity and a common moral sense that can be shared by all.
The Chancellor’s references to the moral universe, the moral responsibility and the moral sense reflect his conviction that progress in all policy areas, from international development to family policy, from education to environmental policy, can only be achieved if policy is founded on a ‘progressive consensus’: a set of progressive views and values, or a ‘moral sense common to us all’, which are embraced by people in Britain and beyond. The CAFOD lecture builds on the Chancellor’s speech at the Compass Conference of 2004 which focused on the nature of progressive politics, the progressive consensus and the importance of the moral foundation of politics:
All of us are here not only because we wish to win a historic third term, and not just because we wish to ensure a progressive set of manifesto policies. We are here because we want to build in our country, in our generation and in our times, something much broader and more enduring than that.
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Our shared task is to build a British progressive consensus whereby not just we in this hall, not just the Labour Party, but the people of this country see a Britain of prosperity and justice for all as the way forward for our nation.
A progressive consensus that is therefore more than a set of policies and programmes pursued by the government alone but is a set of progressive views and values embraced by the people.
Discussions about the progressive consensus and the need for it to be grounded in moral values have been a prominent feature of political debate in recent years, particularly in the Labour movement. Few speeches and statements made by the Labour Party leadership go by without a reference to the progressive consensus. Indeed the phrase featured 13 times in the Chancellor’s 2004 Labour Party Conference speech. But what exactly is the progressive consensus and why have moral values returned to the centre of political discussion? And what are the implications?
The progressive consensus rests on the notion that politics is more than a struggle for office and power, a perpetual game between the ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ in which principles are simply the servants of ambition. Instead, the progressive consensus holds that principles, values and morals are the foundation of progressive political achievement. But precisely because of this, clarity about the framework of values and principles within which and against which progressive politics are conducted is crucially important: it should inform every detail of policy, ensuring political approaches are principled rather than opportunist. Without clarity about the principles and values underlying a progressive consensus, the danger is that the term loses any significant salience.
The leading lights of the Left unite around the idea that the progressive consensus involves rooting policies in the progressive values shared by the British people: the values of solidarity, reciprocity, mutuality and equality of opportunity. Importantly, this does not simply mean establishing policy in the middle ground, through a process of ‘triangulation’ and simply splitting the difference between the political parties. Rather it means developing policy based on the common ground, understanding, tapping into and articulating through policy the deepest values and aspirations of the people. As Tawney once argued of progressive politics:
It must be related, not only to practical needs but to the mental and moral traditions of plain men and women, as history has fixed them. It must emphasise primarily what it has
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in common with their outlook, not the points at which it differs from them. It must not dogmatise or brow beat, but argue and persuade.
Those who call for a progressive consensus recognise that for it to be both meaningful and enduring, its proponents will need to continue to convey an active sense of the core values which underpin it and of the way in which they shape policy. Without a clear expression of the values and morals which shape policy, the danger is that politics is perceived as merely a scientific, mechanical exercise which becomes increasingly distant from people’s everyday values and aspirations. In the Smith Institute publication, ‘Telling it like it could be: the moral force of progressive politics’, Douglas Alexander MP wrote of the values underpinning the progressive consensus:
Progressive politics rejects the notion of survival of the fittest, instead preferring to value each individual as part of a wider social whole. The enduring value we place on ensuring that every member of society is cared for because of their equal worth as fellow human beings challenges us in the modern age to use the power of Government to extend opportunity…Each of us was first drawn to the Labour Party by a recognition that it is the vehicle for the values – of solidarity, equality and liberty – by which we wish to live our lives and define our society. In the daily cut and thrust of political debate or amidst the jargon of policy formation, it is these values which provide our compass for the way ahead. And at every point in our history they have defined not just the party’s programme but its very soul.
When Tawney talks of the need to base policies on the moral traditions of men and women and when Gordon Brown argues for policies to be based around a ‘moral sense’ there is a clear and shared conviction that, contrary to the recent trend of British politicians shying away from discussing the moral dimension to politics, for fear of being seen to be moralising, a moral impulse does underpin progressive political change. Indeed the profundity of the Chancellor’s CAFOD lecture lies not just in the call for unity around a specific international development initiatives, but the conviction that progressive policies, in this field as much as others, are simply not possible without a moral foundation. Rather than politicians shying away from linking politics, morals and values, the progressive consensus is founded on politicians sharing with the people the moral dimension to politics.
A number of other factors explain why some on the Left have embraced the reintroduction of morals and values into the political realm. First, history suggests that the progressive
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politics of the Left has always been based on a moral foundation. Any anthology of British socialism worth its salt would record that one of the most distinctive features of British socialism has been its insistence on the moral basis of politics. The great voices of the Left, George Orwell, William Morris, Thomas More, Bernard Crick, George Bernard Shaw, James Maxton, Hugh Gaitskell and Richard Tawney consistently pointed to the moral foundation of socialism. Indeed, when socialism has failed in the past it has done so arguably because the moral foundation of socialism has been ignored or rejected. Under the sway of a crude form of Marxism many socialists allowed themselves to succumb to the delusion that socialism was primarily a science of society, or that history was on its side and predeter- mined. These errors of theory produced even greater errors of practice. Yet the best British socialists always insisted that, at bottom, socialism and embedding progressive politics was a matter of moral choice. It has been written that William Morris was “brought to Socialism by his conscious revolt against that mechanical materialism which reduced the story of mankind to an objectless record of the struggle for the survival of the ‘fittest’, and which, in his own time, under whatever high-sounding phrases, put profit and not ‘free and full life’ as touchstone of value”. More recently, in 1993 John Smith wrote:
Let me assert my profound conviction that politics ought to be a moral activity and we should never feel inhibited in stressing the moral basis of our approach. Of course, we have to take matters further forward. We have to undertake the intellectual task of applying a moral principle in a way in which results in a practical policy of benefit to our fellow citizens. And life is never free of dilemmas. But let us never be fearful of saying that we espouse a policy because it is, quite simply, the right thing to do. And let us not underestimate the desire, which I believe is growing in our society, for a politics based on principle.
While the bond between morals and progressive politics has a long history on the Left, recent political history has witnessed the fracturing of the bonds between morals and politics. The response to the attempt to go ‘back to basics’, under the government of John Major, was enough to put off all but the bravest politician from entering the choppy waters of discussing the moral basis of politics. But the recent failure of politicians to engage in this debate has had serious consequences. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Sir Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, have long advocated the importance of politicians engaging in such a discourse. Richard Layard has recently suggested that ‘we are in a situation of moral vacuum, where there are no agreed concepts of how unselfish a person should be, or of what constitutes a good society.’ Therefore in response to this moral vacuum, and in keeping with the very best traditions of British socialism, the
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proponents of the progressive consensus have recognised that the very essence of politics is moral: that to vote or voice an opinion within the public realm is to express a moral belief because it is to choose one vision of how society should be over another. The result has been that an increasing number of progressive politicians have sought to re-emphasise the moral basis of both policies and politics rather than, as perhaps would have been the case 10 years ago, steer clear of such dangerous territory. In the words of Douglas Alexander MP:
While it has become popular in recent decades to deride the role of political parties, only political parties allow the formation of the lasting and coherent coalitions that allow sustained progress to be made. They are the means by which we come together to find such common focus through shared deliberation and discussion. Without them, politics and the decision making that non-party political groups seek to influence would be rooted in the temporary whims of populism, with scant regard for the inevitable consequences of any decision made.
A third factor behind the new emphasis on the moral basis of politics is the recognition by the proponents of the progressive consensus that in order to sustain progressive change, the political messages advanced by politicians need to reach out and strike a chord with the values and aspirations of the British people. This means recognising that electoral success is a necessary but insufficient vehicle of sustained change and that a language is needed which carries an empathy with the ‘moral sense’ of people. Mrs Thatcher realised the importance of not being seen to be mechanistic but tapping into people’s instincts in 1979 when she said “the mission of this government is much more than the promotion of economic progress. It is to renew the spirit and solidarity of the nation…we need to inspire a new national mood, as much as to carry through legislation”. Appealing to people’s morals, values and ethics therefore provides the vehicle by which progressive politicians can carry the weight of the public with them in seeking to embed change. So while effective communication and good organisation are vital electoral tools, neither is sufficient in enabling any political party to sustain a political movement. International evidence affirms this message. In explaining the re-election of President Bush, analysts have pointed to the success of the Republican campaign in shifting the common sense of the American people towards its vision of the good society and galvanising it during the election campaign. Harvard University’s Michael Sandel has said that the Democrats have allowed the Republicans a monopoly on the moral and spiritual sources of American politics, further emphasising the importance of asserting clearly the ethical foundation of what political parties do.
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Having set out the nature of the progressive consensus and the factors behind the renewal of the bond between morals and politics, it is worth briefly considering the potential of progressive consensus to generate change. International development, the subject of the Chancellor’s CAFOD lecture, represents a policy area which is perhaps the clearest demonstration of the power of progressive thought, built on a widespread consensus, to generate change. Before the Labour Party came to power in 1997, the international aid budget was pitiful. Today, the Department for International Development has a massively increased budget. In 1997 just one country was going to receive debt relief. Now 27 countries are benefiting with $70 billion dollars of unpayable debt being written off. But the key point is that these changes have been made possible only because of a demand for change by people both in Britain and across the world. Nor could they have happened without the coming together of hundreds of churches and groups, first through the Jubilee 2000 coalition and now through the global community which comprises the Make Poverty History campaign. There can be few more powerful examples of how the seed of an idea, based on a moral impulse, can grow to nurture progressive debate and shape progressive policies which achieve real change. This is the progressive consensus in action. As Douglas Alexander has shown, history is on the side of the progressives:
The vibrancy of the moral core from which progressive politics springs has, throughout the Labour movement’s history, changed the course of British society. From the National Health Service to the changing aspirations for international development, progressive politics at its best has brought the people of this country together in a shared sense of purpose; the purpose of building a better society for all, rooted in the values of equality, solidarity and social justice. In turn, these progressive achievements have rooted them- selves within British society, becoming irreversible hallmarks of the kind of nation we wish to become. In this process we can see that the moral impulse of progressive politics acts as a catalyst to building and sustaining the progressive consensus such political changes require.
The longevity of the NHS and the recent success in promoting international development show us that progressive values not only endure but continue to inspire change both in Britain and abroad. They are the foundation of the progressive consensus which rests on the ability of progressive politicians to reach out into society and make the case not just for policies but for the morals, values and principles which underpin those policies. The Chancellor’s CAFOD lecture represents far more than a series of measures to promote international development: it is recognition of the power of morals and values to shape progressive policy. History shows us not just that morals and progressive politics have
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always gone hand in hand, but that when political institutions, like the NHS, draw on the morals, values and the instincts of the British people the combination can produce enduring and successful symbols of progress.
Values are therefore at the heart of progressive politics: they provide a rock of reference, the foundation of policy and can be the source of an enduring progressive vision.
The Institute is very grateful to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the opportunity to publish this important text, and our thanks are also due to the Archbishop of Westminster for his introduction to the Chancellor’s piece.
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An introduction to the CAFOD Pope Paul VI Memorial Lecture Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster
There was a time when the presence of a Chancellor of the Exchequer at a lecture organised by an aid agency would have been regarded as a visitation from the fox to the hen house. Development used to be low on the priority list of successive governments. It was seen, in the public mind, as a minority cause – worthy, but not of enormous relevance to domestic politics, let alone general elections.
How different it all looks now. The visible face of hunger and poverty and disease have stirred the conscience of the world. Ordinary people discuss the way, for example, world trade rules inhibit the ability of developing countries to earn their way out of poverty through exports. There is widespread interest in debt relief, how much of the national income goes on aid, and how aid is targetted. World poverty has moved to the foreground of British politics and media debate, and there is mounting expectation that from the Gleneagles Summit in early July will emerge a fairer deal for the world’s poorest.
How to explain this moral awakening? Television and travel have no doubt played their part in enabling the wealthy west to come closer to the reality of their poorer brothers and sisters in the South. LiveAid, 20 years ago, contributed to making the cause of the poor fashionable for the young. The end of the Cold War, which had reduced ideological choices to free markets versus state intervention, made it easier for people to speak up for justice without being given a political party label. And the success of the Church-led Jubilee Coalition, which campaigned so energetically for the remission of unpayable debt by poorer countries, showed that rallies and campaigns on behalf of the poor can spark political initiative leading to concrete change.
These are all explanations as to why, in 2005, the Make Poverty History campaign has turned what was a trickle of righteous indignation into a popular tide sweeping the Western world. But the moral awakening in our time is in many ways as mysterious as the movement for the abolition of slavery in the late eighteenth century. In both cases, the awakening has been to the dignity of human beings. Whether or not they are formerly religious, people carry with them a deep sense of that dignity, and feel uncomfortable when they see it violated. The Spirit moves, and eyes and hearts are opened. In the last 10-15 years, those who live in the wealthy west have sat up straight and asked themselves why it is that, when so many have so much, so many others not far away die because they cannot afford to live.
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The Churches have quietly – and sometimes not so quietly – continued to call for justice for the world’s poor, even when it was not fashionable to do so. As Gordon Brown says, “when the history of the crusade against global poverty is written, one of its first and finest chapters will detail the commitment of the Churches in Britain to help the world’s poor.”
The Catholic Church has consistently taught, through its social teaching, that beyond the strict demands of the free market there is a duty to solidarity, justice and universal charity. As Pope John Paul II wrote in his encyclical letter Centesimus Annus (1991), there exists “something which is due to human beings, because they are human beings, by reason of their lofty dignity”. The recently-published Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (Continuum, 2005) makes clear that development is a right, not just an aspiration, and carries with it a set of corresponding duties. The right to development, as the Church sees it, is deduced from a series of interlocking principles: the common destiny of the human family, the equality of dignity of every human person, the universal destination of the goods of the earth, and the centrality of solidarity to human life. All these are all essential to what we believe, and the source of our determination to do what we can to unchain the shackles binding the poor of the world.
The Catholic aid agency CAFOD, which has grown in just a few decades from a tiny charity to a global agency, is the clearest expression in the Catholic Church of England and Wales of those moral values. If a bandwagon has been rolling, and people have been jumping on it, then CAFOD is one of those who first put wheels on it and gave the band its music. It is, inevitably, one of the organisations which make up the Make Poverty History coalition, which is pressing the leaders of the world’s wealthiest nations to make good on their millennial pledges when they gather for the G8 Summit in Edinburgh in early July.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, has welcomed that pressure. As his lecture shows, he believes strongly in the Make Poverty History case.
As his CAFOD lecture shows so well, he is conscious of the energy and moral force which the Churches and faith groups bring to this question. Not only is he not embarrassed by that fact, but he appears to be proud of it. He is willing to suggest that human inter- dependence, duty to others and justice in the human family are moral facts. He even states, boldly, that “what is morally wrong cannot be economically right”. This is a very far cry from what too often the poor countries of this world have been told – that if it is economically right, it must be morally right too.
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After his lecture, in answer to a question put from the audience, Gordon Brown said very clearly that he intends to be judged as politician on his efforts to tilt the scales in favour of the poor. He did not invite the audience to put these efforts alongside his record as Chancellor of the Exchequer, but to judge him on this one single achievement – or lack of it.
It would be all too easy for him to dampen expectations, to stress that what is achieved in Edinburgh does not depend on the British Government alone, to remind people that politics is the art of the possible. But by asking us to judge him on his efforts, he is saying the opposite: that a historical chance such as that of Edinburgh transcends party politics, and that he intends to seize it, on behalf of the world’s poor. That is why, whatever our political allegiances, his courage and determination deserve our backing. This is why I do not hesitate to be in Edinburgh on 2nd July to raise the Catholic Church’s voice on behalf of the poor, to support our Chancellor’s efforts, and to pray that justice finally prevails.
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One moral universe: the case for action on global poverty Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer
Joseph Campbell describes a hero as someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than him or herself.
And today I want to honour Cafod – your missionaries, aid workers, supporters, contributors and campaigners – as modern heroes. For just as surely as some of our greatest heroes of history, your religious faith, your moral anger at poverty, your sense of duty, has led you to fight for great causes, stand for the highest ideals and do God’s work on earth.
The reward you seek, as you have always said, is not recognition, nor status, nor titles, nor money, but that the coming generation – who never even knew you – enjoys a better life thanks to your courageous work.
You led a coalition for debt relief whose voices rose to a resounding chorus that echoed outwards to the world from Birmingham, then from Cologne, then from Okinawa – a clarion call to action, speaking not for yourselves alone but for the hopes of the whole world.
And you led a coalition that achieved more standing together for the needs of the poor in one short year than all the isolated acts of individual governments could have achieved in one hundred years.
Now, it is the churches and faith groups that have, across the world, done more than any others – by precept and by example – to make us aware of the sheer scale of human suffering, and our duty to end it.
Indeed, when the history of the crusade against global poverty is written, one of its first and finest chapters will detail the commitment of the churches in Britain to help the world’s poor.
And my theme tonight is that we are not powerless individuals but, acting together, have the power to shape history.
And each of us, building on the individual causes we cherish – from work on debt relief to education, from fair trade to clean water, from blindness to TB, from Aids to child vaccination – can together not only make progress for the direct concerns that drive us forward but, working together, can also turn globalisation from a force that breeds
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insecurity to a force for justice on a global scale.
I want to sketch out for you a vision of a new deal that demands a new accountability from both rich and poor countries. A new compact between those to whom so much is given and those who have so little.
More than a contract – which is after all one group tied by legal obligations to another – and nothing less than what the author of The Politics of Hope called a “covenant”: the richest recognising out of duty and a deep moral sense of responsibility their obligations to the poorest of the world.
And I want to suggest that at the same time as developing countries devise their own poverty reduction plans, we the richest countries must take three vital steps:
• first, agreeing a comprehensive financing programme – that is, we achieve a break- through to complete 100% debt relief; find a way to persuade others to join us in declaring their timetables on increasing development aid to 0.7% of national income; and immediately raise an additional $50 billion a year, doubling aid to halve poverty, through the creation of a new International Finance Facility; • second, with this new finance, that we advance to meet the Millennium Development Goals on health, education and the halving of poverty; use this unique opportunity to drive forward the internationalisation of Aids research and the advance purchase of HIV/Aids and malaria vaccines; build the capacity of health and education systems; and deliver to the 105 million children who do not go to school today, two-thirds of them girls, our promise of primary education for all; and • third, that we deliver the Doha development round on trade, and make it the first ever world trade agreement to be in the interests of the poorest countries.
Indeed, because progress on each of these is dependent on progress on all of these, we must during 2005 advance all of these causes together.
Exactly five years ago in New York and in a historic declaration, every world leader, every international body, almost every single country signed up to a shared commitment to right the greatest wrongs of our time.
The promise that by 2015 every child would be at school. The promise that by 2015 avoidable infant deaths would be prevented.
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The promise that by 2015 poverty would be halved.
This commitment was a bond of trust, perhaps the greatest bond of trust pledged between rich and poor. But already, so close to the start of our journey – and 20 years after the problems were first exposed to this generation through Live Aid – we can see that our destination risks becoming out of reach, receding into the distance.
And at best on present progress in sub-Saharan Africa:
• primary education for all will be delivered not in 2015, but 2130 – that is, 115 years too late; • the halving of poverty not by 2015 but by 2150 – that is, 135 years too late; and • the elimination of avoidable infant deaths not by 2015 but by 2165 – that is, 150 years too late.
So when people ask how long, the whole world must reply:
One hundred and fifty years is too long to wait for justice.
One hundred and fifty years is too long to wait when infants are dying in Africa while the rest of the world has the medicines to heal them.
One hundred and fifty years is too long for people to wait when a promise should be redeemed, when the bond of trust should be honoured now in this decade.
Martin Luther King spoke of the American Constitution as a promissory note and yet, for black Americans, the promise of equality for all had not been redeemed. He said that the cheque offering justice had been returned with “insufficient funds” written on it.
He said, “We refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.” And he said the time had come to “cash this cheque which would give upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice”.
And in this way he exposed on racial equality the gap between promises and reality. But in exactly the same way, today’s Millennium Goals – a commitment backed by a timetable – are now in danger of being downgraded from a pledge to just a possibility, to just words.
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Yet another promissory note, yet another cheque marked “insufficient funds”. And the danger we face today is that what began as a great bond between rich and poor for our times is at risk of ending as a great betrayal of the poor by the rich – and as a global community we are at risk of being remembered not for what we promised to do, but for what we failed to deliver, another set of broken hopes that break the trust of the world’s people in the world’s governments.
And when we know the scale of suffering that has to be addressed, the problem is not that the promise was wrong, the pledge unrealistic, the commitments unnecessary, but that we have been too slow in developing the means to honour, fulfil and deliver them. In the past when we as a global community failed to act we often blamed our ignorance – we said that we did not know. But now we cannot use ignorance to explain or excuse our inaction. We can see on our TV screens the ravaged faces of too many of the 30,000 children dying unnecessarily each day. We cannot blame our inaction on inadequate science; we know that a quarter of all child deaths can be prevented if children sleep beneath bed-nets costing only $4 each.
We cannot defend our inaction by invoking a lack of medical cures – for we know that as many as half of all malaria deaths can be prevented if people have access to diagnosis and drugs that cost no more than 12 cents.
The world already knows we know enough. But the world knows all too well that we have not done enough. Because what is lacking is will.
So if we are to make real progress we must – together from this meeting room this evening – and then from countless other centres of concern and endeavour, go out into this country and other countries and show people and politicians alike everywhere why it is morally and practically imperative that we not only declare but fight and win a war against poverty; why we must not only pass resolutions and make demands but move urgently to remove injustice; why lives in the poorest countries depend upon converting, in the richest countries, apathy to engagement, sympathy to campaigning, half-hearted concern to wholly committed action.
In short, we must share the inspiration we have of the power of the dream of a better world – and why it is now more urgent than ever that people everywhere are awakened to the duties we owe to people elsewhere whose hopes for life itself depend upon our help; duties not just to people who are neighbours, but to people who are strangers.
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So that even when we know that our sense of empathy diminishes as we move outwards from the immediate, face-to-face, person-to-person relationships of family, outwards to neighbourhood to country to half a world away, we still feel and ought to feel, however distantly, the pain of others – and why it is right to believe in something bigger than ourselves, bigger even than our own community, as wide as the world itself.
It has been written that “if we answer the question why we can handle the question how”.
And this evening I am going to put forward three propositions:
• that our dependence upon each other should awaken our conscience to the needs not just of neighbours but of strangers; • more than that, that our moral sense should impel us to act out of duty and not just self-interest; and • that the claims of justice are not at odds with the liberties of each individual but a modern expression of them that ensures the dignity of all – and there is such a thing as a moral universe.
First, does not Martin Luther King show our responsibilities to strangers, to people we have never met and who will never know our names, when he describes each of us as strands in an inescapable network of mutuality, together woven into a single garment of destiny?
Indeed, just as the industrialisation of the 18th century opened people up to a society which lay beyond family and village and asked individuals who never met each other to understand the needs of all throughout their own country, so, too, the globalisation we are witnessing asks us to open our minds to the plight and the pain of millions we will never meet and who are continents away, but upon whom, as a result of the international division of labour, we depend for our food, our clothes, our livelihoods, our security.
In my 2004 Labour conference speech I recalled the words of a poet:
“It is the hands of others who grow the food we eat, who sew the clothes we wear, who build the houses we inhabit; it is the hands of others who tend us when we’re sick and lift us up when we fall; it is the hands of others who bring us into the world and who lower us into the earth.”
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When I talked of the hands of others, I meant our dependence upon each other – the nurse, the builder, the farm worker, the seamstress – not just in our own country but across the earth. We are in an era of global interdependence, relying each upon the other; a world society of shared needs, common interests, mutual responsibilities, linked densities, international solidarity.
And since 11 September 2001 there is an even more immediate reason for emphasising our interdependence and solidarity. Now more than ever, we rely on each other not just for our sustenance but for our safety and security. Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, says: “What poverty does do is breed frustration and resentment which ideological entrepreneurs can turn into support for terrorism in countries that lack the political rights, the institutions, necessary to guard the society from terrorists. Countries that are lacking basic freedoms. So we can’t win the war on terrorism unless we get at the roots of poverty, which are social and political as well as economic in nature.”
And President Bush said on the eve of the Financing for Development Conference in Monterrey: “Poverty doesn’t cause terrorism. Being poor doesn’t make you a murderer. Most of the plotters of 11 September were raised in comfort. Yet persistent poverty and oppression can lead to hopelessness and despair. And when governments fail to meet the most basic needs of their people, these failed states can become havens for terror. In Afghanistan, persistent poverty and war and chaos created conditions that allowed a terrorist regime to seize power. And in many other states around the world, poverty prevents governments from controlling their borders, policing their territory, and enforcing their laws. Development provides the resources to build hope and prosperity, and security.”
So does not everything that we witness across the world today, from discussing global trade to dealing with global terrorism, symbolise just how closely and irrevocably bound together are the fortunes of the richest persons in the richest country with the fate of the poorest persons in the poorest country of the world, even when they are strangers and have never met, and that an injury to one must be seen as an injury to all?
But is not what impels us to act far more than this enlightened self-interest? Ought we not to take our case for a war against poverty to its next stage – from economics to morality, from enlightened self-interest that emphasises our dependence each upon the other to the true justice that summons us to do our duty – and to see every death from hunger and disease as if it were a death in the family?
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For is there not some impulse even greater than the recognition of our interdependence that moves human beings, even in the most comfortable places, to empathy and to anger at the injustice and inhumanity that blight the lives not just of neighbours but of strangers in so many places, at so high a cost?
Is it not something greater, more noble, more demanding than just our shared interests that propels us to demand action against deprivation and despair on behalf of strangers as well as neighbours – and is it not our shared values?
It is my belief that even if we are strangers in many ways, dispersed by geography, diverse because of race, differentiated by wealth and income, divided by partisan beliefs and ideology, even as we are different, diverse and often divided, we are not and we cannot be moral strangers, for there is a shared moral sense common to us all.
Call it as Abraham Lincoln did – the better angels of our nature; call it as Gerrard Winstanley did – the light in man; call it as Adam Smith did – the moral sentiment; call it benevolence, as the Victorians did; virtue; the claim of justice; doing one’s duty. Or call it as Pope Paul VI did – “the good of each and all”.
It is precisely because we believe, in that moral sense, that we have obligations to others beyond our front doors and garden gates, responsibilities to others beyond the city wall, duties to others beyond our national borders as part of one moral universe – precisely because we have a sense of what is just and what is fair – that we are called to answer the hunger of the hungry, the needs of the needy, the suffering of the sick whoever and wherever they are, bound together by the duties we feel we owe each other. We cannot be fully human unless we care about the dignity of every human being.
Christians say: do to others what you would have them do to you.
Jews say: what is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man.
Buddhists say: hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.
Muslims say: no one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.
Sikhs say: treat others as you would be treated yourself.
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Hindus say: this is the sum of duty – do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you.
Faiths that reveal truths not to be found in economic textbooks or political theory – beliefs now held by people of all faiths and none – that emphasise our duty to strangers, our concern for the outsider, the hand of friendship across continents, that say I am my brother’s keeper, that we not only don’t want injustice to happen to us, we don’t want injustice to happen to anyone.
Indeed, the golden rule runs through every great religion – of what the Bible calls righteousness or what you and I might call justice – and the words of Mahatma Gandhi reinforce this golden rule:
“Whenever you are in doubt, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]…”
Then, he said, “you will find your doubts melt away”.
So we are not – morally – speaking in tongues. And while there are many voices from many parts and many places, expressed in many languages and many religious faiths, we can and must think of ourselves coming together as a resounding chorus singing the same tune – and as a choir achieving a harmony which can move the world.
So our interdependence leads us to conclude that when some are poor, our whole society is impoverished.
And our moral sense leads us to conclude, as we have been told, that when there is an injustice anywhere, it is a threat to justice everywhere.
But can we not also say (and this is my third point) that, even when we are talking about the needs of strangers, the claims of justice – that we should do our duty to ensure the dignity of every individual – are now more powerful than ever? It is because the dignity of the individual is at the heart of our concerns about human beings that those claims of justice are not – as many once argued – at odds with the requirement for liberty, but are essential for the realisation of liberty in the modern world.
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In her recent book Gertrude Himmelfarb shows that, when the 17th and 18th centuries brought a revolt against outmoded forms of hierarchy, there was understandably a preoccupation not with justice or duty but with liberty. In 1789 “liberty” literally came before “equality” and “fraternity”. The call for freedom from outmoded forms of hierarchical obligations was then the only path to ending the power of absolute monarchs and repealing old mercantilist laws.
But although the great Enlightenment philosophers marched under the banner of liberty, rightly wishing to prevent any ruler invading the freedom of the citizen, a closer reading of these writers shows that, for them, the march of individual freedoms did not release people from their obligations to their fellow citizens and fulfilling the duties they owed to each other.
For them, liberty was not at odds with justice or duty but liberty and duty advanced together. One of the greatest tribunes of liberty, John Stuart Mill, stated categorically that “there are many positive acts to the benefit of others which anyone may rightfully be obliged to perform”.
And Rousseau wrote that “as soon as men cease to consider public service as the principal duty of citizens we may pronounce the state to be on the verge of ruin”.
And as Adam Smith – often wrongly seen as the patron of free-market capitalism without a conscience – put it: the philosophy of “all for ourselves and nothing for other people” was a “vile maxim”. “Perfection of human nature was to feel much for others and little for ourselves, to restrain our selfish and indulge benevolent affections.” In that spirit and as he died, Smith, the writer not just about the “invisible hand” but also the “helping hand”, was writing a new chapter for his Theory of Moral Sentiments entitled “On the Corruption of our Moral Sentiments”, which is occasioned by “the disposition to admire the rich and great and to despise or neglect persons of poor and mean condition”.
So the great apostle of freedom believed passionately in justice and in duty to others and saw no contradiction in saying so. And in our century this should be our focus. We should be asking not just what rights you can enforce on others, but asking what duties we can discharge for others.
David Selbourne says duties without rights make people slaves but rights without duties make them strangers.
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Moral strangers demand rights without duties.
Moral neighbours say that every time one person’s dignity is diminished or taken away through no fault of his or her own, it is an offence against justice.
And if the dignity of a child or adult is diminished by poverty, or debt, or unfair trade, we are all diminished.
Enlightened self-interest may lead us to propose a contract between rich and poor founded upon our mutual responsibilities because of our interdependence. But it is our strong sense of what is just that demands a covenant between rich and poor founded on our moral responsibility to each other – that even if it was not in our narrow self-interest to do so, it would still be right for every citizen to do one’s duty and meet the needs, and enhance the dignity, of strangers.
My father used to tell me we can all leave our mark for good or ill – and he quoted Martin Luther King saying everyone from the poorest to the richest can be great, because everyone can serve.
That all of us, no matter how weak or frail, or at times inadequate, can make a difference for good is emphasised by a story told by Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, writing of the film About Schmidt. Schmidt – played by Jack Nicholson – describes a futile life of family estrangement ending in an equally meaningless retirement, endured with an overriding sense of failure. In the film, Schmidt says:
“I know we’re all pretty small. In the big scheme of things what in the world is better because of me? I am weak and I am a failure – there’s just no getting around it… Soon I will die…maybe in twenty years, maybe tomorrow, it doesn’t matter… When everyone who knew me dies, too, it will be as though I never even existed… What difference has my life made to anyone? None that I can think of…none at all.”
But then he receives a letter from the teacher of a six-year-old in Tanzania for whose schooling and healthcare, in a small charitable gesture, Schmidt has been paying.
The young boy cannot yet write, the teacher says, but he has sent Schmidt a drawing instead. It shows two little line figures, one large and one small, obviously the boy and Schmidt.
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And the drawing shows them holding hands together as the sun shines down upon their friendship. And so the film ends with Jack Nicholson’s character slowly grasping that he has done one good deed in his life – for a stranger – a young child far away whom he has never met.
The duty done to others by Schmidt gives his life meaning.
Proving that one generous act can redeem a life.
So we do live in one interdependent world.
We are indeed part of one moral universe.
Even the meanest of us possesses a moral sense.
What really matters is the compassion we show to the weak.
And you value your society not for its wealth and power over others, but by how it can empower the poor and powerless.
Now that moral sense may not be “a strong beacon light radiating outward at all times to illuminate in sharp outline all it touches”, as James Q Wilson describes The Moral Sense so brilliantly. Rather, the moral sense is like “a small candle flame flickering and sputtering in the strong winds of passion and power, greed and ideology”. As Wilson says, “brought close to the heart and cupped in one’s hand, it dispels the darkness and warms the soul”. And even when it burns as a flicker it is still a flame, a flame that can never be extinguished.
So we do not wipe out the debt of the poorest countries simply because these debts are not easily paid.
We do so because people, weighed down by the burden of debts imposed by the last generation on this, cannot even begin to build for the next generation.
To insist on the payment of these debts offends human dignity – and is therefore unjust.
What is morally wrong cannot be economically right.
In the words of Isaiah, we must “undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free”.
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So let me set out the agenda that flows from our moral sense.
In 1997 just one country was going to receive debt relief. Now 27 countries are benefiting with $70 billion of unpayable debt being written off.
And it is thanks to your campaigning on debt relief that:
• with debt relief in Uganda, four million more children now go to primary school; • with debt relief in Tanzania, 31,000 new classrooms have been built and 18,000 new teachers recruited; • with debt relief in Mozambique, half a million children are now being vaccinated against tetanus, whooping cough and diphtheria.
But I know that you, like me, are less interested in what we’ve done than in what is still to do. And when many countries are still being forced to choose between servicing their debts and making the investments in health, education and infrastructure that would allow them to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, we know we must do more.
That is why in 2005 we must break new ground, go much further than we have gone before, and why, having heard the proposals you put to us, we are proposing a new set of principles to govern the next stage in debt relief.
First, that the richest countries match bilateral debt relief of up to 100% with multilateral debt relief of up to 100%, so that all debts are covered.
Second, that the cancellation of debts owed to the International Monetary Fund should be financed by using IMF gold.
Third, that instead of running down the resources available internationally for development, donor countries make a unique declaration that they will cover their share of the World Bank and the African Development Bank’s debts on behalf of eligible developing countries.
And so that is why Britain has announced that we will relieve those countries still under the burden of this debt to these banks by unilaterally paying our share – 10% – of payments to the World Bank and African Development Bank, as we urge other countries to do the same.
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Next, to put our duties to each other at the centre of policy, we also insist on a progressive approach to trade.
And fair trade is not just about the financial gains, it is also about giving people dignity – enabling people to stand on their own two feet and using trade as a springboard out of poverty.
You know the damage that rich countries’ protectionism has done to entrench the poverty of the poorest countries. We spend as much subsidising agriculture in the European Union as the whole income of all the 689 million people in sub-Saharan Africa taken together. The money that the US spends just in subsidising 25,000 cotton farmers dwarfs the total income of Burkina Faso, where two million people are dependent on cotton for their livelihoods. And for every dollar given to poor countries in aid, two dollars are lost because of unfair trade.
So 2005 is the time to send a signal and to agree a new policy.
First, it is time for the richest countries to agree to end the hypocrisy of developed- country protectionism by opening our markets, removing trade-distorting subsidies. And in particular, doing more to tackle urgently the scandal and waste of the Common Agricultural Policy shows we believe in fair trade.
Second, it is time to move beyond the old Washington consensus of the 1980s and recognise that, while bringing down unjust tariffs and barriers can make a difference, developing countries must also be allowed to carefully design and sequence trade reform into their own Poverty Reduction Strategies.
And third, because it is not enough to say, “You’re on your own, simply compete,” we have to say, “We will help you build the capacity you need to trade” – not just opening the door but helping you gain the strength to cross the threshold. We have to recognise that developing countries will need additional resources from the richest countries, both to build the economic and infrastructure capacity they need to take advantage of trading opportunities – and to prevent their most vulnerable people from falling further into poverty.
Our discussion of debt relief and trade leads to the essential challenge of 2005: that our new deal with the developing countries must involve a transfer of resources.
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Not aid as compensation for being poor but aid as investment in the future. And so, like debt and trade, this is about enhancing the dignity and potential of each individual.
Since the 1980s, aid to Africa, which was $33 per person ten years ago, has halved to just $19 per person now.
So we need a new financing programme.
Thanks to your campaigning, we are the first UK government to be able to announce a timetable for 0.7%. And over the next year we plan to ask other countries to join us and nine others in becoming countries which have set a timetable towards 0.7% of gross national income. But the truth is that the scale of the resources needed immediately to tackle disease, illiteracy and global poverty is far beyond what traditional funding can offer today.
That is why the UK government, as part of the financing package to reach the Millennium Development Goals, has put forward its proposal for stable, predictable, long-term funds, front-loaded to tackle today’s problems of poverty, disease and illiteracy through the bold initiative of a new global finance facility.
The International Finance Facility is in the tradition of the Marshall Plan of 1948 when, to finance the development of a ravaged postwar Europe, the richest country in the world – the United States of America – agreed to transfer 1% of its national income each and every year for four years – a transfer in total of the equivalent in today’s money of $75 billion a year.
And it is modelled on the founding principles of the World Bank in 1945, where nations provided resources to an international institution that then borrowed on the international capital markets.
Let me explain what the IFF could achieve for the world’s poor.
The IFF is founded upon long-term, binding donor commitments from the richest countries such as ourselves.
It builds upon the additional $16 billion already pledged at Monterrey. And on the basis of these commitments and more, it leverages in additional money from the international capital markets to raise the amount of development aid for the years to 2015.
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By locking in commitments from a wide range of donors, the IFF would enable us to front- load aid for investment in development, enabling a critical mass of predictable, stable and coordinated aid as investment to be deployed over the next few years, when it will have the most impact in achieving the Millennium Development Goals – saving lives today that would otherwise be lost.
The IFF would enable us to invest simultaneously across sectors – in education and health, trade capacity and economic development – so that instead of having to choose between urgent emergency disaster relief and long-term investment, the impact of extra resources in one area reinforces the investment in another.
The IFF will also allow us to attack the root causes of poverty not just the symptoms, focusing on developing the capacity and the dignity people need to help themselves.
And let me just explain the scale of what I am proposing.
In all our campaigns taken together, we have managed to raise international aid from $50 billion a year to $60 billion.
Our proposal is to raise development aid immediately, not from $60 billion to $65 billion, or even $70 billion, but in effect a doubling of aid to more than $100 billion per year.
With one bold stroke: to double development aid to halve poverty.
An extra $50 billion that will allow us to attack the root causes of poverty, not just the symptoms, and to meet the Millennium Development Goals.
The aim of the International Finance Facility is to bridge the gap between promises and reality.
Between hopes raised and hopes dashed.
Between an opportunity seized and an opportunity squandered.
Of course we will continue to look at other means – international taxes; more resources direct to development banks, the IMF and the World Bank – but the practical benefits of the IFF are:
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• we provide the support poor countries need immediately to invest in infrastructure, and education and health systems, and economic development so they can benefit from access to our markets; • we provide grants to help ensure a sustainable exit from debt; • we make primary schooling for all not just a distant dream but a practical reality – meeting these needs and rights now, and not deferring them to an uncertain future; • and we meet our global goals of cutting infant mortality and maternal mortality, eliminating malaria and TB and treating millions more people who are suffering from HIV/Aids.
I thank the Holy See and the growing number of countries which have indicated support for the IFF – including, of the G7, France and last week Italy. Let me give an example of what we can do today and now, if we work together.
Let me give an illustration of what – because of the IFF model – is already possible.
The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation – which has immunised over the past five years not a few children, but a total of 50 million children around the world – is interested in applying the principles of the IFF to the immunisation sector – donors making long-term commitments that can be securitised in order to front-load the funding available to tackle disease. If, by these means, the Global Alliance could increase the funding for its immunisation programme by an additional $4 billion over ten years, then it would be possible that its work could save the lives of an additional five million people between now and 2015.
So in one fund, with one initiative, we can glimpse the possibilities open to us if we act together. Think, if we could do the same for health, for schools, for debt, for the capacity to trade, for research and advance purchasing of drugs to cure malaria and HIV/Aids, of the better world we can achieve.
So with next year – 2005 – the year of the UK’s G8 presidency, the push for G8 progress starts now.
You have set a challenge for 2005, with 2005 a make-or-break year for development; a moment of opportunity for development and debt relief; a challenge Tony Blair, Hilary Benn and I know we must, for the sake of the world’s poorest, not squander but must seize. An opportunity to make a breakthrough on debt relief and development,
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on tackling disease and on delivering the Doha development round on trade.
We must rise to the challenge and we accept that we will be judged by what we achieve.
So the task for this government now is to replace talk by action and initiatives by results, and to rise to the challenge – pledging to strive for urgent progress both on the priorities of finance for development and trade. And as you take forward your 2005 campaigns, I know you will hold us accountable as you have done so far, that you will challenge us: Be the conscience of the world, be the voice that guides us at this crucial crossroads.
Toni Morrison said that “courage is to recognise and identify evil but never fear or stand in awe of it”.
Let that be our inspiration as we think of Africa.
Thirty thousand children will die needlessly today.
If this happened in our country we would act now immediately together. We would indeed conclude it should never be allowed to happen anywhere.
Yet today 30,000 children will die.
Each child a unique personality.
Each child precious.
Each one loved, almost every one who could live if the medicines and treatments available here were available there.
But each one of those 30,000 children will struggle for breath – and for life – and tragically and painfully lose that fight.
And I know what you are thinking.
If I could this day help one single child who might otherwise die live.
If I could today and tonight prevent one avoidable death.
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If I could prevent a single child from needless suffering.
If I could turn the despair felt by a mother worried about her child, ranging from desolation to hope, then it would make everything I do worthwhile.
But if we could, together by our actions, help thousands, hundreds of thousands and millions.
And if we could, with all the power at our command, working together, collectively change the common sense of the age so that people saw that poverty was preventable, should be prevented and then had to be prevented, so that we met the Millennium Development Goals not in 2150 but in 2015, then all else we do in our lives would pale into insignificance and every effort would be worth it.
As Bono has said – It’s not enough to describe Everest. We have to climb it. And it’s not enough to picture the New Jerusalem. We must build it.
But when people say that debt relief, trade justice and finance for health and education is an impossible dream, I say:
• people thought the original plans for the World Bank were the work of dreamers; • people thought the Marshall Plan unattainable; • even in 1997 when Labour came to power people thought debt relief was an impossible aspiration, and yet already, with your support, we are wiping out up to $100 billion of debt; • people thought no more countries would sign up to a timetable for 0.7% of national income in overseas development assistance, and yet this year alone five countries have done so.
So when the need is even more urgent and our responsibilities even more clear; and even when the path ahead is difficult, hard and long, let us not lose hope, but take courage in our shared resolve to find the will to act.
Let us hear the words of Isaiah: “Though you were wearied by the length of your way, you did not say it was hopeless – you found new life in your strength.”
And let us answer with Isaiah also as our motto for 2005: that we shall indeed “renew our strength, rise up with wings as eagles, walk and not faint, run and not be weary”.
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A few weeks ago, I cited a famous saying more than one hundred years old – that the arc of the moral universe is long but it does bend towards justice. This was not an appeal to some iron law of history but to remind people that, by our own actions, we can and do change the world for good.
And I believe that, • with the scale of the challenge revealed, • with the growth of public pressure you have started in Britain and in other countries, and • if there is a determination among world leaders to be bold, we should build upon our moral sense. And if we do, while the arc of the moral universe will be long, it will bend towards justice in the months and years to come.
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Recent publications
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Recent Smith Institute Publications
Religion and the Rise of Socialism: The ethical origins of the Labour Party (John Smith Memorial Lecture) Rt. Hon. Lord Hattersley of Sparkbrook Price: £9.95 ISBN: 1 902488 81 4 Published: 2005
On 12th July 2004 Rt. Hon. Lord Hattersley of Sparkbrook delivered a John Smith Memorial Lecture at an event held by the Smith Institute. In his address, Roy Hattersley drew on the sceptical view of markets held by the ‘Christian Socialist’ thinkers that contributed to the foundation of the Labour Party to develop an understanding of the role of markets in today’s world. He argued that the development of the global economy and of information technology in the last quarter of the twentieth century has made it all the more necessary to define where the boundaries between public and private enterprise lie. He argues for the re-invigoration of politics based not on the transformation of public service and services into a caricature of the market, but through the development of policy from first principles, driven by moral and philosophical imperatives.
Enlightenment Lectures 2002 Lord Dahrendorf, Sir Neil MacCormick MEP, Dr Robert Anderson, Elspeth Attwooll MEP, Lord Sutherland, Rt. Hon. Sir Malcolm Rifkind QC, Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown MP, Dr Emma Rothschild, Dr Irwin Stelzer. Edited by Ben Shimshon Price: £9.95 ISBN: 1 902488 80 6 Published: 2005
This pamphlet comprises the transcripts of a series of lectures held as a tribute to the late Donald Dewar, Scotland’s first First Minister. Their aim was to examine some of the ideas that flourished in 18th Century Scotland in the period now known as the Scottish Enlightenment and to bring out those aspects of that period’s political and economic philosophy that still hold relevance for today’s world. Over the course of the four lectures the ideas of Adam Ferguson, Joseph Black, David Hume and Adam Smith were each discussed by an academic of distinction and by a contemporary commentator or politician. It became apparent that many of their concerns, and their approaches to them, resonate
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closely with present day issues such as the development of a healthy civil society, links between academia and enterprise, the balance between economic liberalisation and social fairness and the problems of moral relativity.
Telling it Like it Could Be: The moral force of progressive politics Douglas Alexander MP Price: £9.95 ISBN: 1 902488 85 7 Published: 2005
Over the last year, the Smith Institute has held a number of seminars and events around issues which their proponents claim are rooted in the ‘common ground’. This has developed in tandem with a growing concern that the tribal politics of Westminster is becoming increasingly alien to the British public whose trust of politicians is diminishing and, for many of whom, party loyalty is no longer the core component of political identity. Single issue lobbies are attracting significant attention, while the offerings of the single issue political parties are often supported beyond their reasonable expectations. In this first pamphlet of a series we have commissioned to explore these developments, Douglas Alexander MP frames the centre left’s quest for progressive policies in terms of the current debate about how to build upon a ‘common sense’ in which the British values of equality, solidarity and social justice prevail. In developing the argument for a politics based on shared principles, this essay also raises questions about how we could ‘do politics’ in 21st century Britain.
Affordable Housing Margaret Ford, Peter Bill, Prof. Anne Power, Ed Balls, John Healey MP, Tony Pilch, Rt. Hon. Keith Hill MP, Ken Livingstone, Jon Rouse, John Callcutt. Edited by Peter Bill Price: £9.95 ISBN: 1 902488 86 5 Published: 2005
Although average house prices have risen over the last six years, the numbers of homes being built has not, with official figures showing a shortfall in the number of new homes of 62,000 per year. But as the Barker Review showed, the costs of constraining supply go beyond higher house prices and a lack of market affordability. Inadequate housing means
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that the UK will become an increasingly expensive place to do business, with high housing costs and reduced labour market mobility. In addition, weak responsiveness of housing supply and the volatile behaviour of our housing market pose risks to economic stability and overall economic welfare. As the Chancellor has said, “most stop-go problems that Britain has suffered in the last fifty years have been led or influenced by the housing market”. Affordable Housing brings together essays by key experts in the field of housing and we hope that their contributions will help to develop the debate on promoting affordable housing.
Can social justice ever be delivered in a disordered world? (John Smith Memorial Lecture) Rt. Hon. Lord Robertson of Port Ellen Price: £9.95 ISBN: 1 902488 35 0 Published: 2005
On 31st March 2004 Rt. Hon. Lord Robertson of Port Ellen delivered a John Smith Memorial Lecture at an event held jointly by Zurich Financial Services and the Smith Institute at William Kent House, London. Taking as his starting point John Smith's belief that prosperity and social justice must go hand in hand, Lord Robertson discussed the importance of foreign policy in the pursuit of a fair society. He emphasised the importance of an internationalist perspective, both as a means of providing the security that allows us to pursue social justice at home, and in order to avoid the creation of ‘some cosy oasis of social fairness in a world of injustice’ – a state of affairs that would have been unacceptable to John Smith.
CSR in Action: A review of the Young Offenders Programme led by National Grid Transco. The SMART Company Price: £9.95 ISBN: 1 902488 84 9 Published: 2005
Currently, over 11,000 under 21 year olds are in prison at a cost to the taxpayer of £340 million. Over 70% re-offend within a year of their release. National Grid Transco has developed a unique scheme to train and employ young offenders as gas network
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operatives, and pioneered business involvement in the rehabilitation of offenders which meets both a business and social need. To date, National Grid Transco has trained over 140 offenders. A further 100 will have completed training and be in jobs by the end of 2005. The re-offending rate is currently only 7%. The Smith Institute is pleased to be publishing this review of National Grid Transco’s Young Offenders Programme, which has been prepared by the SMART Company. We hope that this excellent case study will contribute to the ongoing debate about the role that business can play in promoting public interest goals.
Smart Localism Jim Robertson, Phil Swann, Judy Doherty, Peter Smith, John Foster, Jane Roberts, Alex Hopkins and Rachel Thompson. Edited by Jim Robertson Price: £9.95 ISBN: 1 902488 83 0 Published: 2005
Although the concept of localism has risen up the policy agenda, with all political parties arguing the case for greater local involvement in key policy issues such as public service reform, a number of important questions remain about the key elements, processes and potential benefits of localism. What does localism mean in practice? How can greater local involvement help to drive improvements in public services? What is best practice? In trying to meet national and local priorities, what should the role of local authorities be? This collection of essays and case studies seeks to answer some of these questions; to clarify what the different understandings of Localism are; and to suggest practical ways forward that reconcile as many of them as possible.
Perspectives on Migration Tony Pilch, Robert Winder, Christian Dustmann, Francesca Fabbri, Susan Anderson, Gloria Mills, Sukhvinder Stubbs, Barbara Roche MP, Claude Moraes MEP and Dr Irwin Stelzer. Edited by Tony Pilch Price: £9.95 ISBN: 1 902488 82 2 Published: 2005
Throughout its history, Britain’s population has been augmented by successive inflows of migrants. Each inflow has made significant contributions to the UK’s economic, social and
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cultural development. Some ethnic groups have done particularly well in terms of both education and the labour market. But despite this contribution, the debate in recent years has become more negative, and there are now serious difficulties in discussing the differences between immigration, asylum and migration; and in many instances overtones of racism are apparent. In addition the case for economic migration has often been confused, and has focused on the social costs of immigration rather than its potential economic, social and cultural benefits. Perspectives on Migration brings together essays by commentators and key experts in the field of migration. We hope that their contribu- tions will help to develop the debate on ensuring that Britain’s immigrants continue to make a positive contribution to the country’s economic and social development
Achieving Social Inclusion Rt. Hon. Baroness Blackstone, Martin Stephenson, Mary Robson, Mike White, Peter Jenkinson, Rt. Hon. Richard Caborn, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, Sir Stuart Lipton, Andrew Ogg. Edited by Tony Pilch Price: £9.95 ISBN: 1902488 72 5 Published: 2005
This booklet is based on a series of three seminars that took place between May and June 2003. These events were organised to investigate the roles that sport and active recreation; the arts; and architecture and the built environment can play in promoting greater social inclusion. While these areas may have been previously underdeveloped in terms of their policy implications, over the course of this series it became apparent that, if the government is to succeed in its overall strategy to promote social inclusion, these issues will have to play an increasingly important role.
Civilised Capitalism Lord Tugendhat, Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown MP, Shriti Vadera, Sir Ronald Cohen, Sir Christopher Gent, Denise Kingsmill CBE, Michael Clasper, Dr Irwin Stelzer, Sir Howard Davies, Ruth Kelly MP. Edited by Ben Shimshon Price: £9.95 ISBN: 1 902488 77 6 Published: 2004
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The series of seminars which are transcribed in this monograph were held between January and April 2004. The initial idea for the series came from a speech given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the Social Market Foundation in February 2003 entitled A Modern Agenda for Prosperity and Social Reform. In his speech, the Chancellor raised a number of crucial issues and questions about the role and limits of government and markets in pursuing the public interest. In many of the current areas of political controversy – public/private partnerships, the future of healthcare, the funding of univer- sities – a common thread is the relationship between individuals, markets and the state in meeting the interests of the public.
Over the course of the series we tried to discuss the major policy implications that flow from the Chancellor’s speech. What exactly is the ‘public interest’? What are the conditions that are necessary to promote the public interest through the activities of government and the markets? What are the respective roles of markets and government in securing opportunity and security for all? What are the moral limits of markets and where does perceived market failure become a threat to the pursuit of the public interest? Each seminar saw these themes drawn out through presentations by, and discussions between, politicians, business people, commentators, academics and public servants from across the political spectrum.
Building Sustainable Communities: Capturing land development value for the public realm Peter Bill, Wyndham Thomas, Kate Barker, David Camp, Ian Henderson, Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, Phil Butler, Jeremy Edge and John Gummer MP. Edited by Peter Bill Price: £9.95 ISBN: 1 902488 78 4 Published: 2004
This monograph considers the policy proposals that seem best able to meet the recom- mendation made in the Barker Review, that “government should use a tax measure to extract some of the windfall gain that accrues to landowners from the sale of their land for residential development.” As is pointed out in the monograph, there have been three serious attempts since 1948 to impose a super-tax on the jump in the value of land bestowed by the grant of development permission, all of which failed. On the other hand, it is becoming clear that not only is there a need to generate the funding required for the wide range of infrastructure of high quality necessary for sustainable communities, at the
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right time in the development cycle, but there is also a need to reform the complex Section 106 system. And the good news is that there seems (with one exception) to be a consensus amongst the authors of the monograph that some form – or forms – of a new development land tax, along with a simplification of Section 106 agreements, is worth pursuing.
These publications are available to purchase from: Central Books, 99 Wallis Road, London, E9 5LN. Tel: 020 8986 5488
Alternatively they are available to download in pdf format from our website: www.smith-institute.org.uk
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