Hard-Left puts Make Poverty History agenda at risk

By Alex Singleton | 24 June 2005

Britain's Make Poverty History campaign has been very successful over the past year building a consensus about what July's G8 Summit should be about. The tragedy of African poverty has been made the central focus, and Make Poverty History has put forward ideas for relieving that. There has always been debate as to what are the most effective ways of making poverty history, and it's important we debate the specifics. But the issue of African poverty has so far remained at the centre, specifically the merits or otherwise of trade justice, aid, and debt relief.

By being a broad church, MPH has been able to achieve wide support, for example mobilizing middle-class churchgoers to ensure the issue of African poverty is mentioned every Sundays by their vicars.

Now hard-Left campaigners seem to be setting to out to smash what Make Poverty History has achieved. They don't like the fact that Make Poverty History has been interacting with the British government which they regard as a human rights violator. They think the Iraq war should be a central issue, even though Iraq isn't in Africa. They want to "Make Capitalism History", forgetting that one-party socialism has been a principal cause of poverty in Africa. They don't want to influence the G8 leaders - they want to stop them meeting.

I'm skeptical of the Make Poverty History agenda. But at least the MPH campaign involves serious people discussing serious issues. It has achieved a great deal - like putting EU subsidies on the agenda and successfully pushing for increased debt cancellation. The hard-Left's agenda offers nothing constructive. Seeing hard-Left protesters on the TV, rather than the middle-class Christians, will only turn people off the issue of African poverty.

This is why Bob Geldof is quite right to tell artists at Live8 not to attack President Bush who he points out has done more for Africa than any other American leader. Geldof is determined not to lose control of the central message of the Make Poverty History campaign. He's right.