Shut down the G8 in Gleneagles!

//REVOLUTION //International Delegate Conference, Vienna //2005-05-15

From: info@worldrevolution.info
To: leaders@g8.com

Dear G8,

Hello again. We hope you’re looking forward to your visit to Gleneagles in July. It brings back fond memories of the last time you were in Britain in 1998, when a chain of 70,000 protesters surrounded your meeting in Birmingham, doesn’t it? Of course, those protests started a bit of a trend, so this time you’ll be meeting further off the beaten track, in a bunker on a golf course in Gleneagles. But don’t worry! We’re still coming up to give you all a warm welcome.

Just like we did in Genoa in 2001, when your hired guns had to resort to murder to protect you. In response, 300,000 workers came out to march in protest against your meeting and against what you were prepared to do to silence us. On the whole, though, it makes for better public relations if you pretend that you are listening. At that meeting in Birmingham, back in 1998, you agreed to cancel a fraction of the third world debt – $100 billion, less than five percent of the total figure of over $2 trillion. It wasn’t nearly enough, but even this commitment seems to have slipped your mind. As Tony and George have already spent more than three times as much on the Iraq war, maybe that’s not too surprising!

All this is making us think, if thousands of protesters turning up at your meetings, and millions demonstrating against the war, aren’t enough to get the message across to you all, maybe we need to be a bit more assertive...

The summit protests of the anti-capitalist movement helped to radicalise a new generation. They brought to public attention the fact that your secretive G8 meetings were being used to plan future imperialist incursions into the third world, to consolidate the power of the most powerful nations and keep the rest of the world on its knees.

But just as your G8 meetings helped you, the eight most powerful countries in the world, to get together to plan the future of the planet, they also got us thinking about doing the same. Suddenly whole new layers of activists and young people were meeting each other on the streets and at the counter-summits. We could see the possibilities of working together internationally, and of using militant action to make our voices heard.

We know that we are a strong movement – tens of thousands of protesters from across Europe and the world have spent months planning their visits to Scotland. REVOLUTION calls upon the movement to take this opportunity to flex its muscles again… The anti-war movement showed us that even demonstrations of millions of people are not enough in themselves. If the protests in Scotland are to make an impact, they need to be militant and impossible to ignore.

On 2nd July, a coalition of development NGOs, churches and charities called Make Poverty History have called a demonstration to ask the G8 leaders to cancel unpayable debt, deliver more aid, and fight for trade justice. We will be there too, but with a different message – we’ll be calling for a complete cancellation of all the debt, the overthrow of the G8 governments, an end to the occupation of Iraq and Palestine, victory to the resistance and revolution against global capitalism. It’s good to see that so many people are planning to go up to Edinburgh for this demonstration. However, not only is it taking place five days before you all meet, but it is 100 miles away, with transport being organised to take protesters home again immediately afterwards. We’re not too sure that these Make Poverty History people can know you as well as we do if they think that this will be enough…

You see, we don’t think you can make poverty history without making capitalism history too. The capitalist system depends on billions being held in poverty to produce wealth for the few. From our experience and from the lessons of history, we anti-capitalists know that if you ask your world leaders nicely to stop being so unreasonable and to hand down some more crumbs from the table, it is true that you might get some acknowledgement in the short term. But until the power of the eight of you is replaced with the power of the six billions of us, then as soon as you feel the need to forget your promises, ignore us, shoot at us… you will. And that means that you, the G8, have to go.

We don’t want people to go home after the Make Poverty History demonstration, we want them to stay in Scotland with us and try to shut down your summit. We don’t want the G8 Alternatives counter-summit to be a talking shop, we want to plan a permanent co-ordination of action against the G8 - we know that we need to work together consistently if we are to be as prepared as you are.

We are not asking you to cancel the “unpayable” debt: we want all the debt cancelled. We don’t want your Africa Commission – you’ve already “helped” Africa so much that you should be paying reparations, not granting pathetic amounts of misdirected aid. We don’t want any more of your phoney debt relief, like the temporary suspension of Indonesia’s debt burden while the tsunami disaster had brought it to public attention. We don't want “peace” under your forces of occupation, or your “democracy” imposed at gun point, we want to see your armies driven out of the Middle East.

We are not asking you nicely for reforms, for crumbs from your table, for concessions that can be withdrawn or forgotten as soon as they are made: we are fighting for revolution.

We call upon all young people and youth organisations, on the Trade Unions, and on all other groups and individuals not only to come to Edinburgh to call for an end to international poverty, but to take the next step too – to stay in Scotland for your visit and to work alongside us to show you that we all have plans for the world, too – and we are just as dedicated as you are to making sure we can carry them out.

See you in July!

REVOLUTION

CC to young people around the world: come and join REVOLUTION at the protests from July 2nd – 6th. See our website for more details of how to get there and of where and when we are having planning meetings before we go…