October 17 is the UN international day against poverty. This year the theme was “From Poverty to decent work: bridging the gap”. 2010 is also the EU year against poverty. We need to remember that this comes after events like Live 8 and the UN Millennium commitments. On one level its strange to have such events because let face it who is it who actually wants poverty? The underlying message from such events has been and remains that “caring individuals” could end poverty directly without any need for political or economic reform. However, the reality is far more different.
The recent mid term review of the UN Millennium goals this year have highlighted the vast gap between the rhetoric and the reality of reducing poverty at global level. Just one statistic highlights the gap: still in 2010 there are 360,000 per year women dying in childbirth. This is an issue that is not difficult to resolve. It’s not about creating new jobs; it’s simply about targeting aid effectively and appropriately.
The same gap between rhetoric and reality is evident at the EU level. This year is in fact the EU year against poverty. The EU held its annual round table on poverty and this highlighted why its mission impossible. The EU round table is billed as kind of “mobilisation of stakeholders”. This year this mobilisation of actors was in two “acts”.
Act One took place as part of what is called the “Round table against Poverty”. I don’t know why its called a “round table” as there is not a round table in sight. This act is infact a traditional stage setting of a succession of people sounding off to an audience that has heard it all before but reacts as if its all new, and greets tired platitudes as if they were new insights that opened up a new world. So we were treated to an MEP calling for people in poverty to have the right to live in “dignity”.Infact she used the word no less than 15 times as if the more she said it the more depth it would carry. Given the fact that this her third mandate in the European Parliament I wondered what she had actually done about addressing this issue in the past 15 years.
”Dignity” infact became the leitmotif as other speakers followed her urging the need for poor people to have the right to “dignity” .Given that this first act was graced by the king and queen of Belgium , who clearly have a surfeit of dignity, I found myself wondering why they could not respond and offer some of their surplus dignity for the benefit of the poor.
Act One , also has the traditional address from someone who is billed as “someone who has experience of poverty”. The person is given a kind of “cult or star” status as they have something that the others can only talk about in second hand way. They have lived in “poverty” and have come to tell the tale. The institutional actors who form the audience for this “confessional” take on the form of anthropologists who politely listen to the word from the “street”. Yes they know the factors that account for poverty in our affluent society but their knowledge is “second hand”.
The irony is that they know the causes of poverty better than the “spokesperson for the poor”, but, in this case, his words are a sort of balm that allows for the shadow of poverty to enter the room and create a collective mediation that reaffirms that their view of reality is in fact grounded in the reality of experience.
The voice of the poor this year was a guy whose story is familiar. Years of back breaking work in an industrial sector that no longer exists, followed by long term unemployment and the corrosive effect of loss of meaning which in his case meant marital breakdown, alcohol problems, short term homelessness etc. This experience has in his case opened up a new possibility and that is to be an “ambassador “for people experiencing poverty. He now attends meetings like the round table, in order to “tell it like it is”.
The sad fact is that, whilst he gets star billing in this act, his words are soon lost in the plethory of Eurospeak that follows him. His problem is lack of meaningful work, but the other actors shift the focus to discussing how to establish a “Platform against poverty”. This platform is one of the so-called flagship initiatives that the EU2020 strategy has come up with.No one knows what this means and it soon becomes clear that the Head of Unit upon whose shoulders this flagship hangs also has no clue what it means. “I prefer to not speak about a platform” she says. “I think its better to think of this as a kind of framework”.
She is followed by other stakeholders representing “civil society”. This constitutes the quango style NGO’s , who masquerade in the Brussels ether as constituting a “ connection” with the field. Infact they are EC funded and EC dependent organisations whose role is to dance a highly choreographed tango with the EC which consists of saying “thank you” and “ can we have more” or “could you please pay more attention to this factor”. This is an institutional charade masquerading as open debate. Criticism when it is voiced is cast in such a vacuous way that no-one can take offence. It’s a kind of Alice in Wonderland moment when no-one really knows the meaning of anything and everyone agrees with the meaning of everything.
Meaningless concepts like the platform against poverty somehow are elevated into new tools that will solve or reduce the problem of poverty. No one voices the reality, that we are creating poverty by supporting a strategy for growth that is based on boosting consumption. No one dares point out that in the European Year against poverty we are breaking all post second world war records of creating poverty. No one questions if the model of growth is fundamentally flawed.
The script for Act One does not permit this discourse. This is long running event, now in its 9th year and still filling theatres of make believe every year so why change the plot or the actors for that matter.
This year, however, to celebrate that it’s the European Year against poverty, the organisers created an Act Two. I don’t know who is responsible for vetting the PR but act two was billed as the “circus against poverty”. A fitting title in my view for Act One.
The circus against poverty took place in a real theatre setting and the first part consisted of a “celebration of the year”. The participants in act two were slightly different than act one. Sure there were the “continuity actors” from act one, that is the EC official and the representatives from the Quango NGO’s, but they were added to by actors from the field. In this case these were people who were not based in Brussels . However, as became clear, these were people whose travel and accommodation were being paid by the EC, they were in fact a “rent a crowd” selected from organisations that had received some kind of funding for organising an event in their localities as part of the European year.
Nevertheless, they brought a freshness into act two that was missing in act one. However, their freshness was fast dissipated as they ran into the reality of the EU dialogue. One young participant from Newcastle asked the panel how they could support the participation of more young people in the fight against poverty. The response was as follows:”Its great to see young people here today..the National Action Plans for Social Inclusion and Protection are envisaged to link into regional and local Action plans and that is how more young people can get involved”.
I asked the young person who asked the question whether she was satisfied with the answer, and before she even spoke her young colleague from Newcastle said “it was a load of bollocks”.
This sentiment must have been pretty widespread because at the start of the first part of Act Two there must have been about 250 people present. After the initial plenary session, the organisers had set up a series of “forums on poverty” but the participants deserted the event and I counted less than 30 actual participants remaining. Clearly, the energy had dissipated, the circus had left town so to speak.
Sure we need to highlight the problems of poverty in our society, sure we need more discourse about possible solutions, but the EU discourse is a redundant one. It is one that is based on simply assuming that growth will “lift all boats”. The underlying fantasy being that western consumerism, far from being intrinsically implcated in systemic global inequalities , could itself solve them. All we have to do is buy the right product. That is the message that we have been hearing for over 30 years and it has simply failed.
There was no discussion about the social damage that this is imposed by our governments led by the EU fixation on the Growth and Stability pact.Spain, Greece, Ireland, UK, Germany, Italy, Austria, Holland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, France, Portugal,Romania, Bulgaria are all member states where unemployment is at record levels, where inequalities have increased, where governments are reducing social transfer payments. For example , the Spanish government has reduced the subsidies for older people by 5.2% and within this has cut housing subsidies by nearly 20%. The German government (where supposedly the economy is now once again strong), subsidies to people with disabilities are being cut. “Austerity” is in fact a cloak for creating greater inequalities. On these realities there was no mention, indeed the EU strategy is based on the belief that the medicine will be good for reducing poverty.
The discourse is also redundant in that it is rooted in a concept of poverty that is limited. Its rooted in material poverty which is not the only issue. It’s the deeper poverty facing our society that is simply airbrushed out of the debate. That is the poverty of ill health(physical and mental), the poverty of failing educational attainment levels, the poverty accompanying the decline of trust and social capital, the alienation from our political structures .
An EU approach that is simply focussed on “a decent wage” plus active inclusion and measures targeted at specific groups is simply too limited and also divisive socially and politically. The roots of poverty in the wider sense are about growing inequalities and that is what we have to focus on, not just material deprivation. That is what makes the EU strategy Mission Impossible, but then its allows for an ongoing play every year which seems to keep everyone happy.
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