I've talked recently about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment
Partnership, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/ttip-gunpowder-plot.html,
and yesterday evening I attended a meeting in Oxford
dedicated to the subject, intended mostly for its opponents. Rather unusually
this was held in a church. I arrived half and hour early because the start time
stated on the church's website was wrong. As I entered the door, a group of
Brownies were rehearsing a dance routine. I stood by the doorway watching the young
girls prancing around in skilful synchronicity and enjoyed the show. I then
experienced an interesting moment of unlearning and then self-discipline. I was
struck by a sudden sense that a man like me shouldn't be watching a group of
eight to ten-year-old girls in brown tights and jerseys dancing. I quickly
identified this as a controlled response, a thoughtcrime caused by Big Brother
nanny state programming; I shouldn't watch young girls dancing because people
might think I was a paedophile. Yes, even though I was watching the girls in
all innocence. I felt guilty for a moment, even dirty, as if I actually were a paedophile just for enjoying a
dance by young girls in a totally non-sexual way. I commanded the thought to
leave my mind and I made a point of carrying on watching till the end of the
show just as a little personal rebellion against both the Big Brother in
society, and the one inside my head. (How ironic that the same Big Brother
state which is so obsessed with "child protection" turns a blind eye
to real child abuse of a horrific severity
and scale, see: http://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/jimmy-saviles-hospital-crimes.html.
I'll have to do a dedicated article about this.) The church was lit by bright
white bulbs and its nave split by a wide aisle with a large chapel on either
side full of piled up hymnbooks, a small electric organ and other
ecclesiastical detritus. On one of the pillars there was a stone relief of
Abraham about to stab his son Isaac to death before God stopped him; I hate
that story! Once the Brownies had left, the TTIP meeting began. Although about
forty people turned up there, none of the big names on the local liberal and
environmental scene were there, like Peter Tatchell and Mark Lynas. Most of the
attendees appeared to be in the Green Party and the leaflets they handed out
were Green publications. Oddly enough there was a policeman standing outside in
the vestibule for the first part of the meeting. He hadd been there when the
Brownies were in the church; was that to keep a watchful eye on them... or us?
The main speaker was a bit late because of the traffic and
the chairman introduced her as Annaliese Dodds, see: http://www.anneliesedoddsmep.uk/. He
stressed that this was a non-partisan all-party meeting, yet Ms Dodds was in
the Labour Party. She had been elected to the European Parliament for the Southeast
England constituency in May 2014 and lives in Rose Hill, Oxford .
Because of an admitted prejudice against Labour politicians, and Ms Dodds'
somewhat austere and academic look, I was surprised when she actually came
across as quite amiable and down-to-Earth. I expected her to have a prim
schoolmarmish accent but she had a musical Scottish twang. All ten of the
constituency's MEP's were invited to this meeting, including Nigel Farage of
UKIP, but only Ms Dodds agreed to speak there. It seems a lot of people are
aware of TTIP, as George Monbiot said in his Guardian column, see background link above; Ms Dodds says that out
of the eight thousand emails she receives every week five thousand one hundred
are about TTIP. She presented the subject in an impartial, professional and
very political way; you can tell she's used to negotiation and diplomacy. The idea
for TTIP came out as an alternative to the ill-fated agreements of the World
Trade Organization in the 1990's. International trade needs regulation and
before the WTO there was nothing but various bilateral agreements between
nations and regions which doesn't work, in Ms Dodds' view. It's too fragmented.
TTIP is the biggest and most ambitious of any international trade agreement so
far; covering the United States of America and the European Union it amounts to
a quarter of all the world's commerce. Ms Dodds is a member of a loose tendency
in the European Parliament known as the "socialists and democrats",
one of the largest. This group is in favour of globalist organization of trade
because of the disorganized nature of it otherwise. The example Ms Dodds gives
is the famous BMW car factory in Oxford .
Because of US customs laws that factory cannot export cars to the USA
unless they're dismantled first; then they have to be put back together at
another plant in the USA .
I agree that's insane, but I don't see TTIP as the solution; not least because
of the dangers of TTIP I explain in the background link above. The EU
Parliament will eventually get to vote on TTIP, but the "Socialists and
Democrats" group would rather shape the deal into a form they can accept,
not just reject it out of hand. Anneliese Dodds described how she was allowed
to view the TTIP proposal papers, but she had to pass through a security door
into a vault; and she was made to sign a non-disclosure agreement first! This
is really scary; why would the basis of an EU Parliamentary bill be kept
confidential? Ms Dodds of course couldn't tell us anything about the actual
contents of the documents but she told us: "Some of my concerns were
allayed, but not all." National governments play an important role too,
she said, because they can exclude certain elements of TTIP; Labour, "my
party" as she called it in this politically-neutral meeting, wants to
protect the NHS from the dangers of runaway corporate privatization... erm...
that horse has already bolted I'm afraid, see: http://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/allyson-pollock-at-tedx.html.
I also question the abilities of national governments as the power of the European
superstate increases year by year. The part of TTIP that worries "Lord
Mon-bee-ott!" as Alex Jones calls him, the most is the ISDS- investor-state
dispute settlements; Ms Dodds has mixed feelings about them. She sees a
separate decision-making structure as something very useful in a non-democratic
country without a stable and effective judiciary. She herself has experience of
working in Montenegro ,
a state that was once a part of Yugoslavia
and after the death of that communist federation it was reestablished. However
its current government is still very rickety, only having become fully independent
from Serbia in
2006. She believes ISDS could do a lot of good in such a fragile nation. However
the EU and its member states all have a perfectly functional judiciary and so
don't need third party interlopers; indeed such processes might do harm. Ms
Dodds minces her words far more than George Monbiot does, and when the Q and A
session began, a lot of the audience brought their fears to the table. The TTIP
and ISDS represents a threat to national sovereignty; I know Ms Dodds won't
agree with me, but I think a Europhile complaining about a loss of national
sovereignty is something of a denialist. However TTIP poses a different and
specific threat in that it replaces national sovereignty with corporate
sovereignty, as Monbiot explains far more bluntly.
I had to leave before the end of the meeting. I waved
goodbye to the church's bubbly female vicar and walked home in the cold. I'm
glad I decided to go along to the meeting. It's very clear that the Labour
Party, or specifically Annaliese Dodds who represents them in Brussels ,
is not completely opposed to TTIP, although the Greens, which accounted for
most of the audience, definitely are. I'm definitely not an advocate of the
Green Party, but I agree with the audience; TTIP sounds like an extremely bad
deal. I'm not an economic socialist; on the contrary I'm something of a right
wing anarcho-capitalist. However I object to TTIP just as strongly as the
liberals, but for different reasons. I don't accept that some kind of
centralized rule book is the only way to resolve trade disputes and incompatibilities
between different nations. Surely BMW can find some way to negotiate sending
the Americans cars in one piece; is it really so complicated that we need
international law to intervene? I did warm to Annaliese Dodds; as I said she
sounded cheery and unassuming. She was presenting her case in a professional
manner, as if she were addressing the EU Parliament itself. It's possible she
is totally opposed to TTIP, but can't say as much right now. Politicians are
always careful to weigh and measure every single word they utter. However a
time will come when Ms Dodds might have to stand up and plant her flag on one
side of the line or the other. If it's the correct side, she'll earn my respect
and support... even if she never gets my vote.
See here for
additional background: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/trans-pacific-partnership.html.
