Just pick up our Guest Speaker!

JDC blog, Friday 22nd Sept

Sounded easy enough when it was suggested I might do a blog over the Labour Party Conference here in Manchester. Not that I had done one before or knew the etiquette, but heck, whatever, if it helps the campaign. Friday would be an easy day before the big march tomorrow; sure I could pick up a JDC speaker from Kenya, no problem (well, other than the flight cancelled and the wrong booking reference at the hotel).

But how on earth do you blog five or six hours of a wide ranging political debate? Easily enough material for half a dozen theses’. A debate that was arguing the semantics of ‘all conflicts are about access to resources’ before we were half way home (that’s a ten minute drive from the airport!). Not any old campaigner either, someone aspiring to run for the Presidency of Kenya.

Wahu Kara is Director of Kenyan Debt Relief and a veteran campaigner on debt, human rights and politics. She is JDC’s guest speaker at the International Development Questiontime on Monday. If she gets a fair hearing she is going to rattle a few cages! Hers is not the complacent, self-congratulatory analysis of the DfID white paper on International Development! Not by a long chalk.

I can’t condense so much food for thought into this short blog, but let me select a few highlights relevant to our campaigning (but recognise that these gloss over so many areas of diversity)

Campaign for ‘Economic Justice’; debt relief is merely one component.

‘Economic Justice’ (Wahu’s term) isn’t just about economics, it’s about the whole breadth of human and social values and governance.

Our campaigning for Economic Justice would help create the space for civil society to seek and seize it for themselves.

If there was one theme on which we were closest it was our role in helping local society stand up and take control of their own destiny and avoid the concept of ‘giving’ so often with implicit/explicit strings. (poorly expressed; but think about it in terms of – we don’t want a Martial Plan to give aid; we want to remove the barriers, create the space for societies to chose their own social model).

We could agree on so much, but there were worrying voids, maybe the semantics of language, maybe the gulf in experience. But at least we were united in our anger at the injustices of today and a determination to campaign for a greater understanding and Economic Justice in the future.

Now lets get on with the march, just 12 hours to go!