Nick Dearden in Red Pepper. February 2014.
“Trade and investment agreements currently being negotiated will mean the biggest corporate power grab in a decade. We need a new global movement to confront them, writes Nick Dearden.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) was little known when its 1999 summit brought campaigners from across the world to Seattle to confront the trade liberalisation agenda. A mixture of creative street protests, brutal policing, an atrociously organised conference and a bloc of developing countries prepared to say ‘no’ defeated the WTO’s plans.
From that point forward, so-called ‘trade liberalisation’ joined ‘third world debt’ as an iconic issue that defined the global justice movement. Here were two mechanisms through which corporations had captured political power for their own interests, whatever the cost in terms of poverty, inequality and environmental destruction. At summit after summit the alter-globalisation movement fought international institutions like the WTO to a standstill…”