Economic justice

							             What’s wrong?
• A billion people go to bed hungry
• Richest 1% have 40% of wealth; poorest 50%
  have 1% of wealth
• Most of the world’s farmers are women, yet
  just 1% of them own land
• Poor people will be hit first and worst by
  climate change
• The rich lead crazy lifestyles
         Are things getting better?


•   10,000 fewer children die daily than 20 years ago...
•   ...but most poverty reduction is in a single country
•   ...the top 1% got wealthier between 2007 and 2009
•   ...climate change is at an impasse
•   ... and change is SLOW
What then can we do?
•Consciousness
•Co-ordination
•Confrontation
•Consolidation
        Three campaigns


• Tax justice
• Jubilee 2000
• Climate Change Act
Why tax justice?


International aid =
$120 billion




                      Developing countries lose
                      3x more to tax havens
  98 of the FTSE 100 use tax havens

         82 also work in developing countries.
Almost 40% of all overseas subsidiaries are located there.
 Banks & extractive companies use tax havens the most.
What we found…


SABMiller uses tax loopholes to
shift over £100 million
into tax havens each year.




Developing countries lose £20 million
in tax revenues




That’s enough to put an extra 250,000 children
in school.
“Wow. I don’t believe it.”
“Multinational brewer SABMiller will
come under the close scrutiny of
tax authorities in five African countries.”
“I worked in corporate Britain and I know how
                                                             I will "target tax evasion and off-shore tax havens.
companies use the complexity of the tax system
                                                                      Everyone must pay their fair share."
to endlessly reduce their tax payments.”




"I very much hope, and I'm not going to write [Chancellor]
George Osborne's budget, we can make progress on that in              “Ed Miliband declares war on the
   the budget because we have got to make sure the tax               UK's secretive offshore tax havens”
           system is fair and is seen to be fair,"
         What’s interesting?

•   Consciousness, confrontation or both?
•   Original research to create a demon
•   Work with partners in developing countries
•   Broad set of actors, but not (yet) a mass
    campaign
             What happened?


$90 billion of the world’s poorest countries’
  unpayable debt was cancelled by 2000

... And more later....
     What was interesting?

• Conviction that it wasn’t too difficult
• Mass coalition and movement, on justice issue
• The concept of Jubilee and the time limited
  campaign
The Climate Change Act
            What happened?
• Legally binding CO2 reduction targets to 2050
  for the UK
• All political parties signed up to it
• Independent Committee for Climate Change
  produces rolling 5 year targets
• Now on the 4th. Big fight, in the end accepted
  by Cameron
       What’s interesting?

• All party consensus
• Got through by sheer weight of numbers of
  back benchers
• Methods often thought to be pointless
  achieved something radical
“We find ourselves in one of those
 historical moments in which time
 seems to accelerate, things fall
 apart and everything is up for
 grabs.”
                 Paul Kingsnorth