14 - 20 February 2002
Issue No.573
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 14 - 20 February 2002 Issue No.573 |
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The heart of hollowness
Tony Blair's tour of West Africa crowns Britain's triumphant military intervention in Sierra Leone, but Britain's former African colonies are counting on British largesse, writes Gavin Bowd
With his first visit to the African continent, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has drawn attention to the one area of foreign policy the Labour government can consider an unqualified success. But the United Kingdom's attempts to solve the problems of a part of the world still benighted a century after the publication of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness mask wider failures and a lack of political direction.
When Blair arrived in Sierra Leone this weekend, he found a country where British armed forces are largely credited with providing stability and helping build a functioning state. According to opinion surveys, it is the departure of the UK's several hundred soldiers -- not the 20,000 United Nations peace- keepers -- that will be regretted by the populace.
Tony Blair
(photo: Reuters)
On the question of aid to the developing world, and to Africa in particular, Blair and Development Secretary Clare Short have taken a lead. Since 1997, the UK aid budget has increased considerably, while that of France and Germany has fallen. This weekend, the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, was in Ottowa, Canada, to press the richest nations to dish out $50 billion -- four times the amount that the charity Oxfam has calculated as necessary for educating all of Africa's children.
This mission to help the world's poorest and efface, in Blair's words, the "scar on the conscience of humanity" that is Africa, seems to chime with the gut feelings of Labour Party members. It would prove that a party accused of obsession with spin and being enamoured with big business, still has a heart. The core values of socialism, which Brown, Short and even Blair publicly espoused not long ago, would survive intact in the 21st century.
But it is not difficult to see the limitations of this policy. If we are constantly reminded that the UK is the "fourth largest economy", its aid budget is still only 0.3 per cent of its GDP. Brown's laudable efforts to wring money out of the richest countries come up against many obstacles, in particular an isolationist US. In Ghana, Blair called for the African continent to be given access to Western markets. This collides with France's preferential treatment of its former colonies.
Blair has pursued an African policy with the single- minded zeal worthy of a Christian Socialist. And it contrasts glaringly with his domestic performance. Blair has both praised public sector workers and branded them as "wreckers." There has been constitutional reform, but changing the House of Lords has been an almighty mess. In the wake of 11 September, Blair has called for multicultural harmony, while his Home Secretary, David Blunkett, has made deeply provocative remarks about arranged marriages in the Muslim community.
Clare Short and her boss have spoken of "helping Africa to help herself," of giving a "hand-up, rather than a hand-out." This rhetoric emanates from a government that cannot run a decent railway system, and which is noticeably lacking in ideas on the reform of health and social security. Blair's sincere efforts in Africa's direction demonstrate the hollowness of his own political project. In West Africa, he might have mused on the impressive achievements, both political and intellectual, of late Senegalese leader Leopold Senghor or African nationalist leader Kwame Nkrumah. He could then look with embarrassment at the modesty of his own contribution and that of British prime ministers before him. Instead, he chose to rest on the laurels of Britain's recent success in Sierra Leone.
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