LETTERS

Readers’ letters should be short, sharp and sent to "Letters Page", NEW INTERNATIONALIST, 74A HIGH STREET, WALLINGFORD, BERKS., U.K. Contributions will normally be shortened unless it is stated that a letter must be used in its entirety or not at all.

 

from: Kurt Waldheim, The Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Dear Sir,
One of the most urgent tasks faced by the United Nations and those who support the ideas it stands for, is to alert the public of member countries, particularly in the industrialised nations, of the dangers inherent in the growing gap between rich and poor countries. I am delighted to hear that the New Internationalist can be counted among those ready to march in this excellent cause.

The New Internationalist arrives on the scene at an important moment in the short history of the world-wide development effort. Important negotiations on the future of the monetary system are under way; trade talks are likely to start soon. Both will have an important bearing on the future of the economic world order. Within the United Nations, the International Development Strategy, a remarkably statesmanlike initiative supported by all the member countries of the U.N., is scheduled for the first periodic Review and Appraisal, a kind of co-operative stock-taking of global development. The existence of publications such as yours can be enormously helpful in assuring that these important developments are followed closely by an informed and concerned public.

It is therefore with pleasure that I wish you and your publication, as xvell as its sponsors, Oxfam and Christian Aid, which have already done so much to relieve hunger and suffering, every success in this new and valuable venture.
Kurt Waldheim.

 

from: M.P. Naicker, Director of Publicity and Information, tile African iVationa I congress.

Dear Sir,
We are very pleased indeed to hear that The Internationalist is now a monthly magazine and that one ot’ its aims will be, as before, to increase people’s knowledge and understanding of developinents in the Third World.

Representing, as we do, one of the most racially oppressed peoples in the world, we are particularly keen that the New Internationalist should continue to expose racism and racial discrimination wherever these abhorrent practices rear their u~Iv heads.
We wish you every success in your new venture.
M.P. Naicker.

 

from: Peter Hyde. Trade .4 crion Pty.. Australia.

Dear Sir,
We are pleased to be associated with the launching of the New Internationalist. Hopefully the advent of a monthly magazine will encourage people of the affluent countries to question our own aid, trade and investment relationships with the Third World.
Good Luck!
Peter Hyde.

 

from: Frank Judd. M.P.

Dear Sir,
All success to The Internationalist in its new monthly role. At a time when internationalism could be debased by an almost total preoccupation with what is in effect a relatively homogeneous Western European elitist Club there is a desperate need to keep a real perspective of human society as a whole. The fight for worldwide international justice as distinct from charity is more relevant than ever. I am certain the New Internationalist will make a distinguished contribution..

Frank Judd.

 

from: The Rt. Hon. Judith Hart, MP.

Dear Sir,
I hear that The Internationalist is now going to be a monthly magazine. I am so pleased. It will certainly fill a gap and I wish it every success. I hope in particular that the magazine will write about the fundamental economic, social and political problems of development.
With best wishes,
Judith Hart.

 

from: Reg Prentice, M.P.

Dear Sir,
I was verx glad to learn that The Intern~ionalist is now a monthly magazine. It has already established a lively tradition by its radical and forthright approach to development issues. It packs a real punch. I hope this will continue.

There is a danger of the discussion of these problems becoming too prosaic and too technical. I am sure that the New Internationalist will continue to stress the real urgency of the situation. I wish it every success.
Reg Prentice.

 

from: C’olin Winter, Bishop of Darnaraland-in-Exile

Dear Sir,
I quote from a recent Internationalist: "Please help snap the world out of apathy . Your magazine is dedicated to do just that. My hope is that Christians, young and old, xviii read your magazine, that consciences will be seared, and that an informed public opinion in Britain will respond with generous hearts to what you are showing us about the Third World.

I’m glad you’re around. All bles~in~s on your Work.
Cohn Winter.

 

from: Robert K.A. Gardiner, Executive Secretary, United Nations Economic commission br Airica.

Dear Sir,
I write to Congratulate you on the entry of The Internationalist into the field of monthly pub lications. We, at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, are indeed pleased to know of this new step in your efforts to create greater awareness of the problems of the developing nations, among the peoples of the rich world.

In your earlier issues, we have read with interest your great concern about international trade and the need to resolve, in realistic fashion, some of the limitations imposed upon economic and social progress by such external factors as foreign trade and external tinancing. The structural bias of the world economy towards the interests of the industrialised nations, and the uncertainties of export incomes, are among the obstacles which constantly beset the efforts of developing Africa. Their solutions are of crucial importance to the member States which we serve.

It is my hope, however, that the New Internationalist will also increasingly draw attention to the need for partnership in development. As you well know, publicity about the Third World very often tends to stress the poverty of these countries. Our lands are at present poor in production; that is true. But, potentially, our resources — both human and natural — are not so poor; and their effective development depends upon partnership with the industrialised world. That is why I should like to encourage your new magazine to endeavour to feature some of the great efforts being made by the people in the developing countries to help themselves, sometimes in co-operation with bilateral and international agencies — in particular the international voluntary agencies.

We at the Economic Commission for Africa have come to develop enormous respect for the valuable contribution which the international voluntary agencies have been making to African development. We know that their support is mainly derived from the small donations of working people in the Western World. Such personalised forms of co-operation do cut across international boundaries and they seem to us to demonstrate the basic ingredient from which international understanding is structured, or can be strengthened.

With these suggestions and examples, I wish you every success with the launching of the monthly publication of the New Internationalist.

Robert KA. Gardiner.

Photo credits:
Jssue 1. p.12—13,John Hillelson Agency.

This issue:
p.6— 7 Farmers Weekly
p.18—19 John Hillelson Agency.
Bruce Davidson fbr Magnum.

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NEW INTERNATIONALIST

The New Internationalist is published monthly by P.A.C. from 74A High Street, Wallingford, Berkshire, England. It has the joint backing of Oxfam, Christian Aid, and Third World First and its aim is to inform and involve as many people as possible in the campaign for world development. The magazine is distributed by R.P.S. Ltd., Victoria Hall, Fingal Street, London, SElO ORF. A year’s subscription costs £3.00 post-paid fiom R.P.S. Ltd. at the above address.

International Distributors:

Australia: Trade Action Party Ltd., 1100 High Street, Armadale, Melbourne, Victoria 3143.

New Zealand: Education Office, CORSO, 303 Willis Street, P.O. Box 2500, Wellington.

Canada: Oxfam Trading Ltd., 183 Avenue Road, Toronto 5, Ontario. United States: New World Coalition, Room 209, 419 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass. 02116.

The annual subscription for the United States and Canada is $9 including air mail postage.

Europe: R.P.S. Ltd., Victoria Hall, Fingal Street, London SElO ORF. Annual subscription rate £4.00 or equivalent.

All other countries: Annual subscription rate £4.00 (sea mail) £7.50 (air mail) from R.P.S. Ltd. at the above address.

The New Internationalist is produced and sold by Peter Adamson

(editor), Lesley Adamson, Alex

Brodie, Ken Carroll (art director),

Anne Carr, Alex Duncan, Patrick

Goymour, Lindsay Knight, Alice

Lindsay, Mary Jo Putney, Dexter

Tiranti (sales), Troth Wells-Cole.

 

CONTENTS

Third World News

The End of Cheap Food: Elizabeth Stamp looks at the flow of food and protein from the poor to the rich

Peron Rides Again: Richard Gott analyses the extraordinary influence of Peronism in the presentArgentinian elections

The Peace Heroes

The World Health Scandal: Alex Brodie describes how modern medical practices are failing the majority of the world’s people

Martin Luther King: A Re-assessment by Jonathan Power

New Internationalist Essay: "Socialism and Communism in India" by Sankar Ghose, Minister of FinanceDevelopment and Planning in West Bengal

Articles and opinions expressed in the pages of the New Internationalist do not necessarily represent the views of any of the sponsoring organisations.

Printed by the European Printing Company, London and Bletchley.

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On June 16th the governments of Britain and Portugal celebrate the 600th anniversary of their alliance. Portuguese Prime Minister Marcello Caetano will pay a state visit to Britain and Prince Philip will return the compliment with an official trip to Portugal.

But not even 600 years of tradition should be allowed to mask the real nature of Britain’s ally or the present day implications of her alliance.

Portugal’s domestic policies do not exactly stand as a beacon to light our civilisation on its way. Caetano rules, like Salazar before him, as a dictator. There is only one political party in Portugal and only one Portuguese in nine is allowed to vote for it. Infant mortality in the poorer areas is higher than 100 deaths per thousand babies born. Illiteracy is over 40%. Only 1.44% of public expenditure is used for education. 43% is spent on the military.

Small wonder that one-eighth of Portugal’s entire population has emigrated in the last ten years.

But it is Portugal’s African policies which turn the stomachs of humane men and women everywhere.

In Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau, twelve million Africans live and die under a system of Portuguese colonial rule which defies every declaration of human rights that has ever been issued. African workers in their thousands are split from their wives and children and forced to work in fields and factories under Portugal’s Labour Laws which were described by a United Nations Special Commission as "little short of slavery".

On the coffee plantations of Angola, Africans are forced to work for next to nothing, and to live in compounds surrounded by barbed wire, guard dogs and machine gun turrets — conditions which would have done justice to a Nazi concentration camp.

For the African, there is no right of political or trade union organisation and no protection from arbitrary arrest, imprisonment without trial, and the unsympathetic attentions of the secret police.

Peaceful protests by the African population have been answered with bullets. On August 3rd 1959, the dock-workers at Pidgiguiti in Guinea-Bissau went on strike for more pay. The Portuguese authorities shot fifty of the strikers dead and forced the rest back to work at gun-point.

On June 16th 1960, the Portuguese Governor of Delgado Province in Mozambique attended a meeting in Muerda to discuss African claims for better wages and living conditions. He asked those who wanted to speak to him to stand to one side. Many did so. They were then tied up and beaten by the police. The resulting uproar was the signal for concealed troops to open up with machine guns. The Muerda Massacre.

On February 5th and 6th 1961 Portuguese troops machine-gunned a crowd of 3000 Africans at Luanda, and a few days later opened fire again on 5000 people gathered at Baixa de Cassange.

Having had more than they can take of Portuguese cruelty, and having seen their peaceful protests silenced by gun-fire, thousands of men and women in the three colonies have formed underground movements dedicated to the freeing of their country by the only means left open to them — armed struggle. In the last ten years, the M.P.L.A. in Angola, FRELIMO in Mozambique, and the late Amilcar Cabral’s P.A.I.G.C. in Guinea-Bissau, have grown in strength from a few desperate resistance fighters to a national independence army of over 20,000 men and women under arms. Portugal now has over 200,000 troops deployed against these movements. And the poorest nation in Europe is now spending almost half its annual budget in fighting ‘forgotten wars’ to keep hold of colonies twenty times the size of Portugal itself.

In the course of this struggle, atrocities have been committed on both sides and a constant flow of hot-air and rhetoric has been directed to the outside world. The Portuguese have tried and are still trying to dismiss and discredit their opponents as a handful of terrorists. But the fundamental justice of the freedom movements’ cause has now been accepted, after independent inquiries, by both the World Council of Churches and the United Nations.

The role of Britain and Europe in all this is far from negligible. Through N.A.T.O. European nations supply arms for Portugal to wage its unjust wars in Africa. Through trade agreements and investment deals European companies provide Portugal with large amounts of revenue, much of which goes straight into Lisbon’s war coffers.

This then is the ally who will be banqueted in London, and this is the ally with whom Prince Philip will sip wine in Lisbon. And this is the present day nature of the alliance which Britain now prepares to celebrate.

The man at the summit of this mountain of injustice and oppression, Marcello Caetano, pays his state visit to London in three months time. If those who know the facts remain silent during the celebration of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance, if they remain silent when Caetano waves from his car as he drives through the streets of London, if they remain silent whilst Portuguese wine-tasting events take place all over Britain, if they remain silent at the polite cultural exchanges between Britain and Portugal, then they will be tacitly acquiescing in the celebration of an alliance of shame.

Several British organisations are helping to organise peaceful protests and letter-writing campaigns to the press, politicians, and embassies in protest at the celebration of the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance. Details of these campaigns are available from the New Internationalist.

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Amilcar Cabral

AFRICA GRIEVES FOR AMILCAR CABRAL

Independent Africa is grieving for the loss of Amilcar Cabral, the man who formed and led the P.A.I.G.C. liberation movement to the point where it now controls two-thirds of the territory and three-quarters of the population in the Portuguese colony of GuineaBissau.

But in the aftermath of Cabral’s assassination it is becoming clear that the mourning is mingled with euphoria at the nearness of victory for the P.A.I.G.C. In their statements on Cabral’s death, the main liberation movements and the independent black African nations have all tinged their condolences with congratulations.

The optimism is justified. For despite the loss of so great a leader, the P.A.I.G.C. shows no signs of faltering in its stride towards final victory — with or without the promised help of Sekou Toure and Colonel Gaddafi — and preparadons are going ahead for a draft constitution and elections in the liberated areas of the Portuguese Colony.

But Cabral himself knew that the fight of the people of GuineaBissau "to freely control their own destiny" was only "the first obstacle". For Guinea-Bissau is a desperately poor country. It has little known mineral or oil wealth.

The population, according to Cabral’s own figure, is 99.9% illiterate. And although Cabral was one of Africa’s greatest intellectuals, he knew that "the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head. They are fighting for material benefit, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children." When the P.A.I.G.C. win their victory over the Portuguese, they will then be faced with Cabral’s "greater fight" against poverty.

The wider struggle
The independent African nations and the liberation movements throughout southern Africa are claiming rightly that the success of Cabral’s P.A.1.G.C. is a significant victory over colonialism and white supremacist rule in Africa. But again, Cabral himself knew that, in this wider context also, the liberation of Guinea-Bissau was only the first small step.

One indication of this is the remarkably calm attitude of the South African government. A Johannesburg radio report, commenting on Cabral’s assassination, described it as "surely a set-back for the terrorists and also a set-back for peace in this tiny West African territory", a statement virtually acknowledging that peace in Guinea-Bissau is synonymous with victory for the P.A.I.G.C.

The reasoning behind South Africa’s unperturbed attitude is obvious. It is not merely that the victory of the P.A.I.G.C. now seems inevitable; it is the fact that

Guinea-Bissau is a small, poor colony, thousands of miles away from the main battle lines in the struggle between white supremacist rule and the freedom movements in Angola, Mozambique, Rhodesia, South West Africa, and South Africa itself. Furthermore, victory for the P.A.I.G.C. will enable Portugal to concentrate her forces in defence of her two main colonies, Angola and Mozambique, which unlike Guinea-Bissau possess considerable mineral and oil wealth and which are virtually on South Africa’s front doorstep. The South African government is far more perturbed about these two colonies and has sent troops into Mozambique to help the Portuguese fight against FRELIMO.

Cabral himself always insisted that the liberation of Guinea-Bissau was only the first small step both for the people of Guinea-Bissau itself and for the struggle for self-determination in Africa. And in the present situation his own motto is more relevant than ever: "Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. . . claim no easy victories."

 

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SOUTH AFRICAN STRIKERS REMAIN BELOW POVERTY LINE

The strike of 50,000 African workers in Natal, South Africa, has left 80% of black workers still below the accepted poverty line.

The strikers were demanding a minimum wage of 20 Rand a week (about £11.00) which is the figure given by Natal University sociologists as the minimum needed to support an average African family without any comforts or luxuries. Even though reliable figures are not available it now seems that the strike action has forced an average pay increase of about £1.00 a week instead of the £5.00 demanded. This would mean that the average weekly wage for an African worker is now £7.50 — still far short of the wage-packet a man needs to provide necessities for himself and his family.

Thousands of workers are still paid less than £3.00 for a week’s work, and the hardship this causes is immeasurable.

The fact that the strikers had to go back to work with their demands unmet is a clear reflection of the present balance of power in South Africa. The employers, both government and private, gave the strikers an ultimatum — go back to work or lose your jobs. With no trade unions, no strike pay, no welfare system, and African unemployment already running at one and a half million (15% of the entire population), the strikers had no choice.

Merely by striking at all, the African workers were breaking the law. The Cape’s Masters and Servants Lawpf 1856 makes it illegal for any non-white worker to break a contract with an employer. This law still sends 30,000 Africans to jail every year and is part of what Cohn Bundy described in the New Statesman as "a system of laws and devices designed not only to compet and to control a flow of cheap black labour, but also to render it permanently rightiess, unorganised, demoralised."

Many companies have claimed that they cannot afford to pay their African workers the £11.00 a week minimum wage which is the accepted Poverty Datum Line. Yet companies in South Africa boast high profits in the different context of investment inducement and annual financial statements. The London-based Counter Information Services group pointed out last year, for example, that the British Rio Tinto Zinc company made £138 million in pre-tax profits from its Palabora mine in the period 1966—71 and paid a total of only £4.6 million in wages over the same period to its African workers — most of them below the poverty line.

In the longer term, the Durban strikers may have had some small effect on the South African situation. The government appointed Wages Board has changed its attitude drastically. Instead of accepting the growing wage gap between black and white workers, the Board is now calling for the gap to be narrowed. And for the first time, the Board is basing its figures on the Poverty Datum Line.

Possibly of more importance is the experience gained by the strikers and their organisers over the last few weeks. In last year’s strikes the workers nominated their leaders to negotiate with the employers only to have them arrested and imprisoned for inciting a strike. This time the strikers refused to nominate, and so expose, their leaders, and relatively few arrests were made.

 

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CAMPAIGN ON INDOCHINA

The London-based Indo-China Solidarity Conference is starting a campaign to press for the release of political prisoners held in South Vietnam. Plans are being made for a series of demonstrations outside the Saigon Embassy in London and for a write-in campaign to deluge the Embassy staff with letters demanding that the South Vietnamese regime implement the provisions of the Pans cease-fire agreement with regard to political prisoners.

To broaden the base of the campaign, regional conferences are being established in Sheffield, Norwich, Brighton, Leeds and Nottingham.

Alex Brodie reports on the background to the campaign:

As American prisoners of war return to a hero’s welcome, and North Vietnamese troops stream back across the 17th parallel, unbowed, chanting revolutionary songs, tens of thousands of South Vietnamese civilians rot in South Vietnamese jails.

It is impossible to find out exactly how many there are. They are Buddhists, students, politicians, and other non-communist opponents of the Saigon Government. Or they are just the pathetic anonymous flotsam of war, scooped up, dumped behind bars and forgotten.

Amnesty International estimates that there are probably 100,000 civilian prisoners in South Vietnamese jails, for whom the peace settlement affords no safeguard. It is urging the International Conference on Vietnam to act with the utmost urgency in putting these people under United Nations protection. "The agreement has done little to allay our fears for the safety of the tens of thousands of political prisoners and other non-criminal civilians held in Vietnam. The danger of them being massacred or forgotten remains as strong as ever."

Amnesty reports a growing fear in Saigon that President Thieu is indulging in a last desperate purge to strengthen his political position by eliminating actual or potential non-communist opposition to his regime.

Benjamin Cherry was Saigon correspondent of the Far East Economic Review until October 1972, when he was expelled from the country for criticising the government. However he was able to discover something of the conditions inside President Thieu’s jails, from ex-prisoners who, despite the dangers of being re-arrested, were prepared to talk of their experiences.

Ba Nam is 70. 5 years ago she was arrested and imprisoned without trial for three years. Her crime? She was accused of having let out a room in her house to a member of the National Liberation Front. Her interr3gation consisted of being tied down and jumped upon, and having lime thrown over her head. As a result she now walks with a stoop and sufferk continual wracking pains in her back. The lime blinded her in both eyes.

Le van Phuoc spent three years in the medieval inhumanity of Con Son Island’s ‘Tiger Cages’, unable to stand straight or stretch out his legs. Several people in his cage had been there for ten years. Many, Phuoc says, were completely insane, and could no longer speak coherently. Phuoc is lucky. He is out. It is the uncounted, unknown thousands living a degraded subhuman existence who are the forgotten victims of this war, and of this peace.

The existence of these cages only recently came to light. Universal horror was expressed, but little seems to have changed. The tiger cages were destroyed, and replaced a few months later by bigger and ‘better’ ‘Buffalo’ cages, into which more people can be crammed.

Exactly what is happening in Thieu’s prisons and on what scale we cannot know, and will not until they are opened to the world. Sadly the peace settlement offers little hope of this.

 

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EARTHWATCH IN NAIROBI

The first members of the new United Nations Environment Programme (U.N.E.P.) have arrived in Nairobi, Kenya, to begin setting up the headquarters of the latest U.N. Agency. With a budget of $100 million for the first five years’ operations, U.N.E.P. will spearhead the world-wide fight against pollution.

The new agency was set up by the United Nations General Assembly after the much-publicised Environment Conference in Stockholm last year. Its Director is to be the Canadian industrialist Maurice Strong.

U.N.E.P. is charged with three major responsibilities. First it is to set up EARTHWATCH to begin continuous measurement of pollution on an international scale and to spell out the necessary action for improving the world’s environment. The final report on EARTHWATCH will be submitted to the 58-nation governing council of U.N.E.P. in June and the experts hope that it will be in operation by next year — monitoring the Earth from the ice-caps to the tropics.

Secondly, the new organisation intends to set up a computerised International Referral Service on the environment. The idea is to provide a comprehensive and readily available index on a world scale for all kinds of information about environmental research, legislation, and management experience, as well as names, addresses, and telephone numbers of sources of information.

Thirdly, a GENE-BANK is to be set up for the collection and preservation of plant genetic resources. As modern techniques of plant cultivation become more and more sophisticated, it is believed that major food crops are becoming increasingly vulnerable to devastation by pests and diseases. The GENE-BANK will be used to quickly make a variety of plants available for immediately reestablishing genetic resistance to plant disease.

The choice of Nairobi for the headquarters of the new agency is a diplomatic victory for the Third World. The developing country members of the UN have long wanted an important UN centre to be established in the Third World itself.

The government of Kenya is providing one hundred temporary offices for the new Secretariat and will finance 50% of the office rent for the next five years. Kenya has also offered a free grant of land for the Secretariat building, free premises for world environment conferences, and an immediate loan of $500,000 for furnishing and equiping the Secretariat.

Many of the developed nations objected strongly to the choice of Nairobi for the headquarters of U.N.E.P. Their opposition was based on the practical difficulties of running a major U.N. Agency thousands of miles away from the international centres of New York and Geneva. But, under pressure from many developing nations, Nairobi was selected and the abstaining countries made it clear that they would accept this choice in good grace.

The Tanzanian delegate, Mr. Joseph Opanga, commented "if we accept that the United Nations is a world body, we cannot say that any part of the world is too far away, or too remote, to host parts of the United Nations." He added that, until now, the people of Africa and to some extent the people of Asia and Latin America also, had formed the impression that they were not sufficiently part of the United Nations — "they felt as if the world body was an A mencan or European organisation. The choice of Nairobi should be able to dispel such a misconception".

 

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LONDON UNIVERSITY TO STUDY ZAMBIAN PROBLEM

A team of researchers from London University is to link up with the Zambian Ministry of Housing in a joint study of the problems caused by the rapid migration of people from rural areas to the cities of Zambia during the last ten years.

The population of Lusaka, Zambia’s capital, is approximately 150,000 people and 120,000 of these are estimated to be squatters living in shanty towns around the perimeter of the city.

The rapid growth of cities surrounded by slums is common to most developing nations and is caused both by rural ‘push’ and urban ‘pull’. As the young people of the rural areas grow discontented with the poverty, underemployment, and boredom of their lives, and as communications widen their knowledge of other places and other ways of life, so they begin to leave their homes in increasing numbers in the hope of finding paid employment and more exciting lives in the cities.

But, on average, for every one job created in the towns and cities of the Third World, two or three men leave the countryside in search of it. Most of them end up in unemployment and squalor on the outskirts of the city and its life.

The combined effect is that the agricultural areas, on which the development effort so largely depends, are losing their youngest and ablest men to the cities, whilst the cities themselves become miserably overcrowded and the capacity of local urban authorities to provide health services, food, water, housing and employment is hopelessly overstrained.

The Zambian study of this problem is being jointly undertaken by the Zambian Ministry of Local Government and Housing and the Development Planning Unit of the School of Environment Studies, University College, London. The project is aided by a grant from the British Government.

 

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BRITISH SHIPS AND THIRD WORLD SEAMEN

From Quest News Services, a monthly report on social change in the U.K., comes a disturbing report on the use of Third World’s labour on British ships.

One third of all seamen employed on British ships are non-British, says the report. These 22,000 men are paid at roughly a quarter of the rate paid to their British counterparts, even though their rates are negotiated by their unions in their own country. The National Union of Seamen basic rate for an able seaman, for example, is £87 per month, whereas his Indian equivalent is paid a basic £20 a month.

Yet by present international standards, Britain’s treatment of foreign seamen is better than average. Several other major maritime nations pay their foreign seamen even less than the low union rates of the countries whose nationals they employ.

The largest British employer of Asian seamen is P & 0 Lines, one of the biggest shipping companies in the world. P & 0 act as recruiting agents for Asian labour on behalf of 14 companies, all but two of them British, and of the 20,000 Asians they recruit annually, about 6,000 work for P & 0 themselves.

John Prescott, Labour M.P. for Hull East and Opposition Front Bench Spokesman on shipping, is writing to P & 0 in order to begin an investigation into wage levels, accommodation standards, and allegations of racial discrimination on British ships. Mr. Prescott is himself an official of the National Union of Seamen and is critical of NUS acceptance of the pay and conditions of foreign seamen employed by British companies: "I am becoming increasingly concerned at the exploitation of Third World labour by shipping companies around the world, including British companies".

The author of the report, Michael Holman, points out that "not only are foreign seamen denied the protection of British Trade Unions, they are also specifically excluded from the provision of the Race Relations Act. This Act, which is of course designed to ensure equality at work, exempts ships from its provisions stating that: ‘it shall not be unlawful to discriminate against any person in respect of employment on a ship, if compliance (with this Act) would result in persons of different colour, race or ethnic or national origin being compelled to share sleeping rooms, mess rooms, or sanitary accommodation 2’

As far as wages are concerned, the N.U.S. attitude is that they are negotiated by the Indian (or other countries) trades unions, and they are therefore not prepared to intervene in the matter. Nor, it seems, have the Indian unions requested their assistance in raising wage rates to, say, the minimum recommended by the International Labour Organisation, which for an able seaman would be £42 per month —double the Indian rate but still only half the U.K. rate.

Nor is the N.U.S. prepared to oppose the Race Relations Act exemption. Yet if what Jack Jones said at the Trade Union Conference on discrimination in December 1970 represents the Trades Union credo, the N.U.S. attitudes are questionable: "Ever since the beginnings of the Trade Union movement in this country, British Trade Unionists have stood shoulder to shoulder with our brothers all over the world, and have done much to help the development of Trade Unions in the Commonwealth in particular . . . We believed, and still believe, that our movement knows no distinction and no boundaries..

Quest Communications Limited, 209 Abbey House, 2/8 Victoria

Street, London SWIH OLD.

 

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About 750 million people in Asia will be hard hit by future Common Market policies, concludes the first in a series of studies by the Overseas Development Institute on the EEC and the Third World.

By 1977 the existing system of trade preferences for Commonwealth countries will have been replaced. Associate Membership has been offered to most Commonwealth states — as well as to the Yaounde Group of former French colonies — but not to the Commonwealth countries of Asia, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Pakistan (ex-Commonwealth). These countries will also suffer as tariff barriers between the developed countries of EFTA and the EEC are abolished — so diverting demand from the products of the developing world.

India and Hong Kong will be worst affected by the loss of Commonwealth Preferences. Dutiable exports worth $100 million from India, $164 million from Hong Kong, $21 million from Pakistan, $35 million from Malaysia, and $29 million from Singapore (at 1970 rates) will lose their present preferential position. This will mean a loss of export revenue which is desperately needed to finance development projects.

Against the harm done by the loss of Commonwealth Preferences must be balanced any gains from the Generalised System of Preferences to be adopted by the EEC on January 1st, 1974, which will govern imports from all non-associate developing countries. The details of the EEC’s Generalised System of Preferences have not yet been settled, but quite clearly the scheme wiil not favour Commonwealth Asia as a whole. It is likely to be based on the existing EEC system which gives no preferential treatment to raw materials from the Third World and offers very limited duty reductions to processed agricultural goods. Coconut products, for example, Sri Lanka’s main export in this category to Britain, will be severely affected.

Manufactured goods from Commonwealth Asia will also be given a rough ride. Processed jute, which is crucial to Bangladesh and important to India, will no longer enter Britain duty-free but will now face relatively high tariffs. And stringent tariff barriers and import quotas will limit the import of textiles — which employ more people in the Third World than any other manufacturing industry and are potentially a source of increasing revenue for development.

The EEC’s policy is to impose a strict tariff quota on ‘sensitive’ products — those which can be produced cheaply by developing nafions and which compete with European producers. So, for example, Hong Kong is specifically excluded from preferences on non-cotton textiles and shoes. She will receive few favours from the EEC either now or in the future.

As the final arrangements for 1974’s Generalised System of Preferences are made, the signs are that instead of encouraging exports from the Commonwealth Asian countries, the EEC is pulling up the drawbridge.

 

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They have come together in response to a call from the United Nations asking all interested groups in the rich world to pressurise their governments into implementing the United Nations strategy for the Second Development Decade (DD2).

Britain’s Voluntary Committee on Overseas Aid and Development (V.C.O.A.D.) took up this challenge and has established a United Kingdom Standing Conference on the Second Development Decade —with V.C.O.A.D. as its ready-made secretariat.

The Standing Conference has quickly received the support of the overseas aid charities; religious, political and academic, youth, and women’s organisations, as well as some less obvious groups such as the Boys Brigade and the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahai’s of the British Isles.

Now these groups are mounting educational programmes throughout the country, starting with their own memberships, to mobilise public opinion around the key issues in world development. By lobbying in the corridors of power and disseniinating information at grass roots level, thex’ hope to build up pressure on the Government to implement the strategy which the United Nations has drawn up for world development in the nineteen-seventies.

The first target of ‘Mobilisation for DD2’ is the ordinary membership of the affiliated organisations who are being reached through conferences, teach-ins, film shows, study groups, and exhibitions. Organisers have been appointed in over 100 towns and cities where V.C.O.A.D., and W.D.M., (World Development Movement) agencies already exist. But the ultimate success of the programme depends on local groups taking the initiative in organising activities, for which V.C.O.A.D.provides speakers, films, slides, pamphlets, posters, etc. V.C.O.A.D. reports that after the first meeting there is usually a demand for a follow-up event.

At present the main approach is through study groups. Following the initial Standing Conference report on "Britain’s Role in DD2" there are working groups on population planning, the environment. science and technology, the role of women, and the mass media.

Although this is a long term project whose effect is bound to be more gradual than spectacular, Freddie Lees, Secretary-General of V.C.O.A.D., and of the Standing Conference, detects "an increasing groundswell of interest". He draws particular encouragement from the study group on the mass media, which consists solely of journalists. The results can be seen in the recent increase in the amount of newsprint, and viewing time given over to Third World issues. More and more articles on aid and development have begun to appear, even without an obvious news story to promote them.

V.C.O.A.D., whose existing organisation is at the disposal of the Standing Conference, has an increasingly large number of requests for information and materials to handle. The demand is particularly strong from schools. And it is here that Freddie Lees believes the most important work is being done.

In the first U.N. Development Decade (1961—71) the poor world saw its share of world trade decline, its terms of trade deteriorate by 4%, its debts rise to over $60 billion, its illiteracy rates rise from 740 million people to 810 million, and its population grow by another 523 million. Over the same period. the rich world spent a smaller and smaller proportion of its increasin~ wealth on overseas aid.

Taking account of this depressing situation. the U.N. strategv for DD2 calls upon all the developed countries to give 1% of their G.N.P. in aid each year, and to give O.7% of this in official aid as opposed to private investments and export credits.

Secondly, the strategy calls upon the rich to sign commodity agreements wherever possible in order to guarantee poor nations fair and stable prices for their agricultural raw materials on which so many developing countries so heavily depend — and to refrain from developing any more synthetic substitutes for Third World exports. Turning to trade in manufactured goods, the strategy asks for the abolition of all tariff and customs duties on the manufactured exports of the developing world.

At the moment there seems to be little chance that these aid and trade targets will be met. The Standing Conference on DD2 believes that government action to implement the strategy will only be politically possible ~~‘hen the cause of world development has more, and more evident, public support.

Standing conference on DD2, Vc.O.A.D., Parnell House, 25 Milton Road. London, SW1.

"The Story of Simon and Jane" is a 36-page comic-strip booklet recently published by The African National Congress; it illustrates the plight of black people in South Africa and shows how Simon and Jane became involved in the freedom struggle. This extract picks up the story at the point where Simon and Jane have just been married. Jane’s employers have reluctantly agreed to let the couple live in the small servant’s room because Jane is too good a cook to lose …

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As the price of meat makes headlines in the rich world, ELIZABETH STAMP writes about where our meat really comes from and why we may be facing the end of cheap food.

The U.K. imports 50% of its food and 50% of its animal-feeding requirements. In fact our cattle, pig, and poultry production relies heavily on imports of protein from the developing countries, sold to us in trade to earn them urgently needed for-eign exchange. Professor Georg Borgstrom, in his book "Too Many", comments "The impressive increase of animal production in postwar Europe is to a substantial degree due to this gigantic influx of first-rate protein which enters into agricultural production almost through the back door." Somewhat sarcastically he con-tinues, "No doubt everyone realises how preposterous it is that the two most protein-needy continents, Africa and South America, are the main suppliers of the largest quantities of animal protein feed moving in world trade - and they provide those who already have plenty."

Fishmeal and ojiseed cakes are the two products involved in this massive transfer of protein from the developing nations to the animal-feeding troughs of the rich world. Fish from the Humboldt Current off Peru and Chile, and from the Benguela Current off the south-west coast of Africa, are converted into fishmeal. Almost all of this fishmeal and oil comes to Western Europe and the U.S.A. to feed our live-stock. Borgstrom estimates that the Peru-vian catches alone would be sufficient to raise the protein nutritional standard of the entire South American continent to Southern European levels. 95% of the ojiseed products exported from Africa and India come to Western Europe. Borgstrom considers that the 1 ½ million metric tons of protein involved, if suitably processed for human consumption, could raise the protein content of the world's malnour-ished by 50%. Such a rise in the poor world's consumption of protein would have dramatic effects on the health, the capacity for work, and, ultimately, the development progress of the poor world.

And yet we do not question the Scot-tishness of our Aberdeen Angus, or the Englishness of our pork and battery-raised chickens. When prices rise, we blame the government, or our favourite new scape-goat, the Common Market. But what are the facts?

Dependence on the Third World
We import 40-50% of our animal feed requirements. We produce, ourselves, the bulk of the cereal grains fed to animals. But the protein required for the com-pounds and concentrates for our rapid turnover animal production is 90-95% im-ported. Fishmeal, the precious animal pro-tein providing the vital range of amino-acids, is for the most part impor-ted - somewhere in the region of half a million tons a year. To produce this quan-tity of meal, 3 million metric tons of fish must be caught, more than the total fishing catches of the U.K. and Iceland together. The ojiseeds which make up the other sub-stantial protein element are also impor-ted - to the tune of 1 '/2 million metric tons a year, much of it from developing countries.

But we remain blissfully unaware of the sources of the foods that fill our lar-ders and refrigerators, as the recent out-cries on prices have shown. Only a dock-strike last year, which threatened our imports of animal-feed, reminded us that our livestock were vulnerable. They would have been the first casualties if the strike had continued.

The situation becomes more absurd when we realise that we do not need all the animal protein we are consuming. The FAO/WHO Ad Hoc Committee of Experts on Energy and Protein in 1971 gave the following standard for animal protein requirement — 37 grams daily for the average man, and 29 grams for the average woman. The following table shows how far above this standard we are, compared with some of the countries who are providing us with protein to feed our animals.

NET FOOD SUPPLY PER HEAD - PROTEINS (GRAMS PER DAY
	Animal Protein	Total Protein
U.K. 1968/69	54	88
U.S.A. 1969	69.5	96.8
Peru 1967	18.4	52.4
Gambia 1964/66	14.6	62.2
Cameroun 1964/66	10.8	58.9
(FAO Production Yearbook 1970)

 

More for the animals

The protein imbalance is the most serious factor in the whole world food situation today, and FAQ projections of effective demand for 1980 show little improvement. For the world as a whole they forecast an average figure of 23.2 grams per head per day, embracing a range from 57.5 grams in the rich countries to 13 grams in the poorer countries. Our high level will be maintained, they reckon, by the continuing flow of protein products from the poor to the rich countries.

Fishmeal demand, which at present ufilises one third of the world fishing catch, will increase from 3.8 million metric tons in 1964/66 to 6.6 million metric tons in 1980, the equivalent of 30 million metric tons of fish. World consumption of oil-seed cakes and meals at 45 million metric tons in 1964/66 will rise to 71 million metric tons in 1980, with only 15% consumed in the developing countries.

Turning to the cereal grains, the major food constituents in the world, consumption has always been shared by man and his animals. Traditionally man had priority, and his animals grazed and scavenged, were fed the wastes that man couldn’t eat, and only occasionally were fed grain. This is still the pattern in the poorer countries. Only in the rich West, as our range of foods has widened, have we fed more grains to livestock.

FAQ estimates that demand will rise from 783 million metric tons in 1964/66 to 1 ,110 million metric tons in 1 98Q~ for all cereals excluding rice. But within these totals, human food demand will increase from 345 million metric tons to only 453 million metric tons. In other words, only 44% of the food grains grown world-wide in the mid-sixties were used for human consumption; and by 1980 the percentage is expected to drop to 40%. A strange situation when some millions of human beings are malnourished or starving for lack of

food. Even in wheat production, one of the highest protein and therefore most nutritious cereals, 1 2% is currently fed to animals.

The end of cheap food for the rich

A year ago an article like this might have ended there, with a comment that FAQ’s projections merely reflect the reality of a market economy where the rich can buy what they want, and the poor cannot afford to buy what they need but even have to sell to the rich what they should be consuming themselves — with a call to thinking people to redress the balance between our greedy affluence and their desperate poverty.

But, suddenly, two events have turned this picture upside down, and the food isn’t flowing quite so easily to the markets of the rich countries. Largely unnoticed by the public and press, fishmeal prices have shot up from £85 a ton last summer to £180 a ton in January, because the anchovy have disappeared from the Humboldt Current. This is known to have hap-penned in the past for temporary periods; but in those days only a few local fishermen were affected. Now, the giant fish-meal plants of Peru and Chile are shut down. Many thousands of fishermen and factory workers have lost their jobs and livelihood. The fish are now reported to be returning but the Peruvian Government has already warned against the dangers of over-fishing.

Back home our livestock feed industry and the rate of livestock production are threatened too. The shortage of fishmeal has put the pressure on the alternative protein sources of oilseeds, and prices are rising rapidly, as the following table from "The Farmers Weekly" of January 5th shows.

Raw Materials for Feeding Compounds and Concentrates (£ per ton — 1972)
	June	September	December
Herring meal (cif*)	111	166	200
Soya meal (ex mill)	55	65	106
Groundnut cake (cif)	51	64	104
Cotton Expellers (cif)	45	50	95
*cif :- cost insurance and freight

The prices of compounds and concentrates to the farmer went up in December, and at the end of January, and further increases can be expected. So chicken and pork will be joining beef, temporarily at any rate, as expensive items in the housewife’s budget.

More widely reported, but still not widely known are the droughts that have hit parts of Russia, China, Western India, Nepal, Rhodesia, South Africa and Central America — a frightening list of disasters. Not devastating droughts countrywide, but severe enough to reduce harvests seriously, and to bring these countries on to the

world markets to purchase grain or to ask for food aid. Russia was the first off the mark in the autumn, contracting to buy 20% of the U.S. wheat crop, and further purchases are under discussion. China followed. India has made some purchases and will require more. Nepal and Nicaragua are both receiving food aid from the U.S.A.

World food grain stocks, the major part of them in North America, are showing the signs of strain. Prices for North American hard winter wheat have risen from £44 a ton in November to £5 I in January, compared with £28 twelve months ago. The British standard white loaf, which uses the imported hard wheat, went up in price in June 1972, and another price rise is being requested by our large bakery firms. All grain prices are rising, but not as fast. Soon it will be worthwhile the housewife and small village baker making bread from home-grown grains again.

Feeling the pinch

The optimists and ostriches will see these events as extraordinary — a temporary series of disasters which will soon be forgotten when the rains and the fish return. But some realists are watching other developments — the rapidly increasing world population, the growth of purchasing power in some of the poorer countries, and the development and use of bargaining power by groups of nations like the oil-producing countries in OPEC. One of the factors behind the current world beef shortage is the growth of beef consumption in Argentina, Chile, South Korea, and Yugoslavia. It may not be long before we feel the same sort of pinch elsewhere.

Michael Allaby in his new book so pointedly entitled "Who Will Eat?" writes of our intensive livestock industry: "It will face other (difficulties) as soon as the demand for food in developing countries creates sufficient pressure to necessitate the diversion of protein from export to the home market. The competition for available fish meal and oilseed cake will bring sharp price increases as the supply dwindles, and eventually the supply may cease altogether. At that point the livestock industries of the developed countries will find themselves contained within the resources of their own territories . . . all in all, it is very unlikely that the present intensive livestock systems can survive for more than a few years more."

He foresaw a gradual process when he was writing last year. But suddenly the twin disasters have brought the world food problem right on to our doorstep. Maybe we’ll start to try and solve it on the scale required now that it’s really hitting us. There’s nothing like direct experience for clarifying the mind and the will.

The days of cheap food are over, and our greed for protein will be satisfied only at increasingly high cost. Home bread-making and some free range chickens should not remain the preserve of the food fads and the romantics. A more realistic look at our island’s agricultural resources wouldn’t hurt anybody. It might even provide some more jobs, some more satisfaction, and certainly a more realistic diet for all of us..

 

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This month's election battle in Argentina is dominated by the presence of a seventy-eight year old man who has been in exile for almost twenty years and who is not even a candidate for office. RICHARD GOTT looks at the elements in the Argentine's past and present which explain the extraordinary political magnetism of Juan Domingo Peron -Gaucho among the gauchos.
Richard Gott is the General Editor of the Penguin Latin American Library and writes regularly for "The Guardian"

Argentina, to the outward eye, is a developed country; it has sky-scrapers, a metro and traffic jams. Buenos Aires with a population of more than 8,000,000 is one of the largest cities in the world. Argentinians are involved in nuclear research. They buy expensive supersonic jet aircraft. They manufacture their own computers. Farming — from which the country still derives the bulk of its wealth — is highly mechanised, and the industries which have sprung up in the past 40 years are also increasingly capital-intensive.

In terms of per capita income Argentina ranks above certain European countries like Spain or Poland and its massive middle-class enjoys considerably more personal freedom than in tliose two States.

Wealthy Argentiians enjoy a Californian standard of living, with every kind of electronic consumer device plus domestic servants — the envy of American visitors. They can afford to travel at least once a year to Europe or the United States and their ideas and values they share with Paris or Washington. If international fashion demands the mini-skirt then that is what they will be wearing.

Argentina enjoys a freedom of thought and opinion rare in Latin America, newspapers and periodicals are numerous and comprehensive, publishing houses are highly sophisticated and discriminating, and Argentina’s social scientists are engaged in examining their society with an intellectual vigour uncommon outside Sweden.

A nation in decline
If this description were the whole truth about Argentina, you would need to read no further. If not exactly a paradise, Argentina is certainly a going concern. It is a rich, prosperous country which certainly does not depend for its survival on regular handouts from outside. Of course, it has many poor peasants, and squalid shanty-towns, but by Latin American standards these easily pass unnoticed.

More important politically are its large numbers of workers whose incomes are static or declining. For Argentina, like its neighbour Uruguay across the River Plate, is in decline. Its economy is stagnant, its birthrate is slumping, even the famous Argentinian beef is in short supply.

Doubtless there are many countries that can adjust comfortably to a relative decline in their fortunes. But for a country as firmly plugged into the world economy as Argentina, the going is hard. Not only does it see Europe and the United States disappearing round the corner miles ahead, but even Brazil — Argentina’s traditional rival — is now surging ahead with its undistributed boom. And Argentina was brought up to have aspirations. Historically it is a society of immigrants, and, like all such, their visions of the future were boundless. An Argentinian does not take pride from the fact that his country is infinitely richer and more productive than his neighbours. Rather, he is bitterly resentful that he is no longer in the First Division along with Australia and New Zealand or the United States.

The military discredited
That there is something wrong with Argentina is as immediately obvious as is its surface development. For a start, there have been no elections for ten years. Since 1966 the country has been ruled by the military.

For many people, military rule is the personification of what has gone wrong with the country. Rarely before in the country’s history have the armed forces been so discredited, and it is partly this fact which led General Alejandro Lanusse, the President since 1971, to call for new presidential and congressional elections on March 11th.

Nevertheless, while military rule, with all that it implies in terms of senseless rigidity and lack of participation, is unquestionably a contributory factor to the malaise that hangs over the country, it is by no means the root cause. Whoever wins the elections — if a jealous military do finally allow them to be held — will be faced with underlying problems that are hardly likely to be solved without a thorough-going economic and social revolution.

A country of immigrants
Argentina, more than anywhere else, has shaken off the cultural legacy both of the indigenous Indians and of the Spanish conquistadores. In the colonial period, Argentina was an insignificant province of the Spanish Empire. It was not until the latter half of the nineteenth century that it became transformed by immigration. A hundred years ago it had a population of barely two million. Today there are more than 23 million Argentinians. In the fifty years before the outbreak of the First World War more than two million immigrants had settled in Argentina, mostly coming from Italy and Spain. Indeed in 1914, half the population of Buenos Aires had been born outside the country.

As with almost all immigrant societies, Argentina has a markedly racist attitude and tends to attribute its relative development to the predominance of the "raza blanca". Until quite recent times Argentina had a significant Indian population, but less than a hundred years ago, in 1 8T9, General Julio Roca set about a successful extermination campaign. The pampa was cleared of Indians and opened up for the commerce and profit of the immigrant. This was an era, comparable to the opening up of the American West, to which the Argentinians look back with considerable pride. Today the miniscule Indian population survives only on the Andean plateau on the borders with Chile and Bolivia.

A new proletariat
The new immigrants from Europe brought with them a considerable amount of ideological baggage. Liberalism, anti-clericalism and socialism all had their adherents, and indeed at the beginning of this century much of organised labour was controlled by anarchists, followers of Kropotkin. In the boom years up till 1930, when Argentina was Britain’s larder, the immigrant-controlled unions grew wealthy and powerful. Working chiefly in the foreign-owned services sector, they were the beneficiaries of free trade — and this strand in Argentinian unionism survives to this day.

But in the Great Depression, the structure of the Argentinian economy began to change. Cut off from world markets, there was a rapid growth of industry on an import-substitution basis. And the drying-up of immigrants from Europe was paralleled by internal migration, with peasants from the interior flocking to the cities to man the new factories in Buenos Aires, Rosario and Cordoba. These new industrial workers formed a depressed and exploited proletariat with little in common with the relatively privileged members of the old unions, and from the beginning there was a conflict between them.

Peron and the ‘shirtless ones’
It was against this background that Colonel Juan Domingo Peron made his first appearance. The most fascinating and controversial figure to appear in Argentinian history for more than a century, an explanation of his role and of the forces that support him is essential for understanding the contemporary picture. For Penon today is the key to revolutionary socialist change in Argentina.

When President, between 1946 and 1955, Peron received an almost uniformly hostile press in Europe. To those who insisted on seeing Argentina in European terms, Peron appeared to be the reincarnation of Mussolini. British shareholders, aggrieved by his nationalisation of their assets, were happy to accept this version of events.

Yet despite Peron’s authoritarian behaviour, the fact remains that Peron proved to be the most popular President the long collective memory of the Argentinian working class can recall, and today the vast majority of left-wing intellectuals and students class themselves as Peronists.

When Peron first came to power he was supported chiefly by the poor rural migrants who were fed into the new factories. These were the famous "descamisados" or shirtless ones who so frightened the Argentinian oligarchy and its international allies. Subsequently he acquired broad support from all sections of the labour movement, though the leadership of the established unions were never happy with Peron’s version of syndicalism.

When Peron was overthrown by the army in 1955 and sent into exile, his political legacy lived on. A legend had been created. Those who overthrew him were determined to root it out, but they could not make the attempt to do so without distorting their professions of democracy. For more than thirty per cent of the electorate voted for Peron, and now for nearly twenty years this element has effectively been disfranchised.

In those years a wide variety of formulae were devised to rule the country without the participation of the Peronists. Since 1966 Congress has been closed and the military has been ruling by decree. In 1 969 the system blew a safety valve when students and workers in Cordoba rebelled in a fashion reminiscent of the French "Revolution" of 1968. And now in 1973 the armed forces have been obliged to call elections lest the unpopularity that they have drawn upon themselves should get out of hand.

Political agitation
The unrest in the country has been dramatised by the existence of powerful urban guerrilla movements proclaiming their allegiance to Peronism. Their policy of kidnapping foreign businessmen for ransom, robbing banks and assassinating prominent opponents has alarmed the army and certain sectors of the middle class who claim that this type of politics is "unArgentinian". In fact, though, the guerrillas are building on the anarchist tradition at the turn of the century, and it is often recalled that in 1 905 President Quintana was nearly assassinated.

Though guerrillas inspire fear in some, there is no evidence that their activities alienate the workers, many of whom are forced to work in factories that are under martial law. Such is the state of latent discontent that many people talk in terms of a civil war if the elections are not held. This may be overly dramatic, but it is true that the last two years have seen radical political agitation and strike action in the most unlikely corners of the country. On the other hand, both within the Peronist movement and in Argentinian political life generally, there is a very long tradition of compromise and arrangement, and it seems hard to believe that this will not prevail.

The coming election
There are nine candidates for the presidency, but only two are of any consequence — Hector Campora, representing Peronism, and Ricardo Balbin, representing the Radicals. Both can expect to get some thirty per cent of the vote in the first round on March 1] th, and then there will be an important three weeks bargaining before the second round on April 8th. Whoever wins will signify a major challenge to the way in which the country has been run for the past few years. In particular. foreign investors — notably from the United States — may find the going tough.

On the question of economic nationalism Balbin and Campora are as one. There is a general consensus that foreign control over the economy has increased in the past few years and should be diminished. 95% of the automobile industry is in the hands of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. 70% of the petro-chemical industry is controlled by Dow Chemicals. 40% of the steel industry is in foreign hands. 50% of the production and sales of petrol is controlled by Shell and Esso. No less than eight Argentinian banks have been bought up by United States or Spanish banks in the last six years. While many civilians have connived at and taken advantage of this sellout, the military are widely considered to have been the principal beneficiary. A win for either Campora or Balbin would almost

certainly involve a lessening of United States involvement in the Argentinian econom. and perhaps a growing participation by western Europe and Japan.

A gaucho among the gauchos
The Peronists look back to the figure of the nineteenth century dictator. Juan Manuel Rosas, for whom history has few kind words. Yet the key to Rosas’ popup. larity — and that of Peron — can be found in these few words of Rosas:

"I know and respect thc talents of man~’ of the men who have governed the country . . . but it sccms to me that all committed a great error; they governed yen’ well for the cultured people but scorned thc lowcr classes, the people of the fields, who were the mcn of action

They did nothing against the rich and the upper class; I believe that it is important to establish a malor influence over this class to contain it and direct it, and I propose to acquire this inf7uence at any cost; for this, I will work constantly, with many sacrifices. I will be a gaucho among the

gauchos Eva Peron, Peron’s now

legendary wife and political partner who died of cancer in 1952 at the age of 33, once said that the lower classes to which Peronism made its appeal were the political heirs of the gauchos of the interior who clung to Rosas.

Peronism left and right
The left wing in Argentina has also espoused Peronism, because they adopt the position that the masses are the supreme arbiters, and if therefore, in Argentina. for historical reasons, the masses are Peronist, then the revolutionary cadres must be Peronist too. Of course, this does not mean that the Peronist movement as a whole is revolutionary. Peron himself, as of now, certainly is. His known admiration for Fidel and Mao, and his unbridled support for the revolutionary guerrilla organisations in Argentina are proof enough of this. But Peron, and those of like mind, are probably a minority within the Peronist movement — a situation not unlike that in which Mao found himself at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

The Peronist movement embraces the traditional political spectrum from left to right, and Hector Campora was almost certainly chosen as the Peronist candidate by Peron both because of his absolute loyalty and because of his ability to appeal to the most conservative Peronists.

Peronist revolutionaries are supposed to be appeased by Campora’s electoral slogan, "With Campora in Government, Peron in power." But certainly, if Campora wins, the major political struggle which has been going on within the Peronist movement will be intensified.

Peronism offers to Argentina the possibility of a socialist nationalism, but it is no more than a possibility. The Outcome of the internal fight within the movement remains uncertain; relations with the armed forces have yet to be defined. But a victory for· Peronism would certainly lead to a more Argentinian Argentina and would be the most significant anti-imperialist development in Latin America since the election of Salvador Allende in 1970.

 

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Once liberation had been won, the joy and pride of millions of Bengalis was released. The songs of Tagore were sung in the streets. ‘Amar Sonar Bangla’ (My Golden Land Bengal) became the new nation’s national anthem.

But in the process of becoming free Bangladesh had been devastated, and freedom means little when it is the freedom to starve. The rawest of raw materials, the soil, the water, the climate are almost all that is left intact. The tools to work the land, the nets and boats to fish the rivers, the institutions and infrastructure to distribute and market the produce — all are sorely lacking. Out of this wreckage the Bengalis must build a new nation.

Building a nation
With the coming of peace and Independence, the new nation’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, called upon the Mukti Bahini liberation fighters to assemble in Dacca and ceremonially lay down their arms. In a moving speech, the Sheikh called upon the thousands of young men to put the heroics of war behind them and return to their own villages to give three or four years of their lives to their communities — to go back and build a nation.

Among the crowd was a nineteen year-old Mukti Bahini soldier called Moshin Ali, who had spent the war as an organiser, travelling by night across the border into India, recruiting and training groups of young refugees to swell the ranks of the liberation movement.

Deeply affected by Sheikh Mujib’s speech, Moshin Ali decided to use his organising. skill and experience to recruit and train a peacetime army and set about building his part of the new nation.

After a six-week training course in reconstruction techniques, Moshin recruited 300 young ex-guerilla fighters and returned home to his own village of Gurudaspur. Less than a year later he has established a ‘Ganamilan’ or People’s Union staffed by over a thousand full-time volunteers.

The People’s Union
The People’s Union aims to bring people together in co-operation against their poverty. Agricultural co-operatives covering over 3,000 acres have been formed and, by pooling resources, the people were able to invest in machinery and improved irrigation systems far beyond the means of the individual. This year the improved strain of rice (IRRI), Mexican wheat, potatoes, peanuts, and vegetables will be planted on 1 ,000 acres of land and if all goes well the input cost of £27,800 will be translated into a return of £108,700. Initially the proceeds will be shared equally between the landowners and the People’s Union, with the landless labourers being paid wages. Eventually the labourers will be admitted to an equal third share. Eleven other rudimentary co-operative societies have been formed amongst weavers, shoemakers, bamboo and cane workers, bin cigarette makers, and fishermen. Roads and bridges destroyed in the war (one of which was Moshin’s own handiwork) are being repaired. Irrigation canals are being dug, sanitation improved, and houses rebuilt.

Mass education
The most spectacular successes to date have been the mass education programmes. Within two and a half months last gear 250 night schools teaching basic literacy had been opened. Already 20,000 people have learnt to read and write and over the next two years Moshin expects to extend this basic education to 80,000 people in Gurudaspur.

The third plank in the platform of the People’s Union is a basic preventive health programme. Fifty-two women have been given training in nursing, hygiene, child care, sanitation, first-aid, primary health care and vaccination. Every day now these same women are to be seen going from house to house and beginning to teach what they have been taught. Very rapidly the people of Gurudaspur are becoming more and more involved in their People’s Union. Through co-operation they have lessened the dictatorship of the weather over the amount of food in their bellies; through co-operation they are learning and teaching others the skills of reading, writing and health care; through co-operation they are helping each other to lift the curses of unemployment, homelessness, under-nourishment, and through it all is emerging a new sense of identity and common purpose.

National implications
The outlook of the People’s Union is essentially pragmatic. It’s emphasis is on satisfying the basic necessities. But it has inescapable wider implications for the nation as a whole. For the work of the People’s Union is a work of liberation, more profound than the liberation bought with guns and physical courage - it threatens many of the time-honoured assumptions of the Bengali society, the legacies of a cruel past.

Bengali attitudes
For centuries the Bengali has endured the rape of his country. He has suffered constant exploitation and corrupt domination and he has been gradually reduced to the position of a hired labourer on his own land. The result has been that many Bengalis have become enmeshed in a fatalistic acceptance of a subordinate role. The classic image of the Bengali was that of a clerk, or a night-watchman, a mere servant of the system — a system which never gave but it took. Because the Bengalis, over the years, have been given little scope or incentive to take any initiative and plenty of scope for mistrust and suspicion, these attitudes have become ingrained and now represent a serious barrier to development. The People’s Union of Moshin Ali is breaking down these attitudes and the commitment of huge numbers of people is in itself a remarkable achievement.

In 1 962, for example, the then President of Pakistan, Ayub Khan, tried to initiate a Bengali literacy campaign. The response was negligible and the experiment was a total failure. By contrast, the People’s Union literacy drive has caught fire. Deputations from areas without a literacy class have turned up during teaching at the People’s Union to demand that their area be given a class. The atmosphere in these make-shift classrooms is electric with anticipation, as pupils from seven to seventy-seven years old cluster together, avid to learn the three ‘R’s’. An Oxfam visitor to Gurudaspur reports "the strained concentration on the faces of the middle-aged weather-beaten farmers, as they lab oriously drew the characters spelling out their own name, and then radiating with pride in their new found achievement, was a sight I shall long remember. Huddled in groups around a kerosene lamp, scratching out their first words, or reciting the images from hopelessly inadequate text books, these were some of the people who were, each night, coming together in tiny huts of priman’ school buildings, to begin their entry into the new world."

The role of women
The most striking change has been in the role of women in the People’s Union. Traditionally women play no part in Moslem society. They are rarely seen and never heard.

Yasim Ali is a chemist in a village outside Gurudaspur. He is not an old-established member of local society, having settled there only in the last 20 or 30 years. A literate, respected man, his dispensary has become something of a small scale health centre, supplying simple medical supplies and primary health care. His four daughters came to the People’s Union wanting to help, wanting to make their contribution to a new society of which they are as much a part as any man. They gathered together a group of 15 girls, and under the direction of the local sanitary inspector, took a course in hygiene, sanitation, and child care. This was treated with great caution by other more intransigently Moslem women, and the eldest daughter, Zahida, was ‘sent to Coventry’ by her neighbours. The ‘rebellion’ of these girls bore fruit. Women’s training schemes are now an integral part of the mass training programme. Ninety of the literacy schools are for women only.

When Algerian women discarded their veils the revolution found an invaluable source of strength. The transformation of some Bengali women from chattels into people, into fighters and builders is an act of liberation which bodes ill for many caste-bound conservative traditions. The implications for future generations are vast. As one of the young women of the People’s Union put it "Women of Bangladesh have, for centuries been prevented from playing their part. Now we demand to play our part in the rebuilding of the nation. We have been in darkness. Now we are in light."

The People’s Union and politics

However the People’s Union is only one year old this month. its survival is not a foregone conclusion. It is only a very tiny part of the country. And Bangladesh faces problems so huge that its survival as a nation is not assured.

Drought in main rice-growing areas, inflation which has trebled the price of most commodities, shortage of foods and medicines threatens the fragile backbone of the nation as fast as it can be rebuilt. Although the People’s Union is growing in strength, many co-operative programmes are perishing. The People’s Union can obviously not exist as an island amidst a sea of disintegration. Likewise it cannot steer clear of national politics.

Neither Moshin nor any of his comrades in the People’s Union will take any part in the forthcoming elections. And with good reason. For that would be inviting enmity where there seems at present to be only goodwill. And more important is to concentrate on building up the People’s Union to a strong secure position. However the road Moshin is travelling cannot fail to have political implications. Moshin is potentially a very powerful leader. The People’s Union hinges on him. Of the administrators he is the only one who is sufficiently confident and forceful to take decisions. His energy thrusts him to the forefront of everything, the smallest decisions must be his. He has the charisma which ties others to his lead. He is surrounded by loyal companions. He has the trust, affection and the respect of tens of thousands of Bengali citizens.

Already the success of the People’s Union has attracted neighbouring villages. Moshin has had to refuse to incorporate them. However if the People’s Union establishes itself as an evident and undoubted success, it will expand out of Gurudaspur. This prospect worries many politicians who see Moshin Au securing for himself a broad political power base. He will become something of a ‘king’ in the area.

Moshin versus the politicians
Between Sheikh Mujibur at the top, and the young Mukti Bahinis, like Moshin, at the base, there stands a party political structure which still serves the middle man, the entrepreneur, the man with wealth and influence rather than the Bengali peasant.

Already a confrontation is developing between the People’s Union and the political establishment, insistent demands that the Department of Rural Development exert some control over the People’s Union are rebuffed with Moshin’s equally insistent refusal to relinquish his direction of the project, his project.

In many parts of the country there is dislocation, uncertainty, bloodshed; the very things that the People’s Union aims to avoid. In Gurudaspur at the moment there is calm, gradual growth, peaceful cooperation.

National politicians fear the autocracy, albeit benevolent, of Moshin Ali over this small part of Bangladesh, where he is indisputably in control. Moshin Au and his followers fear that outside control will introduce rivalry, infighting, opportunist politicking, into the People’s Union.

There is a gap that must be bridged. Sheikh Mujibur’s hopes of a free, egalitarian Bangladesh are being put into practice by young idealists, like Moshin Au. Yet they are outside, and even in confrontation with, the political establishment.

If the future hopes of Bangladesh rest anywhere it is in the peace heroes, the young ex-fighters who are building as fervently as they fought, and the people of Gurudaspur who are breaking through the suffocating restrictions of a traditionally repressed, caste-bound, conservative society, in the hope that they will never again have to fight for their right to live.

 

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THE WORLD HEALTH SCANDAL

Modern medical care is often in the wrong place and of the wrong kind to help the vast majority of the world’s population. ALEX BRODIE explains why the medical profession is failing the world’s poor, and campaigns for the great changes necessary to help bring about the greatest health of the greatest number.

Chronic disease and ill health is the stark characteristic of life in the developing countries of the world. In some rural areas a mere handful of doctors is the only medical care available to millions of people.

And yet in many of the capital cities of the Third World huge, modern and highly sophisticated hospitals, often costing more than half the entire health budget of that country, stand as a symbol of national achievement amidst the appalling poverty and disease of ramshackle shanty towns.

In this way the health budgets of many developing nations are being used to provide expensive curative treatment for a tiny urban elite, and a workshop for the medical profession to practise its skills, even though this kind of medical care is irrelevant to the health needs of the vast majority of the people of the poor world.

The result is that half of mankind, those who live in the rural areas of the Third World, are deprived of adequate medical care. The sophisticated technology of modern medicine has failed to ensure simple health for the majority of the people in the world.

Health goes with wealth
The distribution of medical care obviously reflects the inequitable distribution of wealth throughout the world. The rich countries of the world not only suffer less ill health, they are more adequately served by the medical profession. In a basically healthy country like Britain there is one doctor for every 850 people. In the rural areas of Indonesia, where illness is a fact of life, half a dozen doctors must attempt to provide medical care for a million people.

Inappropriate medicines
But the problem could not be solved by a simple redistribution of medical manpower and resources from richer urban areas to poorer rural areas, even if this were possible.

For the medical profession in almost every country is geared to the needs of modern, western, industrial society. And the expensive, individual, curative treatment which it provides is totally inappropriate to the health needs of a poor agricultural society.

The disease patterns of the Third World and the developed world are very different. The health requirements of the Third World are closer to those of Britain 100 years ago than to those of Britain now. 32% of all deaths in England and Wales a century ago were the result of infectious disease. In 1972 this figure was 0.6%. But in the Third World, eleven muhon people are still affected by leprosy, 600 million by trachoma, the world’s major cause of blindness, 650 million by ascariasis, over 200 million by bilharzia, 250 million by filiarosis — diseases which are virtually non-existent in the rich world.

The world’s top ten diseases. measured in terms of the numbers of people affected, are all highly susceptible to preventive health measures. These diseases are caused and spread by contamination, lack of sanitation, dirt, lack of knowledge about preparing food, lack of safe water for cooking and washing and drinking, and by malnutrition which weakens resistance and leaves people vulnerable to debilitating diseases.

The appropriate cure for this kind of ill health is not the expensive hospitals, sophisticated drugs, transplant apparatus and operating theatres. lt is nutritious food; sanitary living conditions; clean water supplies; education in elementary hygiene; child and pregnancy care; food preparation and diet balancing.

Thus the medical needs of the rural areas of the Third World are very different from those of the western industrialised world. To bring basic health to the majority of mankind therefore requires not only a redistribution of medical manpower and resources in favour of the rural areas, but also a fundamental change in the kind of medical care now being taught and practised.

The alternative system
An alternative system of medical care would be based on the community health centre, staffed by medical auxiliaries. Recruited from his own community, the medical auxiliary, although less skilled and less strenuously trained than the doctor, could provide primary medical care where there is none. Trained to diagnose and treat common illnesses, disseminate elementary yet essential knowledge concerning personal hygiene, sanitation, birth control, diet, and to conduct vaccination campaigns, he could do more to raise the health standards of the community than any number of new city centre hospitals.

The £5 million required to build a new hospital in Lusaka, Zambia’s capital, could have financed 250 health centres throughout the country, serving the entire population of Zambia.

 

Rich versus poor
However this is not how medical resources are usually distributed. Precious funds are wasted on showpiece hospitals which only serve to encourage "medical specialisation of a sort which leads to the isolation of the medical fraternity

from practice or interest in rural areas where a vast reservoir o/ ill health could be alleviated by the application of relativel-t easil~’ acquired technologies and expertise . . . it has been estimated that, in the late 196Os, between 45% and 55% of total government health expenditure in the developing countries was spent on hospital services. 35% to 45% was spent on personal health services, and the remainder was divided between non-personal public health services and teaching". ("Medical Care in Developing Countries" —Office of Health Economics).

This is because there is a direct conflict of interests between the professional standards which a doctor is pledged to uphold and the health needs of the rural masses of the Third World. The medical profession, a highly respected, legitimised interest group, always wins. To practise the skills which he sees as the highest level of his professional expertise, the doctor needs expensive facilities and equipment. When added to the cost of his training, often continued abroad, the sum represents a huge investment in services which are only of use to the relatively rich urban elite whose medical needs have more in common with western industrialised society than with the vast majority of their countrymen. ln protecting ‘professional standards’ the doctor is providing medical care for the rich, and denying the poor the resources to alleviate their misery.

The medical brain drain
This inequality is further perpetuated by the prevalence of private practice in the Third World. There is no opportunity for private earnings amidst the poverty of the countryside, so doctors concentrate in the cities.

The demand for preventive public health services is vast. The supply minimal. The demand for specialist, skilled doctors is small. The supply large. Those who can afford or who have need of ‘western’ medicine are few. Consequently there is a drain of doctors from the developing to the developed countries, like the U.S.A., where the demand for sophisticated specialist care exceeds supply.

Of 30,000 licensed physicians in the Philippines in the mid-1960s, less than half were practising there. Desperate shortage of medical care though there may be, the Philippines has contributed more doctors to the U.S.A. than any other country in the world.

There are 15,000 foreign-born doctors in Britain. Most of them are from India. Whilst a mere 10,000 to 15,000 doctors cater for the 450 million people of rural India, the same number are abroad serving the populations of the rich world.

Foreign doctors working in Britain constitute 25% of the total medical employment in the National Health Service. Ostensibly they are here for post-graduate training. But, as Lord Taylor (himself a doctor) said in the House of Lords, in reality "They are here to provide pairs of hands in the rotten est, worst hospitals in the country, because there is nobody else to do it. The lobs are there waiting for them to come and get them, and be paid while gaining experience. There is no nonsense about teaching in these places . . - we are not playing fair by them. We are putting them into these thoroughly unsatisfactory hospitals where . . - the conditions are very often so bad that you cannot expect Englishmen to work there."

In the senior hospital grades, the number of doctors born in developing countries is relatively small. However in the more onerous junior grades, which do the bulk of day to day work in British hospitals, foreign doctors constitute 60% of the total of those employed. It is no exaggeration to say that without these foreign doctors, the N.H.S. would be unable to function.

The effect of this migration of doctors is to draw the money and manpower of the poor world into the service of the rich.

The benefit to Britain of this international mobility is obviously enormous. The benefit to the doctor is largely one of an increase in status and earning capacity. The benefit to his country of origin is negligible, and even detrimental. "At United Kingdom training costs these doctors represent about £150,000,000 of investment in higher education, made by some of the poorest countries in the world and being used to benefit the richest." ("Doctor Migration and World Health" — Oscar Gish).

Many of these doctors will remain in Britain and Europe. Some will continue on the migratory path to the U.S.A., the haven of private medicine, where they can sell their skills dear, dispensing personal medical care to those who can afford to pay through the nose for it. In either case they are lost to their country.

Those who do return to their own countries are imbued with the standards of a medical profession whose values stem from London, Geneva and New York. Their experience of practice abroad is more, not less likely, to encourage them to practise the skills which they see as the highest level of professional expertise, even though this is in direct conflict with the very different medical needs of the majority of people in poor nations.

The political problems
The first step towards providing the greatest health for the greatest number is a political one. Once it is accepted that medical services must be redistributed so as to provide the best possible services for all, instead of being concentrated in the service of an economically powerful elite, then some social control over the peculiarly autonomous medical profession must be exerted in order to change the doctor’s role.

The doctor must accept that medical auxiliaries, less highly trained personnel than himself, will provide the first stages of health care. For it is only through the widespread deployment of cheaply trained medical auxiliaries that adequate and egalitarian medical coverage can be achieved. The fully-trained doctor would occupy a position at the head of a system of referral, dealing with exclusively medical problems beyond the competence of the auxiliary.

If resources were used primarily for preventive schemes, a public health system built around the medical auxiliary could improve standards of hygiene, sanitation, diet, education, and so have a dramatic effect on world health.

The Chinese system, built around the ‘barefoot doctor’ is an indication of what can be achieved. (see box)

Professional opposition
The opposition of the medical profession to the establishment of an alternative system based on health centres and medical auxiliaries is a formidable problem. Even existing preventive care schemes are threatened by the failure to recognize the potential of an alternative health system. This failure is not restricted to the medical profession. There is a generally held acceptance that what is good for the West is good for the Third World, that what the advanced technology of medical science has to offer is the best that can be provided. Cheap labour intensive, preventive medicine is seen as second best. It is this slavish devotion to the advanced technology which perpetuates a glaringly inequitable health system. The effect of this is to pour scarce resources into higher education, to turn out more doctors with the status and skills which allow them to escape the dismal conditions in which the majority live, rather than help to remedy them.

The medical auxiliary is not promised the status and career prospects of the doctor. He is more likely to remain in the community which is his home, using the skills which he has learned for the benefit of those who live in areas which are not attractive to doctors trained in western standards.

In Ethiopia, for example, the doctor/population ratio in the rural areas is little more than 5 or 10 per million. 200 of the 400 doctors serve the 2.5% of the population in Addis Ababa. Most of the existing medical care is provided by auxiliaries — health officers, community nurses, sanitarians. The health officer training programme at Gondar university has been one of the most successful of its kind.

However the whole programme is threatened by the development of the first medical school. The original course has been modified, greatly increasing its academic content, and greatly reducing the relevance of the training to the auxiliaries’ future role in the community.

The self-interest of the-medical profession had a directly adverse effect in Pakistan. There was, and is, a dire need for some form of health care in the rural areas of Pakistan. A survey of 76 local governments, taken in 1969, found no primary health
centres, 1 secondary health centre, and dispensaries in only 23 of the 76 regions; 55% of the medical school output had left the country. Rural medical services were virtually nonexistent. This gap was filled to some small extent by the ‘Licentiate’, a medical auxiliary-cum-doctor. The position of licentiate has now been abolished. The major reason for this was that the General

Medical Council in London refused to recognize the licentiate for the purposes of practice in England. As the licentiates were recognized for employment, within Pakistan, on the same basis as degree-holding doctors, it was feared that doubt might be cast on the latter’s qualifications for working abroad. The least important consideration seems to have been the