Thursday 15 January 2015

Tony Benn TTIP-ed Us Off

From today's Guardian letters page:

George Monbiot (Equality before the law? Throw it on the corporate bonfire, 14 January) highlights one of the most disturbing and potentially devastating attacks on democracy now being played out by the US, UK and 12 other EU members.

To claim that the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) is primarily a trade agreement is nonsense.

The trade agreements already in existence may require some fine tuning, but the addition of TTIP is anything but a tweak to existing arrangements.

Our own government and opposition parties are strangely mute on the subject.

How can it be fair, reasonable or democratic for any government to put their country and their electorates in a position where a small number of international corporations can sue us over laws that affect their profits, using a legal system designed only for them? It is totally abhorrent.

Interestingly, that infamous “loony of the left” Tony Benn was forecasting events such as this as far back as the early 70s. I urge every MP to read The Best of Benn.

Page 57 is a good place to start: this section covers a speech entitled Multinationals and World Politics, which he made to a conference of international business leaders, and which was coolly received.

About 40 years ago, he said:

“In short, multinational companies employing thousands of people, controlling great resources, with a vested interest in territorial development and with reserves of capital and know-how to protect, have become states and must expect to be treated as such… The single biggest political issue of the 70s, 80s and beyond is the need for the democratisation of power.”

Our democratic system has never been under so much pressure as it is today and it is time for people, regardless of their party allegiances, to wake up to the fact. Do not let TTIP happen.

David Beswick
Harrogate, North Yorkshire

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