Jill Rees: Welcome Press

I know what it is like to weep bitter tears for my country. Throughout the 1980s my country was run by a rabid right wing solipsist who systematically destroyed every institution which had made ‘British Constitutional Socialism’ almost universally respected as an attempt to build Jerusalem in our green and pleasant land. Finally, when criticised, she snorted, ‘There’s no such thing as society.’ So it was that I read a reader’s letter with empathy, a PhD student at a prestigious university in Benue, telling me he wept for Nigeria.

British Democracy evolved over several centuries following the 16^th century Earls Rebellion for freedom of religion and the fair application of land inheritance. Although ‘gentlemen’ had a say in Parliament, democracy in the sense of the common people having a say was much fought for and much died for.

After the Plague in England, workers were very much in demand, and wages and conditions were excellent. Consequently, political change occurred mainly among the aristocrats and concerned higher constitutional matters. By the early 1880s, the population had grown and wages could be cut to starvation level because workers were obliged to take what they could get. If anyone objected, they would be fired and another hired in his stead. Agriculture and industry was just beginning to develop on a global scale and production had not yet reached levels of major exportation. It was illegal to join together to protest until 1824, when trade unions began to be formed legally.

In 1832, six men joined together in a ‘friendly society’ in Tolpuddle, south west England, to protest against the gradual lowering of wages. The powers that be objected, and they were arrested and exiled. These men became known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs, and symbolise the rights of the working people to a decent living and a decent lifestyle.

During the next 50 years, conditions for ordinary people in Britain were dire. A novel, ‘The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists’, was written about the conditions endured by poverty-struck working men who were unable to make enough money to support themselves and their wives. Throughout this long story, wives die in childbirth, men too sick to work are unable to visit a doctor, children die in hunger and of ordinary childhood diseases they could not afford to treat and cause by defiled living conditions.  The book was not permitted to be published until 1914, when many of the workers the author Robert Tressell wrote about were being slaughtered as ‘cannon fodder’ on the battlefields of Europe.

Throughout the novel Tressell’s hero Frank Owen asks the question, why do so many allow themselves to be so mistreated by the few? He urges working people to stop being ‘philanthropists’ to the rich, working themselves literally to death so that fat cats can make ever increasing profits, and supported by those who could afford the backing to be in potions of power. Until the poor become organised, he thinks, the rich will take what they want.

This is similar to Nigeria today in many ways. Wealth is the main source of power, and to be in government you need to be from a certain background. Meanwhile, low wages, poor housing, paltry health and nutritional resources and limited educational opportunities keep the poor in their place. The poor and powerless complain, they talk about the corruption in power, yet they remain in isolation, and do nothing. They weep.

There are too many young people in Africa. They don’t need to be persuaded by high wages, they don’t need to be educated, and they have no leverage to fight corruption in high places. If an individual complains out loud, they are sacked and replaced.  The state doesn’t need to keep all the babies born alive until they reach working age, more will come.

Never has anyone with power voluntarily yielded it. Nigerians can look at corruption and ask ‘Why, why?’ but the answer is simply ‘Because’. Why don’t the rich and powerful not share their wealth?  Because they don’t have to, nobody makes them.

When I went to Nigeria I too was concerned about all this corruption in high places.  I was soon shocked to understand that it went all the way to the bottom too: to the maid who steals from her Madam, to the security who keeps you waiting until you pay a bit extra, to the worker who won’t do anything extra unless you give him a ‘tip’. How can they complain about corruption, I would ask, and yet do the same?

‘To survive’ said my friend, obviously wondering how I got to be so stupid.

The oppression of the workers continued in the UK in between the wars. In the 1930s poverty was so bad that the famous ‘Jarrow Marchers’ walked from the north to London, picking up thousands of unemployed workers along the road.  The Labour government of the day, along with the Trade Union Movement, ignored the 12,000 workers who came on the Houses of Westminster.

Only after the Second World War, when the whole of Europe was in ruins, did some element of idealism as well as necessity see fit to build the decent society we find in Britain today. In 1945, a newly elected government began to invest in agriculture, in steel and coal industries, in Heath and education for all its citizens, and in child support for poorer families.

The lessons we have learned are these: those in power will not yield it without a fight; the working people have to unite and work together, not to let one individual get fired or bullied in the workplace;  poor and underprivileged people need to get organised; we must never give up however long it takes; dignity and unity are what matters.

The economic crisis is worrying many people worldwide, but for us who have nothing, the worry is much less. In fact, this may be a window of opportunity for us to change some conventional  economic structures. Today’s forward-thinkers are interested in sustainable development and co-operative working.  These obviously lend themselves to small independent projects.

Sustainability means we don’t have to produce an awful lot of stuff. Co-operatives mean we don’t have to have money, because several minor players combine what they have.  The trick is to contain them. In the USA, at the start of the great corn belts, famers worked in co-operatives to share expensive machinery, and this enabled them to harvest huge areas of land, and make profits which could then be put back into the farms, until they were able to become independent.

With sustainability however, there is no real need to ever become independent. In France and Spain, wine and other co-operatives have simply stayed together, enjoying the pool of labour and skills, and content with smaller profits. The increase in standard of living is slow, but this in itself enables the co-operatives to stay ‘beneath the radar’ as it were and out of the state’s eye, with its desire to control everything.

Modern co-operatives include coffee co-ops in South America, and the organic projects in Uganda. Fair Trade, a company which began as a farmer’s co-op to keep profits with the growers instead of the supermarket chains, has developed into an international phenomenon. Organisations and NGOs abound whose job is to help fledgling sustainability projects, like the Green Belt project of Uganda. But how close are Nigerians to being able to use these opportunities?

A commonly held view from the ‘Stupid White Man’ community (apologies to other stupid white men out there) is that Africans are incapable of strategic thinking and unable to plan ahead. This is patently not so: the Nigerian scams are often brilliantly planned and executed.   If, instead of spending their energy scheming plotting and cheating, young people decided to work together to improve their lot, what could not be achieved?

1,309 words

©Jill Rees

04 October 2008

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Tags: co-operative movement, corruption, Leadership, Nigeria, progress, trade unions