THE G7 GROUP of imperialist leaders will meet in Lyon, France, this June. A counter summit outside of around 20,000 people will discuss alternatives to the global austerity policies of the G7. The Brussels-based Campaign for the Cancellation of the Third World Debt (COCAD) is co-ordinating a World Appeal — 'World Bank, IMF WTO: Enough!' - in the months before the Lyon event. To find out more DUNCAN CHAPEL interviewed ERIC TOUSSAINT, a COCAD staff member and a leader of the Fourth International. "COCAD STARTED after a public concert and demonstration in Paris of more than 200,000 people in 1989. François Mitterand invited the other six leaders of the G7 to meet during the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution. The countermobilisation was an mixture of singers, artists and intellectuals, and social and political movements.
We followed it with an appeal for the immediate and unconditional cancellation of the Third World debt. It succeeded in gaining various supporters at the. level of massive organisations, above all in the NGO sector. We have met a very big echo amongst young people. Now we are regularly invited to secondary schools and some colleges.
We make a direct link between the austerity here against public services and the public debt of the state, and again we gained very big support. Behind the public debt crisis in the coun tries of the North, you'll see the same chronology as for the South. It begins at the end of the 1970s, increases in the THERE IS little to rejoice as 1980s. Debt service payments have been very high since ten years ago.
These debt service payments have many consequences which are similar in the North and the South: privatisations; public sector cuts; sackings in the public sector; the reform, or ending. of the welfare state.
From beginning with the Third World debt, COCAD has made a World Appeal against neo-liberal polljuly 1990 London demonstration for repeal of the Third World debt was joined by French socialists Africa: really impressive! So from Zimbabwe now we have 20 addresses. We've sent to the people in Zimbabwe the addresses of the others and now they are in contact. We now have been invited to Senegal and we will make a common meeting with Samir Amin, of the Third World Forum.
World-wide, we're in a situation of imperialist and capitalist offensives. Various sectors which are resisting are trying to have some convergence. That something more or less marginal, but significant. Yesterday COCAD staff were in Paris at a meeting of the organisations which are preparing for the G7 summit in June. Fifty-two organisations support the mobilization and that's what I want to show:- there's AC! [the national anti-unemployment campaign]; the anti-racist movements: Fasti, MRAP, SOS Racisme: the NGOs; trades unions like the CGT. SUD, FSU and at the political level the Communist Party, LCR and the Greens and some anarchists.
That's something more or less new Ten years ago we had big anti-nuclear demonstrations in Britain or Belgium We've had some demonstrations since then against racism and on other single issues. Now we have some general trend which attempts to derive some general conclusions against neo-liberalism.
We want the cancellation of the Third World debt and combine it with the demand to expropriate what the Southern bourgeoisie, allied to imperialism, owns in the North. We want complete expropriation of what they own here - in the banks, businesses. property and so on - and to give it back to the people.
We must support the struggles of these peoples in their struggle against the bourgeoisie. We explain to the people here that we don't have to expropriate these things in order to repay the Third World debt, but to give it back to the peoples of the South because they need it to apply other types of policies. And we favour the expropriation of the allies of imperialism inside their own countries as the Sandinistas did with the Samoza sector."