Tag Archives: established interest groups

On recklessness

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Having just returned from a week in a once thriving fishing community in Portugal, I read an article about a much-needed campaign to improve the access of small-scale fishermen to EU-regulated fishing quotas. EU fishing quotas were introduced in the 1970s and 1980s to help protect European fish stocks and the livelihoods of European fishermen. Perversely, through bad design and questionable implementation at national level, they have ended up exclusively favouring the big fishing industry, who are trawling the seas unsustainably, depleting fish stocks and destroying centuries-old small-scale fishing communities all over the EU.

In short, the quotas are blasting into oblivion the very things they were designed to protect.

The Common Fisheries Policy reform expected in 2012-2013 will be a real test of how willing and capable we are of prioritising sustainability and the survival of traditional communities over the interests of big business. The Fair Fishing Manifesto published by Greenpeace and Nutfa  is not some tree-hugging pipe dream. It’s the illustration of multiple tragedies taking place right now in front of our very eyes. They require us to pay attention and take urgent action.

I married into a Portuguese family with a proud fishing heritage in Peniche, a tiny windswept rock of Atlantic wilderness and mind-boggling human resilience. Two generations back, they earned their living exclusively from fishing, along with most of the people of Peniche. Arnaldo, my husband’s paternal grandfather, went out to sea in his own small boat, while Zacarias, the other granddad, worked on traditional ‘traineiras’, finishing his career on the charmingly named ‘O Atleta’ (The Athlete). Grandma Isabel spent her days mending fishing nets with other fishermen’s wives, uncle Arnaldo was a fish auctioneer at the Peniche fish market, while my wonderfully brave and wise father-in-law started his working life building fishing boats on the beach at the old Peniche ‘estaleiro’.

These days, the only family member involved in fishing is uncle Urban, selling fish from his little refrigerated van and finding it increasingly hard to make ends meet because of fish stock depletion and decreasing profit margins. Peniche itself is faced with an employment crisis, with the only opportunities on offer being a handful of food processing plants and an emerging tourism industry fuelled primarily by young Northern European surfing enthusiasts. The ocean has been fished to within an inch of its life.

Two generations ago, the people of Peniche knew not to fish all year round, to allow stocks time to reproduce, grow and replenish. Nowadays such practices are deemed commercially unsound. Our trawlers are merciless and relentless, our technology unbeatable, the few who profit are drunk on greed, while our oceans lie increasingly empty and communities wither away.

There was nothing unavoidable about any of this. But it takes courage to keep greed and recklessness in check, even when not doing so means spiralling uncontrollably towards disaster. Us humans have real trouble imagining alternatives to ‘business-as-usual’.  By next year the EU’s decision making-process will be complete and we will know if the CFP reform is anything more than another collective failure of the imagination. I wholeheartedly hope that it is.

Democracy CPR

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Business secretary Vince Cable says the financial sector is disproportionately influential in policy circles. This shouldn’t surprise anyone. I touched on this in Amplified’s first blog post. There are important questions to be answered here about the quality of democracy and the fair representation of social and economic interests.

It is unrealistic to expect the private sector to curtail the amount of investment it makes into lobbying. What we can and should do is enrich public debate in a way that puts pressure on the policy agenda. It has not been sufficiently clear for a very long time that the financial sector or indeed any other big business stakeholder are not by default guardians of the public interest or of widely shared social goals. This has however long been an underlying assumption of political debate and policy output.

The tide seems to be turning. Nef’s Andrew Simms is pulling no punches: “This looks like full-scale mobilisation for an economic war of attrition with the finance industry on one side, and the rest of society, business and industry on the other.” This new narrative is sorely needed, belligerent though it may sound. Only a couple of years ago, Big Society guru Jesse Norman was framing social conflict in entirely different terms, personifying the state as a life-sucking force quashing all conversations: “In conversational terms, one might think of the state as the domineering bore at the table, whose loudness overwhelms the talk of others. But a better parallel might be that of the patriarch whose favourites thrive, but in whose unspeaking presence others feel robbed of air and automatically fall silent”.

When Norman was writing about this in his guide to the Big Society, anti-statism was if not the only game in town, then certainly the biggest. What the emergence of new narratives does is help ensure that the “ills” that are being addressed in policy output correspond to the values and preoccupations that best represent us a society. It may sound obvious, but variety has long been missing from the narrative palette underpinning debate, at least in its mainstream manifestations. With an obviously depleting effect on democracy. Vince Cable may have just administered some much-needed CPR.

Ambition

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A few months ago I offered advice to a humanist organisation doing great work to promote human rights and equality in Europe and beyond. We spoke at length about their impression of being denied access to the key discussions taking place within the EU institutions on matters to do with faith and inter-cultural dialogue. I couldn’t help but agree that inter-faith debates in Brussels frequently exclude secularism. This is a significant systemic failure that deserves to be addressed – for its influence on political debate and project funding, if anything.

I spent a long time before our meeting reflecting on the reasons why EU debates on matters of faith are not as inclusive as they ought to be. I have direct experience of running inter-cultural conferences in the European Parliament. So I understand the influence that external actors can have at every stage of the process. Such external influences can be a fundamentally positive way of keeping political debates relevant at a societal level. If they retain a sense of balance, that is.

The question is who is responsible for ensuring balance and fairness. The institutions themselves have a lot of power in this respect, naturally. But, from my experience, they are also fairly responsive to external pressures. Some humanists fear, for example, the conspiratorial influence of the Catholic Church. It’s certainly true that many MEPs and EU civil servants do not disclose their allegiance and links to particular faith organisations. But the reality is that most lobbying by churches takes place overtly, using professional strategies and established channels. The Catholic Church are a good example of successful lobbying that results in influence on political debate and a seat at the discussion table.

Amplified makes it its mission to help social progressives gain access to the corridors of power via the same established channels used by conventional interest group lobbying. They must overcome their outsider complex and be armed with the knowledge, confidence and contacts that are needed to have an impact. The balance of influence often tilts towards established interests, but their wheels also squeak much louder. This can and should change.