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If you woke up on Sunday morning to find a pink sticker attached to the clothes you fell asleep in and a vague recollection of posing next to a big green beer bottle the night before, you were definitely at the Big Cheese. I can safely say I was mistaken for nearly every green vegetable possible that night; cucumber, courgette, leek, but celery was my favourite. However the reality was that encased in the foam suit of armour that muffled the cheesy charts and limited my vision like a periscope, I was actually on the latest leg of a fun filled charity campaign trail.
Charity groups can often seem aloof and elitist; a group for people with high minded ideals, strong political convictions and years of knowledge on the topic in question. In a bid to cut through this image, for the last few weeks I have followed and shadowed the newly created Bollocks to Poverty (BTP) Edinburgh University group as they have embarked on their first campaign. Standing outside Potterrow in a highly conspicuous outfit cajoling the queuing crowds to take part in a photo petition, the reality of charity work became strikingly clear; its draining, but fun and particularly with BTP always unconventional.
The BTP action group, the youth wing of ActionAid, formed in Edinburgh after the hard work and determination of its student leader, Meg Doherty. Since January it has become the 10th university BTP group and the first in Scotland. Its first campaign is a difficult one with large aims to say the least.
In November 2010, ActionAid published an extensive report into the tax dodging practices of the world’s second largest producer of beer, SABmiller. The company is the producer of such well known and ubiquitously consumed beers like Peroni and Grolsch, hence why I found myself inside a costume modelled on a Grolsch beer bottle.
The report accuses the company of using legal and financial loopholes and the re routing of profits into tax havens like the Maldives to effectively minimise the amount of tax they are paying in developing countries where they make their profits. After speaking to government officials, conducting undercover research and using published financial materials, ActionAid believes that in Africa and India; where some of the beer sold internationally for £2bn profits is brewed and bottled, SABmiller has effectively played the law to escape paying £20m to the affected countries in taxes.
In a country where the words cuts cuts cuts seem to have interwoven themselves into the fabric of our daily lives, tax dodging has created a huge and grassroots public anger in the UK. Companies like Vodafone, accused of dodging around £6bn in taxes through the use of tax havens in Germany, have led to a public outcry over the double standards over how big multinational corporations and the individual are treated.
The issue is at the same time very complex and surprisingly simple for campaign groups including ActionAid. Through no one is accusing SABmiller of evading tax, that is not paying taxes through illegal means, they are being accused, alongside many other companies, of utilizing the law to minimise the amount of tax that is payable by means within the law. In a speech at the Liberal Democrat conference earlier in September Danny Alexander called corporate tax dodging “unacceptable in the best of times but in today's circumstances it is morally indefensible.”
In this climate of austerity and we all being “in it together”, the hypocrisy of the tax system was underlined perfectly by a Big Cheese “intellectual” playing devil’s advocate. All you need to do is invest in a good financial lawyer, he told me. Beside the dubious ethics the difference is that unless you are a huge conglomerate with money to throw about, tax dodging is a practice exclusive to the rich and the connected. As activist Jennifer Rush-Cooper told me, she was drawn to the campaign because of this hypocrisy. She was galvanised by a realisation of the “unimaginable extent of imbalance of wealth and power, and the relationship between the two. Actionaid have used the story of one woman, Marta, to illustrate this - she works selling SABMiller products by their factory in Ghana. Her tiny business pays more taxes than the massive multinational one right next door!”
Taxes are what we pay for a civilised society according to the quote emblazoned on the Internal Revenue Service in Washington, DC. They pay for our infrastructure, our social services and everything that makes us a modern society. According to the organisation WaronWant, developing countries loose £250bn every year as a direct result of corporate tax dodging annually. It is shocking to comprehend that Africa looses more to tax dodging than it gets from international aid.
Though many people may see it as an issue of corruption related solely to developing countries, Britain is said to loose £120bn annually to tax dodging and uncollected tax. The power of the BTP campaign as I have come to see is its universality. Speaking to the charismatic, Meg Doherty, she told me about the campaign. “It’s quite a good way of showing that the problems that affect us here also affect people in developing countries, it’s very easy to have that “we are here, we’re in England, this happens here and that happens there in developing countries” mentality but this sort of campaign ties across the [developed and developing worlds] and unites a lot of people” She rejects the belief of many people that corruption can be the cause of tax dodging in developing counties like Ghana, the focus of the ActionAid report, “it’s not because they’re a corrupt country anymore than we are, if it was then why would it be happening all over the world?”
Though a lack of certainty over how to act against injustice have dogged campaign groups in the past, something seems to have changed and affirmative and often unconventional action has become widespread. As Meg says, Tax Dodging “is the kind of issue you can get upset about but also do something about”. UkUncut has led the way with massive sit-ins targeting companies accused of tax dodging and recently Bedlam has been part of a national theatrical debate on this issue with their Theatre Uncut production. Standing in my beer bottle outfit it is easy to feel isolated and feel your voice is insignificant in the bigger picture but once you realise that your are part of a larger grassroots movement, you feel empowered by the sense of collective force.
Throughout the campaign trail the question of the legality of what SABmiller and other high profile companies are doing has been a constant issue. Even though tax dodging is seen by many as morally unacceptable it is legal and so justified by some. The fact that this practice has ingrained itself so much into the way that the world does business is apparent in the way that it is seen by many to be a legitimate aspect of business (an opinion voiced by a number of students approached by the beer bottles).
SABmiller have been following ActionAid’s campaign closely and in response to the accusation put forward by the group have defended their company. They state that they do not take part in aggressive tax planning and have cited the investment they have made to the African countries where they operate, valued at US$500m annually. Talking to Meg, she accepts this to be true in part. “They have huge breweries in central Africa and produce the top beer in Africa, that produces a lot of money for African people all over the continent. It provides jobs, it provides work. But at the same time it is something that everyone is expected to do, ...”
I had to clarify if she meant dodge tax? She smiled at my confusion, it was a long day I must admit “No, paying taxes in general, we don’t pay taxes now [as students] but in the long run if we don’t pay taxes there are serious consequences, you get thrown in prison; all sorts happen. But a very different set of rules appears for individuals and giant businesses. What I don’t understand and ActionAid don’t understand as a whole is why a huge multibillion pound company who make £2bn profit each year can get away with something the average person cannot get away with.”
Raising awareness through beer bottle antics and a petition on the back of beer mats is only part of the campaign and as Jenny accepts, this won’t single handily prevent SABmiller operating as they do “but that was never really the plan”. The plan is for a grassroots student movement and this will hopefully be achieved through galvanising the student unions into proactive action. BTP has been in communication with EUSA about banning SABmiller products. After speaking to Liz Rawlings EUSA President they were placed into contact with Sam Hansford VPS. Meg told me, “He said that we don’t actually stock SABMiller products in the university at the moment, but that is purely because the NUS don’t stock them. And if the NUS did start stocking them we would start stocking them, it is a complicated issue because you can’t really ban something that is not here.”
However this has not discouraged them, but rather developed even greater momentum for the campaign and brought them a step closer up the power chain. This humble group of seven is now in contact with the decision makers at the NUS. Overcome with excitement but feeling certain hesitation over a small group being able to affect huge policy I was told “It’s so easy to feel like they are so huge and you’re so small. Everyone [at BTP] feels it and we had a meeting the other day and we were like “we are talking to the NUS that’s really scary, we don’t have anything to say to them”
The reality is that this small group of seven energetic, optimistic and hardworking student campaigners are now communicating with Susan Nash VP (Society and Citizenship). BTP Edinburgh is looking at the possibility of engaging with all the other BTP university groups spread about the UK to create an organised pressure to officially ban SABmiller products in student unions into the foreseeable future. If just one group is able to on its own develop a dialogue with top student politician, the possibility of what a national movement can achieve is huge.
With growing success in their campaign, BTP is looks positively at their future. Activist Jennifer Hanlon sees the effectiveness of the campaign group as a result of their unique approach to charity work. The focus is all about putting the fun into campaigning and about getting people to contribute their unique talents to the group. They joke that they are strongly anti-cake sale and they are justified by the success of their engraining alternative campaigns. By applying a festival feel to their work, (Meg found herself inspired to join the group as a “young and drunk person running around at Reading festival”), the group has an energy and vibrancy that suits students.
They believe that simply sending out leaflets informing you of the depressing realities of what they are campaigning about is not the answer. Preaching to people or simply sitting behind a table and not engaging with people directly doesn’t inspire action. Jenny agrees saying she’s “pretty sure a cake sale wouldn’t get a passive student to care about the damaging effects of tax dodging on a developing country!” BTP is thriving on their ability to make a difference whilst doing something that people love and this has been the plan since the very first email sent out to all students just before Christmas (Meg laughs at the realisation of having been one of those “annoying people to send you one of the 12 emails you get a day”)
Still continuing with the campaign against tax dodgers, BTP are building momentum for a “recruitment drive” as they jokingly call it into next year. Plans are in the pipe line for creating a big presence at next year’s Fresher’s Fair, hoping to draw in as many eager first years into the action group as well as developing a following with established students. With effective autonomy mixed with huge support from BTP headquarters in London, the team is able continue developing into a unique, effective and engaging campaign group. If the responses I have experienced so far are anything to go by, students react as much to the way in which the group operates as much as the campaign messages. Keep a look out for big green beer bottles. |