The case for a fairer distribution of wealth is stronger than the argument for cuts that hit the weakest, says Owen Tudor
Robin Hood is the archetypal hero of redistributive social justice. So he was the obvious choice for the campaign launched last week by a representative sample of civil society in favour of a financial transactions tax.
Trade unions, churches, charities and green groups are united in demanding that the fruits of globalisation should be more fairly distributed. The campaign could be even bigger than the Put People First coalition which protested against the global economic crisis last year and demanded no return to business as usual.
So far, 75 organisations have joined the Robin Hood tax campaign and every day more are signing up. Green groups, including Greenpeace and the RSPB, are keen to close the funding gap that caused so many problems for the Copenhagen climate talks. Development charities such as Oxfam and ActionAid want to see real progress this year on the Millennium Development Goals which are due to be achieved in just five years’ time. Health, education and sanitation all need a boost if the goals are to be reached. And unions and churches – from Unite to the Salvation Army – are worried about the social effects of the cuts in public services that some claim are inevitable, given the level of government borrowing needed to bail out the banks and tackle the recession.
These concerns are reproduced across the G20. The International Trade Union Confederation is pressing the International Monetary Fund to recommend a financial transactions tax at the G20 finance ministers meeting in April. In Germany, the Tax Against Poverty campaign has collected sufficient petition signatures to place the idea on the agenda of the Parliament. In the United States, trade unionists and other progressives have secured support from Congressional figures such as Nancy Pelosi. Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy in France and Lula in Brazil are also keen.
The Robin Hood tax campaign is calling for a series of taxes – on share trading, currency speculation, derivatives and more exotic transactions – varying between 0.005 per cent and 0.5 per cent. That could raise as much as $400 billion a year around the world. Even if implemented in this country alone, it would be a major step forward.
It could also change the terms of the political debate over public spending.
The prevailing wisdom is that returning growth – so far, so weak – is not enough to plug the gap in the public finances.
That gap was caused by a combination of falling tax revenues due to the recession, action to boost demand to make the recession shorter and shallower, and the money spent on bank bailouts. So it directly results from the risky bank behaviour that caused the crisis in the first place.
A Robin Hood tax could help close that gap without the cuts in public services, or increases in other taxes that would hit ordinary people more directly, like VAT or income tax. Instead, it would penalise those risky financial practices.
So the question is not really whether to tax financial transactions, as many right wing commentators have asked. The question is whether the Robin Hood tax is better than cutting public services or raising other taxes? Visit www.robinhoodtax.org.uk for more information and to sign up to the campaign.
Owen Tudor is the TUC’s head of European Union and international relations.
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