Thank you for a very interesting post and for the equally interesting comments. For me the morale of the story is that it took staying power – 50 years! – to achieve abolition. It seems that when the issue represents a vested interest for entrenched and powerful forces, campaigners need to dig in for the long haul. These campaigners did not lose steam – even after the ten year set back! – and it leads me to question the ‘winnability’ of campaigns that have sustainable and systemic change as their goal and yet are accompained by a timeline of three to five years.

Take for example the suffragates and their battle for the right to vote. That took fifteen years (1903 – 1918) and another ten to get the right to run for any political office. The Jubilee 2000 coalition ran for ten years -and had some important success – but a lot of the high profile work wiht the international coalition has died down. Could it be that if we had continued this effort for another ten years, we might be having a different conversation about the food security crisis afflicting many developing countries? What about another thirty years to Jubilee 2050 – just as the world population hits 8 billion? Less inequality and as Lisa suggests – a fair playing field where men and women have the ability to feed their families with dignity? Obviously true systemic change takes time so Max…. I am totally with you on the importance of not only challenging, but also regulating, the financial sector. However, since there is ‘passionate and complete oppositon by the financial sector and political leaders in the UK and US’ to the idea of an FTT and considering the history of great campaigns you so elegantly introduced, what should we prepare ourselves for? Ten years and an internationally mandated and enforced Robin Hood Tax or is that twenty years?

[More on Thomas Clarkson here: http://abolition.e2bn.org/box_59.html

I think that campaigns like the Grow campaign are fighting for systemic changes – and I am glad that Oxfam is putting a lot of energy there as well.

I see why people are arguing for the tax – we need more money in order to create change. Yes, definitely. I just think that in order to create real and sustainable change we need to focus on changing the system. No matter how much money we have, if the system doesn’t change them real sustainable change is not possible.

The money generated by FTT needs to be solidly committed to compensate for the 4 trillion dollars in ODA pledges that have never materialized over the past 20 years. It then needs to be harnessed to a robust program to help children in particular as they are wholly dependent on adults for their basic needs.

The FTT proposals are too timid.
They ask for one fifth of one per cent of financial transactions. We should be pushing for a solid 1-2%.
Even at the lower rate, the tax would generate up to 350 billion a year for ODA needs that are going unmet.

The World Food Program feeds 21 million children school lunch in 80 countries every day. With another 3.2 billion a year, that number could rise to 66 million.
Case in point.

So, with sufficient courage, the FTT could transform ODA by providing a consistent flow of funds that are adequate to the needs that go unmet- day after day, as ten million children a year
die of wholly preventable causes.

That’s not a very comfortable boat.

I get it and I’m not opposed to the tax – just as I wouldn’t be opposed to more comfortable boats.

I guess I just wish we couldn’t be putting our time and energies into more systemic changes rather than hoping for rampant capitalism to continue so that we can pick up some of the crumbs to make a difference with.

The FTT can do a great deal to rein in big finance, but even if we do that I think that another financial meltdown is inevitable. The system, in a larger way than just rampant speculation, is the problem.

Again, thanks for the response! It’s good to hear how others are seeing this as well.

I wanted to respond to Lisa and Sam about the Robin Hood Tax.

Of course you are both right on many levels the fight against slavery is far more profound than the fight for Financial Transaction Tax.

I do think the comparison stands up in one main way- the huge power of the financial services industry and big finance generally in the modern era is very similar to the domination of slavery in the British and global economy of the late 18th century.

My firm belief is that the rapid deregulation of the financial sector has been the central driver of the brutal inequality that now sees FTSE 100 bosses getting a 50% pay rise in the year when ordinary people are seeing their pay, services and pensions cut to pay for the national debt run up to bail out banks.

So I would say to Sam that this is in fact a very principled issue- fighting for redistribution of wealth towards the many from the few. Fighting against perncious and unacceptable inequality in our society. Inequality and its ill-effects are the defining issue of our age.

A Financial Transaction Tax, like debt cancellation, is not enough on its own to rein in big finance- but I would disagree with you that it is a neglible thing, and encourage you to look again. There is no doubt that an FTT would be a major blow to the speculation that has led us into this financial crisis. It could lead to a 70% reduction in some of the most febrile and casino-like markets, that generate the billions in bonuses. In fact Joe Stiglitz has compared the FTT (which he supports)to environmental taxes- a tax on the polluting effect of toxic finance. This is also why the FTT is passionately and completely opposed by the financial sector and political leaders in the UK and US.

Or in the founding of Oxfam for that matter with Canon Milford and the first meeting in University Church.

Do the Quakers have a better PR agency ? or is the Church Of England too establishment now to get a mention