STARVING AFRICA New danger from aid cuts

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ORGANISED! REAGANOMICS has alr eady left two million people dest itute and charity food offices boor ning across the US.

Now it is going to spread devastation much wider.

The US government has forced a big reduction in the funds of the World Bank's Development Association, a major organiser of international aid.

IDA needed . $24 billion between now and 1987 to maintain its previous spending levels. Its officials asked for $16 billion from the contributing governments. All, except the US, would go at least as high as $12 billion. The US forced the figure down to $9 billion.

International aid was already stagnant. Aid from the advanced capitalist countries (OECD) was 0.5% of their national income in 1965. Since the early "70s it has gone down to about 0.35%.

Britain Britain's overseas aid has gone down from 0.52% of national income in 1979 to 0.38% in 1982.

In the mid-'70s, aid from oilexporting states boosted the total - but that, too, has now begun to decline.

For many of the world's poorest countries, the effect of further aid cuts may be disastrous.

In the poorer countries of Africa, during the 1970s, aid covered 40% of all investment and 20% of all imports. And the international debt squeeze means that those countries are already in trouble with their import bills and investment projects.

This aid, at the best of times, was far from pure generosity. 'Aid as imperialism' was the title of one book, and that about summed it up.

Most of the aid was not straight grants, but just longterm loans on easier terms. In return for those loans the big capitalist states got fat export orders.

According to the Observer, British companies got £1.40 in export orders for every fl the government put into IDA.

Profitable

The projects financed by aid were by no means always the most useful for the people of the country being 'aided' - rather, the most profitable for the multinationals. And aid was also used as a politica. weapon to prop up pro-imperialist governments in the Third World.

But then public sector investment within the advanced capitalist countries was never socialist, either. The cuttingback of it has still had devastating results.

Overseas aid is being cut for much the same reasons as public sector investment: the capitalists, stricken by crisis, have cut back projects offering a longterm return and gone all out for short-term profit.

Millions will pay the price in malnutrition and starvation. Socialists should be demanding that the rich capitalist governments give millions, not so much in aid as in reparations for the damage they have done in the past, to the Third World.

... it is more than a coincidence that the leadership of the Irish Labour Party are at this very time trying to start a witchhunt against the Marxists in the This will not sound too bizarre in the 26 Counties, which recently lost a minister of justice in the following circumstances.

His brother-in-law was due to appear in court on a traffic offence. The minister of justice had the chief witness detained by the RUC as a very dangerous man during a visit to the Six Counties, so that he could not get to court to testify!

It is not self-evidently impossible, therefore, that the raid was as Militant says inspired by leaders of the Labour Party to create an atmosphere which would help them purge Militant.

But I'm not convinced. The Irish Labour Party purges its anti-coalitionists pretty frequently. What do they need the police for?

And who would believe Irish Militant was involved in what they call "individual terrorism'? Certainly no-one who knows Get Name Address What is the most likely expl nation for the raid? The poli mind works in strange ways, al maybe someone was working a cording to the principle: if seems utterly improbable, thi maybe there is something in it. Militant, with its strange mi ture of ferocious dogmatism ar quiet propagandist routin combined with support for tl expansion of Stalinism, which considers progressive, by mi tary means (in Afghanistan does take some getting used to It is not impossible that som one could become convince that there is more to it tha meets the eye, though in fa there is not.

Or maybe someone in 1 around the government did si up the raid, and Dick Spring • sensitive to the recent scanda such as recent prime minist Haughey's use of the police 1 interfere with critical journa ists - has thought better of and is covering tracks.

Messages of protest should b sent to the Taoiseach, Garre Fitzgerald, Dail Eireanı Dublin.

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