"Let's make poverty history..."

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown have the opportunity to change history for the developing world. That was the passionate argument of U2 singer Bono in a speech that put Africa at the heart of the Labour Party Conference at the end of September.

Labour has to “get real” in facing the challenge of global poverty, said Bono, in an impassioned call for people to respond to the crisis of AIDS, unfair trade and unpayable debt in Africa. Britain, he said, had a real chance to effect change when it took up the G8 presidency next year.

Below we carry edited highlights, but you can read the whole speech here.

Journey of a rock star
“I'm here as part of a journey that began in 1984-85, with BandAid and LiveAid. Another grizzled rock star, my friend Sir Bob Geldof, issued a challenge to 'feed the world.' It was a great moment, it changed my life. That summer, my wife Ali and I went to Ethiopia, on the quiet, to see for ourselves what was going on. We lived there for a month, working at an orphanage. The locals knew me as “Dr Good Morning”. The children called me “The Girl with the Beard” (don't ask).

Africa is a magical place. And anybody who ever gave anything there got a lot more back. A shining continent, with beautiful royal faces… Ethiopia not just blew my mind, it opened my mind. On our last day at the orphanage a man handed me his baby and said: take him with you. He knew in Ireland his son would live; in Ethiopia his son would die. I turned him down. In that moment, I started this journey. In that moment, I became the worst thing of all: a rock star with a cause.”

An emergency, not a cause
“Except this isn't a cause. 6,500 Africans dying a day of treatable, preventable disease-dying for want of medicines you and I can get at our local chemist-that's not a cause, that's an emergency. That's why I'm here today. You know, I could make the soft argument for action – or I could make the more muscular one. The soft argument you've all heard before. People are dying over there, needlessly dying, at a ridiculous rate and for the stupidest of reasons: money. They're dying because they don't have a pound a day to pay for the drugs that could save their lives.

“There are hard facts that make up the soft argument. This soft, moral case I know you understand. And if you're already converted, you don't need me preaching at you. Though I must admit I enjoy it.

“So let me make the other, more muscular argument… Let's be clear about what this problem is and what this problem isn't.”

The first tough truth…
“Firstly, this is not about charity, it's about justice.

Let me repeat that: This is not about charity, this is about justice.

And that's too bad. Because you're good at charity. The British, like the Irish, are good at it. Even the poorest neighbourhoods give more than they can afford. We like to give, and we give a lot. But justice is a tougher standard. Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice; it makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties, it doubts our concern, it questions our commitment.

Because there's no way we can look at Africa- a continent bursting into flames -and if we're honest conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.

Anywhere else. Certainly not here. In Europe. Or America. Or Australia, or Canada.

There's just no chance. You see, deep down, if we really accepted that Africans were equal to us, we would all do more to put the fire out. We've got watering cans; when what we really need are the fire brigades. That's the first tough truth.”

The second…
“The second is that to fight AIDS, and its root cause, the extreme poverty in which it thrives, it's not just development policy. It's a security strategy. The war against terror is bound up in the war against poverty, I didn't say that, Colin Powell said that. And when a military man from the right starts talking like that maybe we should listen! Because maybe, today, these are one and the same. People get nervous when I talk like this. I get nervous when I talk like this. But in these distressing and disturbing times, surely it's cheaper, and smarter, to make friends out of potential enemies than it is to defend yourself against them…”

The hope for 2005
“Listen, this is a real moment coming up, this could be real history, this could be something that your children, your children’s children, that our whole generation, will be remembered for at the beginning of the 21st century. Putting right a relationship that has been so very wrong for so very long. The North, the South, the Have Nots, the have yachts.

Britain is in a unique position here. I know you've got a chequered past. I'm Irish, let's not go there. Forget the plundering of Empire, I wont even bring it up… You have real relationships in these places - real relationships-right across the developing world. You could be the interface between the worlds of the haves and the-have-nothing-at alls. But Empire aside, we have to accept that even people with short memories are not sure they like the look of us.

In certain quarters of the world, Brand UK, Brand EU not to mention Brand USA-are not their shiniest. They're in real trouble. The neon sign is fizzing and crackling a bit, isn't it? The storefront's a little grubby. Our regional branch managers are getting nervous. The problems facing the developing world afford us in the developed world a chance to re-describe ourselves in very dangerous times. This is not just heart - it's smart.”

Making poverty history
“If I could ask you to think a hundred years ahead, to imagine what we, and our times, will be remembered for, I would venture three things: the Internet, the war on terror, and the fate of the continent of Africa. We are the first generation that can look extreme and stupid poverty in the eye, look across the water to Africa and elsewhere and say this and mean it: we have the cash, we have the drugs, we have the science -- but do we have the will? Do we have the will to make poverty history?

Some say we can't afford to. I say we can't afford not to.’

Read the whole of Bono’s speech here