To continue reading please register or login to your OHW+ account.
Claims that globalisation is a conspiracy between business and government have been dismissed as utter nonsense by the chairman of BP Amoco.
Speaking at the Industrial Society's annual John Garnett lecture in London, Peter Sutherland said globalisation has a life and dynamic of its own. "It is equal nonsense to pretend that globalisation is a policy that governments are free to pursue or abandon.
"Mobile phones and electronic data transfer cannot be abolished by governments. Boeing and Airbus are not about to stop building cargo planes, while CD manufacturers in Europe and cut flower producers in Colombia are not about to stop using them," he told business leaders during the Industrial Society's Leadership Week.
Sutherland, who is director-general of GATT, used his lecture on "globalisation and a just society" as a platform to attack the public demonstrators at the World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle and the recent World Economic Forum meeting in Davos.
"Next time you see slogans saying 'The WTO Kills People', take a moment to think about what the perpetrators of such rubbish are seeking to tear down," he said.
