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.
