War on Want

A couple of months before I left the Morning Star I moved to Caledonian Road and started to scour newspaper ads for a job. The first to catch my attention was for a publicity/fund-raiser vacancy at War on Want, the development agency, and the address was Caledonian Road. Fate was playing its hand again. I went for the interview feeling very positive, but one of the panel members was very anti-communist and very aggressive in his questioning. I left the interview room feeling quite certain I wouldn't get the job, and was really surprised when I received the phone-call confirming my appointment.
The director mary Dines put me to work straightaway on her pet project in Eritrea. She asked me to produce a leaflet publicising the effects of the Ethiopian bombing of their villates. she gave me photos of small children with their limbs torn off by the bombs and my task was to appeal for money for hospital equipment. I used one of her more harrowing photos and pulled at the readers' heartstrings in the text. When I showed it to the staff, expecting praise, I was roundly abused for exploiting the victims and putting over a Charity image. I tried to ward off their proper anger by saying I had been briefed by the Director, upon which the staff rep went in to berate her, and I was instructed to change the leaflet. A salutary lesson.
During my first year at the agency we organised a tour of Britain for representatives of the Aboriginal peoples of Queensland, Australia, who were trying to win support for their campaign on land rights. When they arrived in this country the cold hit them badly and they had no winter clothing, so they had to borrow my husband's long-johns.
When later a new director was appointed, he aimed to get money out of Europe to expand our work in Central America, Bangladesh, Southern Africa and the Horn, as well as starting up a UK programme. I was uneasy about his plans. I believed that small is beautiful and I feared that the agency would get too big too quickly.
He gave me the job of setting up the UK programme. We were concerned about the growing poverty and unemployment in Britain. Thus we promoted and supported projects such as workers' co-operatives; Unemployed Workers' Centres; and the Centre for Alternative Iindustrial and Technologica Systems, which aimed to produce socially useful goods. Recognising that women remained among the most disadvantaged in our society, we also supported women's employment projects and training schemes, and Back Women's Co-operatives.
The expansion of our work meant the arrival of new staff and the office politics began to change. They opposed the equal pay policy for all workers which we had been trying to achieve, and they were against servicing themselves as we had previously done. Hierarchical structures were set up and I was no longer happy in the office.
Despite our differences, Terry, the new director, invited me to go to Somalia with him to see if War on Want could work there. I hoped to give support to women's craft co-operatives. En route to Mogadishu we had to stop overnight in Rome and there I met an Italian man who was also going to Somalia. He gave me his card and invited us to visit his banana plantation ot too far out of Mogadishu. When Somalia was under Italian "protection" he had owned the plantation, he told me, but now it had been taken over by the government. However, recognising his expertise, they had asked him to oversee its management. As Terry and I had a heavy schedule I doubted whether I would be able to visit, but when we arrived in Mogadishu w found there was an official two day holiday so Terry suggested we might as well take advantage of my friend's offer of hospitality. I phoned him and he happily came to pick us up in his car. When we reached the plantation we saw little groups of women and children standing at the entrance to their small thatched huts all smiling at us. The land around their huts was parched and dusty, but when we rreached the Italian's bungalow, it was set in gardens full of brightly coloured flowers and shrubs and his verandah was lined with well-watered potted plants. An outhouse was used as the kitchen and his cook/housekeeper lived there with her children. H called her to bring food and she came in with her head bowed and eyes down as she was a Muslim. She seemed frightened and he told us that her previous boss had raped her.
The plantation looked very neglected but was still productive - four sections growing bananas and a patch filled with coconut trees in which lived a colony of monkeys. As we walked through their territory they pelted us with stones and nuts.
When we did start work, Terry went up north to visit the refugee camps and i went to meet women being trained in different crafts and to visit a small co-operative that had already been set up. The training centre was in an old Montessori school where they were being taught to cook by different methods fro traditional through to a modern cooker. An American woman was teaching them tye-dying and others were showing them how to use sewing machines and knitting machines. In another workshop they were making traditional baskets and in another they were making children's clothes. Just outside the school the co-o ran a small shop where their crafts were sold at very high prices.
I became very friendly with my interpreter, Fatima, from the Women's Ministry. She was a Muslim and very proud of the fact that she had been educated, which was unusual for women. Her mother, a widow, was very worried that her daughter was still unmarried. It had been her uncles - "enlightened men" she called them, who had insisted she take the educational opportunities offered her under the supposedly marxist regime of President Barre. She also discussed with me the issue of female circumcision which she had undergone and which was still common practice in Somalia even though the government did not approve.
I was unhappy about a lot of things I saw in Somalia, particularly the bribery and corruption. Ships full of much-needed grain were left waiting outside the harbour for days until the palms of several harbour officials were well greased. Food meant for free distribution was being sold in the market. And it was disheartening to see tractors and other vitally necessary machinery left rusting in the fields for lack of spare parts. So we decided against getting involved in supporting projects in Somalia. We would never be able to be certain that our money and goods would reach the intended destination and we did not have the resources or personnel to be able to check it.