Owen Tudor

This weekend sees the first G20 Finance Ministers meeting of 2011, and today, Thursday, was the second global day of action for a Financial Transactions Tax – known in the UK and several other countries as the Robin Hood Tax. Campaigners in 25 countries, 12 of them from the G20, lobbied the British, French and German embassies and took part in media stunts. We were calling on the French and German governments to turn their commitments into concrete action, and the British government to give up its perverse defence of the finance sector that caused the global financial crisis. In Britain, protests were held yesterday outside high street branches of some of the worst culprits, in London, Glasgow, Cardiff, Portsmouth, Bristol, Hereford and Wilmslow (George Osborne’s constituency). The movement is growing, and is having an impact: French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde has singled out public campaigns as one of the main reasons why FTTs are on the G20 agenda. We launched a petition on the Make Finance Work website, which people can embed on their own (as well as sign), aimed at the G20 summit in November. This year will be a crucial one for the campaign, but we have got off to a great start.