Peter Gallagher

From a 1984 speech to the Con­fed­er­a­tion of British Indus­try by Hugh Cor­bet, then Direc­tor of the London-based Trade Pol­icy Research Centre.

The sit­u­a­tion* puts one in mind ofthe report pre­pared by a well-known firm of man­age­ment con­sul­tants com­mis­sioned to advise on the com­mer­cial dif­fi­cul­ties of a famous sym­phony orches­tra. Part of the report that was pre­pared dealt with a con­cert per­for­mance by the orches­tra of Schubert’s Unfin­ished Sym­phony. The com­ments of the con­sul­tants read as follows:

1. For con­sid­er­able peri­ods, four oboe play­ers had noth­ing to do. The num­ber in this sec­tion should be reduced and their work spread over the whole of the orches­tra, thus elim­i­nat­ing peaks of inactivity.
2. All twelve vio­lins were play­ing iden­ti­cal notes. This seems to be unnec­es­sary dupli­ca­tion and the staff in this sec­tion should be dras­ti­cally cut. If a large vol­ume of sound is really required, it could be obtained through an elec­tronic amplifier.
3. Much effort was absorbed in the play­ing of demi-semi-quavers. This appears to be an exces­sive refine­ment and it is rec­om­mended that all notes should be rounded up to the near­est semi-quaver. If this were done it would be pos­si­ble to use trainees and low-grade operators.
4. No use­ful pur­pose is served by repeat­ing with horns the pas­sage that has already been han­dled by strings. If all such redun­dant pas­sages were elim­i­nated, the con­cert could be reduced from two hours to twenty minutes.
5. Finally, if Schu­bert had attended to all these mat­ters, he would prob­a­bly have been able to fin­ish his symphony.

Just as the con­sul­tants over­looked the pur­pose of the orches­tra, so trade nego­tia­tors appear to over­look the pur­pose of the GATT, which is to pro­vide a sta­ble insti­tu­tional envi­ron­ment for the con­duct of inter­na­tional trade, enabling pri­vate enter­prises to know where they stand vis-u-vis their gov­ern­ments, and the gov­ern­ments of other coun­tries, so that they can plan for expan­sion or if need be for adjust­ment — thereby facil­i­tat­ing the process of eco­nomic growth.

* 1984 was marked by ran­courous dis­putes and ‘blowups’ over prob­lems that were even­tu­ally addressed in the Uruguay Round: PWG

The sug­ges­tion that the nego­tia­tors (now WTO rather than GATT) have lost a sense of what the Orga­ni­za­tion is for, while build­ing the com­plex maze of man­age­ri­al­ist ‘fixes’ that is the pro­posed Doha deal, is still apt.