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London. December 7 1998 (ICFTU OnLine): ICFTU General Secretary Bill Jordan urged the British Government to stand by its tradition of human rights by helping to bring General Pinochet to trial, by agreeing to his extradition to Spain, following the Law Lords’ judgement.

‘I trust and hope that this country will honour the fiftieth anniversary (of the UN Declaration and of ILO Convention 87) by helping to bring to justice a man who destroyed democratic development in Chile, and symbolised a crude and corrupt surrender to the dictatorship of the market’, said Bill Jordan.

Bill Jordan speaking at a Conference in London to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the International Labour Organisation’s Convention 87 on the Freedom of Association. The Conference in London is being organised by the International Labour Organisation, in cooperation with the Trades Union Congress.

In his speech Bill Jordan drew attention to the fact that the United Kingdom was closely involved in the drafting of Convention 87, and was the first country to ratify it on June 27 1949. Since then 122 countries have followed. The most recent country was Indonesia, which pushed through its ratification after the fall of President Suharto. Indonesia learnt, to its cost, that a country whose development was based on a booming export drive, at the expense of workers rights would find that it lacked the necessary level of democracy or civil society to survive the economic turmoil in which it found itself.

To end its own campaign on Convention 87, the ICFTU is writing to those governments which have not already ratified Convention 87 urging them to mark the 50th anniversary by carrying out ratification as swiftly as possible.

Next year the ICFTU will celebrate the fiftieth year of its own foundation, which also took place in London in 1949. During 1999 it has a number of events planned to mark its fifty years in existence.

International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU)
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please contact: Luc Demaret on: 00 322 224 0212 - press@icftu.org

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