4 days ago
Tony Blair: Bono and Geldof saved millions of lives with Live Aid
Sir Tony Blair says Bob Geldof and Bono have saved millions of lives.
The rock stars have often been labelled as western do-gooders but a new documentary sets out their influence on world leaders since the Live Aid concert 40 years ago. 'What Bob and Bono and others have done over the years has resulted in, I don't know, probably millions of people living who otherwise would have died,' Blair says.
The former British prime minister credits Geldof with getting him to champion African debt relief, while George W Bush tells how Bono persuaded him to pledge $15 billion to fight Aids in Africa.
In the series, Live Aid at 40: When Rock 'n' Roll Took on the World, Bush recalls a 2005 meeting with Bono and Geldof before a G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. 'I didn't have a clue who Geldof was. He and Bono came in, and Bono was at least somewhat presentable; Geldof looked like he crawled out from underneath the ground,' Bush says with a chuckle, before adding: 'But he was a good guy. He cared deeply.'
Blair's former adviser Justin Forsyth says: 'Bob was effing this and effing that, even with presidents and prime ministers, and Bono had this kind of deep empathy with people and knew how to kind of appeal to their inner souls.'
Geldof adds: 'He [Bono] wants to give the world a great big hug, and I want to punch its lights out.'At the start of the series, Geldof speaks about a conversation with Paula Yates, his wife at the time, that prompted the idea of Live Aid and how he had to explain who Status Quo were to a bemused Prince Charles during the concert on July 13, 1985.
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Geldof later reflects on his subsequent campaign to obtain debt relief for Africa, begun when he returned to an orphanage in Ethiopia in 2003. 'I see these children whose parents have died because of no food. It annoys me to tears of frustration. I go ballistic at this point, as ever, and 'get me Downing Street'.' Blair, at a G8 summit in Évian-les-Bains, France, took a call from an aide relaying Geldof's concerns. 'I remember shouting, 'It's happening again,'' Geldof said.
In a subsequent meeting, the British prime minster agreed to head a Commission for Africa after Geldof set out the case for the world's poorest countries to be freed from debt. 'I wouldn't have reacted that way at anyone, but it was him with his track record, his commitment, his knowledge, his dedication. And therefore, it made sense,' Blair said.
Kate Garvey, another aide to Blair, recalls: 'He [Geldof] was driving the agenda inside government.'
When Blair decided to raise debt relief at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, he knew it was critical to persuade Bush. They also had the backing of Bono, who had formed an unlikely alliance with the Bush administration when he got access to Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser and a 'huge fan' of U2, soon after Bush's election. She says in the documentary that Bush's tastes went 'toward country music'. Pictures show the president smiling as an aide asks: 'You do know who Bono is, don't you?'
He replies: 'Yeah, he married Cher.' But Bono found common ground when he brought an 'ancient Irish Bible' as a gift to the White House, as he knew Bush was a 'man of faith'. Bono wanted the US administration to take action on the Aids pandemic, at a time when 6,000 Africans a day were dying. 'I'm being informed that there's a pandemic destroying an entire generation of people on the continent of Africa at the time that I'm the president,' Bush says.
Around a year later, in his state of the union address, Bush pledged $15 billion over the following five years to 'turn the tide against Aids in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean'.
Bobby Shriver, co-founder with the U2 frontman of Data (Debt, Aids, Trade in Africa), said: 'Bono got George Bush to give $15 billion to black people who don't vote, who have Aids.'
Bono says Pepfar, the president's emergency plan for Aids relief, was the largest health intervention in history, adding: 'It has saved 26 million lives.'
In the series, the lack of diversity of the rock acts in the charity concerts is debated with Harvey Goldsmith, the promoter behind the Live Aid and Live 8 concerts. 'I didn't care whether they were black, brown, green or yellow, if they were a big act and they were great and they wanted to play, great,' he says.
Bono does think it could have been more inclusive of the African continent. 'We did our best to make it more involving of African acts and failed,' he says, referring to the Live 8 gigs. At the Gleneagles G8 summit, a few days after the Live 8 concerts, aides recall how Blair rushed to London from Scotland when he was told of the July 7 bombings. When the exhausted prime minister arrived back towards the end of the summit, Forsyth says the Blair had little patience with Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, who was holding up agreement on Africa.
'He went down into the bar with all the leaders there, and their wives. I remember him, not to exaggerate, but he had Schröder up against the wall, saying, you know, 'We've got to do this deal?' And at that moment, Schröder gave in, and we got across the line with the Germans.'
The G8 leaders agreed immediately to cancel $40 billion of debt owed by 18 of the world's poorest countries, and promised to increase aid to developing nations by $50 billion a year by 2010.
Live Aid had critics. Kumi Naidoo, a human rights activist, said: 'There were many good people with good intentions that were involved both with Live Aid and Live 8. I think that there was not enough sensitivity to understanding that it's not right for a bunch of predominantly white male folks to get together and say, 'We got to frame a continent like this.''
Bono fears the 40th anniversary of Live Aid will have a different resonance for global aid than events in 2005.
'The 20th anniversary was just a convergence of good fortune and good actors on the world stage. But what's happening now in politics means this anniversary could be a funeral for the last 40 years.'
Live Aid at 40 airs on Sunday, July 6, on BBC2 and can be streamed on BBC iPlayer
