Royal Academy of Art (KABK) Group Exhibition ‘Catalogue’ at Paradise, WEST, The Hague, October 2024
Zone Fever (Corporate governance) 2024 – Installation view, approx 190 x 240 x 300cm, Canvas, acrylic paint, spray paint, plaster, jute, sheet plastic, photographs, paint cans, plastic containers, motor, sound speaker, tape, letraset, vinyl lettering, latex, various studio materials.
Zone Fever 1 (Corporate governance) 2024 is the culmination of 8 years of research and activism into the global right-wings dismantling of social democracy via Special Economic Zone’s (SEZs). My activism involves public speaking events at anti-freeports/SEZs events across the UK, these are mostly hosted by prominent investigative journalists, and are attended by concerned citizens of all ages, I have been writing articles for independent news outlets, doing radio and filmed interviews while also having a sizable following on Twitter X.
An SEZ is a designated region ‘freed’ from the host country’s regulations, stakeholders and investors are trusted to ‘self-regulate’, meaning they can create their own rules. At one end, we have low-wage production, and reduced employment rights for workers. At the other end zones are basically tax havens where corporations can both onshore and offshore their profits. Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss turbocharged the resurrection of Margaret Thatcher’s free zones and added dozens more; there are now 74 SEZs and 12 Freeports currently being installed across the UK under the new Labour Govt. 48 SEZs and 8 Freeports in England, 18 SEZs and 2 Freeports in Scotland, 8 SEZs and 2 Freeports in Wales. Bidding on all free zones closed in 2022.
All 12 UK Freeports are each housed inside a Special Economic Zone (SEZ), the zones vary in size from 38 to 75km in diameter. Example; Forth Ports in Scotland own 8 other Freeports which are owned by parent company Otter Ports Ltd, the managing director of which is Lord Smith of Kelvin, Otter Ports Ltd is registered in the Cayman Islands, Smith did not declare this in the register of interests. Both Cromarty and the Firth of Forth sit inside much larger Special Economic Zones (SEZs), 70% of the City of Edinburgh is inside Forth Ports SEZ. From the UK govt website ‘Enterprise zones are a devolved matter and there is no obligation for the devolved administrations to adopt them’ – UK Government.
The majority of free zones are in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, China has the most, almost half in total. Europe and North America have less than 10%, why would that be? The 82 free zones in the EU are strictly regulated to prevent governments of member states from giving State aid (public money) to companies of their choosing, this distorts the integrity of the EU’s Single Market creating an unlevel playing field. The bidding process for UK free zones took place between 2021 and 2022, businesses lined up for tax breaks and low-regulation were chosen by the UK Govt. From the EU Commission’s website on State Aid and SEZs – ‘The EU Parliament stresses that State aid should support ecological transformation and foster the development of services, knowledge, and infrastructure rather than providing support to specific companies’. UK SEZs contravene EU laws and regulations on State aid. When Sunak and Starmer say ‘no rejoining the EU’, not one reporter in the MSM points out this fundamental component about the EU’s rules on State aid. UK SEZs are being installed by stealth, and sabotage the UK’s chances of rejoining the EU for 25 years, which is the duration of the free zones licenses. https://europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2020/646164/EPRS_BRI(2020)646164_EN.pdf
The question remains, what will Labour do about Jacob Rees-Mogg’s Retained EU Laws Bill which revoked +600 pieces of EU/UK laws on 31/12/2023? The 3 main areas targeted were employment rights, food safety, and environmental laws with 1000’s more for the chop by 2026. Starmer’s changed Labour Party must reverse this, but they won’t, why? Brexit was an open invitation for a number of the most disruptive, climate polluting, human rights abusing corporations, and stakeholders including the world’s largest shadow bank Blackrock to set up shop in the UK’s 12 deregulated Freeports and 74 Special Economic Zones (SEZs) to ‘self-regulate’ and make their own rules inside the zones, relaxed laws mean relaxed enforcement of laws. The UK is being privatized, ‘zone fever has arrived by stealth, Brexit was the catalyst for massive deregulation, the selling off of collective sovereignty to the highest bidders. Just as Hong Kong and Singapore were colonized by the British in the 1850’s in what came to be known as China’s ‘century of humiliation’, so the same fate comes to bear on the UK.
