July 13: On This Day in World History … briefly
Bob Geldof stated Live Aid 'created something permanent and self-sustaining', but also questioned why Africa is getting poorer.
1985: ‘Live Aid’ benefit concert kicks off
‘Live Aid’ was a dual-venue benefit concert held on Saturday 13 July 1985, and an ongoing music-based fundraising initiative. The original event was organised by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise funds for relief of the ongoing Ethiopian famine. Billed as the “global jukebox”, the event was held simultaneously at Wembley Stadium in London, England, United Kingdom (attended by 72,000 people) and John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States (attended by about 100 000 people).
On the same day, concerts inspired by the initiative happened in other countries, such as the Soviet Union, Canada, Japan, Yugoslavia, Austria, Australia and West Germany. It was one of the largest-scale satellite link-ups and television broadcasts of all time; an estimated audience of 1.9 billion, across 150 nations, watched the live broadcast, nearly 40 percent of the world population.
The impact of Live Aid on famine relief has been debated for years. One aid relief worker stated that following the publicity generated by the concert, ‘humanitarian concern is now at the centre of foreign policy’ for western governments. Geldof stated “We took an issue that was nowhere on the political agenda and, through the ‘lingua franca’ of the planet – which is not English but rock ‘n roll – we were able to address the intellectual absurdity and the moral repulsion of people dying of want in a world of surplus.”
The organisers of Live Aid tried, without much success, to run aid efforts directly, so channelled millions to the NGOs in Ethiopia, much of which went to the Ethiopian government of Mengistu Haile Mariam – a brutal regime the UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher wanted to ‘destabilise’ – and was spent on guns
Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.
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