Some may forget that the current headquarters of the WTO has a dark secret. Before the GATT Secretariat moved in in 1977, the building had been home to the International Labour Organisation. Evidence of the building's grim past has just been discovered, with a number of murals from the socialist realism school uncovered when plaster and wall boards were removed. The paintings had been sensibly covered up by the GATT soon after moving in! WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy, a member of the French Socialist Party, is aparently overjoyed at the discovery as he "has always championed the harnessing of globalisation for workers' benefits.
"There are only advantages in returning to a time in history when the people wanted to create an international system which prevents the repeat of a traumatic situation such as the first world war which they came out of," Lamy said."
