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Five Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
with Photos
by Allan Sekula
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June 16, 2001
What Blair's Victory
Means
by Tariq Ali
It was the lowest turnout in a British
general election since 1918. Only 59% of those eligible to vote
made the journey to the polling booths. Tony Blair's 'mudslide
victory' was built on mass apathy. Labour is in power for a second
term with the support of only 25% of the electorate. In 1997
13. 5 million people voted Labour. In 2001 the figure had dropped
to less than 11 million and 18 million registered voters declined
to vote. Since the advent of adult franchise no British Prime
Minister has ever governed with such a tiny mandate.
Stung on election night by
comments from TV journalists to the effect that the low turn-out
had deprived New Labour of moral authority, Tony Blair's trusted
advisers, Lord Falconer, Jack Straw (now Foreign Secretary) and
John Prescott (Deputy Prime Minister), each of them singing from
the same Millbank hymn-sheet, offered two basic explanations.
First, there was a general trend in Western Europe of voter apathy.
Secondly, people were contented, happy, and aware that Labour
was going to win a big majority and this made them complacent.
The first is simply not true, something which could have been
rebutted easily if the BBC journalists had been aware of European
voting patterns. Turnout in France, Italy, Germany and Scandinavia
is still above 70%. The truth is that Britain is heading in
the American direction. Once the economy goes in a neo-liberal
direction with the corporations in control, politics is usually
not far behind.
The second excuse is so ridiculous that I doubt whether even
government ministers, cocooned from reality by civil servants
and spin-doctors, actually believe this nonsense. All the surveys
of public opinion indicate a deep dissatisfaction with mainstream
politicians. People believe there is no fundamental difference
between the two major parties. It is widely thought that both
the major parties are servants of the system. The Liberals, who
weakly resist the depredations of neo-liberalism are rewarded
with a few extra seats and serve as a useful safety valve, but
not much more.
This is not simply the view
of the 'ignorant' person in the street, who is supposedly incapable
of understanding the complex processes of redistribution being
masterminded by the New Labour leadership. This is also what
is firmly believed by the City of London and helps to explain
why so many big business interests voluntarily backed and funded
Blair. His record of continued deregulation and low public spending,
his promises to go further still, appealed to them. His courage
in breaking with social-democratic reformism while castrating
the Labour Party band neutering the trades unions fills them
with admiration. They know perfectly well that it would have
been difficult for a Conservative government to do what Blair
will do in his second term.
For this same reason New Labour
enjoys the fulsome support of the leading organ of big business,
the Financial Times; unpredictable but uniform support
from the Murdoch empire, total support from the Express group
(currently owned by a New Labour pornography merchant) and a
BBC now packed with its own placemen (Greg Dyke, Andrew Marr,
etc). No previous Labour government possessed anything like this
level of media protection. Indeed, during the elections New
Labour obtained the endorsement of every single national newspaper
save the Mail and Telegraph at election-time. The
election campaign and the result were joyless precisely because,
for the first time ever, the entire campaign was conducted
inside a media bubble.
No public meetings. No public
debates. Everything organised with the efficiency of a slick
PR firm marketing a product. The only time the election came
to life was when Blair was confronted by an angry working-class
woman in Birmingham complaining about conditions in the hospital
being graced by the Prime Ministerial presence. Blair's embarrassment
was acute.
The reasons for this favourable
treatment by the bulk of the media are two-fold. On the one hand,
the Conservative Party is far more deeply crippled by a combination
of Europhobia, and class 'drop' than it has ever been in the
past century. It was simply not a credible alternative. More
importantly, why should capital in general or newspaper magnates
in particular object to the policies of this government? Apart
from individual aversions to the EU, there is no good reason.
Once Blair had stolen their soiled shirts, the Conservative Party
had to make a choice. It could have moved decisively to the centre-ground
and attempted an audacious outflanking of Blair from slightly
to the left of New Labour.
Or it could have appealed to
hard-core Conservatives on traditional right-wing issues like
crime, foreigners, the sanctity of the pound, etc. Their leader,
William Hague chose the latter course, suffered a heavy defeat
and resigned as Leader, leaving behind a rump Party to choose
his successor. Whatever the choice, it is unlikely that the Conservatives
will be able to heal their divisions over the next 4-5 years.
This means that Britain over the next period will be governed
by conservatives, but not the Conservative Party.
In these circumstances, the
electoral success of New Labour is unsurprising, though the low
turnout is a useful indicator of actual public enthusiasm for
New Labour. Those on the Left, who claimed that New Labour was
really Old Labour and would soon begin to travel in a similar
direction, were wildly wrong from the start. Blair signalled
a break with traditional social democracy and if a system of
proportional representation existed in Britain the breach would
probably be marked by a split between social democrats and Blair
Democrats.
The Economist, an astute, but vociferous defender
of global capitalism, in its issue before the election on 2 June
2001 published a cover which showed Blair's face underneath a
Margaret Thatcher hairdo and her earrings, headlined its leader
comment thus: 'Vote Conservative, but choose the ambiguous right-winger
rather than the feeble one.' The text explained to readers that
Blair had governed on the centre-right and how New Labour's
'macroeconomic policy, indeed, has been more orthodox than its
Tory predecessor, with more fiscal discipline and the welcome
granting of independence to the Bank of England.' The Economist
concluded by calling on its readers to vote for Blair:
'Tony Blair is the only credible conservative currently available.
The Blair we support with our vote is the one who admires Margaret
Thatcher and has followed many of her policies; who hints that
he favours a real, structural reform in health, education and
welfare, including greater use of private provision; who believes
a sharp move to the left in the second term would be electoral
suicide.'
What will Blair do in his 'radical second
term'? To his credit the New Labour leader made no attempt to
conceal his plans from the electorate or members of his own party.
The New Labour leaders really do believe in the neo-liberal dogma
that only the private sector disciplined by the market can deliver
decent public services. This belief is the outcome of a recent
ideological shift. Unsurprisingly, it is former Socialists and
Marxists in the Blair entourage who defend capitalism with all
the ardour of new converts. They are virulent in their opposition
to everything they once believed. They are shameless in their
justification of the most irrational neo-liberal policies. They
are untroubled by conscience. Having obliterated their own pasts
and incapable of visualising a future, they live largely in the
present. They have escaped from themselves in the world and have
expelled the world from within themselves. They have become provincial,
boorish, bullying opportunists. Power, patronage (receiving
and returning) and money is all that matters to them. These are
the corrupted souls that surround Blair's throne. Born-again
capitalists, they abase themselves in the presence of the World
Bank, the IMF and the WTO.
For many years now, one of
the main priorities of the WTO has been to accelerate the privatisation
of education, health, welfare, social housing and transport.
With the decline of profit margins in the once prosperous manufacturing
sector, Western capitalism is determined to force entry into
a once inviolate public sphere. Giant multinationals have been
busy preparing competitive tenders to capture the public services
share of the gross domestic product. In its notorious 1993 development
report titled 'Investing in Health', the World Bank described
public services as an obstacle to abolishing world poverty.
There have been important conflicts
between US/Canada and the EU on some of the policies advocated
by the WTO which affect the health and safety of citizens, but
the multinationals are winning. A few years ago in the hormone-treated
beef dispute, the WTO ruled in favour of USA/Canada, arguing
that EU safety standards were higher than those accepted internationally.
In a sharply critical review of WTO policies Professor Allyson
Pollock (of the Health Services Research Unit at University College,
London) argued in Lancet, the leading British medical
journal on 9 December, 2000:
"... The WTO's national
treatment rule was used to define a public-health initiative
as protectionist and therefore potentially illegalThe new criteria
proposed at the WTO threaten some of the key mechanisms that
allow governments to guarantee health care for their populations
by requiring governments to demonstrate that their pursuit of
social policy goals are least restrictive and least costly to
trade."
New Labour, like their Thatcherite
predecessors, ever zealous to please the United States and its
financial institutions are determined to be the first EU state
that fulfils all the WTO conditions. Accordingly, the British
public was informed that the Private Finance Initiative (PFI)
would be used to create a new structure of in the public sector.
In other words New Labour declared that it would go further than
Thatcher and Major had dared and attempt to complete the Thatcher
counter-revolution. The air-traffic controllers will be sold
off to a few wealthy airlines. The railways, whose privatisation
has been a disaster financially and has led to the breakdown
of safety, will not be taken back into any form of public ownership.
New laws are being passed to make it possible for any local
authority to sell off any school to private industry. At the
moment only those schools considered to be 'failing', i.e. not
provided with sufficient resources by the government to teach
children from poor families, are handed over to companies. Among
the firms directly engaged in teaching children of 'failed' schools
are Shell Oil (special lessons in ecology?), British Aerospace
(lectures on the arms trade?), McDonalds (healthy eating) and
Tescos.
The transition from the public
to the private sector is already in place and by being handed
important contracts a new wave of entrepreneurs are being won
over to New Labour. They are making vast sums of money for doing
what the Government once could do for itself. Naturally they
feel obliged to contribute funds to the Party. The following
eight businessmen are merely an indication of what will follow.
_______________________________________________
NAME COMPANY PAY
GOVT. CONTRACTS
Sir Clive Thomson Rentokil £1m. Cleaning
Service
Peter Mason Amec £669,000
Glasgow Schools
Brian Staples Amey £494,885
Modernising Min. of Defence
Mike Welton Balfour-Beatty* £477,335
UCL Hospital
Sir Neville Simms
Carillion £452,000
Nottingham Trams
Rod Aldridge Capita £369,000
Criminal Records
Paris Moayedi Jarvis £347,000
Rail Maintenance
* This was the firm in charge of rail maintenance and repairs,
but after the Watford train crash (an event that created public
revulsion against privatisation) it emerged that Balfour-Beatty
had been negligent in its duties. This is not something that
worries New Labour too much. After all, in the search for profits
it is only natural that accidents will happen.
When Blair first came to power he boasted
that New Labour would and could implement 'reforms' that had
escaped Thatcher and her successor. In this new term he will
begin to do so. The funding of public services will be decisively
decoupled from their public provision. The result of this socio-economic
engineering will, in effect, end with the privatisation of health
and education and bring about the death of universal services
for all, the de-facto re-introduction of means-testing and a
strengthening of social and class divisions in contemporary Britain.
Already, the gap between rich and poor has grown wider after
four years of New Labour.
Those who voted for Blair will
be in a weak position to resist him since the Government will
argue, with some justification, which they are carrying out the
policies for which he was elected. Mercifully only one in four
people voted for New Labour, which leaves open the possibility
that in more volatile conditions the apathetic will begin to
stir. Already the trade unions that have, till now, been snoring
peacefully in Blair's big, inclusive bed are now beginning to
make dissenting noises against the privatisation plans. Since
they have refused to campaign against these measures or educate
their members, they might have problems mobilising them except
for the most narrowly sectional interests. This would be unfortunate
since Blair has long been looking for a trade union to defeat
in order to further improve his credentials with big business.
Teachers and health-service workers 'resisting reform' might
provide a useful target.
The one bright moment during an otherwise gloomy election night
was when a 66-year-old doctor, Richard Taylor in Wyre Forest,
who stood as an independent candidate on a single issue--saving
the accident and emergency wards in local Kidderminster hospital--defeated
a junior New Labour minister, with a majority of 17,630 votes.
In sharp contrast both the Greens and the competing far-left
groups, the Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Labour Party,
performed very badly. This is partially the result of a first-past-the-post
electoral system that makes it impossible for small parties to
gain seats, but only partially. The fact is that a mood of cynicism
and political apathy tends to benefit the far right rather than
the left. From within the bubble Blair could address the finely-tuned
Labour Party conference on September 26, 2000 and indulge in
meaningless boasts:
"Don't tell me that a
country with our history and heritage, that today boasts six
of the top ten businesses in the whole of Europe, with London
the top business city in Europe, that is a world leader in technology
and communication and the businesses of the future, that under
us has overtaken France and Italy to become the fourth largest
economy in the world, that has the language of the new economy,
more brilliant artists, actors and directors than any comparable
country in the world, some of the best scientists and inventors
in the world, the best armed forces in the world, the best teachers
and doctors and nurses, the best people any nation could wish
for. Don't tell me with all that going for us that we do not
have the spirit to meet all the challenges before us."
In the small town of Oldham,
near Manchester, they clearly lacked the spirit. This was once
a centre of manufacturing industry. Unemployment is currently
over 30% and real unemployment, undisguised by slippery statistics,
is probably higher. The fascists of the British National Party
(BNP) moved in a few years ago to target the town, which has
a large Asian population (children and grandchildren of the workers
who were encouraged to come and work in the textile factories
after the Second World War), as a potential 'race-hate' area.
The BNP worked hard, built a strong base amongst local unemployed
white working-class youths, carefully orchestrated clashes between
the two communities. During the election campaign there was a
riot in Oldham with burnt cars providing barricades for angry
young Asians, who refused to remain passive. No mainstream political
leader visited the town. It remained outside the media bubble.
Ignore it and will go away was the general view. But the BNP
prospered, winning 16,000 votes in a solid Labour town.
Throughout the last century capitalism was on the defensive,
permitting social democracy to take the offensive and offer social
and democratic reforms to keep revolution at bay. That situation
has now been reversed. With the disappearance of a global enemy,
capital can now concentrate on the 'enemy within'. Many of the
concessions it was forced to concede can be brutally clawed back.
Others can be taken by stealth. In other words social, economic
and democratic rights will have to be fought for once again (as
in the 19th century) against the might of a triumphal capitalism
and those who rule in its interests, symbolised today by the
three B's: Bush, Blair and Berloscuni.
The executioners of neo-liberalism and their ideologues have
created a culture of consumerism in which politics itself has
become a game-show, a weaker reflection of what is available
on television, which is a faithful reflection of life-politics.
In the debased coinage of Blair's most-favoured sociologist,
Anthony Giddens, 'Life politics concerns life decisions. It is
a politics of choice, identity and mutuality.' Such a politics
can accommodate everything and everyone and mean nothing. It
is the 'political' version of the 'don't worry, be happy' message
transmitted daily by MTV.
What is required is a campaigning
coalition that unites all sections of society opposed to the
privatisation frenzy. What we need, and in a very real sense,
in all our cities are Committees of Public Safety to defend the
public and its needs against the pirate-politicians who serve
the interests of global and local financial institutions. Such
alliances, of necessity, need to be concrete rather than abstract,
totally inclusive and based on reality rather than fantasy. This
is a restricted horizon, but we are living in bad times. CP
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