[A-List] BP watch: corporate state nexus

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

>From July 31 to August 2, the Financial Times ran a major series based
on interviews with BP chief executive "Lord" John Browne and his friends
and associates. Running to four full pages, it was a major public
relations exercise on behalf of the normally reticent Browne, who has
just been given a further six years (to compulsory retirement at 60) in
addition to the seven he has already clocked as CEO. With alleged fears
over increasing autocracy and patronage hampering the search for a
successor, the series was an effort to portray Browne in as flattering a
light as possible.

It is possible to glean from the articles some information regarding the
networks functioning at the top of the British state, and how these
overlap the economic, political and ideological sectors. The first
article is mostly biographical, charting Browne's career since school.
Of interest here is the background to his university days provided by
one Peter Hennessy, the Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History
at Queen Mary College, University of London. Hennessy and Browne met at
Cambridge University, where Browne had enrolled to study physics at St
John's College. Of this experience Browne is quoted as describing the
college as populated by a "very mixed society which I really did like.
There were Americans, people from Europe, state schools, private
schools. I made some very close friends who I still have." One appears
to be Hennessy, who comments on Browne's avoidance of the student
radicalism of the time thus: "John was very grown up. He was far too
realistic for the love-and-peace stuff. There were no excesses. He never
even got drunk, and when others did he would just sit there and smile."

In this way Hennessy casually dismisses the left as a bunch of
irrelevant hippies -- in Cambridge University, of all places! Of course
the old Soviet spy ring of the 1930s was long past (as far as we know),
and, given Browne's own desription of St John's, it seems more likely
that CIA infiltration of a sort was going on. As for Hennessy, he
remains a chum, commenting later in the same article that "John runs BP
like a research scientist", a reference to Browne's background in
geology and his approach to management.

Why bother about Hennessy? The Attlee Professor of Contemporary British
History has just published a book entitled "The Secret State: Whitehall
and the Cold War". Unfortunately he relies heavily on available official
documents, and even then ignores crucial evidence, if this snippet from
the latest edition from "Lobster" magazine is anything to go by:


History is the business of Peter Hennessy, but when asked to give the
James Cameron Memorial Lecture to inquiring young journalism students at
London's City University under the title "Open government, Whitehall and
the press since 1945", Hennessy managed to avoid even mentioning the
Information Research Department. For such a massive Whitehall operation
employing hundreds of people and spending enormous sums of taxpayers'
money for 30 of those postwar years to remain out of sight of the
distinguished professor is quite an achievement. Some secrets are indeed
well hidden.
-- Tom Easton, "Tittle-tattle 1" Lobster 43, Summer 2002

[See below for information on the IRD]

Easton goes on to mention that the series in which Hennessy's lecture
appeared is organised by City University journalism professor Hugh
Stephenson, who also edited the published version this lecture series,
"Media Voices", published by London-based Politico's. Easton goes on to
describe Stephenson:


A former Foreign Office diplomat, Stephenson became editor of the New
Statesman soon after the formation of the Social Democratic Party in
1981 and wrote Claret and Chips, a short and rather uninformative book
about his many friends in the new party, the following year. Stephenson
apologises in his introduction to Media Voices for the absence in the
book of one of the 14 lectures in the series -- that of James Cameron's
old historian friend, Studs Terkel, under the title "The journalist in
flesh and blood". Stephenson, explaining the omission, says: "the
evening was part reminiscence and part answers to questions from the
audience and there was no editable text." This, from a professor of
journalism?
-- Ibid.


A clearer picture forms of the sort of academic rigour exercised and
upheld by Hennessy and friends.

While part 2 of the series focuses on Browne's management lessons
learned in 33 years ("leaders must lead", etc., etc.), part 3 tackles
the issue of BP's links to the present government...


	BP has perhaps more reason than other oil companies to fear the tread
of governments, having been nationalised out of existence in Iran, Iraq
and Nigeria when it was seen to be an arm of its UK government owner.
	While the days of ownership have long past, BP's ties with the British
government are still so close that rivals call it "Blair Petroleum",
even though this did not ward off this April's North Sea oil tax
increase.
	Browne has developed this relationship prudently, avoiding scandal of
the kind that embroiled Bernie Ecclestone, the Hinduja brothers, Lakshmi
Mittal and Richard Desmond.
	Unlike these businessmen, whose donations to the Labour Party exposed
them to allegations of buying political favour, neither Browne nor BP is
a party donor.
	Nor does BP try to buy the favour of MPs. Instead Browne has developed
personal ties and regular exchanges of ideas between BP and the
government. One Whitehall insider says there is a "meeting of minds"
between Tony Blair and Browne, who is a regular visitor to Downing
Street. Both men admire the other's leadership.
	This rapport is reinforced by the presence on Browne's staff of former
New Labour officials still close to Number 10.
	Anji Hunter, Blair's childhood friend and former special assistant, is
Browne's director of communications.
	Nick Butler, strategic policy adviser, is a former Labour candidate and
friend of Jonathan Powell, Blair's chief of staff.
	In contrast, the head of BP's government relations office is Richard
Ritchie, a former Tory candidate and aide to the late Enoch Powell MP.
	Senior executives are encouraged to take time out to sit on government
task forces. But the strength of the relationship between BP and the
government lies in the fact that ties at the top are matched much lower
down the organisations.
	Browne has encouraged BP managers to make use of secondment programmes
to ministries, mostly the Department of Trade and Industry, but also the
Foreign Office and Treasury.
	There are four BP employees at the DTI. There are no DTI officials
seconded to BP today, though there have been in the past.
	The Cabinet Office says such secondments were designed to "exchange
experience and skills".
	BP staff are not permitted to work on policy issues affecting the
company, but gain insight into how policy-making works.
	"There is a bit of a revolving door", says Norman Baker, a Liberal
Democrat MP who has looked into the ties between BP and the government.
He says the connections are probably more extensive than with any other
UK company, but adds he has found no evidence that BP has abused them.
	As the appointment of Ritchie shows, BP is keen to play both sides of
the UK political fence. The group can ill afford to be seen as partisan
or parochial. For these reasons, BP is staying out of the UK's debate on
adopting the euro -- "because we regard it as too partisan to enter,"
says Browne, "and weäre not just a UK company".
	Overseas the group adopts a less hands-off approach: "When we started
in Azerbaijan, we encouraged the UK government to set up a
representative office in [the capital of] Baku. We gave them office
space, which they paid for." The way governments see it, Browne says, is
that "the flag goes and the trade follows". But sometimes as in
Azerbaijan, it is a case of "the trade goes and the flag follows."
	However, in Azerbaijan, BP found more support from the US. Washington
has backed its plans to pipe Caspian oil and gas through Georgia to
Turkey to prevent Russia or, even worse from Washington's point of view,
Iran dominating the export of Caspian energy. The US has "given
confidence to the participating governments [Azerbaijan, Georgia,
Turkey], and that's important", he says. In the US, BP has entered
uncharted waters by deciding earlier this year that it would discontinue
the habit of political campaign donations practised by Amoco and Arco.
This brings the company's behaviour in the US into line with its ban on
political funding in the UK and continental Europe.
	However, US employees of BP can still make voluntary campaign
contributions through a company public affairs committee (PAC). Out of
BP's 45,000 employees in the US, 11,000 are eligible to be on the PAC
and 1,500 have chosen to get involved, the company says.
	The ending of corporate donations is a new departure, says Browne.
"Some people have said to me: 'you'll never get access [to politicians]
again'. If so, so be it."
	But most observers feel that the doors will remain open to BP in
Washington. BP is a big employer in Alaska, in Chicago (through Amoco),
in California (through Arco), and in Texas. "When you're an important
employer, people listen", says J Robinson West, who runs the
Washington-based Petroleum Finance Company. "People who make these
[campaign] contributions tend not to have this kind of leverage."
	
	"They work the Hill"
Julia Nanay, another PFC analyst with a focus on the Caspian, says:
"Like every other oil company, they work the Hill. They're very good at
it, at being in Washington and educating whoever they need to educate."
	She adds: "BP has a reputation for being among the most well-liked. The
US government seeks them out as much as they seek out the US
government."
	Hugh Depland, spokesman for BP in the US, says: "BP has 45,000
employees in the US, but in Washington DC it has 16 people."
	He adds: "We haven't stopped having involvement and discussions with
government entities. What we have stopped is making contributions to
public entities. We still have people in Washington who are lobbyists
and lobby in the various states in which we do business."
	In the UK, BP's clout has benefited Browne personally. Last year, and
after having been knighted two years earlier, Browne was invited to put
himself forward as a "people's peer", and he did so. Since then, he has
spoken as Lord Browne twice in House of Lords' debates, but only on
subject he knows -- climate change and universities.
	Browne is understandably coy about his political tastes. He says he
does not vote for a particular party, but makes a "personal" choice for
his local MP. But this may not pose him a problem, because he is
registered to vote at his home in Chelsea.
	The Conservative incumbent, Michael Portillo, is a friend.

--Tobias Buck, David Buchan, Krishna Guha and Sheila McNulty, "Oiling
the political engine", Financial Times, August 2, 2002


Other reference

Tobias Buck and David Buchan, "Sun king of the oil industry", Financial
Times, July 31, 2002.


On the IRD, this, culled from a presentation by Lobster editor Robin
Ramsay:

In 1948 the psychological warfare organisation, IRD, the Information
Research Department, was set up within the Foreign Office. IRD worked
abroad trying to combat nationalism in the British Empire, and at home
to combat the British left. IRD fed information and propaganda on
'communists' within the labour movement through confidential recipients
of its briefings one of whom we now know was the late Vic Feather into
the media, and into the Labour Party's policing units, the National
Agent's Department and the Organisation Subcommittee. These latter
organisations also received information on a local basis from some
police Special Branches. Special Branches also surveilled the unions,
the wider left and organisations like CND.

For a full version see
http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/rrtalk.htm