[A-List] Paul Foot on Iraq and New Labour

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

The people must protest

Paul Foot
Wednesday October 30, 2002
The Guardian

Forty years ago, I sat down proudly in Trafalgar Square alongside Bertrand
Russell and thousands of others in protest against Britain's weapons of mass
destruction. We were all breaking the law.

There was a lot of civil disobedience at that time, organised by the
Committee of 100. The committee's arguments were founded in the horrific
nature of nuclear weapons and the urgency of alerting the government to
widespread public disquiet about them. The square was cleared by police in
the early morning and the committee eventually vanished.

Now, however, 40 years on, a monstrous war looms in the Middle East for
which there is not the slightest justification. Every single charge against
Saddam Hussein - that he has nuclear weapons, repeatedly breaks
international law by invading his neighbours, and is a constant threat to
peace in the region - applies tenfold to the client state of the United
States in the region, Israel.

The war on Iraq proposed by President Bush is a classic imperialist invasion
to safeguard oil supplies. Very few governments in the world - and
absolutely none in the Middle East - support Mr Bush's war. Britain's New
Labour government is an exception - no one doubts that if Mr Bush does go to
war in Iraq, he can rely on the grovelling support of the British
government. Yet in the country the situation is very different. Opinion
polls show a majority against war. The enormous anti-war demonstration last
month took everyone by surprise, but was ignored in parliament and
patronised in the press. Only 70 MPs out of 650 made even a gesture against
the Iraq war. Lots of people joining in tomorrow's anti-war day will wonder
what it takes to get their protest noticed. Who else can stop the war but
the people? The case for civil disobedience, strong enough in the early
1960s, seems even stronger now.

· Whenever I see Paul Boateng on television, I recall his election in 1987,
with a heavily reduced majority, in Brent South. Garlanded with flowers, a
delighted Mr Boateng declared: "Today Brent South, tomorrow Soweto." I have
always been puzzled by this reference to the poverty-stricken South African
township, but now I think I am beginning to understand it. Mr Boateng is in
the cabinet, as chief secretary to the Treasury, and on October 10 he spoke
at a global investment seminar sponsored by the country's biggest banker
HSBC. After paying long and grovelling obeisance to the millionaires in his
audience ("thanks to you, London has maintained its position among the
world's top financial centres - we owe that to the enthusiasm and outlook in
this room") Mr Boateng moved on to his main theme - the talks at the World
Trade Organisation in Doha. The European Commission, he said, was putting
its proposals about more "liberalisation" to the WTO. A lot had been done to
pass on the views of British industrialists, but "we have more work to do in
order to deepen the dialogue on trade in services". He went on: "The better
informed the EC's negotiators are about the barriers you face, the better
equipped they will be to present your case."

In the past, Labour Treasury ministers have sought the views of bankers so
they could be assessed and perhaps even contradicted. Now it seems a
minister's role is even simpler: just to present the bankers' case to the
WTO in order to remove any "barriers you face". One such "barrier" that
annoys bankers all over the world is publicly owned enterprises such as
hospitals, a barrier that is especially irritating in new juicy markets in
Africa. So at last Mr Boateng's 1987 slogan is beginning to make sense:
"Today Brent South, tomorrow Soweto's hospitals privatised - with big fees
for bankers."

· The same fraternal relationship between New Labour ministers and their
wealthy sponsors emerges from last week's short controversy about tax relief
on pensions contributions. At the moment all contributions to a pension fund
can be set off against tax. In recent months some cheeky advisers have dared
to suggest that the pensions tax relief for the very rich should be
scrapped, saving many billions for the exchequer, and replaced by a scheme
in which the government makes matching payments into everyone's pension pot.
"This could mean," explained the Financial Times, "the less well off getting
more help towards pension saving, but the better-off would get less." What a
shocking proposal! How dare the government even contemplate such an outrage!
As soon as the Tories and the Daily Mail got to hear of it there was a
deafening chorus of righteous rich men's fury, and the terrified ministers
at once threw up their hands and surrendered.