Petrol protests are "anti-market", not "anti-tax"

[Keaney Michael <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Thanks to Lou P. for forwarding this.

The situation in Britain is very complex, not least because of the lack of
an effective organised Left opposition. One aspect of the fuel protests that
has not, to my knowledge, been fully realised has been the vulnerability of
public order to this sort of "spontaneous", "leaderless" mobilisation, given
the horrendous legal restrictions imposed upon trade unions and collective
bargaining. Blair and co might be of more of a mind to rescind some of
Thatcher's egregious anti-worker legislation as a result of this.

Those spearheading the protests are among the leading beneficiaries of the
Thatcher era: farmers and hauliers. Hauliers benefited from cheap petrol, an
environmentally reckless road-building programme, the starvation of
investment from then state-owned railways, the aggressive promotion of Mrs
Thatcher's dystopian "great, car-owning democracy", and the progressive
deregulation of the road haulage industry, as weight limits were relaxed to
accommodate hauliers' demands for economies of scale at the expense of those
unfortunate enough to live en route. This only further encouraged
road-building, as previously quiet country villages' inhabitants, out of
self-interest, were won round to the building of bypass routes circumventing
their little bits of paradise. Meanwhile railways lay dormant or closed.
And, as has been pointed out elsewhere, lest we forget the role of hauliers
in the breaking of the miners' strike of 1984/5, solidarity is a concept
that has come rather late to this particular group.

The largesse bestowed to farmers over the years is the stuff of legend. The
concentration (collectivisation), industrialisation and commercialisation of
agriculture, and the arrogant technocracy governing this process, led
directly to the BSE crisis and the quietly mounting death toll from new
variant Creuzfeld Jakob Disease, which has been and is expected to continue
rising in statistically significant numbers.

Add to this a vicious press, controlled largely by Rupert Murdoch, Conrad
Black and the Rothermere clan, and all revoltingly populist in content and
form, and acting in a way as Her Majesty's Official Opposition (given the
travails of the Conservative Party), and you have a lot of discontent being
channelled towards a govt that very much deserves to be on the rack. Except
that it is on the rack for reasons that have nothing to do with the
assertion of progressive policies, and plenty to do with interest groups
fighting to retain privileges won during the Thatcher era.

Should Blair be toppled, what is the alternative? The most realistic (i.e.
likely) alternative would be a resurgent, populist Conservative Party which
is effectively the political mouthpiece of Conrad Black, even going so far
as to argue for Black's policy of withdrawal from the EU and entry into
NAFTA. In recent times the need for a resurgent, organised Left has not been
greater.

Krugman is the ideal exponent of neoliberalism because his technocratic
economics married to his paltry understanding of the political economy
allows him to pronounce with such certitude on matters of which he knows
obviously zilch. Blair would be flattered, I'm sure, with the implicit
comparison Krugman makes between him and Thatcher, the latter serving as a
model for Blair's style of governance (and Blair, in turn, Jorg Haider!).
There is nothing like "strong leadership" to reduce grown men to pathetic
sycophants. As for the protests being "anti-markets", they are rather more
than that. At one level they are the last gasp of a set of interests whose
privileges were and are unsustainable, morally, environmentally,
economically, politically. But they have served as a focus for the sort of
anti-corporate power sentiment that Al Gore appears to be attempting to
co-opt onto his election campaign. Ever the followers in these matters, no
doubt Blair and co will attempt to copy the rhetoric in the near future. The
trouble is, however, that a major feature of Blair's "fitness to govern" was
his cosy relationship with these same corporate interests. And, as this
episode has shown, in a capitalist state where costs are socialised and
profits privatised, the ideological costs have been borne solely by the
state, while oil companies have been content to pay their drivers to sit and
do nothing, and then stoke the fires a little more by announcing impending
price increases when it looks like the protests will subside.

The need for an organised Left alternative is great. But if accomplished
with some imagination and vigour, it could serve as a powerful focus of
legitimate discontent and offer hope to people otherwise condemned to the
powerlessness of consumption, and tempted by the false promises of
reactionary populism. The victory of Ken Livingstone in the London mayoral
contest shows that, when presented with a clear Left alternative (even with
its inevitable compromises), there is popular support for such a platform.

Michael K.