where is the power?

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

The following comment could easily be written about the United States and
other countries under the neo-liberal sway, with some modification for
institutional and historical differences.

Where the real power is
Corporations could get what they wanted even if they never gave Labour a
penny

George Monbiot

Tuesday February 5, 2002
The Guardian

Just as the government struggles to shake off one scandal, it is entangling
itself in several more. Almost every day for the past fortnight, Labour has
been embarrassed by new revelations about the favours it has exchanged with
the disgraced companies Enron and Andersen. And almost every day for the
past fortnight, the government has been stocking up future trouble by
granting companies even more extravagant concessions.

On Sunday, Tony Blair spoke of his determination to continue bringing
corporations into government by means of the private finance initiative,
which has already become the occasion for most of the trouble about
Andersen's role. One of the Sunday newspapers claims that the government
will announce its decision to part-privatise the London underground on
Thursday. Stephen Byers, the transport secretary, appears to be preparing
his case: on Saturday he sought to dismiss comparisons between the
privatisation of the railways and "public private partnerships". Other
government spokespeople were forced, last week, to pour scorn on similar
comparisons between the break-up of the railways and the rushed
privatisation of the Post Office.

On Thursday, Greenpeace released a leaked summary of the government's energy
review, which shows that Labour, despite manifesto promises to the contrary,
will not now rule out the construction of new nuclear power stations. On the
same day, the government announced 44 new trials of genetically engineered
crops, which will be planted so close to fields of conventional crops that
the further contamination of the food chain is guaranteed. Today, parliament
will debate the varied and fascinating career of John Birt, the government's
transport adviser, who turns out to be working for one of Britain's major
transport operators, Richard Branson. The government seems to be looking for
trouble.

So what on earth is going on? Given that the government's love affair with
big business provides the substance of all the major scandals it has
suffered since taking office, why does it keep hopping into bed with
corporate power?

The commonest explanation is encapsulated in a phrase which has been used
liberally over the past fortnight: cash for access. The Labour party's
admission at the weekend that it now has an overdraft of £6-10m reinforces
the impression that Tony Blair will do anything for money. Last week Polly
Toynbee argued on these pages that "only an absolute ban on any donations,
in cash or kind, will have the public impact to repair Westminster's sleazy
reputation".

Her proposal makes sense, but I fear that the problem runs much deeper than
that. Corporations in Britain could get what they wanted from the government
even if they never gave the Labour party a penny.

Labour is the rope being yanked in a woefully uneven tug of war. On one end
are some of the trades unions, such as Unison and the GMB, led by the people
whom Blair attacked on Sunday as "small 'c' conservatives who believe the
old ways will do". Alongside them are a handful of pressure groups, such as
Corporate Watch, the World Development Movement, Friends of the Earth and
Greenpeace, and some tens of thousands of enthusiastic but disorganised
protesters. On the other end is just about every institution and individual
wielding real power in the United Kingdom.

The anchorman at the end of the rope is the corporate sector and its
well-resourced and effective lobby groups. His constant traction results
from his adherence to the oldest rule of the game: however much rope you are
given, you must always demand more. Blair's government, in response to
pressure from the CBI, has granted British companies the lowest corporation
tax in the rich world, a planning system which prevents citizens from
challenging corporate developers and the most lax environmental standards in
Europe, yet still the lobby group bellows that the government is creating a
hostile climate for business.

Clinging to the anchorman's thigh, so tightly that it is sometimes hard to
tell where the corporations end and the party begins, is the parliamentary
opposition. Along the line, less consistent in its force, is the civil
service and the quangocracy [???]. There are at least 40 senior civil
servants and taskforce chairs who are charged with regulating companies
which once employed them to fight the very measures they are now supposed to
enforce.

The result is a creeping deregulation of business, despite consistent public
demands for the better protection of workers, consumers and the environment.
Beside them are some of the most powerful European commissioners, as well as
the heads of foreign governments, constrained, like our own, to demand
concessions for their companies from other nations.

The gorilla at the head of the line is the media. Most of it belongs, of
course, to major corporations, some of which also have substantial interests
in other sectors. They rely for much of their income on corporate
advertisers. The proprietors' political project is to create a better world
for corporations and multimillionaires.

Their attitudes appear to have reached parts of the non-commercial sector.
Last year, Private Eye published a leaked memo sent to the BBC's director
general Greg Dyke by the business editor Jeff Randall. He attacked a
reporter for questioning a corporate executive about high prices during an
interview for the Today programme's business report. "Nobody in their right
mind would put up with that. It was crude consumerism of the worst kind _ If
that slot is on Radio 4 simply to champion the downtrodden shopper, then why
not drop the business tag and rename it the Ralph Nader memorial lecture? No
serious business people will be interested in listening to, much less
participating in, that kind of crap." Since then, "that slot" has been used
to give business executives the unchallenged access otherwise reserved only
for God on
Thought for the Day.

Such is the institutional power of the corporations that the only people now
in a position to hold them to account are other companies. When Amnesty
International revealed that Indian police paid by Enron were beating and
sexually abusing people living where it wanted to build a power plant, the
news was received with horror by campaign ers but ignored by almost everyone
else. But when institutional shareholders lose their investments, the
scandal dominates the headlines all over the world.

Governments stay in power by taking the path of least resistance. If Labour
sought to fight the stronger force, it would be ripped apart, and the
spectators would find another rope for the contestants to pull. Banning
political donations merely changes the field on which the contest takes
place: it does nothing to affect the disposition of forces. The only way to
fight corporate power is the only way democracy has ever been defended: by
persuading as many of the spectators as we can to grab the other end of the
rope.

www.monbiot.com

guardian.co.uk
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine