We are six months into the Labour government, and there is no doubt as to whose interests it represents. Having made a great play about introducing some window-dressing reforms designed to appeal to the middle classes, it has had to ignominiously abandon them in the face of resistance from big business and wealthy landowners. Profits come first. Jack Straw announced that animal testing for cosmetics would continue ‘for the foreseeable future’. The government have decided not to allow time for a bill to ban fox hunting and hare coursing. Meanwhile, its commitment not to raise income tax is being translated into punitive attacks on state welfare for the poor, on the NHS and on state education. However, it is when we look at the tobacco sponsorship fiasco that we see most clearly where Labour’s allegiances lie.
There was a chorus of indignation at the revelation that Bernie Ecclestone, head of Formula One, had lobbed a £1 million bung to New Labour before the general election. How could squeaky-clean New Labour stoop to this after all the sleaze of the Tories? It is of course a daft question: sleaze and corruption are the norm of bourgeois politics. Multinationals and big business don’t have votes as such in a bourgeois democracy, so they get round this little problem with money. In Colombia, if they are BP, they buy the local police, and then invest in a private army to terrorise their workers. This is one manifestation of the global labour market. New Labour is impressed, and BP’s chair, Lord Simon, now sits in Blair’s government. Bernie Ecclestone chooses a different route: a cool million; of course given as an act of complete altruism, without any thought that he would need to call in favours at an early date. In your dreams!
So what are the facts of the matter? New Labour promised a ban on tobacco advertising, and its associated sports sponsorship. It was one of their few promises, but one which the tobacco companies didn’t like one bit. However, they also knew they could not fight the proposal openly. Hence they used the Formula One Association (F1A), of which Bernie Ecclestone is vice-president and whose chair is Max Mosely (son of Oswald Mosely, and in the 1960s a fascist activist in support of his father), to fight their corner. Bernie Ecclestone, who is in the Sunday Times list of the richest 500 people in Britain (along with three owners of F1 teams) gave £1 million to New Labour in January of this year.
Almost immediately, New Labour started to modify its commitments. In March, Chris Smith, then Shadow Secretary of Health, wrote in the Financial Times: ‘We need to try and ensure action on sponsorship and promotion in such a way that sporting activity does not suffer. No final decisions have been made’. Contrast this with what his deputy, Kevin Barron, had said in October 1996 at a meeting in the European Parliament: ‘In the UK we will ban advertising and with the EU will work with you in support of the proposed directive on Tobacco Advertising’. This directive would ban all tobacco sponsorship in the EU, and was completely dependent on British support at the Council of Ministers.
Ecclestone’s investment was already paying dividends. By summer, Frank Dobson was on board: ‘We recognise that sports are heavily dependent on tobacco sponsorship. We do not wish to harm these sports. We will therefore give them time to help reduce their dependency on tobacco…’ In fact, the one sport really dependent on tobacco sponsorship is Formula One: it receives £35 million per annum from the tobacco industry compared to £10 million for all other sports. The reason is simple: the huge international audiences for Formula One races built up through the F1A’s TV marketing monopoly. On 14 October, Dobson was advising Blair that there should be a longer transition period for F1 than for other sports. Two days later, Blair had a meeting with Mosely and Ecclestone, and the following day replied to Dobson saying the exemption should be open-ended. It was left to Health Minister Tessa Jowell to announce the policy on 3 November, arguing that a ban would drive F1 into countries outside of the EC where they would face no restrictions, and at a cost of up to 50,000 jobs in Britain – this last a complete fiction.
The rest is history. A tip-off to the press that Bernie had lobbed the bung sent it into a feeding frenzy: the government hastily sought advice on 7 November from Sir Patrick Neil, the Parliamentary standards watchdog about both the £1 million donation, and a further expected one of £500,000, hoping presumably that it could the first if it refused the second. Alas, Sir Patrick ruled against both, leaving Labour £4.5 million in the red. So Bernie and the baccy companies end up without having to pay anything! Meanwhile, smoking will continue to kill 300 people every day – but then most of them are working class, so what does Labour care?
However, giving £1 million to Labour is all the fashion, it seems. Lord Sainsbury has now joined the club. He doesn’t want any payback, either – the fact that ministers did not stop a Sainsbury development in Richmond-upon-Thames after a planning inspector overruled the local council who were against it is, of course, sheer coincidence. Maybe Sainsbury’s donation is just protection against its competitors: after all, Asda’ Chief Executive, Allan Leighton, is ‘advising’ the government on its ‘welfare-to-work’ programme, and has spoken out about the need for a more relaxed approach to out-of-town retail schemes. There are 150 other applications in the pipeline for such developments, and we may expect that with their idolisation of consumer choice, the government will be letting these through as well. Certainly Sainsbury’s and Asda will want to be amongst the front- runners. Third member of the £1 million club is Robert Earl, owner of Planet Hollywood, whose personal wealth is estimated at £500 million. He is impressed by Tony Blair, he says – but then he was also very impressed by Margaret Thatcher, so he is being consistent, at least. When Tony Blair spoke at the Labour Party conference about the need for a ‘giving society’, we now know exactly what he meant!
So let there be no doubt about the reality of New Labour: it is financed by big business to run government with the assistance of big business in the interests of big business.
FRFI 140 December 1997 / January 1998
