FRFI 159 February / March 2001
Don’t vote for class enemies – organise and fight back!
Here we go round the mulberry bush! Time for another round of the election game; the occasional circus that poses as freedom and democracy in a capitalist society. Not that there will be much of a contest this time round. The charade is easy to call. The Labour Party has fulfilled all its promises to the ruling class – a vicious, racist government, serving big business, sustaining middle class greed and attacking the working class. They will give Labour their blessing again.
Labour keeps its promises
Six months before the last election, FRFI argued that Labour in government would be completely authoritarian in character, that, ‘in the absence of any working class movement, let alone communism, New Labour has a free hand to establish the sort of dictatorship of capital that is the precondition to salvaging British imperialism’s fortunes. New Labour’s regime will be one of increasing regulation, compulsion and repression of the working class and the poor. No-one with any shred of humanity can offer them any support’.
We said then that the Labour government would:
- sell weapons of mass destruction to barbarous regimes throughout the world
- keep working class pensioners in poverty and not restore the link between pensions and earnings
- institute an oppressive regime against benefit claimants
- retain Tory trade union legislation and minimal employment rights
- continue moves to privatise the NHS through the Private Finance Initiative
Labour confirmed all our predictions, and more, with a vengeance.
Labour government – executive committee of the ruling class
Labour set about serving its masters with gusto. The extent to which the Labour Party has become totally subservient to big business and integrated with the ruling class has been one of the distinguishing features of this Labour government. Marx once wrote ‘The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’. This has always been true, but not since before the Second World War has this been so blatantly obvious as it is with the present Labour government.
As the crisis of capitalism develops it has to seek out new sites for investment. Areas of life that had once been the domain of the state, supposedly protected for the benefit of all society, are penetrated by capital for private profit and exploitation. At the same time capital combines into ever bigger but fewer conglomerates. Immense economic power becomes concentrated in fewer hands. The interconnections between them, and hence their community of interests, intensify. It becomes both essential and feasible that the state and monopoly capital work hand in glove. This is the compact that Labour has facilitated.
Donations, bribery, favours and corruption
Labour, the rich and the infamous, eat, sleep and drink with each other; swap favours for titles; share the same greedy lifestyles and the same arrogant intolerance of anything that stands in their way. Rupert Murdoch visits Tony Blair. His daughter’s boyfriend throws a party at the Labour Party Conference. Murdoch’s favourite economist and friend becomes a Downing Street consultant. Gordon Brown talks to News Corporation at a Sun Valley ski resort. Blair promotes Murdoch’s interests in Italy. Peter Mandelson socialises with Elisabeth Murdoch etc, etc.
And now, we hear, the Hinduja brothers throw parties for just about everyone from Mandelson to Blair, chip-in a million pounds for the Dome and get a couple of British passports in double-quick time following a few words from Mandelson and Vaz and a reference from ‘Junket’ Jack Cunningham. (see News Update, below). Fayed is clearly wining and dining the wrong people.
Labour is bankrolled by the rich. Recently they were slipped a cool £6 million from Christopher Ondaatje and Lords Sainsbury and Hamlyn. The official big donor list includes lots of business tycoons and rich celebrities. Labour’s sponsors include BskyB, McDonalds, Pfizer, Vauxhall and Tesco. ‘Services in kind’ are provided by KPMG, Lotus and Freeserve. Of the top 97 donors, 30 have been given some sort of government job. Big donor Robert Devereux, brother-in-law of Richard Branson, was made Chair of the Creative Industries Task Force. Donors Dr Chris Evans, David Brown of Motorola and Ronald Cohen of Apax Partners were all knighted in the New Year’s Honours. Lord Gavron was made a peer the same month he donated £500,000 to the Labour Party. Bernie Ecclestone, motor racing promoter and another million pound donor, got the ban on tobacco sponsorship lifted from Grand Prix racing. Shortly after Lord Sainsbury made another £2 million donation, John Prescott overruled Richmond council’s objection to a huge out-of-town Sainsbury store. And so it goes on…
Labour and big business united
From the word go Labour signalled its alliance with big business by handing over control of monetary policy to the Bank of England. BP’s Lord Simon was recruited to the government and Lord Sainsbury soon followed. Multinationals put staff to work in government departments. Last year, business representatives filled 90% of both the Treasury and Department of Trade and Industry task forces. At least 30 of the leading 100 companies have top executives advising the government. Their credentials seem farcical if you consider their role is supposed to be one of disinterested and balanced judgement, but perfectly logical when you understand their real role is to further the interests of the multinationals. For instance, Chris Fay, Chairman of Shell UK, a company with a controversial environmental record and which destroyed the lands of the Ogoni people in Nigeria by crude-oil pollution, is Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Business and the Environment. Stephanie Monk, Human Resources Director of Granada Group, which sacked workers after they went on strike when their pay was cut from £140 per week to £100, is a member of the Low Pay Commission and the New Deal Task Force; and Ewen Cameron, President of the Country Landowners Association and owner of 3000 acres in Somerset, who fought against the Right to Roam, is Chairman of the Countryside Agency, responsible for implementing the Right to Roam and for tackling social exclusion in rural areas.
These are just a few of many examples. There are now at least 320 task forces on which over 35% of the places are filled by big business. They are not just ‘jobs for the boys’ or back-handers for favours received. They are one of the mechanisms by which the state and big business collaborate to ensure the optimum conditions for British imperialism.
Supermarkets’ dodgy deals
Take, for example, the supermarkets; among Britain’s biggest multinationals, with total profits each year of billions of pounds, responsible for low pay and high drudgery among their work force, price-fixing and the massive exploitation of workers in the Third World. As well as Lord Sainsbury, the supermarkets have representatives on six government task forces and two advisory committees. Wal-Mart, the US giant that bought Asda, appears to have a direct line to Tony Blair and an understanding that they will be able to get round planning restrictions on new developments by buying up whole retail parks for their giant stores, or even by redefining sites as new towns! The supermarkets’ trade association, the British Retail Consortium (BRC), has persuaded the government to allow bigger lorries on the roads, got John Prescott to do a U-turn on taxing out-of-town car parking, forced amendments to the Competition Bill and helped fix the minimum wage at its appallingly low level. Spokesperson for the four biggest supermarkets at the BRC is Baroness Thornton, Labour peer, Director of the Labour Women’s Network and former Chair of the Greater London Labour Party. No surprise then that Tesco sponsors the Labour Party, delegates at the Labour Party Conference wore Somerfield ID badges and Lord Sainsbury has donated a total of at least £7 million to the party.
PFI – the Heineken of privatisation
The Private Finance Initiative (PFI) is one of the most scandalous outcomes of Labour’s cosy relationship with big-business. For the last 25 years capitalism has been prising open areas that had previously been restricted territory, the nationalised industries and public services, and privatising them. Labour has been happy to find new candidates for privatisation, such as the London Underground and Air Traffic Control, but most of the juicy public utilities have already gone. The wholesale privatisation of health and education would risk losing the support of the middle class. Hence, PFI, ‘the Heineken of privatisation’ as Sir Alastair Morton, Chair of the Strategic Rail Authority, has called it.
Before the last election Labour opposed PFI. By July of the same year Alan Milburn, now Secretary of State for Health, was crowing that, since Labour was cutting public spending, any developments would be ‘PFI or bust’.
PFI works by allowing private companies to build new public schemes that are then leased back to the public sector. To make the scheme attractive to developers, they are often expanded way beyond what is necessary, so that, for instance, instead of refurbishing old buildings they are demolished and new ones built in their place. Huge sweeteners are thrown in, such as extra land for housing or shopping developments. The private developers can insist on new prime sites that may be inappropriate for the original scheme. The developers expect to make between 15% and 25% profit.
PFI attacks the health service
In the winter of 2000, the NHS was in such poor shape that there was a shortage of 1,500 nurses and elective surgery had to stop because of a shortage of hospital beds. There were just 11 intensive care beds left in the whole country and people died as they were shipped around the country in a frantic attempt to find treatment.
In Coventry, two city centre hospitals are to be replaced by one new hospital away from the centre. The new hospital will cost £174 million and result in annual charges of £36 million for the local NHS Trust. The cost of refurbishing the two original hospitals would have been just £30 million.
The scheme will result in a reduction of hospital beds and further cut-backs to pay for the lease. This is a typical result of the PFI scam. The first 14 PFI hospitals will lose a total of 3,700 beds and result in nursing budget cuts of between 10% and 15%. For every £200 million spent on PFI hospitals 1,000 doctors and nurses will be lost. Labour’s claim to be increasing resources for the health service is totally contradictory. The extra hospital beds they are promising will be wiped out by the first phase of PFI alone. This is the reality of Labour’s pact with big business. Trading health, trading lives for profit.
PFI will penetrate all public services
Objections to PFI schemes and public inquiries are brushed aside. No alternatives can be considered. Questions are blocked by ‘commercial confidentiality’. Little wonder when PFI is such a blatant means of turning public assets into private profit. Chief Executive of the Department of Health’s Private Finance Unit was Robert Osborne. In 1998 he returned to the Special Projects division of Tarmac, the construction company that is building many of the PFI hospitals. Chief Executive of the government’s Private Finance Panel is David Steads who also happens to be Corporate Development Director of Serco, another of the big PFI contractors. By April 2000 there were 34 PFI developments underway, worth £3.5 billion. By 2003 the total is expected to be £20 billion.
There are nine PFI prison projects at present. Jack Straw did a U-turn on this, within a week of coming to office. The adviser on juvenile offenders to Labour’s Youth Justice Board is Sue Clifton, an executive at Group 4, which runs two private gaols for children. Straw, Clifton and their multinational backers must be pleased that another source of profit in human misery had been sprung. As Adrian Montague, head of the PFI Task Force said, ‘The prison sector is becoming a commodity product. It is almost on a production line’.
In state education, on top of PFI, there are also Education Action Zones (EAZ), another scam by which capital can penetrate the public sector. First schools in poor areas are under-funded. Then Labour denies, in the face of all the evidence, that poverty is any excuse for educational failure. Then the schools are ‘rescued’ by EAZs. By law, all EAZs must have business representatives on their boards. Such well known pillars of academic excellence as Shell, BT. British Aerospace, McDonalds, ICI and Tesco all help to run EAZs. Some state schools are now managed directly by private firms. These are not temporary measures designed to get schools back on their feet. In 1998 the Labour government admitted, ‘these are the test bed for the education system of the 21st century’. Our schools too are becoming production lines for capital.
Hammering the poor
While giving free rein to the representatives of the rich, Labour has been determined to keep the poor in their place. Any pretence that they have an obligation to the whole of society has been replaced by the concept of ‘social exclusion’; the idea that the poor, the unemployed, the chronically sick and disabled and the majority of pensioners are beyond the bounds of ‘normal’ society and sponge off it. Worst of all, as Jack Straw told us early on, are the ‘winos, squeegee-merchants and junkies’ who must be ‘swept off the streets’; then come travellers and asylum seekers and, of course, young girls who have babies! It is all their own fault, but, so the middle class can sleep more easily in their beds, the socially excluded must be hammered into inclusion. To prepare the way, Labour unleashed a barrage of moral tyranny against anyone who didn’t fit their image of Islington normality. This had a deadly serious purpose for capitalism. It was a class tyranny too. In a deregulated economy, the working class has to be controlled, forced off benefits and into unattractive low-paid work. Labour’s moralising created the climate to justify attacking the poor.
One of Labour’s first acts was to cut one parent family benefit and income support for single parents. This affected over two million children. By 1998/99 35% of all children, that is 4.5 million children were living in poverty. In 1999 benefits for the disabled were cut. As we predicted, Labour adamantly refused to restore the link between benefits and earnings. The gap between rich and poor has continued to widen. Almost a third of all pensioners live in poverty. Nearly 10 million people can’t afford to keep their homes decently dry, warm and decorated. 6.5 million adults can’t even afford a decent overcoat. The Chair of Labour’s Tax and Benefits Task Force, charged with finding ways of reducing poverty, is Martin Taylor, Chief Executive of Barclays plc, who ‘earns’ £1 million a year with another £750,000 in bonuses and has £1 million of share options. Martin has a nice coat.
Policing the workforce
Labour keeps people in poverty for a very good reason; very good for capitalism, that is. People have to be forced into the low-paid, part-time and casualised jobs that are increasingly the norm for workers in Britain. These include the million or so people who now act as domestics or servants for the likes of the Labour Party. Under the New Deal, unemployed workers must accept one of four alternatives. Anyone who refuses, or who feels a tad less than enthusiastic about some dead end, part-time job that pays peanuts and dissolves the brain, is punished by losing benefits. Over 18,000 ‘undeserving poor’ were punished in this way in 1999/2000 alone. The regime is being extended to cover most sections of the unemployed. Even widows, disabled people and lone parents with children in school will be expected to attend ‘work-focused interviews’.
The New Deal has little to do with new opportunities. Its purpose is to maintain a supply of renewable cheap labour; workers who have to accept low pay and appalling conditions, who are too fragmented to organise and fight back.
In April 1998, Simon Jones was sent by an employment agency to work at Shoreham Harbour. Simon had no choice. The work was heavy and dangerous, loading and unloading rocks. Simon was given no training and no safety equipment. Within hours of starting the job Simon was killed. A crane grab crushed Simon’s head. Simon’s death was no accident. It was a direct consequence of the punitive, deregulated work regime that Labour is imposing on behalf of their rich friends.
Chairman of the New Deal Task Force is Sir Peter Davis, Chief Executive of Reed International, an employment agency similar to the one that sent Simon to his death. His opposite number in Wales is Graham Hawker, Chief Executive of Hyder, a company keen on taking over local authority administration and ‘downsizing’ the workforce.
Labour’s cream for the fat cats
While Labour hammers the poor, they are, as Peter Mandelson has pointed out, ‘intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich’. Mandelson should know, of course, having taken a £373,000 ‘loan’ for his luxury home from millionnaire fellow minister Geoffrey Robinson.
Under Labour, the share of total income for the top 50%, and especially for the top 10% of the population has continued to rise. Top peoples’ pay rose by over 25% in both 1998 and 1999. For their rich friends, Labour has introduced cheap share ownership schemes, cut capital gains tax, reduced corporation tax three times to its lowest level ever and ensured that 97% of all estates are exempt from inheritance tax.
Labour arms oppression
Labour is just as ‘intensely relaxed’ when it comes to serving the interests of British imperialism abroad. Britain under Labour is now the world’s second largest arms exporter. Two-thirds go to regimes classified as having bad human rights records.
Staff from British Aerospace, Rolls Royce and Vickers all work in the Ministry of Defence. Labour didn’t revoke a single arms export license granted by the Tories. Head of the agency that advises the Labour government on such matters is Tony Edwards, Director of the TI Group that includes Matrix Churchill, of ‘arms to Iraq’ infamy. Edwards is also Chief Executive of a subsidiary engaged in 150 military operations worldwide.
Hawk jets, light tanks, armoured vehicles, machine guns were all sold to the brutal Indonesian government. They were used against Indonesian demonstrators and in the massacres in East Timor. Even as the massacres were taking place, Indonesian army top brass were being invited to the British arms fair by the Labour government.
British arms continue to flow into Turkey, a country that tortures and murders its political prisoners and pursues its ruthless war against the Kurdish people. Among the suppliers are British Aerospace. Sir Robin Biggam, appointed by Labour as Chair of the Independent Television Commission revoked the license of the Kurdish satellite station Med TV. Biggam is a director of British Aerospace.
Labour has blood on its hands
In the war on Yugoslavia at least 2,000 civilians were killed and a million refugees displaced, Serbs and Albanian Kosovans alike. Over 400 schools and a similar number of hospitals and medical units were destroyed. If Blair’s plan for a land invasion had taken place there would have been even more death and destruction. Purporting to prevent ethnic cleansing, the war increased ethnic killings on both sides. The war’s real purpose was to bolster British imperialism’s bridgehead to the oil-rich Caspian basin and beyond.
In Iraq, Britain and the United States continue their merciless bombing and blockade which have already killed over a million children. A further million are stunted from malnutrition, lack of access to clean water, sanitation and medicines. 200 Iraqi children are dying every day.
The vital ingredient in both Yugoslavia and Iraq is control of oil. In BP and Shell, Britain has two of the world’s five biggest energy companies. Lord Simon was Chairman when BP was collaborating with Colombian death squads and using the army to break strikes. From 1997 to 1999 he was Minister for European Trade and Competition in the Labour Cabinet, helping to carry out Labour’s ‘ethical’ foreign policy. Oil industry representatives pepper Labour government committees They dominate the Oil and Gas Industry Task Force. BP has more members on government task forces than any other company. From Competitiveness to the Environment, from Sustainable Development to Company Law, the oil companies ensure their interests are served.
In Palestine, Labour maintains silent complicity while the US-Zionist alliance tries to terrorise the Palestinian people into submission. Tony Blair’s tennis partner is Michael Levy. Levy is Labour’s leading fundraiser. He has close links with Zionist diplomats and acts as Labour’s unofficial envoy to Israel. Levy is Chair of Jewish Care and has a family home in Tel Aviv. He gave funds to Zionist Prime Minister Barak and ‘Justice’ Minister Beilin both of whom are guilty of the murder and torture of Palestinians. Labour made Levy a Lord.
Labour, party of the ruling class
This then is the reality of Labour’s record in office. Everywhere, in every sphere of life we see the Labour government totally subservient to the interests of imperialism; totally dedicated to the masters of capital; totally at one with the ruling class.
British imperialism cannot escape the deepening crisis of capitalism. It must continue to penetrate every aspect of society and turn it over to the needs of profit. It will continue to screw more and more out of the working class. To do so it will become even more authoritarian, even more bloodthirsty. Labour will faithfully carry out their dirty work.
‘Here we go round the mulberry bush’ was sung by Victorian prisoners in the exercise yard. Those who play the election game are prisoners of the system, endlessly going round in meaningless circles. No-one at the next election will represent the interests of the working class; the revolutionary alternative. Once again our message is ‘ Don’t vote for class enemies. Organise and fight back!’
Jim Craven
Footnote
Some of the examples used to illustrate this article were taken from the website www.red-star-research.org.uk and from the book Captive State – The Corporate Takeover of Britain by George Monbiot, Macmillan London 2000.
Monbiot calls for direct action to reverse the corporate takeover but stresses the action must be non-violent. He doesn’t accept that the process is an inevitable consequence of the capitalist system and can only be stopped by overthrowing that system. At last year’s May Day demonstrations Monbiot condemned the demonstrators rather than the violence of the corporate police state he claims to oppose (see FRFI 155). By trying to limit the form of opposition, Monbiot divides the opposition forces and protects the capitalist system on which his privileged position as academic and journalist depends.
Mandelson
Like a Swiss cuckoo clock Peter Mandelson has been in and out of government. First he was sacked as Cabinet Minister when his ‘loan’ from millionnaire Geoffrey Robertson was exposed. As a close friend of the Prime Minister, and in the true spirit of croneyism, after a few months penance he re-emerged ‘cleansed’ as Northern Ireland Minister to replace Mo Mowlam. Mandelson was a good friend to the Loyalists and it looked as though he would play a key role in the coming general election. In essence Mandelson is a true representative of New Labour – a spiv. Oops…he’s been at it again.
Judicious questions to the Home Office revealed that Mandelson had phoned them on behalf of the millionnaire Hinduja brothers (now under investigation for corruption in India), patrons of the Dome (formerly Mandelson’s responsibility), who were trying to get British passports. It is well known that rich people get passports and poor people get deported, so there shouldn’t have been a problem. But Mandelson couldn’t resist a little lie to Parliament…and for that you get the boot! So it’s goodbye corridors of power, hello Hartlepool, if they want him. Oops, now he’s changed his mind again…
‘Twelve homes’ Meacher
Now we hear that ‘Old Labour socialist’ Michael Meacher owns twelve properties worth at least £2 million. They include three homes for himself, one a mansion in the Cotswolds, totalling over a million pounds, and at least five that he rents out. Meacher is the man who once condemned ‘posh homes’ as part of the Thatcherite divide and second homes in the country for preventing local young people from finding a home.
One of his properties is in Cascades Court, a luxury block of flats in Wimbledon with rents of £700 a week. They were built in place of affordable housing, following a £600,000 ‘payment’ by the developers to Merton council.
Michael Meacher’s wife is a director of three property development companies. Meacher is Minister for the Environment. His ministry is responsible for the regulation of housing and planning.
