What Kind of Economy Denies the Fire-Fighters their Worth?

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What Kind of Economy Denies the Fire-Fighters their Worth?

Foreign Secretary Declares World A Single Media Village

In the course of the lengthy press conference given by the Prime Minister last week occasioned by the fire-fighters’ strike, Tony Blair claimed that if the government conceded to the fire-fighters’ pay claim "the economic consequences would be dire".

According to Tony Blair, the fire-fighters’ just demand that they are paid their worth is at odds with the government’s pursuit of "economic stability". Only as a result of "hard-won stability", the Prime Minister claimed, and as a result of "managing the economy in a sensible and prudent way" would it be possible "to invest in our public services". Based on this logic, Tony Blair asserted that "we cannot therefore allow the good work to be undone now with pay settlements that risk driving up inflation, interest rates and unemployment".

Tony Blair repeated this view throughout the press conference, while adding that even if people thought that the fire-fighters might be a special case, other public sector workers, teachers and nurses for example, might make the same claim. That extra pay would be at the expense of investment in public services "that there are limits to the amount of money that can be made available".

But Tony Blair’s presentation of economics begs the question of the nature of economic stability and a sound economy. In other words, it rests on the questionable assumptions that a sound national economy in the general interest is (a) what the government is striving for, and (b) must be achieved by the working people tightening their belts. What is also assumed is that the government knows best, that it is not deriving its authority from the working people.

What must be asked, and which Tony Blair seeks to avoid the fire-fighters and other workers asking is: what kind of economy is the government managing and on whose behalf? If the economy cannot provide an adequate and just livelihood for those who daily risk their lives for others then what use is it and whose interests does it serve? And what kind of investment is being made in the economy if this is not investment in those who provide the most essential public services in any truly modern society such as education and health care?

What must be recognised is that in any truly modern society people have a right to expect such services, which should be provided and financed at the highest level and not in any way bound by arbitrary limits linked to "the amounts of money that can be made available". As is well known, no such "limits" are currently placed on military expenditure nor on the government’s warmongering policy in regard to Iraq. Gordon Brown in his Pre-Budget Report quietly announced the provision of as much as an extra £1 billion "to meet our international defence responsibilities" – that is, to go to war with Iraq.

Tony Blair and the Labour government are adamant that only they can decide how the worth of workers can be assessed. But should it not be recognised that in any truly modern society the workers themselves must have the right to set their own worth taking into account the wealth they produce by the application of their labour, the service they provide to society and their concrete conditions? Is it not the case that last year cabinet ministers voted themselves a 40% pay rise, so why should this right be denied to others?

But the current dispute also points to the fact that the Labour government is managing an economy that rather than placing in the interests of the working people at the centre, instead places the need for "economic stability" in the interests of making the big monopolies and financial institutions successful globally in first place. It has to be said also, and the growing disquiet among all sections of the people underlines this, that the government’s criterion for success is that business should make the maximum capitalist profit. This is then supposed to make the country prosperous. But if economic stability and prosperity means that working people should put aside their own interests and see the whole of society delivered to the financiers and monopolies, why should they agree to this?

This situation points to the need for the workers to get together to discuss how a truly modern society and economy can be build. This must be a society in which the workers decide not only their worth but the whole direction of the economy so that the needs of the majority can be put in first place.

In a speech at the Foreign Press Association, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on November 27 spoke of the role modern communications has played in creating "a real sense of a global community".

Jack Straw presented the modern media as something neutral, something which is not controlled by human beings, but a force in itself. This force is supposed to act as a "vital catalyst for global action to address the problems of war, famine, disease and oppression".

The media reflect the values of those that control them. It is not possible that they should lack partisanship. The prevailing media reflect the desire of the monopoly capitalist class that the status quo should be maintained by force and that history and ideological struggle must come to an end with "western liberal democracy". The values which reflect this position are considered so superior that it is not even presented that any other values have validity. Indeed, other value systems, such as Islam, are depicted through the Eurocentric spectacles of "western liberal democracy" without a second glance.

But this is not the end of the matter. The world has its reality independent of the media that report on it. Furthermore, the people have their concerns which the media choose whether to address or to put forward some other agenda which goes against the people’s interests. Just because the media reports from everywhere in the world, the peoples of the world will not coalesce to form a "global community" after the model of Jack Straw’s United Kingdom.

The Foreign Secretary has an ulterior purpose in stating his premise, which is that people, according to him, "are no longer willing to accept that morality stops at state borders. They rightly demand action." His arguments are pressed into the service of a sordid scenario of the violation of the sovereignty of peoples and nations.

While the media professionals continue "to shine light on abuses in dark corners of the world" (which, of course, in the emotive language of the Foreign Secretary is anywhere but Britain and America, with some concessions to Western Europe), Jack Straw is highly selective about these abuses and their causes. For instance, he focuses on an Iraq "which no longer possesses weapons of terror, no longer defies the UN, and no longer oppresses its people" while passing over an Israel of which the same words could be uttered with a thousand times more justification. Nor is the condition of the vast majority in the undeveloped world of poverty, starvation and disease considered an "abuse" in the same way, when the world’s people are demanding action from the big powers to end their system of neo-liberal globalisation which is causing such devastation.

The Foreign Secretary’s sense of "global community" evidently convinces him that "the Iraqi regime will not comply without the credible threat of force, and therefore while we do not seek confrontation, we will not shirk it". Jack Straw sees abuses where he wants to see them, and advocates taking action not where it serves humanity’s interests but where it serves the interests of the monopolies who control the kind of media that he has in mind.

It can indeed be said that there is one humanity. This is the reality, and not that there is a "global community", a "single media village", or an "international community" in which there are outcasts and those that dictate to others. There is a reality, but Jack Straw does not think of turning the spotlight on himself to see this reality. Instead, this same media is being turned into a machine for propagating disinformation and moulding public opinion. The Foreign Secretary would like to fool everyone into thinking that the world is one media village where reality is what is presented on the television screen and nothing else. But humanity is bound to assert itself to prove otherwise.