A Brazen Attempt at Political Deception

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A Brazen Attempt at Political Deception

In what was extensively trailed by the monopoly media as a "landmark speech" in his political career, Tony Blair appeared before the 2003 Labour Party conference in Bournemouth in an attempt to justify his government's political programme

At a time when there is a growing crisis of legitimacy for the entire party-dominated bourgeois system of "representative democracy" and increasing opposition to the Labour government's neo-liberal programme of wars of aggression, curtailment of democratic rights and handing over of the social programmes to private capital, Tony Blair's speech aimed to practise political deception on a grand scale, disorientate the working class and people and neutralise their opposition to the reactionary course of his government.

Hailing the six and a half years of a Labour government as an historic achievement, Blair cited the "successes of his government" including "low inflation, mortgage rates and unemployment; the best ever school results; declines in cardiac and cancer deaths; decline in burglaries; abolition of the hereditary peers and cutting Third World debt". He failed to mention the huge debt burden on the mass of the population, the runaway house prices which have meant that many workers are unable to afford a mortgage, the crisis in the NHS or the funding crisis in secondary schools, not to mention the deepening economic and social crises in the "Third World". Moving on from the successes of his government, Blair declared that, "Government's tough" and later on that he has hit "a rough patch". The question that naturally arises is why is government so "tough" for Tony Blair and his Labour government and why have they "hit a rough patch", if as he claims they have attained a "mountain of genuine achievements" for the people. Why are the people rising in opposition to this Labour government, whether in the mass anti-war demonstrations or the Brent East by-election, despite its "mountain of genuine achievements"? This is a question Tony Blair does not address but the answer to it is crystal clear. It is precisely the mass opposition of the people to the Labour government's neo-liberal programme in the service of finance capital which makes government "tough" and has driven the Labour government into its "rough patch".

Moving to one of the central themes of his speech, Blair declared that he was fighting for a "fair future", "fairness remade", "fairness for pensioners", "fairness for taxpayers", "fairness for public transport users" and "fairness for students". With this declaration, Blair is seeking to carry out a huge political deception on the people. He wants them to believe that a system which is based on the rule of a tiny minority of billionaires, whose programme of neo-liberal globalisation is causing havoc in every corner of the world, can be made "fair" for everyone if only we all pull together and make the right reforms. According to this logic, the capitalist system is fine and will provide "fairness" for the billionaire, worker or poor farmer in the "Third World" in equal measure. This is a political deception of the highest order aimed at getting the workers to reconcile themselves to their worsening conditions and to become passive in the face of the onslaught of the financial oligarchy and their political representatives. It is deception, because it suggests that the problem is to make the fairness available to the few now available to the many, that a re-ordered capitalism can achieve this, whereas inequalities are increasing precisely because the system is based on the right of the few to expropriate, own, control and dispose of the material and natural blessings which rightly belong to the whole of humanity.

Addressing another of his key concerns, namely the "affordability of the social programmes", Blair posed the question, "…how do we finance education through life and also get more children into university education that competes with the best in the world"? His answer was direct. "To pretend it will come from the taxpayer is dishonest. It won't and it wouldn't be fair if it did." Blair did not bother to state his preferred solution to his question, namely to charge students huge fees which block working class youth from higher education and saddle those who complete it with huge debts, but declared that his government is "turning higher education from a privilege for the few to a right for the many". Thus is the programme of delivering education to the benefit of the monopolies covered over with words which purport to embody that education is a right! The issue that Tony Blair does not address with regard to the affordability of the social programmes is what becomes of the social product, the total wealth produced by the labour of the working people in Britain and that plundered from the labour and resources of the people of the "Third World". Why is it "fair" that this wealth should be seized as their personal property by the owners of capital? Why shouldn't the working people of each country take hold of the wealth they have produced by their own labour and decide how it should be spent? Wouldn't this solve the "problem of the affordability of the social programmes?" The fraud being perpetrated here by Tony Blair is that the government budget can only deal with the state funds appropriated from personal taxation while who has first claim on the national wealth as a whole is buried as an issue.

Turning to the Anglo-American aggression against Iraq for which he is widely hated, Blair tried his utmost to overcome the people's opposition. Returning once again to the now discredited themes of the threat from "Iraq's WMDs" and "the brutality and wickedness of Saddam's regime", while failing to mention the full support offered to this "regime" by successive British and US governments. More importantly, Blair presents the criminal aggression against Iraq, which he dismissively describes as "Saddam's country" as if 20 million Iraqis did not exist, as being based on the rightness of "his belief" and his "right" to decide whether or not to "leave Saddam in place". This is a clear assault on humanity's achievements of the 20th century, particularly those which arose out of the defeat of fascism in the Second World War. This defeat ushered in a new consciousness that relations between states should be law based and uphold the principles enshrined in the UN Charter of respect for sovereignty and the non-use of force and the threat of force. Tony Blair's "beliefs" do not over-ride the verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunals that the unleashing of a war of aggression against a sovereign country is the "worst of all war crimes".

Assuming once again his colonialist mantle as the "great white saviour" of the world's poor, Blair declared that his government "was growing its aid budget", "cutting Third World debt", "had helped to broker the deal to give AIDS patients in Africa access to drugs", "was fighting to get world trade opened up" and "was fighting to give hope to Africa". Finally he declared that "the fight against poverty and oppression is Britain's mission in the world". With these words, Blair seeks to cloak his colonialist ambitions in a veneer of high ideals and promote imperialist chauvinism among the workers here in Britain. In this vision, the workers and people of the oppressed countries who are living in poverty and oppression are incapable of taking their destiny into their own hands and transforming their situation to their benefit. Their fate is dependent on the "charity" of the imperialist politicians like Blair. This deception is meant to pave the way for the big powers to step up their wars of aggression and interference in the affairs of the oppressed countries under the signboard of "liberating the people from poverty and oppression".

Tony Blair's speech to this year's Labour Party conference is a call for the intensification of the Labour government's neo-liberal programme, which over the last six and a half years has built upon the attacks of the previous Conservative governments. It is a programme for intensifying everything that is retrogressive and oppressive in the present situation. Tony Blair's attempts to hide this reality behind political deception just won't wash. Today the critical issue facing the working class and people is not one of "reclaiming the Labour Party" nor of "making the system fairer". Tony Blair said that the conference slogan had been changed from "Fairness for All" to "A Future Fair for All". This is all part and parcel of the political deception. It is the conception of "fairness", whether now or in the future, which does not recognise that society is divided into classes, which is at the heart of the fraud of the "Third Way". What is needed in opposition to Tony Blair’s neo-liberal programme is for the working class and people to fight for and elaborate their own independent programme of stopping the rich being paid and actually investing in social programmes which safeguard the future of society. Only on this road will the people avert the present dangers and build a society fit for the 21st century.