The Crisis Facing Tony Blair and the Need for the Alternative

Workers' Daily Internet Edition: Article Index :

Commentary:
The Crisis Facing Tony Blair and the Need for the Alternative

Workers' Movement
Further Strike by Postal Workers
Sacking Initiates Tube Strike Ballot
Airport Workers Consider Strikes 7 October 2003
Women's Income is Still Less than Half of Men's

letter to the Editor:
Jack Straw Re-Invents the UN Charter

The summer months in which Tony Blair and his government have been, by their own admission, "battered", only show the extent to which mass opposition needs to be intensified to the neo-liberal economic agenda of accommodating the wishes of the financial oligarchy by selling off social programmes to private capital, and warmongering in Iraq and internationally.

The coverage which preceded Blair’s "clear the air" speech to the recent Labour Party Conference was followed by monopoly press disappointment when his government’s attacks on social programmes and Iraq again rose to the top of the Conference debates. The persistent questions of credibility and legitimacy posed by Blair’s leadership as well as people’s constant opposition to his government’s anti-social agenda need to be addressed so the people’s forces come out on top.

Most starkly represented by national and international opposition to his leading role in planning the aggression against Iraq, Blair is being hammered on each of the justifications used to force through and endorse the unjust attack. On this issue Blair is considered vulnerable and his Conference speech intended to disorient opponents and present himself in Thatcherite colours as "not for turning".

So what kind of crisis is it that Tony Blair and New Labour are facing? Is it one of legitimacy, credibility, trust, accountability, or spin doctoring? Is it the inner workings of government, which have recently been further exposed as an arena of deception and fraud, forced through Cabinet decision-making rituals by Blair and his closest advisers? At the heart of the crisis remains the unrepresentative parliamentary democracy, which guarantees the parties of the rich political power through an arrangement perfected over generations and designed to depoliticise the electorate. It is the same crisis that New Labour was brought to power in 1997 to solve for the bourgeoisie. But, as could have been predicted at the time, this "solution" has been short-lived.

The "reform" of public services, the "hard choices and difficult decisions" Blair professes to be his burden are all pursued with a false mandate. The undemocratic parliamentary system that supposedly grants such authority is itself being exposed as undemocratic and insufficient either to represent people’s democratic will or articulate their opposition. The importance of targeting the source of the problem and navigating a way out of it is therefore vital.

Thatcherism and the Conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s embodied and perfected the driving through of the anti-social offensive. That process itself went into crisis and was the focus of the deposition of Thatcher and the emergence of John Major. It culminated in the 1997 General Election Conservative Party meltdown – an electoral coup against the initiative of the people’s struggles to defeat Thatcherism. Ready to take its place, was New Labour, transformed by Neil Kinnock, John Smith and Tony Blair into a parliamentary party of the rich stepping up the anti-social offensive, with its apologists who manipulated the opposition to the anti-social offensive. The years leading to their electoral rehabilitation saw a complete rebranding exercise as the bourgeoisie searched for a credible alternative to the Conservative Party. The 1997 electoral coup to prevent success in the struggles against the Tories and the anti-social offensive was manifested as a vote for New Labour. New Labour, a new start, new ways of carrying out politics – all the hated features of Conservative rule to be jettisoned – how misplaced those hopes have proven.

Conservative Party attributes that embodied their demise – sleaze, corruption, privatisation – remain, this time in the New Labour government. With Tony Blair continuing to drive through the anti-social offensive in all fields – education, health, transport, and other social programmes. Not to mention almost military interventions, attacks and launching wars of aggression against sovereign nations. These are not the actions of a party opposed to the fundamental characteristics of British imperialism and the parliamentary system. They are the activities of a party of the rich, fully engaged with each element of the old order and its political apparatus, economic architecture and military structure. Since the coming to power of Blair in 1997 his party has shown itself to be quite content to personify and perpetuate each of the essential criteria of a bourgeois political party – as an electoral machine rather than a social force representing the interests of its members and organising them for political power. The illusions of the Third Way as a magic solution – neither Thatcherism nor Old Labour – capable of renovating British society and solving the crises in democracy, representation, the economy and other social spheres are being systematically dismantled. This is the "rough patch" that Blair is caught in, and the source of his "difficult decisions". The aim of driving through the anti-social offensive, transforming public services and constant warmongering face opposition.

So the issue now for the people’s movement is to carefully sum up the experience of the past six years. What is the alternative to New Labour and Tony Blair? Many answer that it is the traditional Labour values said to be manifest in Chancellor Gordon Brown. Such a conclusion is dangerous. A trap is being laid by this debate to jettison Blair and maintain the system of party rule, which is the source of the crisis.

The alternative is the transformation of society through democratic renewal of political life to guarantee that the people are the decisive factors in decision-making. That the people and their representatives – worker politicians – come to power rather then the representatives of what are known as mainstream parties who have proven themselves incapable for representing the people’s will in the outdated parliamentary system of government. Each of the campaigns and struggles waged against the anti-social offensive, and the anti-war movement – by workers, women, and youth – capture the spirit of opposition to the anti-social offensive. Within these struggles are the tools to oust Tony Blair, New Labour and the party-dominated system of government and replace it with a government that places the claims the individuals and collectives have on society in the first place and provides them with a guarantee.

Postal workers in London are to stage a fresh strike next week in their struggle in defence of an adequate London Weighting. Members of the Communication Workers Union will walk out for 24 hours on October 16.

The company and the media always take up the "cost" of a strike. It is as thought the workers were holding the monopolies to ransom and not the other way round. Frequently such companies will hold a gun to the workers heads: either accept what we dictate to you or we will be forced to close, lose out to the competition and/or sack further workers. Of course, this is all presented in a manner which disingenuously identifies the interests of the company, faced with overproduction or intense competition, with the interests of the workers, the community and the country as a whole.

In this case, it was reported that the previous strike by London postal workers caused "widespread disruption" and "cost" the Royal Mail up to £10 million, that postal services were "crippled" and that five days were needed to clear the backlog of post.

The Communication Workers Union has planned the strike to coincide with a 24-hour walkout by tens of thousands of town hall workers in a similar dispute over claims for increased London Weighting allowances. Both the CWU and UNISON workers are determined to achieve their just demand for a £4,000 London allowance in defence of their constantly-eroded standard of living.

According to the anti-worker laws, the unions must give seven days' notice of any strike action.

Sacking Initiates Tube Strike Ballot

Tube workers are to be balloted on industrial action over the sacking of a union activist. Members of the Rail Maritime and Transport Union will be urged to support strikes in protest at the dismissal of the London Underground driver. RMT general secretary Bob Crow accused the company of "scraping the barrel" in finding an excuse to sack the activist. The company has used the pretext off his being seen coming out of a squash club while he was on sick leave with an ankle injury. Yet the both the GP and the sports-injury therapist of the driver concerned had advised him that an increasing amount of exercise would speed his return to work.

It is not the first time and no doubt will not be the last that a pretext has been found to get rid of a union representative and try and isolate them. These same management would find nothing amiss in spending time in such sports activities when it is said to be in the interests of "networking" or other excuses, while it is the workers who are supposed to make sacrifices. In any case, a pretext is a pretext and the management are on the lookout for "justifications" to dismiss those who are activists in the workers’ interests.

Meanwhile, the "two-tier" workforce that now operates on London Underground – with some 6,500 workers being employed by the two private sector companies Metronet and Tube Lines – is causing further difficulties for the workers. Both private companies are refusing to fund back-pay brokered by Mayor Ken Livingstone last year. The companies say they will only pay the increase from this year when they signed contracts under the Public Private Partnership (PPP) to maintain the ailing system and when they inherited the staff from London Underground.

The union leaders accepted a three per cent pay rise last year and returned to work. Ken Livingstone appointed a mediator, Professor Frank Burchill, who has recommended an extra 0.75 per cent. LU employees who were not transferred to the private sector companies are having the additional money backdated.

RMT leader Bob Crow has warned he will ballot for action unless the private sector consortia agree fully to fund back pay for the 6,500 workers. While LU has already paid the money to the thousands of tube workers it retained, the Mayor's spokesperson said he "cannot interfere in negotiations between the unions and private companies".

Airport Workers Consider Strikes 7 October 2003

Hundreds of Heathrow Airport workers including cleaners and baggage handlers are being balloted for industrial action in three separate pay disputes, with recommendations by the TGWU to vote for strike action. The union points out that ground-handling and cargo operations workers employed by Swissport and cleaning workers employed by contractor OCS, totally 1,300 workers, are effectively being offered no pay rise.

Women's Income is Still Less than Half of Men's

A report published on October 9 of a study by the Institute for Employment Studies, carried out for the Department of Trade and Industry, shows that the average woman's income is less than half the average man's.

Full-time female workers earned just over 80 per cent of the amount their male colleagues did on average, according to figures published last year. But women's income as a whole, which includes benefits and money from investments, is only 49 per cent of men's.

Katherine Rake, of gender campaign group the Fawcett Society, said: "Money is still a good indicator of social status so the big question is where the money is in society. This large income gap shows the money still remains primarily in men's hands."

Women of working age are less likely to work than men and those with jobs are more likely to be part timers. Furthermore, the pension income for wives is far lower than that for husbands.

These figures once again are an indictment of the social system. They underline that it is the people who must control the national wealth and transform society to eradicate gender inequality.

On Wednesday, September 24, the Foreign Secretary defended the Bush doctrine of "preventive war" on BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme.

He told the interviewer: "Article 51 [of the United Nations Charter], to which you referred earlier, you said it only allows for self-defence; it actually goes more widely than that because it talks about the right of states to take what is called ‘preventive action’".

Four points need to be made about that statement:

1. Article 51 nowhere talks about "the right of states to take ‘preventive action’", or anything similar;
2. Nowhere else in the United Nations Charter is there any reference to a "right of states to take ‘preventive action’", or anything similar;
3. Article 51 was framed as a specifically limited exception to the "United Nations system", to which Jack Straw referred. It talks only about "the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs" (my emphasis), and goes on to further constrain that right;
4. The United Nations Charter was so framed as to outlaw any state’s claimed right to "preventive war";

Jack Straw spoke as the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, a Permanent Member of the Security Council of the United Nations, to the audience of what is described as "Britain’s leading political programme". He "invented" a provision of the United Nations Charter which does not exist, and went on to broadcast his own invention as a fact.

The United Nations Charter is the cornerstone of conventional international law and its provisions are binding on all members of the United Nations. It is not in anyone’s gift to "amend" it, in the style of mediaeval kings, for their own, or, in the British Foreign Secretary’s case, for another country’s purposes.

Perhaps these facts explain why the transcript of the interview appears not to be given on the Foreign Office website, as is their usual custom. This is a particularly brazen example of the disinformation presented by the government and the media to the public on an ongoing basis. It is to add lies to lies, as their justifications for the unjustifiable become completely exposed. Democratic people must not let such lies pass unchallenged.