Queen's Speech:
Taking the Anti-Social Offensive
Further
The Queen's Speech on November 17 set out the government's
legislative programme for the coming parliament.
The Queen mouthed the words of Tony Blair from the last
Labour Party Conference in saying that this third programme of legislation from
New Labour "aims to build on my Government's programme of reform as they
seek to modernise the country and its institutions to meet the challenges of
the new Millennium". This programme, as has become clear, is to escalate
the anti-social offensive, while doing everything to create the impression that
this onslaught on society is in fact the last word in modernisation and
progress.
The Speech referred to "continued modernising of our
economy [and] the promotion of enterprise" indicating that the
government's neoliberal policies would be further pursued. It continued to
promote the fiction of a "dynamic, knowledge-based economy" of
"electronic commerce and electronic government, improving our ability to
compete in the digital marketplace", as though knowledge and new
technology in itself produced wealth without the application of labour to
nature. It was said, of course, that education remains the government's
"number one priority", which signals that teachers will come under
more pressure, an all-round high standard of education will become even more
the preserve of the privileged, and that education will become even more a
source of profits for the rich. It is a similar story with the Post Office
which will be converted into a public limited company so as "to compete
more effectively in UK and overseas markets", rather than providing a
much-needed service for the people.
There are a large number of bills proposed, nine in fact,
dealing with issues of "law and order", making this the heaviest part
of the government's legislative programme. These proposals would provide new
powers to punish those who fall foul of the government's direction of
criminalising society itself. There will be an end to a defendant's right to
trial by jury in a number of cases, which the legal profession have said will
create a "two-tier defence system" with those most vulnerable being
the unemployed, those in low-status jobs and defendants from national minority
communities. In line with the false analysis of "institutionalised
racism" in the sense that racism is said not to be a preferred policy of
the state but is somehow inherent in certain institutions, there are to be
measures to combat "racial discrimination in the police". There are
proposals also to cut the welfare benefits of those convicted of crimes.
The government is proposing in its "reform" of
the financing of political parties that there is to be a limit of £20
million in the spending of parties at election time. This alone exposes the
farce and the fraud of parliamentary elections. The fiction has been maintained
up till now that candidates are somehow independent of political parties and
there are legal limits on how much each candidate can outlay, while how much
the big parties can splash out to coerce the people to put an X by their
candidates has been unlimited. That £20 million is to be the limit shows
just how unlevel is the playing field for candidates from small parties or
independent candidates who may be chosen by their peers.
Other proposed bills include a "Freedom of
Information" Bill, which does nothing to make government accountable and,
as commentators have pointed out, also does nothing to prevent cover-ups by
government by exempting so much from its scope. A consolidation of the
"Prevention of Terrorism" Act is proposed just at the time when there
is every sign of a breakthrough in the Irish Peace Process, and the so-called
"terrorism" which the Act was introduced on a "temporary"
year-by-year basis is at an end. In other words, all political struggles are to
be further criminalised. In the words of Downing Street, the main points of
this bill are said to be: Permanent UK-wide anti-terrorism legislation;
definition of terrorism to apply for first time to "domestic"
terrorism, strengthened powers to tackle terrorist financing and confiscate
terrorist assets; judge (rather than a Minister) able to consider police
requests for extension of detention; additional temporary Northern Ireland
measures.
Of the bills which might have been introduced, there is no
mention, for example, of legislation on electoral reform to remove the
"first-past-the-post" system which is part of the whole process which
keeps the people themselves away from political power.
In fact, the whole of this legislative programme underlines
the necessity for political renewal. The government has responded to the crisis
of credibility and legitimacy by embarking on a programme of
"constitutional reform". This has the aim, with an air of tackling
the problem fundamentally, of actually entrenching the features which are in
essence the most in need of renewal. The programme also underlines how far the
government has retreated from the notion that the state, as the sole
representative of society, has responsibility for the well-being of society.
The proposed measures underline the actual role of the government as the
representative, not of society, but of the financial oligarchy, of taking the
measures to ensure that the aims of the financial oligarchy prevail in the
economy and in society.
This has been the history of the Labour Party in power
since May 1997. Tony Blair talks of himself as a "moderniser", as
mentioned in the Queen's Speech, against the "forces of
conservatism". But this legislative programme will only provide the
circumstances for deepening the economic and political crisis, exacerbating the
contradiction at the base of society between the socialisation of production
and the private appropriation of the values produced, the situation where the
whole of society, not just manufacturing, is being run to enrich the top
financiers, a foreign policy based on "commercial links",
"security initiatives" which are based on making Britain number one
in the global market.
The very fact that the programme is presented in a
"Queen's Speech" highlights how backward is Britain and the whole
parliamentary system, and that the government, as the executive, have the power
to rule by putting forward whatever legislation they choose. And then the
"debate" on this Queen's Speech is one of the most horrible things to
behold, a model of everything serious political discussion should not be,
lowering the level of political culture to its most base. The whole rigmarole
reinforces the content of the legislation, which is that the government will
force through all the arrangements which the rich require to further drain the
society of its human and natural assets.
The Labour government's third legislative programme shows
that this government, far from being a force for progress and modernisation,
represents the exact opposite, an instrument for imposing the anti-social
offensive even further against the people.
