By Michael Faulkner –
June 13, 2010
The antiquated flummery and arcane ritual of the fancy-dress
parade that is the state opening of parliament proceeded in its customary
fashion on the 25th May. The now aged and stooped monarch, ludicrously
adorned with diamond and gold studded crown, performed the functions she has always
performed, delivering in her inimitable high-pitched, cut-glass, anachronistic
aristocratic cadences, ‘the Speech from the Throne’ – the Queen’s speech
– written by someone else on behalf of ‘her’ government.
For those unimpressed by such ritual, this year’s ceremonial
nonsense contrasted starkly with the situation in the real world outside the
gilded chamber of the House of Lords. The twenty-two bills announced in the
speech, relating to the financial and economic crisis, political reform and decentralization
of government and public services, provide little indication of the alarming
shape of things to come. The initial £6.25bn programme of spending cuts is a
drop in the ocean compared to what will follow. Because none of the three main
political parties came clean in the election campaign about the extent of their
planned cuts to reduce the budget deficit, and because most of the media
colluded in this conspiracy to persuade people that ‘we are all in this
together’ and that the unspecified future hardship would be bearable because
fairly shared, most people remained – and remain – unprepared for
the shocks that are on the way. Two weeks after its formation the Con-Lib Dem
coalition is getting a very favorable press. Grumblings from the Tory old-guard
and left-leaning Liberals are treated as proof that the Cameron-Clegg marriage
has the support of the majority of the electorate who are assumed to have voted
for precisely this outcome – a politics of the centre-right. Another more
plausible interpretation of the electoral politics is that a clear majority
voted in favor of a realignment on the left. The Lib Dem vote was an anti-Tory
vote. Many former Labour voters switched to the Lib Dems because of disgust
with New Labour. Far more stayed loyal to the party despite their
disillusionment with New Labour.
There is evidence that in constituencies with popular, often
left wing MPs, where local activists fought vigorous campaigns, the Labour vote
actually increased. This was most evident in places like the London
constituency of Holborn and St. Pancras where Frank Dobson increased his
majority. Likewise, in Dagenham and Barking, where the fascist British National
Party leader Nick Griffin hoped to get elected, the sitting Labour MP, Margaret
Hodge, increased her majority, pushing Griffin into third place. In the
contemporaneous local council elections the BNP was wiped out in the
constituency, losing every one of its 12 seats. This result was due largely to
the mobilization of hundreds of anti-racist activists who challenged the BNP
head-on, radicalizing the whole campaign.
But parliamentary politics is conducted on the assumption
that the electors’ involvement is essentially passive. Every five years or so,
the elector enters the voting booth to vote for the parliamentary
representative of his or her choice. That is all that is required. With luck,
the elected representative will be a ‘good’ constituency MP, will hold regular
surgeries and be responsive to the concerns of the electorate. That is what
representative parliamentary democracy is all about. Anything that may come to
resemble a mass campaign, or organized mass action in support of particular
objectives, if tolerated, is regarded as ‘extra-parliamentary’ with the
implication that it lacks a certain legitimacy, and, at best may be regarded as
‘lobbying’ or ‘pressure-group politics’. It is in this vein that trade union
militancy and strike action in pursuit of wage claims or for the right to work
are often treated in the media as actions ‘against the public interest’. In the
right-wing press striking workers are never treated as members of the public.
Trade union actions in defense of their members’ interests are nearly always
regarded as irresponsible and anti-social. Real mass action such as the two
million strong march against the invasion of Iraq in February 2003 was totally
ignored by Blair’s government which was hell-bent on war. Only this week, the
peace camp supported by anti-war activists, pitched in Parliament Square, facing
the Palace of Westminster, has been dismantled by the police because it was
deemed to be offensive to the public and to tourists.
Recently there has been a worrying rise in cases of
litigation by employers against trade unions involved in industrial action. The
courts have been used to invalidate union votes in favour of strike action by
focusing on pettifogging technicalities in the way the ballots were conducted.
This was most glaring in the case of an 80% vote for strike action in a dispute
between British Airways and the cabin crew section of the Unite union. An
injunction was granted to BA on the grounds that the union had failed to inform
its members of the exact number of spoiled ballot papers. Although the
injunction was later overturned on appeal, this sort of thing is becoming more
common. With the prospect of increased industrial unrest by workers faced with
wage cuts and large scale unemployment as the cuts bite deeper, the courts will
be used to exploit obscure aspects of industrial relations law in order
effectively to ban strikes. None of the mainstream political parties has defended
the rights of organized labour.
The Con-Lib Dem government talks blithely about the ‘recovery’
as though it is guaranteed after a painful but brief spell of austerity. This
is whistling in the dark. The government, like those in the Euro zone, is
fixated on deficit reduction. Having bailed out the banks that were responsible
for the financial crisis, they are now unprepared to deal with them effectively
and instead seek to make the working population repay the billions used to prop
up the financial sector. But this is not going to work – or, to put it
another way, it will work only in the dysfunctional sense that it will impose
long term suffering on the most vulnerable sections of society. The deepening
crisis in the Euro zone – particularly, but not only the countries of the
southern rim and Ireland whose people are feeling the force of severe austerity
measures – means that the main UK export market will be hit. When this is
coupled with the inevitable reduction in domestic consumption due to the
austerity measures here, the idea of economic recovery even in the medium term,
is chimerical.
Given such bleak prospects, where can we look for any sign
of serious opposition? There will be – indeed there already are –
suggestions that this can only be found in a revived and renewed Labour party
– now the parliamentary opposition. The contest for the leadership has
begun. This cannot be ignored, but neither should there be any illusions about
what to expect from Labour. At the moment, the only two candidates with real
prospects are the Miliband brothers, David and Ed. David is a Blairite whose
record in government should disqualify him from serious consideration by those
seeking a radical transformation of the party. Ed’s record is better, but he
too was a supporter of the New Labour project. While it is true that Labour is
far from dead and is now unlikely to be displaced by the Liberal Democrats, its
revival and renewal as a party of the left is unlikely. New Labour destroyed
the old social-democratic Labour party and David Miliband’s meaningless appeal
to move on to ‘Next Labour’ must be treated with the contempt it deserves.
The time has come – some would say it came a long time
ago – for the most serious appraisal of the political and economic
situation facing not only this country but Europe and the wider world. As
argued before in this column, the financial crisis that hit global capitalism
in 2007 – 2008, was not simply the result of an overblown banking sector
driven by greed. That was (is) certainly one of the most egregious features of
the global system, but the causes of the crisis went much deeper. The excesses
manifest in ever bigger bubbles are endemic to the system. They will continue
to occur and they will always burst with consequences ever more devastating.
That is the nature of the system and no tinkering at the seams will change it.
The creation of a movement or movements capable of
challenging the forces sustaining this disastrous system is not merely
desirable – it is essential. The parties and institutions that have
sustained this system can, by their very nature, play no part in bringing about
its supersession. They will do everything to preserve it and they must be
challenged and fought. Unfortunately much of the old left – too often
now, fractured into sectarian squabbling groups, many of whom seem to have
learned nothing from their past mistakes and dogmatic certainties – is
also incapable of playing a constructive role in creating a new movement. If it
is to be created at all, it will have to come from the coming together of
numerous strands – trade unions, ecologists, neighborhood community
organizations, environmentalists, socialists of many varieties. Many of the
dogmatic certainties of the past will need to be challenged and abandoned. But
one thing is certain: the system that is driving the world towards irreversible
climate change and global catastrophe is inimical to the future of humanity.
Either we put an end to it or it puts an end to us.