[Media-watch] [Fwd: [Fwd: Pilger on Blair: Apr 30, '02]]
Chris Keene
chris.keene at which.net
Fri Apr 4 01:50:33 BST 2003
I dug this out of my email filing system
Chris
"..and the likes of Raytheon,
one of the world's biggest arms
makers, funds the Labour Party."
I knew I had seen something about New Labour being funded by the arms
industry
Chris
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Pilger on Blair: Apr 30, '02
Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 23:17:04 +0100
From: Chris Keene <chris.keene at which.net>
To: Chris Keene <chris.keene at which.net>
Ordinary people had the right to
expect that after 18 years of the Tories, Tony Blair
would be different. : John Pilger :30
Apr 2002
IN HIS first few weeks as Prime
Minister, Tony Blair made a number of symbolic
gestures. One of them was to visit
the Aylesbury estate in South London, where
the poor lived.
The stairs of the rough-cast
concrete estate were perfumed for the new prime
minister and people looked out of
their doors in mostly bemused silence as he
tried to greet them. The effete
leader of the people's party, escorted by a
policeman, looked decidedly ill at
ease.
Purpose-built with tiers of tiny
flats, damp on the inside and peeling on the
outside, an exercise yard and no
community facilities, the Aylesbury is like an
open prison. At the time of Blair's
tour, 59 per cent of the households were living
in deepest poverty, 17 per cent
were unemployed and 78 per cent of the older
teenagers were not in full-time
education.
Blair's visit was reminiscent of
the visit of Edward, Prince of Wales, to the Welsh
slums in the 30s, when the future
king said the immortal words: "Something must
be done." Blair did not say
something must be done about the poverty, rather
that it ought to be tidied up and
policed and the poor kept out of sight: single
mothers in McDonald's, the young
lads weeding the grass in the cracks in the
concrete.
There was no suggestion by Blair
that he would address the main cause of this
poverty - almost two decades of
spectacular wealth redistribution by Margaret
Thatcher, the eradication of real
jobs and training and the running down of schools
for most children. Instead, the
Great Impoverisher, Thatcher, was invited to take
tea with the Great Moderniser,
Blair.
Blame, and a moralising vocabulary
lifted straight from Daily Mail editorials, was
the new style. Poverty was the
fault of the poor themselves, or social services, or
the teachers. Education Secretary
David Blunkett's abuse of perhaps the most
valuable (and underpaid)
professional group drove many teachers away; others
stoically refused to accept his
nonsensical denial of the central role of economic
inequality in success and failure.
The poverty that has deepened under
Blair's Thatcherite regime has overwhelmed
its stream of propaganda about
"education, education, education" and merely
illuminated the truth in RH
Tawney's great work, Equality, once the inspiration of
Labour leaders. "The idea that
differences of educational opportunities should
depend upon differences of wealth,"
wrote Tawney. "Represents a barbarity."
What does Blair believe in? A clue
was provided one year before his 1997 election
victory when he toured Asia. In
Singapore, a one-party state, he declared that the
"success" of the dictator Lee Kuan
Yew "very much reflects my own philosophy".
He offered no political context for
his admiring remarks about a system of social
control described by one writer as
"happy face fascism". Like the ruler of
Singapore, Blair had already
attacked single mothers and homeless young people
and the right of workers to job
security.
Above all, he made clear he wanted
to "modernise" and "reform" British life.
These positive terms were misused
repeatedly in the media, allowing New Labour
to disguise its true agenda.
This had been spelt out seven years
earlier in a book by Peter Mandelson, Blair's
closest adviser, co-authored with
Roger Liddle. Called The Blair Revolution: Can
Labour Deliver? they highlighted
Britain's "economic strengths" as its multinational
corporations, the "aerospace"
industry (weapons and military equipment) and "the
pre-eminence of the City of London"
(banks, money dealers).
This was the blueprint. Blair has
duly put the interests of these groups first, and
they have responded by bankrolling
his "project". New Labour's inner circle is
dominated by extremely conservative
businessmen; and the likes of Raytheon,
one of the world's biggest arms
makers, funds the Labour Party. Like few Tory
prime ministers, Blair has joined
together big business and the British state in
holy wedlock. Parliament and other
representatives of the people, like trade
unions, are awaiting their divorce
papers.
This was Margaret Thatcher's dream,
to which the dictator of Singapore duly paid
homage. Blair, he said wisely, was
Thatcher's successor.
IN handing the Bank of England
extraordinary power over the economy and in
privatising, by stealth, the health
service, education and the Post Office, as well as
selling off air traffic control and
the London Underground, Blair has gone further
than Thatcher.
Political respect for the public
service, the premise of civilised life in post-war
Britain, has been replaced by a
culture of profit and greed unmatched in Europe.
Certainly, he will be remembered, I
believe, for his betrayal of the hopes of
ordinary people who had the right
to expect that after 18 years of the Tories, he
would be different.
Instead, his greatest achievement
is the historic convergence of the two main
political parties, making Britain a
single ideology state in which elections are little
more than a ritual contest between
two almost identical factions, devoted to the
same rapacious "free market". The
party names are retained, Labour and
Conservative, but these
distinctions are now meaningless, like two packets of
soap powder manufactured by the
same company.
Groups of fearless Labour MPs -
that is, real dissent within the mainstream of
politics - are no more. One MP,
Paul Marsden, dared to stand up to Blair's
complicity in the murder by bombing
of some 5,000 civilians in Afghanistan and
found himself subjected to a crude
form of intimidation by the party's whips. I
count just five Labour MPs who bear
what is left of the party's conscience.
To understand Tony Blair in May
2002, try this rule of thumb - reverse most
media descriptions of him in May
1997. Besotted Tonier-than-thou commentators
wrote of their hero: "Tony Blair
wants to create a world none of us have known,
where the laws of political gravity
are overturned (and) ideology has surrendered
entirely to 'values'."
The biggest Blair myth was that he
was non-ideological - whereas the difference
between Thatcher and Blair has been
Blair's liberal veil. His power owes much to
his ideological kinship with those
he now complains about - famous and powerful
media figures who like to regard
themselves as representing the "centre" of
British political life, but whose
attachment to a status quo based on divisions of
wealth and class made respectable
by Thatcher is unshakeable.
They have done their best to
reinforce Blair's illusion that "we are all middle class
now". This is probably the most
absurd lie of the Blair years. Last month, the
Child Poverty Action Group
published its first major study for six years. "Whichever
poverty line is used," it said.
"Around a quarter of our society was living in poverty
in Britain in 1999-2000. The
poverty encountered by children is even greater than
for society as a whole. Around a
third of children are living in poverty." That is one
British child in three. In the age
of Blair, baby boys in Bethnal Green, in the East
End of London, today are more
likely to die before their first birthday than in
1950. And from Bethnal Green, you
can see the towers of the City of London,
which has never been wealthier.
The richest one per cent own a
quarter of all wealth in Britain; the bottom half of
the population, 28 million people,
own between them just six per cent of national
wealth. Under Blair, this division
has widened. In "middle class" Britain, infant
mortality, says the Child Poverty
Action Group, is "almost twice as high in unskilled
manual classes than in professional
classes".
Under Gordon Brown's stewardship of
the economy, little of this national disgrace
has been addressed, even
recognised. On the contrary, Brown has seen off
hundreds of thousands of
manufacturing jobs and income inequality has grown
while tax for the rich has fallen.
For the first eight years of
Thatcher, the rich paid 60 per cent income tax. Under
Blair, they pay 40 per cent. If New
Labour reinstated Thatcher's old rate of tax, it
would raise £15billion for public
services.
The fanfare that greeted Gordon
Brown's "dramatic rescue" of the health service in
the last Budget, and the suggestion
that he has taken the Labour Party back to
its roots, is typical of the
illusions that have helped to sustain the Blair regime.
The "billions" that will barely
bring Britain up to the standards of health care in the
rest of Western Europe will not be
raised from those who can most afford to pay.
DIVIDENDS will not be affected and
tax on company profits has been reduced, yet
again, by Brown, who has done
nothing to end the scandal of tax "avoidance" by
the very rich.
Much of the promised billions will
go on wasteful "private finance initiatives" that
will cream off profits to private
financiers and contractors. Nurses, junior doctors
and ancillary staff have been
promised nothing.
"We need to get used to double
standards," said Robert Cooper, who was Blair's
foreign policy adviser in
opposition. The basics of Britain's Americanised foreign
policy seldom change. What Blair
has done is raise the standard hypocrisy to new
heights. In opposition, he went to
Dunblane following the massacre of the children
there and promised to ban small
arms in Britain. He kept his promise. But he also
secretly stepped up the supply of
the same small arms and many other lethal
weapons to countries where children
are often the first casualties.
Under cover of the Official Secrets
Act, the government approved the shipment of
arms to the military dictatorship
of Indonesia, which was responsible for the
deaths of some 200,000 people in
East Timor. The arms included Heckler and
Koch machine guns used by General
Suharto's special forces, which had long been
identified by Amnesty International
as the source of the worst atrocities in illegally
occupied East Timor.
Under Blair, arms sales have become
the most heavily subsidised sector of the UK
economy apart from agriculture.
Taxpayers pay about £30 each to help sustain
this country in its ignominious
position as the world's third largest seller of arms.
Britain's clients include very poor
countries, and countries on the verge of war with
each other, like India and
Pakistan. On September 11, as America was being
attacked, the government was
hosting an "arms fair" in London's Docklands,
attended by various major human
rights abusers, notably Saudi Arabia, Britain's
biggest arms customer and spiritual
home of the al-Qaeda terrorist network.
Most public events stopped out of
respect for the Twin Towers' victims, not New
Labour's arms fair.
When you next hear Blair moralising
about the "evils" of the world - usually in the
form of a dictator like Saddam
Hussein whom Britain armed to the teeth -
remember the Dunblanes that happen
in faraway countries, thanks to the British
arms trade. Or the British parts
that are used in Israel's helicopter gunships that
fire at people armed mostly with
slingshots. Or his bellicose support for George W
Bush's "war on terrorism" whose
racist attacks on Muslims have brought fear and
insecurity to Britain's Muslim
communities.
If there is a political vacuum in
France, into which the fascist Jean-Marie Le Penn
briefly stepped, there is something
similar in Britain. Only 24 per cent of the
electorate gave Blair his victory
last year, the lowest turnout of any general
election in history.
People were not apathetic; they
went on strike. They understood that the
politicians on offer, like the pigs
and men at the conclusion of George Orwell's
great novel Animal Farm, were
virtually the same.
LIKE many supporters of the French
Socialist Party who refused to vote, many
Britons are fed up with turncoat
politicians: those who gain our confidence with
declarations of principle, then
ditch them when its suits their career. The top
echelon of the Labour Party is full
of them.
The point is that people are never
still and waiting and impassive. Thanks to Blair,
they are learning again that when
freedom is gained, in whatever form, it is not
the result of anything the
government has granted them but what they
themselves have achieved by direct
action.
Think of the civil rights movement
in the United States, and the uprising against
apartheid in South Africa, and the
defeat of Thatcher's Poll Tax. All over the world
that great popular movement is on
the rise again, confronting a "global economy"
that gives to the well-off and
takes from the poorest.
By deriding this new movement as a
"spurious cause", Blair misreads history and
that may be his downfall.
Public meetings have never been
more popular in Britain; they happen every day,
in villages and towns. Three
million people filled the streets of Rome the other
day, and 13 million Italians
stopped work to demand the universal right not to be
sacked unjustly, which the
far-right government of Silvio Berlusconi wants to make
legal. His closest ally in Europe
is Tony Blair, who should beware the ripples
reaching here.
JOHN Pilger's new book, The New
Rulers of the World, is published this month by
Verso.
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