Fuel protests: how should the left respond?
Labour reaps the whirlwind from its refusal to tax the rich
September's fuel blockades coincided with similar actions across Europe, and brought Britain close to paralysis. The attitude of the left to the crisis has involved knee jerk reactions - from opposite ends of the spectrum.
Some sections of the far left, and much of the left in the Labour Party and the trade unions see the movement that erupted as simply one of small employers, to which the labour movement should offer no support at all.
There are even those who say the more these people are smashed up the better. Others, parts of the far left, have seen the protests as a new emergence of working class struggle, which has to be recognised and built on.
In our view both of these positions are profoundly wrong.
First of all we have to be clear: the blockades were not protests by the working class.
The protestors were crisis-ridden sections of the small business people, sections of the petty bourgeoisie, who have turned against new Labour as higher fuel prices have been added to the unremitting pressures of the market which they face every day.
Many of these people became self employed as the result of Thatcherite deregulation and outsourcing in the 1980s, and now work endless hours in deregulated markets and are struggling for the survival against small profit margins.
But does this mean we cannot give them any kind of support? We don't think so.
Farmers harvest bitter fruits from deregulation
Protests by small farmers are not new. The strength of the pound against the Euro is a major problem farmers in Britain as prices for their products are consistently undercut by cheap imports.
But few farmers pay any income taxes. They had been campaigning for more subsidies: but they joined the fuel protest despite the fact that their own (red) diesel carries no tax at all - and retails at 24p a litre.
However there are genuine problems for the (relatively few) small farmers who are not part of the growing agribusiness sector.
They have been hit by a range of big business interests - from banks to fertiliser manufacturers, and of course they have been squeezed by the supermarkets.
To compound the crisis, small farmers have suffered a succession of body blows from a succession of food scares triggered by the unscrupulous activities of the feed manufacturers deregulated under Margaret Thatcher - the most obvious result being the BSE scandal.
Mixed signals from hauliers
Small haulage companies and owner drivers face a European-wide crisis in their industry. This however is not caused mainly by fuel prices, but by the way the industry was deregulated, beginning in the 1980s.
Even those regulations that still exist are flouted by most of the industry, particularly owner drivers, in the struggle to survive. This deregulation has led to the cut-throat compettyion which now exists in the haulage industry as part of the globalised economy.
But the demands that they have raised are far from clear.
The tax take from heavy lorries may be substantial, but it is less than the environmental damage they cause: and although British fuel taxes are high, there are no tolls on British motorways, and taxation on lorries and on business are much lower in Britain than elsewhere in Europe.
Some hauliers have argued that their particular problem is not the overall price of diesel (on which they can already claim back the VAT) but the comparative price of diesel in France and other European countries. They claim this allows haulage vehicles to cross the channel and compete with them with cheaper diesel in their tanks.
They call for a 'level playing field' - even if than means a general levelling up in prices across Europe rather than a levelling down.
We should support progressive movements of the petty bourgeoisie in defence of their interests against big business.
There were of course a range of dubious backers and manipulators behind the protest. These included the oil companies and the Road Haulage Association as well as the Countryside Alliance and the Tory Party.
We do not support these forces: but we do support the stated aims of the protest both in terms of a reduction in the tax on fuel, and in alleviating the crisis facing small farmers, small hauliers, and owner drivers, which are at the core of the action.
The blockades centred on the emotive issue of petrol prices. British prices are the highest in Europe, due to the level of tax, and are now punitive against big sections of poorer people who run cars.
The protest therefore enjoyed mass support amongst the working class, and linked in to a range of other grievances against new Labour. The result was an explosion of anger and resentment.
People who live in the countryside, and small business people, feel victimised by fuel prices. Small farmers, hauliers and owner drivers are being squeezed out by big business, neo-liberal deregulation (unregulated market forces), and - in the case of the small farmers - the supermarkets and food manufacturers who profit from buying their produce at knock-down prices.
We should stand with them and call for the protection of small businesses threatened by their principal enemy - big capital and multinational companies. We reject any notion that this is not the business of the left or of the labour movement.
Tory tax
It is argued that high fuel taxes are there to protect the environment. This was never the case.
The fuel price escalator was introduced by Tory Chancellor Norman Lamont in 1993 as part of a package of measures to switch the burden of taxes from the oil companies to the consumer. Another measure brought in at the same time was the imposition of VAT on domestic heating fuel. In the same budget Lamont slashed petroleum revenue tax paid by north sea oil extractors from 75% to 50%, - and abolished it for firms developing new oil fields.
In one move Lamont was able to line the pockets of his oil company pals, secure a major additional source of growing revenue for the government, and cynically masquerade as a defender of the environment.
The escalator has ensured that fuel duty has risen above inflation every year since - piling up revenue for Tory and Labour governments: ironically it was Gordon Brown who announced this year that he would end the price spiral.
But Brown's main answer to those who wanted him to go further and cut fuel taxes was - and still is - that it would mean cuts in spending on hospital and schools. The money raised through this indirect tax is being used to avoid the need to tax business and the rich.
Protect the environment
Of course there is a genuine environmental problem to be addressed: the issue of car use and road transport is indeed central to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. We can see the flooding taking place in the Indian sub-continent and south east Asia at the present time and the consequences of the rise is sea levels for countries like Bangladesh are all too clear.
We have to put action against global warming at the top of the political agenda.
But we do not accept that environmental protection can be achieved by the current ineffective and regressive tax on petrol.
Cutting the use of cars can be achieved only through combining strong disincentives against car use with the provision of alternative forms of sustainable transport.
Policies in towns should include a major investment in public transport alongside more pedestrianisation, parking restrictions, park and ride, alternative energy sources for the car etc, and a tackling of the all embracing car culture which currently exists in this society.
But without viable alternatives that enable people to travel, increases in fuel prices are inelastic and have little effect on consumption. A differential tax on engine size would be a much more useful way of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
The protests have probably set back Labour's limited attempts to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
But the popular anger flows from successive governments, including new Labour, hypocritically claiming to use fuel taxation as a means of achieving a reduction in emissions, while in fact relying on this as a major source of revenue for the Treasury.
The shift towards indirect taxation, which began under the Tories and has continued under Blair, has been widely recognised as unfair and dishonest.
People can see that a tax which raises more money for the government the more petrol is sold is flawed as a means of reducing the consumption of fossil fuels. They know that the extra money raised for the government is not being spent on environmental protection.
This is one reason why the call by the Green Party to maintain and increase the tax will go nowhere.
Direct taxation
We call for a turn back towards direct taxation. The increases in indirect taxation carried out by successive governments in this country have resulted in a redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich.
We say reverse this situation. Reduce indirect taxation. Tax the rich and impose massive direct taxation on the oil companies to pay for an environmentally sustainable transport system: the current tax on oil extraction in the North Sea is the lowest in the world.
This should be a first step towards nationalising the oil companies and the banks.
Only by taking on the power and wealth of capital can a green agenda be pursued. The Green Party's lack of any class analysis has left it with a blind spot on indirect taxation on fuel.
We link our call for a reduction in fuel tax to a call for a sustainable energy policy and an integrated transport policy for both people and freight. This must include not only new rail and tram services for passenger travel but a complete reorganisation of freight transport, to switch large quantities of material from road haulage back onto rail.
The current levels of transportation of goods (and even people) are a product of "just in time production" - a feature of globalisation, as Andy Kilmister's article explains on page 18. This method has to be challenged.
New Labour, of course rejects all calls to tax the rich and the big corporations. It is as keen as the Tories on promoting the anarchy of the free market, which stands as a major obstacle to any planned transport system or attempt to safeguard the environment.
Business friends
The government's attitude to the fuel protest - which it denounced as "a challenge to law and order" - was determined by the strategic alliance which now exists between new Labour and sections of big business. In fact of all the business interests courted by Blair's team, new Labour's relationship to the oil industry has been the closest.
As Private Eye points out "No area of British business has supplied more expertise to the Blair project than the oil industry. The role of Lord Simon, former BP chairman, as Minister for Europe has been well documented". Peter Mandelson when he was Trade and Industry Secretary actually brought together a "task force" of oil executives "to tackle the problem of low oil prices"!
The public pronouncements of new Labour ministers took the softest possible line on the oil companies - continuing to quote claims of "intimidation" or "violence on the picket line" as the reason for the tankers not going out from refineries.
But the protest was a new phenomenon in many ways.
Collusion
The pickets were effective not because they physically stopped anything, but primarily because of collusion between the oil companies, the hauliers, the owner drivers and the police. The oil companies - not the protesters - were the force that made the action so effective.
The oil barons are making a fortune out of the processing and distribution of oil products - but feared that with crude oil prices rising Gordon Brown might seek to increase the pitifully low rate of taxation they pay on North Sea oil.
They argue that their take at the pump is low (but fail to point out that this is because they have already extracted super profits earlier in the chain). Above all the oil companies are keen to see the government take the blame for high fuel prices while keeping their own rip-off profits intact.
That is why they supported the dispute behind the scenes, forming a bizarre alliance with the hauliers to cut off the supply of petrol and diesel. In some cases tanker drivers were instructed not to go out - even though the road outside was open. Others were given the option to go out ... or go home on full pay!
These are employers who normally make breaking picket lines a matter of principle, and who would automatically instruct drivers to drive through - and sack them if they refused. Anyone who doubts this should try picketing an oil refinery for any other reason - and see what happens.
There were no threats to the pickets from the oil companies, there were no injunctions: they did not even ask the pickets to leave. Some of them allowed the pickets to use facilities inside the refineries.
Derecognised
Many oil companies have derecognised the unions - a factor which seemed to have no effect on TGWU officials who met workers in these companies to urge them to work normally.
In most cases the oil tankers no longer belong to the oil companies. They have been contracted out and are operated by haulage contractors.
The biggest fleet of tankers, it turns out, is owned and operated by the notorious strike breaker Lord Stirling, the P&O chairman who broke the seafarers' strike by organising mass scabbing through the picket lines.
He was an adviser to the Tory Party, and was present with the oil executives at their meeting with Blair. The idea that he would not send his tankers though completely ineffective picket lines unless he was backing the action beggars belief.
Large numbers of owner drivers are also contracted to work for the oil companies. This reflects the huge change in the haulage industry since the mass strikes of employed drivers in the late 1970s.
By the time of the 1984 miners' strike, the industry had changed, and convoys of owner drivers were used to keep the power stations going. Then they were willing to drive not down an open road past a few protesters behind police lines, but through pickets of thousands of battling miners.
The TGWU still organises some people who are directly employed by the oil companies, although how many is not clear.
But the TGWU was one of the unions that have now signed up to the new "protocol" between the government, the oil companies and the unions, designed to keep oil supplies moving in the event of a repeat of the blockades at the end of the 60 day truce.
Not only is this wrong: it is tantamount to a no-strike agreement for the industry. Does the TGWU really accept that tanker drivers should no longer ever be allowed take action to protect their own jobs, wages and conditions?
Precedent
The protocol is also a dangerous precedent for other sectors of workers in what could be described as "essential services". If it is wrong for picket lines to disrupt oil supplies, what about public transport on road or rail? What about food supplies to the supermarkets? What about ambulance crews, hospital workers or fire fighters?
This new, covert attack on trade union rights is a dangerous development, which should be opposed in the unions.
Reluctant to tax big business, and increasingly reliant on the tax revenue from fuel prices, Labour dug in against the protestors while trying to avoid a conflict with the oil companies. They are prepared to see sections of the petty bourgeoisie squeezed out of existence by precisely these big business and multi-national interests.
In this new Labour had the full backing of the TUC, which intervened strongly on behalf of the government. John Monks compared the protests with the lorry owners' action which helped bring Pinochet to power in Chile in 1973.
Backlash
But the Chilean example is a real warning to us here: it showed the ability of the right wing to mobilise a backlash from small business after they had been alienated by the policies of Allende's social democratic government, which ignored their needs
Pumping up the oil firms' profits
This crisis is not caused solely by taxation. The oil companies have massively increased their already gross profits: the top five companies are on target to rake in over £30 billion this year, by exploiting both consumers and the oil producing countries.
Their role needs to be highlighted by the left.
We should defend the right of poor countries which depend on oil exports to sell at a reasonable price.
The fact that the price of oil has gone up from $10 a barrel to nearly $35 in the last year is partly a product of the fact that prices have been low since 1980 (other than for a brief period during the Gulf War).
This low price was part of a general fall in world commodity prices driven by globalisation. The left has opposed this in terms of other raw materials - we should not exclude oil from this view.
Nor should we fall for the demonisation of OPEC by the government. The world's major oil producer is the US, which is not part of OPEC.
Despite the overwhelming support of working class people for the protest, the trade union leaders were mainly concerned with upholding "the rule of law" - which of course includes the anti-union laws - and the fear that French direct action methods might be taken up by British trade unionists.
Their statements can be read as an objection on principle to any protest or dispute aimed at changing the policy of an "elected government". So the union leaders have set their faces permanently against any future strikes against anti-union laws, wage controls, or other reactionary government policies.
Such TUC support for the government could also have led to the introduction of new laws of the distribution of fuel. This in turn might well have been used against the trade unions at a later date.
Indeed the objective of Jack Straw's "task force", hurriedly pieced together after the blockades were lifted, was to put an absolute duty on the oil companies to supply oil. This in turn implies no right to strike by tanker drivers - or anyone else involved in the production and delivery of fuel.
So the protestors got no support from the TUC.
Some on the left take a similar line, and argue that socialists cannot and should not support movements and protests of the petty bourgeoisie. This idea should be rejected.
It is true such movements often attract some nasty political allies, including the far right. But this is simply an added reason for giving them support in order not to drive them in that direction. Such movements can be extremely dangerous if they fall prey to the far right, which may provide charismatic leaders for the cause.
Marxists understand that the petty bourgeoisie is not politically independent as a class (although it can have its own political demands); it has always tended to gravitate towards the strongest class in society.
The working class must therefore defend them against the banks and finance capital, if we are to win then to our side and prevent them allying with the right. Trotsky argued that the working class should always be prepared to establish and lead alliances with the petty bourgeoisie, warning that they will move further to the right if they do not move towards the working class.
Tax the rich
We say tax the rich, not small business. We say abolish VAT, cancel the debts of small businesses and provide them with cheap credit as an alternative to being fleeced by the banks.
Meanwhile the left needs to get to grips with the political issues raised by the fuel blockade and begin to address the problems of the petty bourgeoisie in order to deal with this kind of movement. The politics of the protestors - and their demands - are confused and contradictory, and they offer no easy way in for the left, as some found to their cost when they tried to join the fuel protestors' picket lines.
But the left must help to clarify the real battle lines, and press for the wider labour movement to respond.
We can start with the following list of demands:
Protect the environment
Tax big business and the rich to fund a massive programme of sustainable transport
Free or token passenger pricing
Defend jobs and wages
No no-strike agreements in essential services, or anywhere else
A massive programme of agricultural job creation in sustainable farming systems
Cheap credit and fuel for small farmers and the self employed
Freeze or lower petrol prices
Nationalise the oil companies
Socialise the transport sector and build sustainable transport systems
Socialise agribusiness, property companies and large land owners
Demand TUC support for this programme.