New Labour takes on the fuel protesters
As the fuel protesters' 60 day deadline approached, New Labour launched a two pronged attack upon them. Many of the big business interests who previously supported them have also dumped these unlikely campaigners. As a result the protest is battered and divided and probably not capable of repeating effective action.
First Jack Straw's Task Force launched a series of attacks reminiscent of those mounted against major trade union actions in the past. The protest was infiltrated by MI5 agents, and the police, who played a low-key role last time, have made it clear that they will crack down hard in future.
Straw has gone for the jugular by warning hauliers and owner drivers that they could lose their operators' licences if their vehicles are involved in illegal action - and blockades and slow moving convoys could be regarded as illegal. At the same time conflict on the blockades has been exaggerated (as it always is on picket lines) and stories of BNP involvement talked up.
One of the principal spokespersons for the Task Force is TGWU's Bill Morris who reflected the disgraceful TUC line of condemning the protests and urging police action against them.
This when support for the protests - carried out by crisis-ridden sections of the petty bourgeoisie with some perfectly justifiable demands - could have undermined the influence of the right-wing and the Tories on them.
Then came Gordon Brown's budget measures which make some concessions to hauliers, in the form of a reduction in the cost of vehicle licences, but none what-so-ever to small farmers - many of whom face an even deeper crisis.
There is an expansion of the lower band of vehicle tax, which is a step in the right direction and a reduction on low sulphur fuel - which is currently only available at one garage in 10.
Current crippling levels of fuel tax remain intact for the vast majority of low income people forced to run a car because there is no viable public transport. Brown's freeze on the current level of petrol tax may well not stop the price at the pumps going up if the oil companies decide to do this. And record profits recorded since the protests will not inhibit them in doing so.
Brown's refusal to reduce prices at the pumps does absolutely nothing for the bulk of the working class who supported the protests. This mass support was based on opposition to the current level of tax on petrol which hit the poorer sections of society hardest.
Although Brown packaged his measures with rhetoric about the environment, it will do nothing effective to stem the rise in greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover he avoids any hint of taxing the rich - the only real way to either raise the money to protect the environment or make a meaningful reduction in fuel tax - as well as maintaining and increasing much needed investment health education and infrastructure.
The reductions in the cost of the road fund licence for hauliers does nothing to resolve the crisis of the industry. It makes no distinction between the big haulage companies and the small hauliers and owner drivers who are barring the brunt of the crisis.
Many small operators became self-employed as the result of Thatcherite deregulation and out-sourcing in the 1980s, and are now struggling for survival against the cut-throat competition which now exists in the haulage industry. They are squeezed by the drive for profit from the supermarkets, and other big companies they are contracted to, who are themselves linked into the global economy with its drive to constantly cut costs and maximise profit.
And they will find no solution because just as landowners would increase the rents of tenant farmers if they saw that they are getting extra help from the government the supermarkets and other major users of road haulage will drive ever harder bargains if they see them getting any financial help.
What is needed is a complete restructuring of these sectors so that they are not in hock to big business.
This should include the nationalisation of the land of the big landowners and the nationalisation of big haulage companies.
At the same time there has to be a major shift in the tax system from indirect taxation including fuel tax and VAT to direct taxation, and a major shift of taxation towards the rich and big business.