Editorial 2
Hard edge beneath Blair's woolly conference platitudes
Tony Blair’s speech to this year’s truncated Labour Conference in Brighton has been hailed by his adoring fans in the media as his finest hour.
Generously sparing his party members a few moments in between running errands for warmonger Bush, Blair set out what some have called a visionary statement of a new world order, and some have rightly dismissed as deluded fantasy.
Comedian Andy Hamilton summed up Blair’s glowing talk of a new world alliance that would solve the problems of global warming, poverty and hunger: "I recognised that speech: it’s the one I give in the pub when I’m pissed."
To string together a few platitudes on what might be done after the current war is over is nothing new for social democracy: "holiday speechifying" and promises of a land – or in this case a world – "fit for heroes" has been the stock-in-trade of social-patriots for well over a hundred years.
It has never meant anything other than a subservient commitment of the speech-maker to the cause of capital and the "freedoms" of the capitalist.
The problem is that the system Blair is going to war with George Bush to defend is precisely the same system that creates inequality, poverty, exploitation, hunger, and environmental destruction – and which indeed also fuels the frustration and oppression that are the breeding ground of religious fundamentalism.
Blair may be able to ally with Bush on Bush’s agenda of stamping out terrorist cells, but if he thinks there is any common social agenda with the right wing of the Republican Party, he is suffering serious delusions.
Bush – the President representing big oil, the drug companies and US multinationals – has not the slightest aspiration to tackle poverty, feed the hungry, tackle disease, or restrict the use of polluting fuels. Even if he did, he would probably start to apply these policies in the USA, rather than on a world scale.
Instead Bush and his big business backers see any attempt to solve global problems as a threat to the freedom of US corporations to make profits.
It seems unlikely that Blair has failed to notice this contradiction between his own vague "vision" – which combines a few liberal and egalitarian nostrums with the vague concept of a benign global dictatorship – and those of his chosen "ally".
But he has been quite happy to take advantage of the moment and the mood to distract attention from what he and his government have really been doing on all these questions.
Far from seeking to restrain the excesses of global capital, Blair’s government calls out riot police to beat anti-capitalist protesters, and acts as the most rabid advocates of neo-liberal policies.
Far from feeding the hungry, the British government and British banks dole out pitiful "aid" packages with an eye-dropper, while gathering huge interest payments from developing countries.
Far from promoting environmental policies, Blair refuses to raise the taxes required to finance a proper transport system that could reduce dependence on the car.
And while he talks abstractions, dodges out of party politics, and focuses the media on the world stage, his own government’s policies of privatisation and under-funding public services are running into crisis on almost every front.
The left must build an anti-war movement: but we should not allow ourselves to be deceived by the old conjuror’s trick of distracting our attention.
The fight must also be waged on the "home front" – against the politics of New Labour, which are continuing behind the scenes.