George Monbiot
Tuesday February 19, 2002
The Guardian


State and corporate power are fusing almost everywhere on earth, but in
Italy they have condensed into the stocky figure of a single man. Silvio
Berlusconi, the prime minister, is worth around £10bn. He has interests in
just about every lucrative sector of the Italian economy. His control of
most of the private media (through his businesses) and most of the public
media (through the government) means that he can exercise a dominion
unprecedented in a democratic nation over the thoughts and feelings of his
people. He has been convicted in the past for bribery, tax fraud and
corruption but by amending the law has had those convictions overturned and
his business activities legalised. His government is sustained by parties
which describe themselves as "post-fascist"; he himself has spoken of the
"superiority" of western civilisation.
This is the man who is now Tony Blair's closest political ally in Europe.
After their meeting on Friday, Sr Berlusconi told the press that "we see
eye to eye on all the matters that were raised". Blair added: "Some of
these old distinctions - left and right - are no longer in my view as
relevant as they were maybe 30, 40 years ago." Blair and Berlusconi are now
the only European leaders who seem prepared to support a US attack on Iraq.
Both men have introduced repressive legislation restricting civil
liberties. Both have granted big business the concessions it demands. At
the European summit in Barcelona next month, they will be forming an
alliance with José Maria Aznar, the rightwing Spanish prime minister, in
the hope of forcing France and Germany to accept new measures demanded by
the corporations.

Among their proposals on Friday was the deregulation of employment.
"Europe's labour markets," Blair wrote in Italy's Corriere della Sera,
"need to be more flexible. Businesses are still encumbered by unnecessary
regulation." The paper they published called on member states to introduce
"more flexible types of employment contracts"; to replace labour laws with
"soft regulation"; and to increase "the effectiveness of public employment
services... by opening this market to the private sector".

This is just the latest means by which Blair has chosen to antagonise
workers in the United Kingdom. Last week the steelworkers struggling to
keep their jobs here discovered that the government has been helping a
foreign company to secure and then to finance the acquisition of the vast
steelworks in Romania. The Department of Trade and Industry appears to be
about to renew the UK's exemption from the European working time directive,
which means that this country will remain the only one in Europe that
permits some employers to force people to work more than 48 hours a week.

Last year, the official figures for the number of deaths at work rose by
32%. For the past four years, the government has promised the immediate
introduction of new safety laws and a new offence of corporate killing.
Neither has materialised.

With Berlusconi's help, Tony Blair is seeking to prevent the European Union
from banning the anti-competitive deals which permit the private takeover
of public services. The result is that public sector workers will continue
to lose pay, pensions and holidays as private operators change their terms
of employment. The government is now proposing to deny agency workers the
legal protections afforded to employees. Those who contest these policies,
the prime minister suggested a fortnight ago, are "wreckers" and "small c
conservatives".

So the abiding mystery surrounding labour relations in the United Kingdom
is this: given that the government, both in declaration and in practice, is
the enemy of workers' movements, why do they continue to fund it?

About one-third of the Labour party's funding comes from the unions. Many
of their members are beginning to wonder what they are buying. Last summer
the GMB halved its annual donation to the party, in protest against
privatisation. Both Unison, the biggest donor, and the firefighters' union
are currently reviewing their support. The election of Bob Crow as leader
of the RMT last week may suggest that the unions are beginning to desert
the party they built.

But this will happen slowly, if it happens at all. Most union leaders,
while fiercely critical of Blair's policies, insist that they retain more
influence over the government by lobbying from within. It is hard to see
what the evidence might be.

In his foreword to the 1998 Fairness at Work white paper, Tony Blair
insisted that the policies it contained would "draw a line under the issue
of industrial relations law... Even after the changes we propose, Britain
will have the most lightly regulated labour market of any leading economy
in the world".

Blair has proved true to his word. The government will implement those
European directives which it has failed to undermine. It may introduce a
few concessions for workers in privately financed hospitals. But otherwise
Labour, as Blair has warned, has nothing to offer.

The Confederation of British Industry, which does not give the party a
penny, swings far more weight with Tony Blair than all the hard-earned
millions scraped together by the people whom Labour is supposed to
represent. It would make as much sense now for the workers to give their
money to the Tories.

It is time, in other words, for the trades unions to embrace their role as
wreckers. The party they created has disowned them, so they must disinherit
it. They must destroy the system which guarantees that power remains the
preserve of the parties of big business.

It doesn't really matter which of Britain's small progressive parties - the
Greens, the Socialist Alliance, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, even the Liberal
Democrats - they choose to support instead. What counts is that there is an
effective radical opposition, which has the resources to start snatching
millions of votes from Labour. Political parties, like companies, always
move towards those from whom they wish to take trade. One of the reasons
why Labour has crept so far to the right is that this is the territory on
which it must fight its only serious competitor.

Damage limitation, which is the most the unions who work within government
can hope to achieve, does not precipitate change. Workers' representatives
will swing no serious political weight until they can force the government
to respond to their agenda, as opposed to being forced to respond to the
government's. Even the GMB, which is using the funds it has withdrawn from
Labour to advertise its dissatisfaction, is wasting its money: Blair knows
that he has nothing to fear from it as long as there is no radical
alternative to this government.

It is not hard to see why the unions are reluctant to let go. Labour was
their creation, and its construction was an extraordinary achievement. But
the creature has lumbered away from them, and it works now for those they
sought to oppose. Only by building a new one can they hope to lure it back.