BORIS YELTSIN’S ‘REFORMS’, said President Clinton last week, ‘must be protected because they represent our way of life.’ John Major echoed that Britain’s support for Yeltsin’s ‘democracy’ was ‘unambiguously clear’. Yeltsin, meanwhile, had just issued his umpteenth decree, suspending the constitution and taking control of the media ‘in order to guard its independence’.
This, of course, is normal behaviour in many countries ‘protected’ by the west. Should democracy break out in these places – that is, democracy in the dictionary, rather than the Orwellian, sense – it is quickly discouraged or crushed. Haiti, Angola and Zaire are recent examples. There is a western Newspeak that complements this process. Yeltsin’s opponents are ‘hardliners’ or ‘former communists’, regardless of their democratic credentials. Widespread public opposition to his ‘reforms’ is unmentionable; the fact that 60 million pensioners stand on the brink of starvation is irrelevant.
Our controlled perspective of events in Russia, which owes much to a perverse use of language that is the currency of news, mirrors the way we are directed to see events at home. Here, ‘reforms’ that are similar in nature and purpose, if not in scale, are at a critical stage. The destruction of the value of pensions in Russia and the economic warfare being waged against millions of people in Britain come from the same ideological source, which is the antithesis of democracy. When Margaret Thatcher said there was ‘no such thing as society’, she was defining the ideology that bears her name worldwide.
As Thatcher knew, society is something that can only be organised collectively and through the public and community sphere; and every day that society cedes its countervailing power to the absolute claims of ‘the market’ it dies. It dies not only in socialist terms, but in liberal terms. The great wave of unemployment and insecurity has now broken over the middle class; and those liberal commentators who insist that Thatcherism is discredited deny the evidence of their eyes. Thatcherism remains in safe hands. Indeed, it is unlikely Thatcher herself would have done all that Major is doing, such as privatising the railways and preparing to sell off the Post Office. Major’s media persona as a decent, if incompetent, drone has been, for him, a godsend.
The coup against democracy in Britain has been a silent one. Here there is no Yeltsin and no constitutional difficulty; the coupmasters are a coalition of accredited factions. There is the government faction and the ‘opposition’ faction. Should their alliance be doubted, I recommend a reading of last month’s anthem to ‘the market’ by Gordon Brown, and the recent speeches of Tony Blair on crime and punishment. ‘Blair’, said Kenneth Clarke, then Home Secretary, ‘is the best opponent I’ve had. We’re trying hard to find differences on law and order.’ In its quest to out-Tory the Tories, Labour has become the New Right in what is, in effect, a one-party state.
In the meantime, and with virtually unlimited prerogative powers provided by the British Crown, the Thatcherite executive has appointed an unelected, secret nomenclature. This bureaucracy is in charge of the ‘reforms’ that are destroying democratic accountability in Britain. For example, the National Health Service is now run entirely by the Government’s placemen. The one small local democracy component was scrapped under the legislation that gave the NHS over to the ‘internal market’ – the system that causes death after death among patients denied treatment by the ‘logic’ of the market.11
In education, the Schools Examination and Assessment Council now dictates directly to schools ‘on anything from the age at which children should use commas to when they should learn to swim’. Following the abolition of the elected Greater London Council, its £7.5 billion budget went to unelected and unaccountable bodies such as the London Docklands Development Corporation. Thus, millions in state aid were ‘invested’ in the bankrupt Canary Wharf and other disasters.12
The list of undemocratic bodies embraces every area of public control, from the Training and Enterprise Councils to the Teachers’ Pay Review Body. Whereas in the days of ‘consensus’ some effort was made to include trade unionists and ‘ordinary people’ on quangos, today’s secretive committees are packed with right-wing sectarians, of whom the principals are approved by the Policy Unit at Downing Street. And many such ‘loyalists’, as Thatcher called them, skip from one quango to another. (This is not to suggest they would be different if replaced by Labour nominees, as the singular voice of the bi-party parliamentary select committees demonstrates.)13
At the same time the Crown prerogative (this active, political power of the monarchy is almost never mentioned in the British press) gives government ministers undefined discretionary powers to abolish any level of sub-national government. These powers were used in abolishing the Greater London Council and metropolitan counties in the mid-1980s. The executive even drafted a bill to abolish elections to speed up the counties’ demise.14
Of course, a ‘free market and a centralised state’ were the essence of Thatcherism. The ‘logic’ of this is expressed in exquisite doublespeak. As the market was ‘freed’ (that is, rigged), so democracy was ‘freed’ (more tightly controlled than ever). The Yeltsin Russians and the Li Peng Chinese understand this well, and that their own anti-democracy can flourish behind a façade of ‘new economic zones’, run on cheap labour and environmental vandalism.
However, they can learn from Britain. Take the rigged energy ‘market’, the jewel in the crown. The privatising of coal, and the decimation of pits, will make wealthy the placemen who run electricity, gas and coal. The final destruction of the miners’ union is a bonus. The scrapping of some 50,000 working lives is irrelevant to the ‘dynamics’ of the market.
The coupmasters depend on the media to spread the exciting word and to silence those who understand its truth. However, it is too easy to believe that political reality is fabricated by the media. In fact, there is a kind of critical intelligence and common sense inherent in ordinary language, in the way people arrive at their values. According to Social Trends, most of the British have dangerous thoughts about ‘market’ ideology. More than three-quarters of them believe profit is something that should be invested and go to the benefit of working people. Barely three per cent believe that shareholders and managers should benefit.
Increasingly, the British middle class understands that the destruction of the trade union movement and the public sector is a threat to their security. The concerted action that is now building among teachers, health workers, railway workers, miners and other public employees is likely to receive wide support. If eight million can take part in a general strike in Italy, often in defiance of their trade union aristocracy, something similar can happen here. If direct action can prevent France from dismissing thousands of employees, the same can happen here. The problem is one of national leadership, not impact. A secret Ford management document says, ‘A British truck fleet dispute would probably result in the progressive closure of all Ford European manufacturing plants within three days.’
Such is the power that working people have within their grasp. Once again, they are the countervailing power. There is no other.
April – December 1993