Child poverty increases again under New Labour

Back in 1965, when the Child Poverty Action Group was formed, there were 500,000 children living in poverty. The Labour Party said at the time that the organisation would fold within a year because they would eradicate child poverty within the next 12 months.

Replying to a letter from the CPAG on 20th January 2006, Tony Blair confidently wrote:” I can promise you that we share your ambition to make child poverty history in our country. It is why we have publicly said we want to halve child poverty by 2010 and eradicate it completely by 2020. ”What is nauseating about this is that Blair is telling the CPAG, who in 1965 complained that there were officially half a million children in poverty, that by 2010 he will halve child poverty – ie. slash the number of impoverished children from 3.4 million to 1.7 million (in Jan 2006 child poverty stood at 3.4 million).

Today The Guardian reports that child poverty now stands at 3.8 million!! 42 years after Labour promised to end child poverty, the problem officially is almost seven times as worse!!
Of course, come May 3rd, Blair and co will continue to depend on working class historical amnesia to carry them through, confident their lies and betrayals and rampant hypocrisy will be concealed by surfeit of promises for the future and pathetic excuses for past failings.

Incidentally, if you do suffer from political amnesia, try clicking on this remedy: LABOUR SLEAZE

Suffer the little children - under Blair

Commencing a letter to Labour Party Prime Minister Harold Wilson on 22nd December 1965, AF Philip, Chairman of the newly formed Child Poverty Action Group wrote:“There is evidence that at least half a million children in this country are in homes where there is hardship due to poverty.”He ended his plea on behalf of Britain’s deprived minors thus: “We earnestly beg you to see that steps are taken at the earliest possible moment to help these families.”

So confident that child poverty would be quickly eradicated by the amazing magical wand that Wilson often wielded, Labour suggested the CPAG would be obsolete within a year, the problem it was set up to help sort a thing of the past. Forty-two years later the CPAG is still in existence and child poverty is still with us, despite 10 years of Labour reforms.

In the past week the United Nations has reported that children growing up in the United Kingdom suffer higher deprivation, poorer relationships with their parents and are exposed to more risks from alcohol, drugs and unsafe sex than those in any other wealthy country in the world. The report compiled by Unicef says that the UK is bottom of the league of 21 economically advanced countries, trailing the United States which comes second to last.Over 16% of children now live below the official poverty line. Way to go, Blair. Forty two years after a Labour government promised to eradicate poverty it is as high as ever.


Replying to a letter from the CPAG on 20th January 2006, Tony Blair confidently wrote:” I can promise you that we share your ambition to make child poverty history in our country. It is why we have publicly said we want to halve child poverty by 2010 and eradicate it completely by 2020.”What is nauseating about this is that Blair is telling the CPAG, who in 1965 complained that there were officially half a million children in poverty, that by 2010 he will halve child poverty – ie. slash the number of impoverished children from 3.4 million to 1.7 million.


So 45 years after Labour said they would end child poverty the best they can offer is to set a figure which is thrice the 1965 figure as a bloody victory!! Rather than distributing wealth and claiming to have as its priority the lifting children out of poverty and improving their education and prospects, Labour in facts redistributes poverty like no other government in the industrialised world.


Of course, come election time, Blair and co will continue to depend on working class historical amnesia to carry them through to a fourth victory, confident their lies and betrayals and rampant hypocrisy will be concealed by surfeit of promises for the future and pathetic excuses for past failings.Incidentally, if you do suffer from political amnesia, try clicking on this remedy: LABOUR SLEAZE

Primeministers come and go

Sent to the local Shields Gazette

In his notorious militarist speech of 12, January aboard HMS Albion, Blair compared Islamic terrorism to "revolutionary communism in its early and most militant phase", and said it should be dealt with in the same way.

In his pre-prime-ministerial tour of India, Brown declared that "Islamic extremism had to be fought at all levels, 'just as we learnt we had to fight communism at all levels'" (Times, 19 January).

What can they have in mind? Of course by "communism" they don't mean communism in the proper sense (which is just another name for what I call socialism), even if, as faithful servitors of UK Capitalism PLC, they are just as much opposed to this. What they meant was the ideology under which state-capitalist Russia and China sought to challenge the world hegemony of the Western capitalist powers.

In referring to "revolutionary communism in its early and most militant phase", Blair is going back even further -- to the period before Lenin's death when the Bolshevik regime still hoped to be saved by the world revolution Lenin had mistakenly thought was on the cards. The one good thing that the Bolsheviks did was to try to stop the slaughter on the Eastern Front in WWI by taking Russia out of the war. How did the Western powers react? By themselves invading Russia.

So, what Blair and Brown are in effect proposing is to maintain and build up Britain's armed forces, to send them to do battle whenever needed, to bribe "moderate Muslims", and to generally employ dirty tricks in a bid to beat off the latest challenge to the world hegemony (and oil supplies) of the Western capitalist powers. To such an extent have they assimilated themselves to the job of running a capitalist state and furthering the interest of its capitalist class.

While in India, Brown revealed that he can be just as hypocritical as Blair. He was photographed laying a wreath in memory of Gandhi. As he could himself see the contradiction between advocating the build-up and use of armed forces and Gandhi's reputation as an apostle of non-violence, he explained that it was not Gandhi's non-violence that inspired him but the way he dealt with the challenge he faced (as if he didn't do so non-violently). What a hypocrite! But this is only par for the course from the canting Christian that he is. In any event, he only did it to curry favour with the Indian government to try to get contracts for British capitalist firms to make a profit by selling their goods in India.

"Blair Must Go!" proclaims the current SWP poster given away free on demonstrations. No doubt they are already preparing new ones saying "Brown Must Go!" just as before they had "Major Must Go!" and "Thatcher Must Go!". Meanwhile, as we know that prime ministers come and go but it makes no difference as they're not the cause of the problem but the capitalist system of competitive struggle for profits is, we offer the only logical socialist slogan: CAPITALISM MUST GO!

Penal Profits

Since 1997, the Labour government has passed over 120,000 pages of legislation. ‘Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crme," has become a favourite Blairite battlecry.

The vast bulk of this legislation comes via the Home Office, which has fashioned a total of 59 bills since 1997. Not content with the fact that 10 years in office has led Labour to introduce over 3,000 new offences, The recent Queen’s speech informed us that the Home Office believes there is not enough legislation. Five more bills were announced.

Where the hell is all of this leading?

The answer comes from this morning’s Guardian. At the moment British prisons are full like never before – the highest in Europe in fact – 80,000 this week and rising! Some 8,000 new prison places are needed we are told. Will the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, cough up the requisite sum needed to incarcerate these scallywags? Not on your nelly! He obstinately refuses.

To the rescue comes the Home Office with a brilliant idea. ‘Let’s offer the public shares in prisons’, they say. ‘Get the public to invest in a company that can build jails and then rent them out!’

As the Guardian reports:

‘One incentive for small investors is that the government's punitive penal policy has seen prison numbers rise relentlessly over the past 10 years and would appear to guarantee a steady stream of rental income with no apparent shortage of prison "tenants".’Who says crime doesn’t pay?

Tony Blair - Iraq is a disaster

Only those suffering from selective amnesia will not recall the nauseating lengths to which Tony Blair went in promoting the case for the invasion of Iraq, how he used 10-year-old information gleaned from the internet, and some student’ dissertation, to argue that Saddam Hussein was quite capable of lobbing a missile at Britain within 45 minutes.

Prior to the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, well over a million people took part in a mass protest in London - people fully aware at the time that the events of 9/11 had no link to Saddam Hussein (something George Bush promoted and later denied) and that he posed no military threat to the West. Likewise, the many who marched to Hyde Park that day were right in believing that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction—a fact that was proved within months—and that any war in Iraq would fully destabilise the country (ex-president George Bush Snr. in fact cautioned Dubya that invasion would lead to destabilisation). And you would have been in a minority had you not realised the link between the intended war and the fact that beneath the sands of Iraq lay huge oil resources.

Three years after the invasion, with 650,000 Iraqis dead, the country’s infrastructure in total tatters, the country racked by a civil-war that threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands more Iraqis, global terrorism far more of a reality than before the invasion, Blair has admitted that the whole damned episode is a ginormous cock-up.

Interviewed by David Frost on Al-Jazeera on Friday night, Blair sent a shock-wave through Westminster when, responding to Frost’s querying whether the Western invasion of the country had "so far been pretty much of a disaster", Mr Blair said, firmly: "It has."

However, rather than locating the problem in the invasion, the toppling of Saddam, the setting up of a stooge pro-Western government, Blair continued: "You see what I say to people is why is it difficult in Iraq? It's not difficult because of some accident in planning, it's difficult because there's a deliberate strategy - al Qaeda with Sunni insurgents on one hand, Iranian-backed elements with Shia militias on the other - to create a situation in which the will of the majority for peace is displaced by the will of the minority for war."

And who trained Al-Qaeda? British and US special forces, Mr Blair. And what has always been the will of the majority in Iraq, Mr Blair? That the Western occupying armies get the hell out of Iraq.

Notwithstanding the carnage engulfing Baghdad and British-controlled Basra, Blair maintained that British troops were not ready to cut and run.

"We are not walking away from Iraq," he said. "We will stay for as long as the government needs us to stay.” Or rather British and American forces will stay until the country’s oil wealth is secured for Western interests.

"And the reason for that is that what is happening in Iraq, as in Afghanistan, as elsewhere in parts of the Middle East, is a struggle between the decent majority of people, who want to live in peace together, and those who have an extreme and perverted and warped view of Islam, who want to create war.”

One wonders whether Blair gets his political weltanschauung from the same sources as his war-mongering counterpart across the pond. Nowhere do the politics of oil enter the equation – the real reason for the invasion.

Jut one day after the Frost interview and Blair was back-pedalling – for sure his telephone hotline buzzing all night with concerned messages from the jingoistic fraternity in Washington and the oil cartel at home – and his spokesman adamant that his apparent concession was a "straightforward slip of the tongue" – perhaps the kind is slip Mr Bush is so famous for! Blair’s spokesman continued: "He doesn't think that a democratically-elected government in Iraq is a disaster; he doesn't think that getting rid of Saddam was a disaster, but he does acknowledge there are difficulties, and he doesn't try to downplay those."

We wonder just what “difficulties” Mr Blair is thinking of. That in securing the ‘world’s richest prize’ people have to be killed and democratic elections – as in Iraq – have to be subverted. What, the elections were democratic, Mr Blair? Then why did all candidates first have to be cleared by the White House?

How can an election be construed as legitimate when it is carried out under foreign military occupation and when the country is apparently ruled by, and the election will be officially run by, a stooge government installed and kept in power by the army of occupation? Where the democracy in holding an election that is to be orchestrated from the US Embassy and which will be under the ultimate control of US forces? Where the democracy and freedom of expression when a raging civil war prevents large sections of the population casting a vote and when the election is so tailored as to bring into being a new assembly responsible for drafting a Washington–vetted constitution and selecting a government that will be allowed to exist only so long as it functions under the conditions of military occupation?

Toppling Saddam was not a disaster? The very reason Saddam was not toppled in the wake of the first Gulf War - when the US prompted northern Kurds and the southern Marsh Arabs to rebel against Baghdad, offering they would come to their aid, and then sat back as Saddam annihilated them – was exactly because it was recognised an unstable Iraq was not in US interests, that it was safer to keep Saddam in power. Saddam might have been an utter bastard, but as far as Washington was concerned in 1991 he was holding the country together. This is not to say that we, as socialists, believe Saddam should have been left in power, but it is instructive to point to glaring changes in US policy.

As socialists we do maintain that it is dangerous to listen to leaders of any party and from any country, regardless of their flower cant, and insist that anything they say is taken with a pinch of salt and that workers should organise against them and in their ilk and in our own interests. The concept of leadership has emerged with class society and will end when we abolish class society, when we abolish the profit system and all that goes with it. The master class have been allowed to lead because of their control over the means of living and by virtue of their control of the education system and their monopoly of the media and other information processes.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The greatest weapons we posses are our class unity, our intelligence, our ability to question every corrupt word that is uttered by politicians, and to imagine a world fashioned in our own interests. Leaders perceive all of this to be a threat and so will do anything to keep us in a state of oblivion, dejection and dependency – not least of these methods is to further lie to us at every opportunity. Our apathy is the victory they celebrate each day. Our unwillingness question everything they say, to unite as a globally exploited majority and to confront them on the battlefield of ideas is the subject of their champagne toasts.

When it comes to commenting on Iraq, on would have thought that Blair would have learnt his lesson and kept his ill-informed mouth shut. For over 3 years he has lied incessantly about Iraq. It is staggering that anyone in Britain still finds anything he says believable. Just to remind visitors to this blog of some of his untruths we’re listing a sample few of his Iraq-related porkies. If you think anything Blair says is trustworthy, consider the following:

1) "The assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt … that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons" (Tony Blair’s foreword to the dossier on Iraq, 24 September 2002)

Fact: After over three months of inspections, the UN weapons inspectors reported on 6 March that "No proscribed activities, or the result of such activities from the period of 1998-2002 have, so far, been detected through inspections”.

2) "There is no doubt about the chemical programme, the biological programme, indeed the nuclear weapons programme. All that is well documented by the United Nations." (Tony Blair, 30 May 2003)

Fact: The UN had found no evidence of any on-going programmes since the mid-1990s. Dr Hans Blix said on 23 May that "I am obviously very interested in the question of whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction and I am beginning to suspect there possibly were not."

3) "The reason why the inspectors couldn't do their job in the end was that Saddam wouldn't co-operate." (Tony Blair, interview on 4 April 2003)

Fact: Hans Blix told the Security Council on 7 March 2003 that "the numerous initiatives, which are now taken by the Iraqi side with a view to resolving some long-standing open disarmament issues, can be seen as 'active', or even 'proactive'".

4) "the UN has tried unsuccessfully for 12 years to get Saddam to disarm peacefully." (Tony Blair, interview in the Independent on Sunday, 2 March 2003)

Fact: In 1999, the Security Council set up a panel to assess the UN's achievements in the peaceful disarmament of Iraq. It concluded that: "Although important elements still have to be resolved, the bulk of Iraq's proscribed weapons programmes has been eliminated."

5) "We have already found two trailers, both of which we believe were used for the production of biological weapons" (Tony Blair, press conference in Poland on 30 May 2003)

Fact: Government experts believed that the trailers were used for the production of hydrogen for artillery guidance balloons - a system, incidentally, sold by the UK to Iraq in the 1980s.

6) “There is some intelligence evidence about linkages between members of al-Qaeda and people in Iraq." (Tony Blair to the House of Commons Liaison Committee, 21 January 2003)

Fact: In early February, a classified British intelligence report, written by defence intelligence staff in mid-January and presented to Tony Blair just prior to his 21 January presentation at the Liaison Committee, stated that there were no current links between the two, and that Bin Laden's "aims are in ideological conflict with present day Iraq".

7) "As the Foreign Secretary has pointed out, resolution 1441 gives the legal basis for this [war]" (Tony Blair to the House of Commons, 12 March 2003)

Fact: Resolution 1441 was secured on the British assurance that it did not authorise military action, even if the UK or US believed it was being violated by Iraq. Britain's UN ambassador Jeremy Greenstock informed the Security Council on 8 November 2002 that "There is no 'automaticity' in this Resolution. If there is a further Iraqi breach of its disarmament obligations, the matter will return to the Council for discussion".

8) "On Monday night, France said it would veto a second Resolution whatever the circumstances." (Tony Blair to the House of Commons, 18 March 2003)

Fact: President Chirac said that France would vote against any resolution that authorised force whilst inspections were still working. Chirac said that he "considers this evening that there are no grounds for waging war in order to ... disarm Iraq.

9) "The oil revenues, which people falsely claim that we want to seize, should be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people administered through the UN." (Tony Blair to the House of Commons, 18 March 2003)

Fact: Britain co-sponsored a resolution to the Security Council, which was passed in May as Resolution 1483, that gave the US and UK control over Iraq's oil revenues.

10) "Our aim has not been regime change; our aim has been the elimination of weapons of mass destruction" (Tony Blair, press conference, 25 March 2003 )

Fact: UN weapons inspectors were reporting Iraq's "proactive" cooperation, and were offering that Iraq could be confirmed as fully disarmed within three months if that assistance continued. If Mr Blair's aim was the elimination of prohibited weapons, why terminate the inspection process just when it was most effective?

Today, meanwhile, Gordon Brown is in Iraq and no doubt the trip will be used as a damage limitation exercise in the wake of Blair’s unwitting confession. Brown’s remit? To visit and placate British troops who may have thought this was Blair saying they were going home, and announce at least £100 million in new aid for reconstruction. For what it’s worth, the figure is peanuts. On July 18th of this year US government's top auditor told Congress that the new Iraqi government would require at least $50 billion in aid just to rebuild the country's oil facilities and electrical grids to pre-invasion levels. Brown’s £100 million would not cover the damage that is done to Iraq as a direct result of the ongoing civil war each week.
This piece is also posted here.

The Labour Party Leadership Battle

Countless column inches and seemingly endless hours of news reports have been given over to the leadership crisis the Labour Party is currently engulfed in. Speaking up for Prime Minister Tony Blair, Home Secretary Charles Clark said Blair would stand down when he was good and ready to do so and he accused Chancellor Gordon Brown of “absolutely stupid” behaviour in challenging Blair, commenting that Brown needed first to prove his fitness to lead.

Fitness to lead? Now there’s a thing. It assumes leaders have some special qualification acquired over years of study and self-sacrifice when the only real qualification is the ability to hoodwink others into thinking you possess knowledge and qualities they do not. Unlike other professions – doctors, surgeons, architects, physicists – whose skills come via many years of hard slog – politicians require none whatsoever. The only requisite credentials needed when standing for election are that you are over 21 years of age, not insane and with no recent prison record.

Despite this, many workers think we cannot function without leaders. This is a fallacy and one perpetuated by the master class to help them maintain their rule over our lives. Indeed, so prevalent is this philosophy, that from the cradle to the grave we are taught to mistrust our own intelligence and to feel somewhat inadequate, to look up to our ‘betters and superiors’ (schools, church, politicians, parents etc) for their expert guidance and to accept without question the plans they draw up for our future.

Moreover, the whole concept of leadership and the need to choose the candidate most fitted for the post of leader is keenly promoted by aspiring leaders. In truth, history confirms them to be pitiable exemplars of honesty, integrity and compassion, forever paying lip service to truth and justice and other grand notions equated with leadership.

Blair has proved to be just as deceitful, dishonest and corrupt as every British prime minister that preceded him, ready always to defend power and privilege over the real needs of the people who elected him. From the moment he won a fourteen minute standing ovation from a CBI Conference just prior to the 1997 Labour victory, through the myriad scandals his Party has been caught up in, and right through to his perfidious reasoning to invade and occupy an immiserated but oil rich country, he has constantly lied to the electorate, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and bullied anyone bold enough to stand up to him.

Nothing Brown has said or done inclines us to consider he will act any differently. As Prime Minister he will lead the executive of the capitalist class – what else are governments but the national administrative arm of capital? - and as leader he had better be seen to be “batting for Britain”, defending the interests of big business at home and abroad. This is the real remit of the leader in capitalist society.

It is assumed by many that leaders run the world. Well, I rather think it is we, the workers, who run the world. Politicians might make government policy, which becomes law, but it is we who build and work the hospitals and schools. It is we who build the bridges, roads and railways, ports and airports; all the products that humans need to survive. It is we who produce everything from a pin to an oil-rig and provide humanity with all the services it requires – we the working class! We don’t depend on leaders for these skills or for their guidance. They have no monopoly on our knowledge and intelligence or on the inventions we dream up to enhance the quality of life. If all the worlds’ leaders died tomorrow, few would really miss them and society would function just as before.

The concept of leadership has emerged with class society and will end when we abolish class society, when we abolish the capitalist mode of production and all that goes with it. The master class have been allowed to lead because of their control over the means of living and by virtue of their control of the education system and their monopoly of the media and other and information processes.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The greatest weapons we posses are our class unity, our intelligence, and our ability to question the status quo and to imagine a world fashioned in our own interests. Leaders perceive all of this to be a threat and so will do anything to keep us in a state of oblivion, dejection and dependency. Our apathy is the victory they celebrate each day. Our unwillingness to unite as a globally exploited majority and to confront them on the battlefield of ideas is the subject of their champagne toasts.

Remember this as the battle for leadership of the Labour Party hots up.

The Jesus jokes are safe

Tony Blair was somewhat shamed in the House of Commons last night when he failed to cast the single vote needed to save the Government from defeat over its plans to introduce a new offence of incitement to religious hatred, and in so doing unwittingly allowed blogs like this the freedom to continue putting the much-needed and proverbaial boot into religion.

Blair, for some reason, neglected to vote in a second division when MPs voted by 283 votes to 282, majority one, to back safeguards inserted by the Lords. Had Blair voted, then the division would have been tied, leaving the deciding vote the Speaker, who more than likely would have voted with the pro-Blair faction.

Acknowledging that the Bill, as amended, would still go on the statute book, Home Sec Charles Clarke said: “The Government accepts the decision of the House this evening. We are delighted the Bill is going to its Royal Assent and delighted we have a Bill which deals with incitement against religious hatred."

Because of the Lords amendments, only "threatening" behaviour will be unlawful - the government efforts to prohibit "abusive or insulting" actions having been drop-kicked into the history books. People cannot be now prosecuted for recklessly inciting religious hatred. Instead, prosecutors will have to prove they intended to do so.

So, the Commons has voted to accept amendments designed to ensure only the most menacing statements would be caught by the law. Under the amended Bill statements would only be illegal if they were "threatening", removing an attempt to ban "abusive or insulting" statements and behaviour, all of which I guess makes sense. I'm not into into urging people to harm the religious, but I'm all for hitting out at organised religion's bloody absurdity when the opportunity arises, and if this upsets people, then tough! And no doubt the police in Glasgow will be delighted - the Bill, as it stands, saves them having to cart 50,000 gers and boyz fans down to the nick after a local derby.

From what I can make out the Bill is still ambiguous as to what exactly qualifies as a religion – the capitalistic worship of the god mammon? - and whether it counts if the religious incite hatred towards those who are ant-religious (like me), which is still a religious stance and, indeed, just what qualifies as “hatred” and “incite”. I mean I hate organised religion and wish to help nurture in people a revolutionary class consciousness which would consequently mean they would imbibe a hatred for religion too, but is this “inciting hatred”? Hmmmmm.

Update:

Blair, by all acounts, missed the aforementioned vote because he was wathching a football game. When it comes to issues of national importance, Fulham FC will come first every time.

Blair mistrusts his own Cabinet

It’s a fact that 70% of MPs support the introduction of an ID card, the majority of these Labour Party MPs. We can assume that a majority of Labour MPs would have voted in favour of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 - which gives the state the right to snoop on our email - texts and telephone conversations, or else it would never have become law. Indeed Labour MPs have generally supported the government every time Blair has tried to turn Britain into the mother of all open prisons. But now the Cabinet is up in arms and the Commons is expected to cry a collective “foul” in the coming weeks because Blair is aiming to give MI5 new powers to bug MPs. Poetic Justice or what?

After 40 years Blair is to overturn the Wilson Doctrine – named after Harold Wilson and the practise of not having MPs phones tapped – believing MPs should be treated just as any other citizen (with the minimum of trust and respect for privacy) and MPs are kicking off big style. Andrew Mackinlay, the Labour MP for Thurrock, protested it was a “hallmark of civilised society” that MPs were not spied upon.

And why the hell not, Andy? History shows that the most untrustworthy people in the country generally gravitate towards the House of Commons – the place is full of damned liars and cheats and scallywags. If phone tapping is okay for us mere proles, then why not for MPs? Or have you got something to hide? And I can’t help using the usual Labour Party refrain against you, the one hurled back at us when we complain about the erosion of civil liberties: “If you’re doing nothing wrong then you have nothing to worry about.”

When The Truth Hurts

Under a section headed ‘Open Government’, The Labour Party election manifesto of 1997 declared how “Unnecessary secrecy in government leads to arrogance in government and defective policy decisions”. It made reference to the Scott Report on weapons sales to Iraq under the Conservative Party and pledged that Labour would fight for a Freedom of Information Act and more open government. Many voters were highly impressed with New Labour’s alleged crusade for accountability and gave them their full support at the election.

In December of that year Tony Blair proudly revealed the White Paper Your Right to Know: The Government's Proposals for a Freedom of Information Act. The document advocated “establishing a general right of access to official records and information”, and stated this would lead to more open and accountable government.

The much awaited Freedom of Information Act. received Royal Assent on 30 November 2000 and was brought fully into force on January 2005.

In June 2005 a report by the Department for Constitutional Affairs, which assessed the first three months of the new Freedom of Information Act, found that Ministers and Whitehall bureaucrats were failing to open up the government and disclose information punctually to the public as previously pledged. The report showed that Whitehall departments had not revealed all the information asked for by the public in half of all cases and that there had been hold-ups in a third of all requests.

Maurice Frankel, director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, said in The Guardian (24th June 2005) that that some departments had been so bad that "in any other field, the government would be sending in a hit squad to take the functions over from them because they couldn't do the job". Pointing particularly at the Home Office, he continued: "The legislation seems to have passed them by. They are living in a time warp."

In July, with Blair gearing up for his G8 meeting in Gleneagles, the government decided to release more than 500 documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act – previously blocked documents produced by the Strategy Unit under Lord Birt, a Blair adviser. However, in an exercise highly reminiscent of the infamous episode when the former adviser Jo Moore sent an email on 9/11 suggesting it was a good day to ‘bury bad news’, the government chose to release them on the Friday evening of the Live 8 events around the country, in the full knowledge that the weekend press would focus so much on the Live 8 concerts they’d have little concern for anything else.

So, when the Daily Mirror on Tuesday, 22nd November, printed a report, headed "Bush plot to bomb his Arab ally", which referred to a leaked 5 page government memo contending that US President George Bush considered bombing Al-Jazeera's headquarters in Qatar and was talked out of it by Blair, readers eagerly awaited further revelations and wondered how the government would react to the disclosure. But did the Blair government greet the openness that such an enquiry could bring and comply with requests for further information on the matter? Not on your Nelly! The government rather had the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, threaten the Mirror and other newspapers with the Official Secrets Act – elevating the disclosure of any further information - clearly in the interest of the public - to a treasonable offence.

It is somewhat ironic that a government, which had blatantly and dramatically lied to the British public over Iraq’s WMDs so much in an attempt to get them to support a war in Iraq, a war which was presented as being very much in our interests, should now be saying that disclosure of the memo was not in the national interest, when surely such an attack on Al Jazeera’s Qatar base could have resulted in retaliation against the British public at home and abroad.

And it was not as if the USA had not already set a precedent in attacking Al Jazeera offices. During the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, a US ’smart bomb’ hit the Kabul offices of Al Jazeera. Two years later, in April 2003, the war in Iraq in full swing, the Baghdad office of Al Jazeera was hit by a missile. In the latter incident not only had Al Jazeera provided the Pentagon with its co-ordinates, fearing another ‘mistaken’ attack, but witnesses in the area saw the plane fly twice over the building before it was hit. That same day the Baghdad office of Abu Dhabi TV was also hit.

What possible motive could the US have had for wishing to bomb Al Jazeera? Well Al Jazeera is based in Qatar, a country considered a US ally and its staff are gleaned from all around the world, even Britain, so there can be little question of the TV station being considered an enemy. Al Jazeera’s only agenda is to report the news to an audience of 50 million and in a difficult climate. When the TV station first began broadcasting it won much acclaim in the US. The New York Times eulogized it as a “beacon of freedom” and White House officials saw it as living testimony that the Arab world wanted democracy and freedom of speech. But then the US top brass realised that Al Jazeera has a ‘tell it like it is’ method of reporting; that it was not going to bury the truth like so many western TV stations. It began reporting in gruesome detail what it saw, so much so that it has a nifty sideline in selling footage to foreign TV companies. Moreover, it aired the alleged Usama bin Laden video tapes to the Arab world. Clearly the TV station was becoming something of a “turbulent priest” that the kings of oil wanted rid of.

When, in 2003, Paul Wolfowitz, the US Deputy Defence Secretary claimed Al Jazeera was “endangering the lives of US troops”, it was Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defence who upped hostility to the TV station by falsely claiming it was collaborating with Iraqi insurgents. At the behest of their US puppet-masters, the newly elected Iraqi government had Al Jazeera thrown out of the country.

Back in June of 2005, Donald Rumsfeld further complained about Al Jazeera tarnishing the good old US image “day after day”

When US forces launched a massive and merciless assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah, stopping all men of military age from leaving the city before the attack and with many hundreds of civilians dying in the consequent napalm bombardment, Rumsfeld commented on Al Jazeerah’s coverage of the atrocity:” I can definitely say that what Al Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable.”

During the State of the Union address in 2004, Bush referred to reports from Al Jazeera and other Middle Eastern media outlets as “hateful propaganda coming out of the Arab world.”
George Orwell once said: “during times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” Well, events before and since the invasion of Iraq have revealed we certainly live in times of universal deceit, so maybe Bush wanted Al Jazeera knocked out for its revolutionary act of telling the truth about the occupation of Iraq.

In prosecuting the former Cabinet Official David Keogh along with Leo O’Connor, a researcher to the former Labour PM Tony Clarke over the leaked memo, and in threatening the media with the Official Secrets Act, the government is guilty of the same crime that the story focused on – namely that of attempting to strangle the truth. Blair, on the one hand, allegedly advises Bush, it would not be wise to bomb Al Jazeera, who would have been bombed because they reveal the truth which the US finds harmful, yet clamps down on all attempts to bring the circumstances surrounding the memo to public attention, because to do so would likewise harm Bush.

And this from the same government which announced in their White Paper back in 1997, that “the perception of excessive secrecy has become a corrosive influence in the decline of public confidence in government…[and that]…people expect much greater openness and accountability than they’re used to.”

George Orwell left us with another memorable quote: "He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future." This is exactly what New Labour, indeed the Bush-Blair bandwagon, is all about – controlling the future via their control of the present and what information is available to us and in the interests of their own backers. In preventing the truth surrounding Bush’s remarks becoming public knowledge the government is doing more harm to ‘national security’ than any full disclosure of the alleged “let’s bomb Al Jazeera” remark could. The Labour government ceases to be “open to scrutiny” and accountable to the people and instead becomes the puppet of US foreign policy its detractors always claimed it to be, losing what trust supporters might have had in it.

Of course none of the above should come as a surprise to the well informed, highly attuned to the Machiavellian goings-on of the executive of big business, namely governments. Few governments rule by force nowadays; most rule by consent, a consent granted by a misinformed and constantly lied-to public. Were governments really open with the truth, they would live as long as it would take the masses to tie their nooses.

Indeed, it was George Bush Snr who once said: “If the people knew what we had done, they would chase us down the street and lynch us.”

One thing, however, that the Socialist Party can pride itself on is its openness. We have no secrets; nothing we say or do is said or done behind closed doors, away from public scrutiny. Our EC meetings, Conferences and Delegate Meetings are always open to the public and there is nothing stopping members of the public speaking at the same. Moreover, all of the reports of these meetings are available for scrutiny, even posted on the www. And there are reasons for this – not only do we believe in accountability and feel it important to win the trust and respect of our fellow workers, we further envisage socialist society to be free, open and democratic, with all delegates wholly accountable to the people who elect them, so it makes sense that an organisation advocating such a society should hold its own democratic procedures up as a model.

And as advocates of democracy, free speech and accountability, we will be closely watching the trial of David Keogh and Leo O’Connor at Bow Street Magistrates Court on January 10th, though without much hope that this case will result in a triumph in the cause of government accountability. For Blair and Bush there is just too much at stake – the truth.

Filming the man who consumed the most expensive fish supper in history

(I wrote the following a while back but did bugger up with it and decided it needed an airing, if only for the fact that people who eat £1 million fish suppers need exposing)

It’s a chilly mid afternoon, Thursday, 20th November, 2003 and I’m one half of a camera crew that has blagged its way onto the TV media platform on the runway of Teesside Airport to film President George W Bush’s visit to Tony Blair’s Sedgefield parliamentary constituency. We really look the part, with state of the art camera equipment, housed in expensive looking carriers, and permits, okayed the day before, stuck to our coats. We’re there with the teams from the BBC, ITV and Reuters.

I’ve been there since early morning and I’m busting for a pee and shivering with the cold, so much so my knees are aching. But it’s worth it – I have some great footage of Bush arriving on board Airforce One* and we may well find a buyer and I hope my numbed hands can operate the fidgety camera controls when Marine One (a helicopter) is spotted approaching the airport for Bush’s departure. Christ, I’m cold. I wish I’d put on a decent coat.

The airport staff have generally been very accommodating. Their PR man was welcoming and his colleagues led us (me and my co film maker Carol) to a waiting area, upon our arrival, where we were offered refreshments. Even the police inspector standing next to me on the platform is on real friendly terms. Not so the paranoid security staff who have twice searched our equipment and bodies in a manner which, if I had have done it to another, would have been classed as sexual assault. Every bit of our equipment is thoroughly searched and X-rayed and our clothing scanned for explosives residue with some expensive piece of gadgetry. The bastards even demanded a look under my eye patch, I shit you not – Usama bin Laden has to be somewhere! Still, not to worry; I get through security without having to bend over and endure an internal. But the episode made me think that if you’re into touching people up and want to do it without getting arrested and imprisoned as a filthy perv, then go into security or customs.

As we wait for Marine One and the accompanying Black Stallion helicopters to arrive, the police inspector informs me that he has learned that Blair and the presidential party had a meal of fish and chips at the Dun Cow pub in Sedgefield.

“Christ on a bike,” I chirp, remembering the cost to Durham Constabulary for the day’s security operation, “a million quid for a fish supper? He could have stayed on the plane and I’d have got him fish and chips for a tenner, tip included.”

The sun is going down as Bush arrives back at the airport and there is much cheering and the usual sycophantic shouts of “Mr President!” from onlookers who will proudly tell their grandchildren that the gloopiest president in history looked their way.

In front of me a dozen local cops reach for their cameras and behind and to the right of me a dozen black clad snipers, perched on the roof of the airport terminal, drop and assume the position. I zoom in on the door of Marine One and await Bush’s descent, hoping to get footage of Dubya tripping or a close-up of a bit of fish batter sticking to his chin. And then:
“Fuck!” The camera battery has died on me. “Twat!”

I hastily remove the battery and squat, fumbling about in the camera case that is steadying the base of the tripod for the spare. I look up, smiling embarrassingly at the police inspector, who suddenly looks worried – maybe he thinks I’m going for a gun – and then directly in front of me where a sniper’s silhouette suggests he has his sights on me. I make it clear to anyone watching that it is only a battery, not a grenade, before fitting it and refocusing on Bush, who is now shaking hands with his ‘guard of honour’.

Lined either side of the steps up into the plane, and at right angles to the steps, are a few dozen members of the police, the local territorial army and US airforce staff. This is a last minute change to the schedule and the friendly police inspector standing next to me is happy his boys are being involved. And it suddenly occurs to me that this is not so much a last minute guard of honour but, with the airport widely exposed to the countryside on its southern side, Bush’s short walk from his helicopter to his plane exposes him to sniper fire. These mugs are a human shield for Bush against a sniper’s bullet.

I keep the film running, getting a mixture of close-ups and long shots of the scene, and when he’s aboard and the plane begins to taxi to the runway I zoom in on the front wheel of the plane and do a slow pan out to reveal the blue and white presidential plane in all its magnificent glory as it rolls along and film it until it is so far in the distance it is indistinguishable from a distant sparrow.

I’ve got some great footage – an assortment of shots and some clever stuff too and feel chuffed to bits. We pack our gear away and hurriedly head for the airport’s toilets and then a coffee and chat about the day’s shoot.

Aboard Airforce One and heading back to Washington DC, President Bush was given some distressing news. A fire at the White House earlier that day had destroyed the President’s personal library. Both of his books were lost in a blaze thought to be caused by an electrical fault. Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer later said at a press conference the president was devastated, as he had not finished colouring the second one.

*Airforce One is actually two planes - identical planes – the logic being presumably that an attacker would target the first, which contains mostly entourage - press, secret service agents and sundry Republican arsewhipes.

Some 500 Secret service agents had been in the country for weeks, posing as American tourists, and could been found sitting alone in pubs and cafe’s, looking somewhat conspicuous with their square jaws, crew cuts, long coats and well-thumbed copies of “Larn Yerself Geordie” (this being the nearest White House researchers could find to a ready translator for the North East accent.)

Another War for Oil

This is the text for a leaflet I wrote for an anti-war demo (it incorporates a previous article on the subject)

Once again, in a further attempt to tighten US control over Middle Eastern oil supplies, and no doubt to distract attention from mega-domestic corporate wrongdoings, George W Bush has presented before the world the vision of time- honoured bogey-man Saddam Hussein lobbing weapons of mass destruction around as if they were going out of fashion.

With Osama bin Laden now clearly relegated to second place in the league of global spooks, Saddam has been dusted down and once more presented to us as the greatest existing threat to world peace. The news from Washington is that he still has stockpiles of chemical weapons and is close to building an atomic weapon. That neither George Bush nor Tony Blair has yet been able to authenticate the Iraqi threat with real evidence distracts transatlantic warmongers no more than the fact that Saddam is clearly aware that were he to use any such WMD his country would be instantly obliterated. And that US ally, Israel, is in breach of as many UN resolutions as the errant Iraq, which Bush cites as evidence of Saddam’s contempt for the world, is no more considered than continuous US flouting of UN resolutions.


Hypocrisy and Double Standards


Not so long ago, the US opposed, with one other country, a UN resolution condemning international terrorism and remains the only country to veto a Security Council resolution calling on all states to observe international law - clearly a response to the censure it received from the International Court of Justice for "unlawful use of force" during its terrorist war against Nicaragua, and to which it was also ordered to pay substantial reparations. Dismissing that particular ruling, the US went on to intensify that assault.

When it comes to international treaties, you could be forgiven for thinking George W loathes humanity. His administration has refused to accept the Kyoto agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions, which threaten environmental disaster. It has torn up the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty - a move that threatens a new arms race with the US gearing up for "Star Wars" or the properly named National Missile Defence system. It has, as already stated, de-recognised a treaty setting up an International Criminal Court, maintaining that its politicians and troops should never be held to account for crimes they commit (see quote from the 2002 National security Strategy below).

On July 25th 2001, the US scuppered a decade of international negotiations by announcing, in Geneva, its intention not to back a draft protocol to reinforce the biological weapons and toxin convention which was initially signed in 1972. The reason for this decision was that it threatened US commercial interests. The protocol would have incorporated verification measures which would have given an international inspectorate admittance to laboratories in the signatory countries. We may well wonder just what the US is afraid the inspectorate would uncover at its thousands of biotech sites and defence plants. Just what are its commercial interests and secrets that it could even consider scuttling a treaty drawn up in the interests of humanity? Yet this same administration has been so vociferous in calling for a UN inspectorate to rummage about in Iraq.

Aware that world opinion was against him, Bush looked set to pursue his campaign via the UN, clearly hoping that Iraq’s failure to comply with requests from UN weapons inspectors would be the green light he needed to justify an attack upon Iraq. When Iraq offered to allow inspectors in to search for the weapons the US claimed Saddam had stockpiled, Bush declined the offer.

We may well wonder why the US pretends to be oblivious as to the chemical facilities Iraq might have. Certainly Saddam has the technological know-how. It came courtesy of the US when they sponsored Saddam in his war with Iran. Back in 1994, the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs produced a report entitled U.S. Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War. It concluded:

"The United States provided the Government of Iraq with ‘dual use’ licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological, and missile-system programs, including: chemical warfare agent precursors; chemical warfare agent production facility plans and technical drawings…chemical warhead filling equipment; biological warfare related materials; missile fabrication equipment; and, missile-system guidance equipment

We can further observe that the country with the biggest nuclear arsenal on earth and the biggest stockpile of chemical weapons, and which has a proven track record of having used them, is the United States.

The United States has in fact 9,000 nuclear warheads, as does Russia. Britain, France and China have another 950 between them. On the other hand, Saddam doesn't even have one, as is widely acknowledged. Instead, they charge him with hoarding chemical and biological weapons, but then so do the countries just mentioned.


Furthermore, Dr Kathleen Sullivan of the Nuclear Weapons Education Project in New York observes: "The Bush administration is not only funding the further modernisation of nuclear weapons, but it is also proposing two new facilities in the US dedicated to the manufacture of chemical and biological weapons." She asserts that "the current doctrine on nuclear weapons use" in the US leaves little doubt that Bush is prepared to use them first.

Washington is certainly planning on some serious battles in the near future. Next year, the Bush administration will spend $396 billion on a war machine costing 26 times the combined military spending of the seven countries it recently announced it would not hesitate to hit with nuclear weapons - Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, Syria and Cuba – and a figure almost 300 times that of errant Iraq. Bush now intends to develop thr US war wagon, with a plan to raise this figure to an annual $451 billion by 2007.

We can wonder whether Israel’s nuclear arsenal is ever inspected – after all, it is an aggressive and unpredictable Middle Eastern country, just like Iraq, and with little regard for human rights, its neighbours or UN resolutions. The answer is no. And why? Because, like India and Pakistan, which are widely believed to have a couple of dozen nuclear warheads a piece, Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It’s nuclear arsenal, therefore, exists outside international law and beyond the reach of international weapons inspectors. As Iraq has signed the treaty, it is therefore required to submit to such inspections.

And let’s not forget the key U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 of 1991 – aimed at prohibiting Iraq from developing WMDs; its preamble proclaims that all states must do everything possible to "establish a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the region of the Middle East." Though well cited by transatlantic warmongers, seeking justification for an attack on Iraq, it is not solely concerned with Iraq, as it calls for eradicating weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems right across the Middle East, including Israel, and the working towards a global ban on chemical weapons.

But to go back, for the moment, to Washington’s alleged concern for Iraq’s supposed chemical weapons, recent evidence reveals the US is guilty of playing a heinous game of double standards. Edward Hammond, in an article that appeared on the Counterpunch website (www.counterpunch.org/) on 25th September and entitled US Violates International Law - The Pentagon's Secret Chemical Weapons Program, highlights a report published a day earlier by the Sunshine Project (the text can be found at www.sunshine-project.org/) accusing the US military of conducting a chemical weapons research and development program in contravention of international arms control law. The charges follow an 18 month investigation of the Department of Defence’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD).

The enquiry made wide-ranging use of the US Freedom of Information Act to obtain Pentagon records that form the prime basis of the allegations. An arrangement of documents, many of which are to be found on the Sunshine Project website, make obvious that JNLWD is operating an illegal and classified chemical weapons program. In particular, the Sunshine project accuses the JNLWD of:

1. Conducting a research and development program on toxic chemical agents for use as weapons, including anaesthetics and psychoactive substances, in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention;

2. Developing long-range military delivery devices for these chemicals, including an 81mm chemical mortar round, that violate the Chemical Weapons Convention.

3. Pursuing a chemical weapons program while fully cognizant that it violates the Chemical Weapons Convention and US Department of Defence regulations;

4. Attempting to cover up the illicit program by classifying as secret even its own legal interpretations of the Chemical Weapons Convention and attempting to block access to documents requested under US information freedom law.

Reports and Dossiers

On September 17th the Bush administration presented to the world it’s National Security Strategy of the United States. Though heavily influenced by the events of September 11th, the report is informed with the same belligerent, imperialist jargon that has fused many similar reports. In highlighting areas where the US feels its interests face the biggest challenge, it becomes simplistically clear that this is but a blue print for US domination of the globe. Control of Iraq’s oil reserves can perhaps best be seen as but the first stage of the battle for US global supremacy.

Section 8 states: “We are attentive to the possible renewal of old patterns of great power competition… Russia, India, and China…In pursuing advanced military capabilities that can threaten its neighbours in the Asia-Pacific region, China is following an outdated path that, in the end, will hamper its own pursuit of national greatness.”

Section 9 informs us: “the United States will require bases and stations within and beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia, as well as temporary access arrangements for the long-distance deployment of U.S. forces.” It continues: “We must prepare …by developing assets such as advanced remote sensing, long-range precision strike capabilities, and transformed manoeuvre and expeditionary forces. This broad portfolio of military capabilities must also include the ability to defend the homeland, conduct information operations, ensure U.S. access to distant theatres, and protect critical U.S. infrastructure and assets in outer space.”

That same section tells us that US “forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equalling, the power of the United States…We will take the actions necessary to ensure that our efforts to meet our global security commitments and protect Americans are not impaired by the potential for investigations, inquiry, or prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose jurisdiction does not extend to Americans and which we do not accept.”

Although now five years old, the US Space Command document ‘Vision 2020’ had similarly telegraphed US designs for the 21st Century and set in context the logic behind NMD: “Although unlikely to be challenged by a global peer competitor, the United States will continue to be challenged regionally. The globalisation of the world economy will also continue, with a widening between the haves and have nots. Accelerating rates of technological development will be increasingly driven by commercial interests not the military. Increased weapons lethality and precision will lead to new operational doctrines…..only military dominance will protect US interests and investments. “

Indeed such ideas were then hadly new. They were formulated by Paul Walfowitz (now Deputy Secretary of Defence) and Lew Libby (a National Security Adviser) and presented as a confidential Pentagon document in 1992 by none other than vice-president Dick Cheney. It argued that the US should take the necessary steps to stop any “…hostile power from dominating regions” whose resources would allow it to attain superpower stature; that it should discourage attempts by other advanced industrialised states to challenge US hegemony or upset the extant political and economic global set up and act to halt the ambitions of any prospective global competitor.

It is in the above context that we can perhaps set Tony Blair’s 50 page dossier Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction – the assessment of the British Government, which was coincidentally presented to the British public within days of the publication of the National Security Strategy of the United States.

Blair’s dossier – an attempt to whip up British support for the US venture against Iraq - was largely penned in Washington by the same discredited intelligence agencies that offered no forewarning of the attacks of September 11th. The Foreign Office here neglected even to edit the dossier’s American jargon. Its 50 pages begin with pure distortion, claiming that a report by the International Institute of Strategic Studies suggested Iraq could assemble nuclear weapons within months. In actual fact, the Institute's report concluded that Iraq was years from even developing, let alone perfecting and making, nuclear weapons – a fact that is eventually admitted to towards the end.

Writing for the Znet website (www,Zmag.org/) on 25th September, Robert Fisk observes of the dossier: “Reading it can only fill a decent human being with shame and outrage. Its pages are final proof – if the contents are true – that a massive crime against humanity has been committed in Iraq. For if the details of Saddam's building of weapons of mass destruction are correct…it means that our massive, obstructive, brutal policy of UN sanctions has totally failed. In other words, half a million Iraqi children were killed by us – for nothing.”

Of course there is little testimony in Blair’s dossier that was not already widely available. What there is plenty of in the dossier is conjecture . Instead of the cast-iron definites you would assume would lend the report credence, we come across terms like “there is no definite intelligence”, “it appears”, “is almost certainly”, “difficult to judge”, “secret intelligence sources”, “I believe” and a fair few “ifs”.

With this chunky bit of evidence presented to the British people, Blair expected a popular mandate to go to war. Not that this would be a last resort to stop Saddam developing WMD, as Iraq had in fact agreed to submit to the weapons inspections initially suggested by Washington and London. Bush however was having none of it – as far as he was concerned Saddam could not be trusted. He demands war and Saddam is not going to get out of one that easy. Indeed, US Secretary of State Colin Powell openly announced that America might block the return of United Nations’ weapons inspectors to Iraq. The US is understandably afraid that Iraq's unrestricted offer to the inspectors will "damage the coalition," that he will take from under their noses their excuse for a full scale attack and the theft of Iraqi oil.


The Coming War for Iraqi Oil


There can be no other reason for the US obsession with Iraq than the promise of securing future oils supplies and the profits they bring. What remains imprecise is the US game plan in the region: to use Iraq as a springboard to capture Iran and thus secure a shorter and cheaper route to Gulf ports for Caspian oil, or maybe to get a tighter grip on Saudi oil less there be Islamic fundamentalist blowback resulting from the ‘war on terror’? Or maybe, with China estimated to equal US demands for oil within 20 years, a China the US sess as a real threat to its commercial interests, the foray into Iraq is part of a larger a plan to head off future problems now. NO? Would there be so much US concern if Iraq exported dates only.

Clearly seeing through the current charade, Mo Mowlam, once a member of Blair’s cabinet, wrote in The Guardian (5th September): "This whole affair has nothing to do with a threat from Iraq - there isn't one. It has nothing to do with the war against terrorism or with morality. Saddam Hussein is obviously an evil man, but when we were selling arms to him to keep the Iranians in check he was the same evil man he is today. He was a pawn then and he is a pawn now. In the same way he served Western interests then, he is now the distraction for the sleight of hand to protect the West's supply of oil.”

As the Bush administration continues to beat the war drums, mustering support for its attack upon Iraq, there are those who still steadfastly maintain that the US-UK position on Iraq has nothing at all do with oil and that Bush and Blair are quite sincerely concerned about peace and democracy and ridding the world of a regime that threatens global harmony with its weapons of mass destruction. The evidence, however, suggests that Western concerns with Iraq are far less to do with its alleged threat to world peace and everything to do with control of the region’s oil supplies.

In a leading article in the Washington Post on 15th September, staff writers Dan Morgan and David Ottaway, wrote extensively about Western oil interests in Iraq, observing that whilst senior Bush administration officials say they have not begun to focus on the issues involving oil and Iraq, “American and foreign oil companies have already begun manoeuvring for a stake in the country's huge proven reserves of 112 billion barrels of crude oil, the largest in the world outside Saudi Arabia.”

An Observer investigation, published on 6th October, began: “Oil is emerging as the key factor in US attempts to secure the support of Russia and France for military action against Iraq…The Bush administration, intimately entwined with the global oil industry, is keen to pounce on Iraq’s massive untapped reserves, the second biggest in the world after Saudi Arabia’s”

However revealing this may appear, more damning evidence of US intentions in the Middle East actually emerged some time ago. In April 2001, some five months before ‘September 11th’, a little heard of report was submitted to vice-president Dick Cheney, originally commissioned by James Baker who had been the US Secretary of State under George Bush Senior. It is entitled Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century and describes how the US is confronting the biggest energy crisis in its history. The report specifically targets Saddam as an obstacle to US interests because of his control of Iraqi oilfields and suggests the use of 'military intervention' as a way to access and control Iraqi oilfields and help the US out of its energy crisis.

One passage reads: 'Iraq remains a destabilising influence to...the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export programme to manipulate oil markets…. This would display his personal power, enhance his image as a pan-Arab leader ... and pressure others for a lifting of economic sanctions against his regime. The United States should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments. The United States should then develop an integrated strategy with key allies in Europe and Asia, and with key countries in the Middle East, to restate goals with respect to Iraqi policy and to restore a cohesive coalition of key allies.”

According to the report’s compilers, the main cause of any coming crisis will be 'Middle East tension', which means the 'chances are greater than at any point in the last two decades of an oil supply disruption'. It admits that the US will never be 'energy independent' and is becoming too dependent on foreign powers supplying it with oil and gas. The answer is to put oil at the centre of the administration - 'a reassessment of the role of energy in American foreign policy'.

The report initially contemplates an arms-control programme in Iraq and suggests this may lead to a relaxation of oil sanctions which might make for better trading on world oil markets. However, it then acknowledges that such an arms-control policy would prove over-costly as it would “encourage Saddam Hussein to boast of his 'victory' against the United States, fuel his ambition and potentially strengthen his regime”. It continues: “Once so encouraged, and if his access to oil revenues was to be increased by adjustments in oil sanctions, Saddam Hussein could be a greater security threat to US allies in the region…”

With US oil reserves estimated to last no more than 20 years and the with the US the biggest consumer and the biggest net importer of oil (11 million barrels a day, which is a seventh of global production), there is a growing reliance on Middle Eastern oil. Twenty years ago the US imported just over 30% of its oil from the Middle East. That figure now stands at 52%. And in a world where the US has economic rivals, with their own growing demand for oil (i.e. China’s demands are increasing by 3.5% per year), a war to secure control of the ‘greatest prize’ makes sound sense to the Bush administration.

Additionally, in the post 9/11 world, where anti-American feeling runs high in traditional militant Islamic societies, the US also realises it can no longer remain dependent on Saudi oil supplies. As the US needs an oil supply totalling 20 million barrels of crude oil a day, it now seeks a supplier that can perhaps meet half of these needs – Iraq! With the present high global prices of oil sucking the US into a recession it is important also that the US breaks the Saudi stranglehold on the oil cartel Opec.

And what of the Bush administration and its own personal oil interests? Well make no mistake about it, the president, the vice-president, the defence secretary and the deputy defence secretary, the chairman of the NSC and the head of the CIA all have oil connections. The most hawkish US regime ever assembled has its own private reason for a ‘war’ with Iraq.

Four years ago, Halliburton, the US oil equipment company of which Dick Cheney was chief executive, sold parts to Iraq to help with the rebuilding of an infrastructure that had been devastated during the 1991 Gulf war. Halliburton did £15 million of business with Saddam - a man Cheney now compares to Adolf Hitler. Moreover, Halliburton is one of the US companies thought by experts to be queuing up for the profits resulting from any clean-up operation in the wake of another US-led attack on Iraq.

In the past few years, and increasingly since Bush came to power and most evidently since 9/11, the US has spread its military tentacles - establishing bases in twelve new countries in the past year alone. US forces now surround over 80% of the world’s oil reserves. They have encompassed the Caspian region which has an estimated 70-200 billion barrels of oil and 11 trillion cubic feet of known gas deposits. And still with gas, Iran, neighbouring Iraq, and part of Bush’s dreaded ‘Axis of Evil’ controls 80% of the world’s gas reserves. And with gas estimated to account for 30% of world energy production by 2020, the US game plan becomes increasingly difficult to dismiss as nonsense.

Moreover, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the US, Britain, France, Russia and China - have international oil companies with major stakes in a ‘regime change’ in Baghdad. And since the Gulf War of 1991, companies from more than a dozen nations, inclusive of France, Russia, China, India, Italy, Vietnam and Algeria, have either negotiated contracts or sought to reach agreements in principle to develop Iraqi oil fields, to revamp extant facilities there or explore undeveloped fields. Most of the deals, however, are in abeyance until the lifting of U.N. sanctions.

Sources in Russia have expressed serious concerns about a US attack on Iraq and any ‘regime change’ this may result in, fearing that a post-Saddam, pro-US, government might just not honour the extraction contracts that Baghdad has already signed with Moscow and that all such contracts would be declared null and void. Many in Russia now fear that the US has already brokered deals with the Iraq opposition and despite recent dialogue between Moscow and Washington remain unconvinced of Washington’s claim that Russian contracts would be legitimate.

One Russian UN Official reportedly told The Observer (6th October: “The concern of my government is that concessions agreed between Baghdad and numerous enterprises will be reneged upon, and that US companies will enter to take the greatest share of those existing contracts.”

Such fears are perhaps not unfounded. Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress (an umbrella organisation of Iraqi opposition groups backed by the US), recently announced that he preferred the creation of a US-led consortium to develop Iraq's oil fields, which have deteriorated in the ten years of UN sanctions, saying "American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil." (Washington Post)

Back in 1997, Russia’s biggest oil company, Lukoil, signed a $20 bn contract to tap into the West Qurna oilfield. In October of last year, the Russian oil services company Slavneft purportedly signed a $52 million service contract to drill at the Tuba field, also in southern Iraq. A proposed $40bn Iraqi-Russian economic agreement also reportedly includes opportunities for Russian companies to explore for oil in Iraq's western desert.

French company Total Fina Elf had negotiated for rights to develop the huge Majnoon field, near the Iranian border, which could contain up to 30 billion barrels of oil. But in July 2001, Iraq announced it would cease giving French firms preference in the award of such contracts because of its decision to abide by UN sanctions, and then gave a $90 bn contract to Russian oil company Zarubezhneft to drill the bin Umar oilfield.

During the first two days of October, at the first US-Russia Commercial Energy Summit in Houston, Texas, emphasis was placed on Russia increasing its oil exports to the US, which is desperate to reduce its reliance on the Middle East. Off stage, talks were in progress about a series of contracts held by Russian oil companies. According to Vaget Alekperov, Lukoil chairman, in an interview with the Financial Times on October 3rd, the Russian government secured an agreement that if, or when, the Baghdad regime is toppled, "the [Iraqi] law is the law, the state is still there.”

Mikhail Margelov, of the international affairs committee of the Russian federation council (the upper house of parliament), afterwards told Reuters that Moscow expected "equal, fruitful, cooperation" with the US "especially in the privatisation of the Iraqi oil sector".

Following the Houston summit, Russian energy minister Igor Yusufov and economy minister German Greg travelled with US commerce secretary Donald Evans and energy secretary Spenser Abraham for talks with Bush's vice-president Dick Cheney and national security advisor Condoleeza Rice, undoubtedly in order for the latter to reassure the former that a Russia supportive of an attack upon Iraq would indeed get its share of the spoils once Saddam is ousted.

Apparently, plans to safeguard Russia's interests in Iraq have been under discussion for months in Washington. Prior to the Bush-Putin summit in May, Ariel Cohen, an analyst with the Heritage Foundation suggested an offer to "support the Russian companies' contractual rights", arguing that Lukoil could sway Russian foreign policy, and that a deal could be brokered to Washington's and Moscow's mutual advantage.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, chief of Russia’s second biggest oil company, Yukos, later said in a Washington Post interview that "if there were sufficient political will", one possibility was to create a Russian-American oil consortia to exploit Iraqi

Clearly, like the capitalists state it has always been, Russia wants to make sure that, whatsoever deals the US agrees upon with anti-Saddam Iraqi politicians or Kurdish nationalists, their existing contracts remain valid. And this, more than the repayment of Iraq's $7bn Soviet-era debt, is the decisive factor in deciding how Russia casts its vote on the UN Security Council.

R. James Woolsey, former CIA director and a leading protagonist in the US anti-Iraq campaign, is one of many all too aware of Russian and French qualms regarding the whole affair. Cognizant of the need to secure French and Russian support he commented: "It's pretty straightforward, France and Russia have oil companies and interests in Iraq. They should be told that if they are of assistance in moving Iraq toward decent government, we'll do the best we can to ensure that the new government and American companies work closely with them." In other words, ‘scratch our backs and we’ll scratch yours.’

France is listening and, like Russia, is wondering whether once Saddam is ousted, its companies will lose out to US oil interests. Not only is it now thought to be negotiating a slice of the coming action – a bigger role than the US afforded it in the 1991 Gulf War – but the state-owned Total Fina Elf oil company has also been in talks in the US about the distribution of the spoils of war.

As Washington’s crusade against Iraq offers huge opportunities for international oil corporations, it also exposes serious risks and worries for the global oil market should there indeed be ‘regime change’ in Iraq. As the Washington Post reported: “Access to Iraqi oil and profits will depend on the nature and intentions of a new government. Whether Iraq remains a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, for example, or seeks an independent role, free of the OPEC cartel's quotas, will have an impact on oil prices and the flow of investments to competitors such as Russia, Venezuela and Angola.” (15th September).

Consider the case of Russia. Oil companies such as Lukoil have an important financial concern in developing Iraqi fields; however, a general lowering of oil prices that may result from a flood of Iraqi oil into world markets could jeopardise Russian government attempts to attract foreign investment in its untapped domestic fields, because a drop in world oil prices could make costly ventures to unlock Siberian oil reserves far less attractive.

Conversely, the knife cuts both ways. In the short term, Russia is poised to make a tidy profit if a US invasion of Iraq sparks an immediate hike in oil prices, with its oil companies already negotiating to sell the US oil at two-thirds of the existing market price.

Though having initially urged caution on the Iraq affair, it now looks likely that both Russia and France will give their blessing for a US-led assault on Iraq. And who could blame them? Their governments are little more than the executives of their respective master classes and in the cut- throat world of capitalist competition they must be seen to be promoting their profit-oriented interests, and to hell with the cost of life. In Moscow, Paris, and in state capitals the world over, governments will always maintain that oil takes priority over blood.

Months ago, defending the belligerent stance of the US in its ‘war on terror’ Bush said that ‘inaction is not an option.’ Blair now reiterates this platitude, mantra-fashion. We agree. For the class conscious, inaction is definitely ‘not an option’. As we see it, it is the inaction and complacency of the working class that has enabled the horrors we associate with capitalism, including war, to continue. For almost a century we have warned of the dangers of political apathy, of trusting in leaders, of accepting all that governments say without question and of striving to reform a system that can endure no end of reforms. It is our silence, our inaction, more than anything, that Bush and Blair will depend on in coming months when they seek to legitimise an attack upon Iraq - that same silence the master class toasts each day. Our inaction remains as an important element in our continuing exploitation, for the master class see in it our consent for their excesses.

If you’re into demonstrating against war, then take our advice and invest in a sturdy anti-war banner, for if you are prepared to oppose war without opposing the very system that gives rise to it, then you’ll be demonstrating for quite some time to come. Alternatively you can join the movement which believes that to end wars you must first put an end capitalism. An uphill struggle? No more so than the campaign to end war against the backdrop of the profit system.

New Labour

Can't remember when I wrote this piece, or even if it is a completed article or the notes for one - just found it on my pc, so stuck a 2002 date on it:

To begin with, the great swing to New Labour at the May 1997 General Election was hardly a mass endorsement of Blair’s policies by the electorate. A quick look at the statistics shows the turn-out at the 1997 election to be the lowest turn-out on record – if anything the abstentionists won the election. Rather, it was more a case of voters simply desiring a change of government, believing Blair could offer some digression from 18 years of Tory rule. In reality, the voters were simply electing to office Thatcherism with a smile on its face.

Blair in fact had much praise for Mrs Thatcher. Prior to the election he declared she was someone “Britain needed at the time’” and she was amongst the very first invites to 10 Downing Street in May 19997 when Blair took office. And though critical of Tory policies whilst in opposition, it was Blair himself who told voters that new Labour would be adhering to Tory pending plans for 2 years – so we feel we have every right in “lumping the Labour party in with the Tories.”

Throughout their term in office, and just like their predecessors, the Labour party have proved themselves to be the party of capitalism, a party f reactionaries, more than ready to suck up to their cronies in big business and to clout the poorest at every opportunity

Prior to the election, Blair so enthralled a CBI conference that they gave him a 14 minute standing ovation. He even travelled to Australia to meet with right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

In 1996, Blair accepted a ride in the private helicopter of Sir Anthony Bamford (of JCB), later announcing they shared “common purposes”. At conference that year he declared “we are on the same side. We are on the same team.” Within 3 years, JCB were fined £24 million by the EU for restrictive practices. In February of 1996 Blair had even told another audience of businessmen: “I want to see Britain become an audience of millionaires.”

Seeing profits at every turn, Blair would go on to tell the Green Alliance/CBI Conference (sponsored by BP) and at which such matters as alternative energy sources were discussed: “We should see protecting the environment as a business opportunity.” A shame BP was not listening, for they have just announced record profits of £24 million per day. And of this how much is invested in sustainable energy (an alternative to oil)? – 0.05 per cent of it!

Sidekick Peter Mandelson could be found on the other side of the pond in January 1999, telling an audience of business people how Labour “is intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich

New Labour - the continuing saga

In his new found role as St. Francis of Assisi, Tony Blair jetted off to Africa in February to lecture African workers about the new threat of global terrorism, about ‘self interest and mutual interest’ and how these two concepts were ‘dependent on each other’. At the same time he was in Africa the British press were reporting how Britain’s arms sales to Africa had quadrupled since 1999. Self interest? Mutual Interest? Well maybe for the arms manufacturers and the leaders of those African states that purchase the British weaponry that helps them quell internal dissent and wage war on their neighbours.

The Continuing Saga of New Labour It seems these interests are at the forefront of much of Blair’s thinking. A week after he returned from India in January – remember he travelled there to help them solve the Kashmir problem in a verbal manner – the British press were reporting of a new arms deal with India, which was worth £1 billion and inclusive of 60 Hawk jets.

Those with long memories and familiar with Labour’s love affair with the arms trade, will remember the Biafran war of the 1960s, when Britain’s share of arms sales to Nigeria during that conflict increased from 15-75%. St Francis of Assisi? Try Vlad the Impaler!

Poverty
While the Blair government is keen to point out how they are reducing poverty in Britain – something which tends to run counter to the statistics socialists are regularly fond of citing – we draw your attention to a newly published report by the Child Poverty Action Group (interestingly, an organisation set up by the Labour Party many years ago and which was supposed to exist for one year only). The last time such a report came out in 1996, Labour Party MPs used it to ridicule the Tories. This time round it asserts: “…around a quarter of our society was living in poverty in Britain in 1999-2000. The poverty encountered by Children is even greater than for society as a whole. Around a third of children were living in poverty in 1999-2000. Over 7.8 million people were living on the ‘safety net’ benefit of IncomeSupport/ Jobseeker’s Allowance in February 2001. By the mid-1990s the UK had child poverty rates higher than any other industrialised nation with the exception of the USA and Russia.”

When recession hits, as it did at the beginning of the 90’s one of its marked features is the number of home repossessions. In 1991, courts issued 134,000 home repossession orders. Eight years later, Blair safely in power and reassuring us the austerity of the Tory years was behind us, 137,000 families found their homes being taken from them because of mortgage arrears.

The report further adds strength to our argument that under Blair the wealth gap is widening in Britain. It reveals how the wealthiest 1 percent of the population in Britain own 25 percent of all wealth, with the bottom 50 per cent, some 28 million people, owning just 6 percent of Britain’s wealth.

Blair and Mittal Steal
When it comes to sucking up to the big money men, Labour takes some beating. Who could forget the fiasco surrounding the Bernie Ecclestone affair just prior to Labour’s 1997 election victory? In return for a £1 million gift to the Labour Party in January 1997, Blair saw to it that Ecclestone’s Formula One were exempt from the ban on tobacco advertising.

A year later, Blair was kowtowing to right wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch (whose help he sought during the election), phoning the Italian prime minister Romano Prodi, on behalf of Murdoch, and trying to have any hurdles removed that might hinder Murdoch’s acquisition of Mediaset, the Italian media company.

Months ago, the shit hit the proverbial fan again, when it was revealed that George Bush was not the only high level politician to be hit with the Enron splatter, but that the Labour Party also found themselves pebble-dashed. It was revealed Enron (an energy multinational, now bankrupt) had sponsored several Labour Party Conferences after their 1997 victory, that the Labour Party tailored its energy policies to enable Enron build a gas-fired power plant on Teeside and that Labour smoothed the way for Enron to buy Wessex water four years ago without having referred the buyout to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.

Now come revelations of Blair’s links to steal magnate Lakshmi Mittal. It transpires that Blair wrote a the letter to the Romanian prime minister: “I am delighted by the news that you are to sign the contract for the privatisation of your biggest steel plant with the LNM group…I am particularly pleased that it is a British company [Mittal’s] which is your partner.”

The link, which Blair claimed oblivion of? Mittal had made a £125,000 donation to the Labour Party, his wife Usha giving a £50,000 donation to the local party of former European minister Keith Vaz. The story continues! Just one month before Blair signed the letter, he had attended a big thank-you bash laid on for Labour Party donors (the big guys, that is). And who should be there? Mittal!

It later emerged that LNM’s parent company is registered in a tax haven; that Mittal gets round paying tax in Britain by means of a nifty little loophole the Labour Party conveniently neglected to plug; that his LNM plant in Southern Ireland closed with the loss of 400 jobs and almost £40 million in debts, and that Mittal is one of the brains behind a US campaign to slap a 40 per cent tariff on steal imports, which could well impinge on jobs in the British steal industry. All of which you can be forgiven for, if you sponsor the Labour Party. Thinking of pulling off something big and want to get away with it? A Jewel’s heist, Big Business tax evasion? Simply send a donation to the Labour Party care of 10 Downing Street.