Located in remote, tranquil countryside, near the border of England and Wales, Hay-on-Wye is a small town famous for its bookshops. Yet this discrete and inconspicuous place delivered a telling message to all those who travelled to its annual literary festival: uncontrolled commercialisation, privatisation, deregulation and greed have resulted in global inequality, unhappiness and a media that can no longer tell the truth.
Rain delayed the arrival on stage of Naomi Klein, author of ‘No Logo’ and ‘The Shock Doctrine’, but her account of the exploitation of disaster-struck nations was meticulous and worth the wait, although Rosie Boycott’s lack of probing questions failed to uncover any flaws in her work.
Klein began by outlining the ideas behind her latest book: “What I mean by the ‘Shock Doctrine’ is essentially a philosophy of power,” she said. “The best time to push through a radical free-market makeover of a country is, when what economists sometimes call shock therapy, takes place in the aftermath of some kind of shock.”
The levels of distress required to implement economic reform, according to Klein, are increasing as people are becoming more aware of the failures of “privatisation, deregulation and cuts in social spending” finding that “the real legacy of these policies has been inequality.”
Whilst many conspiracy theories have been alluded to, Klein believes that the ‘shocks’ are often independent of the responses. “I don’t think Iraq was invaded so it could be privatised,” she said. “I think there are a variety of reasons why these shocks take place. But once they take place there is a sense of acute disaster preparedness to take advantage of the crisis.
“When I left Iraq at the end of April 2004, I wrote a piece for Harpers magazine concluding that this attempt to turn Iraq into a capitalist’s dream, to quote the Economist, had backfired. Now Iraq is indeed a capitalist’s nightmare. It’s hard to believe, but in those early days there was talk of a McDonalds in downtown Baghdad.”
While multinational corporations have so far failed to exploit Iraq, the military operations have seen millions of dollars generated for contractors. In the first Gulf War there was one contractor for every 100 US soldiers. At the start of the second war there was one contractor for every 10 US soldiers. The latest numbers show that there are 180,000 private contractors in Iraq and 160,000 US soldiers.
“The US military and, I think, the British as well, didn’t invade Iraq just to loot Iraq, they also invaded Iraq to loot themselves and that part of the project has been extremely successful,” said Klein.
As Britain heads for 42 days' detention without charge, Klein warned that “in many ways Britain and Europe are ahead of the US in the loss of civil liberties. It’s very interesting in the context of companies doing better the worse things get, that after 7/7 the NASDAQ jumped. And that is a marked change from the previous response to terrorist attacks.”
“Much of what we call globalisation - the Free Trade Agreement, the World Trade Organisation, the conditions attached to International Monetary fund loans - are about codifying this so called [Washington] consensus,” said Klein.
“I don’t think it’s inevitable but that has been the point of taking economics out of the hands of elected politicians. It’s less about the policies, it’s about this locking in process and something like the independence of the central bank is a classic piece of the programme.”
Much of this locking in has been speeded up and made stronger by the blurring between the private and public sector, which BBC business editor, Robert Peston, and Daily Mail columnist, Peter Oborne, discussed as they talked about who controls British politics.
Peston began joking that, despite sitting in the Barclays Wealth Tent, the super-rich are not always such a good thing. His statistical illustrations of the enormous amounts of money being earned in the City where shocking.
“The top 0.1% of earners in the UK control 4% of national income, twice as much as most of Europe,” he said.
“The justification from many of these people making all this money is that it’s supposed to make all of us richer. But actually it leads to boom and bust. The bottom 5% have done very badly under Labour and the top 1% have done spectacularly well.”
Oborne was more scathing of the super-rich, who, he said, “have done enormous damage to Britain’s political and social fabric.
“What we now see is the emergence of a very narrow political elite, acting in conjunction with these ghastly creatures who Robert was describing, to destroy much of what is best and splendid and most magnificent about our terrific country.
“What Robert didn’t say in his speech, is that these tax breaks weren’t just due to treasury naivety but that they were purchased by the new rich. Private equity managers bought these tax breaks. Ronald Cohen, the private equity mogul, arranged with Gordon Brown, and there were numerous others, that it was necessary to slash tax for the private equity industry and at the same time donated significant funds to the Labour Party.
“Jeremy Heywood is a fascinating figure actually, the private secretary to the prime minister [Tony Blair] and now under Brown. In the three years between he hopped over to Morgan Stanley and arranged privatisation with the Treasury; a classic case of the debasement of our public domain and capture of our civil service by super-rich American bankers.”
The national media has sat back as much of the above has taken place. Nick Davies, journalist and author of ‘Flat Earth News’, revealed that “there is far more falsehood, distortion and propaganda than is excusable or necessary in our newspapers.”
“If you want to understand why we told you so many things that weren’t true about the weapons of mass destruction, or the Millennium Bug, or the scandal around Bill Clinton, or any of that stuff, you have got to understand that we have become structurally likely to be manipulated.”
Family run papers are now owned by large corporations and Davies claimed that this switch changed the way newspapers work. “The old family owners were indeed propagandists. The new lot, they want to make money, it’s understandable. That releases, in all sorts of subtle ways, the logic of commercialisation and it’s undermined our journalism.”
“We found that the average Fleet Street journalist now has only a third of the time to spend on each story that he or she would have done in 1985. So on the whole we no longer go out and find stories and make contacts and check facts. Instead of being active news-gatherers we have become passive processors of second hand material.”
Julia Hobsbawm, professor of PR, responded to Davies by claiming that for all the bad that PR has done it has also done as much good. Where they did agree, though, was that journalists no longer have enough time. “The best journalism, as Nick says, has both the time and the judgement to make investigations and to present realities in a context that the reader or viewer can understand,” she said.
When asked by a member of the audience why it was that, despite the assertion that news breaks every second, we only see a small number of stories, Davies responded by saying: “There are these extraordinarily powerful concentric forces which are pushing all the mass media into this tiny little consensus selection of stories and angles and sources for those stories. One of those is the structural problem I have talked about, the ‘churnalism’. So we are all feeding on this narrow supply which is coming off the wire service and out of PR.”
So what can we do to change what’s happening? “What we need are some counter narratives and we need the tools to stay orientated when the next shock hits,” said Klein
“What needs to happen is that these crises that we are facing need to be opportunities to propose a real economic, social and ecological alternative to our economic model which is essentially a crisis creating machine. This is why I don’t actually subscribe to the conspiracy theory. I personally think that what we have is an economic model that delivers crises quite reliably.
“In the book I quote Milton Freedman in 1992, ‘only a crisis, natural or perceived, produces real change and when that crisis occurs the change depends on the ideas that are lying around.’ We should learn a lot from that statement because it means that the onus is on us to have our ideas ready for the next crisis.”
As for what governments could do, Peston said: “The tax system is part of the solution and actually regulation is part of the solution. It is well within the power of our government, and other governments as well, to simply say to certain groups of these financial players that certain things that they have been doing are just not right.”
Hay Festival may have alerted us to the problems we are facing but many of those speaking were short on solutions. Maybe they can come up with some ready for next year.
Boris Johnson, new Mayor of London, has started as he intended to go on. He introduced an alcohol ban on London Underground without any preparation and without putting staff in place to enforce the ban. Inevitably the ban was challenged last Saturday night. Tube staff were left on their own to deal with drunken revellers in addition to running a transport system, as they had warned in advance. They were left at the sharp end of Johnson’s self-publicising antics.
At least twelve members of Tube staff were assaulted at King's Cross station alone during Saturday night's alcohol-fuelled disturbances, according to reports coming in to the biggest London Underground union.
RMT has called for a personal apology from the Mayor - who was conspicuous by his absence - to all staff members assaulted as the 'half-baked' alcohol ban came into force.
The disturbing picture coming from RMT reps includes reports that police were 'too busy' to come to the aid of a woman member of staff hit by a bottle thrown at High Street Kensington station, and arriving too late to quell disturbances at other stations.
RMT estimates that the true number of assaults on staff, including spitting, threats and verbal assaults, was more than 50. At least twelve members of staff were assaulted at King's Cross alone.
An RMT member was punched in the face and had beer poured over his head during the incident at Euston Square. One of at least four drivers assaulted was knocked on the head by an assailant, and his glasses were broken. Some drivers booked off on safety grounds when passengers became angry and there were no staff available to assist. One driver refused to move his train when it came to his attention that there was a man on the roof.
At several locations passengers were seen on the tracks, endangering themselves and others. At several locations objects were thrown onto the tracks. Passengers were seen urinating on trains and onto tracks. Drivers also report doors being pushed off their runners and trains vandalised, some seriously.
At Liverpool Street station, one of six closed during the evening, police told supervisors that the station could reopen at 22:00 - but without police assistance. The station remained closed until start of traffic on Sunday.
At least six passenger emergency alarms (PEAs) were activated during the evening. Drivers responding to PEAs were finding it almost impossible to make their way through trains thanks to the sheer number of people and the amount of debris and discarded bottles and cans.
Station closures and the suspension of District and Circle Line services had a knock-on effect on the rest of the network, creating a greater workload and causing problems for staff at most locations.
"The more reports we get from our reps the uglier the picture of Saturday's violence becomes, and the clearer it is that Tube bosses effectively just crossed their fingers and closed their eyes," RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today.
"Local reps are telling us that the scenes were among the most chaotic they have ever seen, with none of the mitigation and crowd-control that would be in place on New Year's Eve - and the concentration of numbers at times was probably greater.
"LUL can't say it wasn't expecting a massive drunken crowd, and doing nothing amounts to a shameful dereliction of its duty of care towards staff and Tube passengers.
"And where was the Mayor when our members were being assaulted thanks to his half-baked publicity stunt - was he still swanning around on a yacht in Turkey?
"TfL rubbished our warnings and said that our members would be able to call on the British Transport Police if there was trouble, but Saturday night proved that to be the nonsense it has always been.
"We have been saying for years that the BTP are already too under-resourced to respond to the calls they already get.
"We understand from driver reps that on the District and Circle lines there were no fewer than five Mayday calls at one point, with no hope of getting help to them.
"Cleaners, most of them on little more than the minimum wage, spent the early hours of Sunday clearing up a sea of vomit, urine, bottles, cans and other debris for no extra pay, and that too is a scandal," Bob Crow said. Ken Livingstone commented on the ban in advance, “The law is pointless unless someone if enforcing it.
“The staff of the Tube won't bother to challenge people; and I can't say that I blame them. The policing of the Underground is the responsibility of the British Transport Police and unless you happen to live or work in very central London, you're more likely to come across the Queen Mother playing the banjo than you are that lot.”
This article first appeared on Socialist Appeal.
I realise now that I didn’t have a hope. I had almost reached the stage when two of the biggest gorillas I have ever seen swept me up and carried me out of the tent. It was humiliating, but it could have been worse. The guard on the other side of the stage, half hidden in the curtains, had spent the lecture touching something under his left armpit. Perhaps he had bubos.
I had no intention of arresting John Bolton, the former under-secretary of state at the US State Department, when I arrived at the Hay Festival. But during a panel discussion about the Iraq war, I remarked that the greatest crime of the 21st century had become so normalised that one of its authors was due to visit the festival to promote his book. I proposed that someone should attempt a citizens’ arrest, in the hope of instilling a fear of punishment among those who plan illegal wars. After the session I realised that I couldn’t call on other people to do something I wasn’t prepared to do myself.
I knew that I was more likely to be arrested and charged than Mr Bolton. I had no intention of harming him, or of acting in any way that could be interpreted as aggressive, but had I sought only to steer him gently towards the police I might have faced a range of exotic charges, from false imprisonment to aggravated assault. I was prepared to take this risk. It is not enough to demand that other people act, knowing that they will not. If the police, the courts and the state fail to prosecute what the Nuremberg tribunal described as “the supreme international crime”, I believe we have a duty to seek to advance the process.
The Nuremberg Principles, which arose from the prosecution of the Nazi war criminals, define as an international crime the “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances”. Bolton appears to have “participated in a common plan” to prepare for the war (also defined by the principles as a crime) by inserting the false claim that Iraq was seeking to procure uranium from Niger into a State Department fact sheet. He also organised the sacking of Jose Bustani, the head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Bustani had tried to broker a peaceful resolution of the dispute over Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.
Some of the most pungent criticisms of my feeble attempt to bring this man to justice have come from other writers for the Guardian. Michael White took a position of extraordinary generosity towards the instigators of the war. There are “arguments on both sides”, he contended. Bustani might have received compensation after his sacking by Bolton, “but Bolton says that does not mean much. That is sometimes true.” In fact Bustani was not only compensated at his tribunal; he was completely exonerated of Bolton’s charges and his employers were obliged to pay special damages.
White suggested that Iraq might indeed have been seeking uranium from Niger, on the grounds of a conversation he once had with an MI6 officer. Alongside the British government’s 45-minute claim, this must be the best-documented of all the false justifications for the war with Iraq. In 2002, the US government sent three senior officials to Niger to investigate the claim. All reported that it was without foundation. The International Atomic Energy Agency discovered that it was based on crude forgeries. This assessment was confirmed by the State Department’s official Greg Thielmann, who reported directly to John Bolton. No evidence beyond the forged documents has been provided by either the US or the UK governments to support their allegation.
White also gives credence to Bolton’s claims that the war in 2003 was justified by two UN resolutions – 678 and 687 – which were approved in 1990 and 1991, and that it was permitted by Article 51 of the UN Charter. The attempt to revive resolutions 678 and 687 was the last, desperate throw of the dice by the Blair government when all else had failed. When it became clear that it could not obtain a new UN resolution authorising force against Iraq, the government dusted down the old ones, which had been drafted in response to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. This revival formed the basis of Lord Goldsmith’s published advice on 17th March 2003. It was described as “risible” and “scrap[ing] the bottom of the legal barrel” by Lord Alexander, the former chair of the Bar Council. After the first Gulf War, Colin Powell, General Sir Peter de la Billiere and John Major all stated that the UN’s resolutions permitted them only to expel the Iraqi army from Kuwait, and not to overthrow the Iraqi government. Lord Goldsmith himself, in the summer of 2002, advised Tony Blair that resolutions 678 and 687 could not be used to justify a new war with Iraq.
Article 51 of the UN Charter is comprehensible to anyone but the lawyers employed by the Bush administration. States have a right to self-defence “if an armed attack occurs against” them, and then only until the UN Security Council can intervene. On what occasion did Iraq attack the United States? Is there any claim made by the Blair and Bush governments that Michael White is not prepared to believe?
Conor Foley, writing on Comment is Free, suggested that my action “completely trivializes the serious case” against the Iraq warand claimed that I was seeking to “imprison … people because of their political opinions”, as if Bolton were simply a commentator on the war, and not an agent. Does he really believe that the former under-secretary did not “participate in a common plan” to initiate the war with Iraq? What other conceivable purpose might the State Department’s misleading fact sheet have served? And what more serious action can someone who is neither a Law Lord nor a legislator take? Bolton himself maintains that my attempt to bring him to justice reflects a “move towards lawlessness and fascism.” This is an interesting commentary on an attempt to uphold a law which arose from the prosecution of fascists.
But there is one charge I do accept: that my chances of success were very slight. Apart from the 300-pound gorillas, the main obstacle I faced was that although the crime of aggression, as defined by the Nuremberg Principles, has been incorporated into the legislation of many countries, it has not been assimilated into the laws of England and Wales. This does not lessen the crime but it means that it cannot yet be tried here. This merely highlights another injustice: while the British state is prepared to punish petty misdemeanors with vindictive ferocity, it will not legislate against the greatest crime of all, lest it expose itself to prosecution.
But demonstration has two meanings. Non-violent direct action is both a protest and an exposition. It seeks to demonstrate truths which have been overlooked or forgotten. I sought to remind people that the greatest crime of the 21st Century remains unprosecuted, and remains a great crime. If you have read this far, I have succeeded.
This article first appeared in the Guardian newspaper on 3rd June 2008. The article with full footnotes also appears on [Monbiot.com]
Companies love to boast about how responsible, green and caring they are these days. Glossy, detailed reports are produced, vaunting each company’s ethical credentials. However, if you look beyond this façade you’ll discover some of these companies are quietly supporting a brutal and repressive dictatorship in Burma.
Last Autumn’s brutal repression of a peaceful uprising and the deliberate obstruction of aid efforts after Cyclone Nargis left 1.7 million Burmese homeless have exposed to the world just how brutal, heartless and inhuman the Burmese regime is. This week we have exposed which companies are putting profit before principle and helping to fund the regime and help it cling on to power.
Burma today
Burma is ruled by an illegitimate military dictatorship - one of the most tyrannical and secretive the modern era has seen - a regime that refuses any democratisation of the political system, that systematically violates the most fundamental human rights, and that oppresses and exploits its population. The dictatorship has such a tight grip on the economy that it is simply impossible to invest in the country without funding the repression of the population.
The view of the democracy movement
Despite this, companies continue to invest in the country. They do not do so because of an altruistic wish to help the people of Burma. They are there to make a profit, and are attracted by salaries of less than 25p a day, a compliant workforce where unions are banned, and limited health and safety laws which in any case are rarely enforced. This is why since the mid 1990s the country's democracy movement, led by imprisoned Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has called on foreign businesses not to invest in Burma. They decided on this policy after witnessing how foreign investment doesn't help the population, it just entrenches military rule. Foreign trade has allowed the regime to double the size of the military – which it uses to strengthen its rule of fear and campaigns of ethnic cleansing in Eastern Burma. Even as military spending has increased to around half the regime’s budget, spending on health has fallen to the lowest in the world.
The Dirty List
In defiance of the democracy movement, many companies invest regardless. Every year the Burma Campaign UK publishes a "Dirty List" of companies that are directly or indirectly helping to finance one of the most brutal regimes in the world. Due to pressure from our campaign, over 100 companies have pulled out of Burma, including Rolls Royce, British American Tobacco, PWC, Arcadia (Topshop), AON and Pepsi. On May 6th this year we will expose a number of high profile companies who have been hoping to make a quick profit off the suffering of the Burmese people. Toyota has been supplying vehicles to the military, TATA – who recently bought Land Rover and Jaguar – have been supplying a plethora of services to the regime and Qantas, through its subsidiary JetStar Asia, has been promoting tourism to the country.
TOTAL
The biggest European villain is the French Oil company TOTAL, it is estimated that their project in Burma generates nearly $1 billion a year for the regime. As well as funding the regime, their project is also closely associated with a litany of human rights abuses, including forced labour, torture and rape. TOTAL do everything they can to keep their investment in Burma out of the limelight. During the Autumn 2007 uprising, the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, asked TOTAL not to make any further investments in Burma. The company quickly complied, stating publicly on October 6th 2007 that "investing in the country would be a provocation". However, even as it was making this statement TOTAL was finalising plans for a new investment, which was completed just two months later in December.
For too long companies such as TOTAL, Toyota and TATA, have got away with putting profits before human rights. By doing so they have condemned Burma's 50 million people to a lifetime of repression and fear. In this new era of corporate responsibility we must hold these companies to account and help end the suffering of the Burmese people.
The full list of companies that we know are supporting the regime in Burma is available online at http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/dirty_list/dirty_list.php
The recent ballot by members of the Police Federation who voted overwhelmingly to press for full industrial rights including, ultimately, the right to strike is evidence of the understandable anger and disillusionment currently felt by rank and file police officers at the derisory pay increase they have been offered, at a time when the price of many of life’s essentials is rising so sharply.
The outcome of the ballot has provoked convulsions of seismic proportions in the press and elsewhere. Along with indignant fulminations from well-heeled backwoodsmen about how the police could dare to vote in the way they did, there have been more measured comments ruefully pondering on the prospects of police setting up picket lines instead of going about their duties safeguarding law and order.
We’ve been in this place before! There is nothing new about anger in the police concerning low pay and poor conditions. In 1872 a substantial number of officers were dismissed by the Metropolitan Police for refusing duty, but their action led to improved pay and conditions. The lesson was learned that collective action could successfully win concessions. In July 1890 another stoppage took place among Metropolitan officers, this time over pensions. The speed with which the government addressed the officers’ grievances strongly suggests considerable official concern about the need to propitiate the ‘thin blue line.’
At this stage the idea of forming a union would probably have been rejected by virtually all the officers. It is evident however that issues over pay, benefits and working conditions continued simmering away beneath the surface because in 1913 concrete moves began to establish a union. Surreptitious recruitment started taking place, despite official statements that any men found to have joined would be instantly dismissed. The National Union of Police and Prison Officers clearly met a perceived need and grew with great speed, in spite of the loss of income and pension rights that dismissal incurred.
The sacking of PC Tommy Theil of the Metropolitan force sparked off a strike in 1918. He was an activist and union organiser greatly respected by his fellow officers for his integrity and hard work. His summary dismissal brought the whole festering mass of long-term grievances to a head, but the central issue in the strike was official recognition for NUPPO.
The date of the strike, 28 August 1918, was well-chosen because the government was already confronting high levels of militancy in many of the major industrial areas, a general public tired of the shortages and extra hardships of wartime and rumbles of mutiny among the workers-in-uniform impatiently waiting to be demobbed. The Russian Revolution of February 1917 had overthrown arguably the most decadent monarchy in Europe. The action of the Bolsheviks, with mass support from workers, peasants and soldiers, had repelled and terrified the forces of reaction everywhere. Likewise it had inspired ordinary people with the idea that, collectively, they could overthrow the capitalist system and the wars, the injustices, the deprivation and despair that went with it.
Within 24 hours 12,000 officers, all but a handful of the rank-and-file Metropolitan force, had gone on strike. Caught wrong-footed, the government moved to end the strike as quickly as possible. Prime Minister Lloyd George met the NUPPO executive and the strike ended on 31 August. Theil was reinstated and all the other demands were met fully. Rumours of possible strikes elsewhere and NUPPO’s success in London led to the implementation of improved conditions in various other forces. NUPPO membership rocketed. Although official recognition of NUPPO was withheld, the fact that Lloyd George had negotiated with the union was taken by many members as evidence that recognition was only a matter of time.
The government was determined not to be caught out again. General Macready, a notably blimpish army brass hat, was brought in as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police for the sole purpose of destroying the influence of NUPPO, a task he greatly relished. He lifted the ban on officers joining the union but banned union members from actions which urged strikes or interfered in any way with discipline. Meanwhile the government had established the Desborough Committee to investigate every aspect of policing in mainland Britain. The Committee recognised that officers had genuine grievances. Low pay was identified as a major problem, as also were varying levels of pay between different forces.
Late 1918 and much of 1919 saw industrial disputes throughout Britain, not only in engineering, the docks and railways where they were common, but more unusually in the baking industry, where there was a national strike. There was even a rent strike in Glasgow. In such a volatile situation, the government could not risk the police being drawn into sympathising with strikers or being involved in actual strike action itself. It was time to excise NUPPO for once and for all.
The Police Act of 1919 set up the Police Federation, in effect a company union. NUPPO was proscribed and it was made illegal for police officers to belong to a trade union. The granting of so many of the men’s demands the previous year had clearly been designed to draw the sting from the mood of militancy among police officers, especially in London and the big industrial towns. Although NUPPO called a strike for the August Bank Holiday weekend of 1919, only a small number of officers responded in London and few elsewhere.
The one exception was Merseyside. The Liverpool force in particular was notorious for poor pay and conditions and harsh discipline. Morale was particularly low in Liverpool, as it also was in the neighbouring forces of Bootle and Birkenhead. The call to strike evoked a massive withdrawal of labour and required the use of troops to ensure that the riots and lootings that took place did not spread out of working class areas like those around Scotland Road, London Road and Islington. In a show of force, a naval battleship and two destroyers were anchored in the Mersey with searchlights and guns focussed on working class ‘trouble spots’ on both sides of the river.
The isolation of the strikers on Merseyside and the small numbers involved in London meant that the action was defeated. Disciplinary measures were taken against strikers, and in Liverpool 955 officers were instantly dismissed without appeal. Men in the Metropolitan force were similarly made an example of. Vindictive though these measures were, it is clear that the government had experienced a nasty fright, and substantial improvements in officers’ pay followed quickly.
The police were hated by much of the working class community on Merseyside. This was because of the role they so often played during strikes, in effect acting as stooges for the bosses by defending scabs and strike breakers under the guise of safeguarding law and order. To their credit, some local trade union leaders urged their members to show solidarity with the striking police, but they had decades of accumulated bad memories to overcome.
Karl Marx pointed out the living reality of the class struggle in the mid-nineteenth century. It was every bit as much a reality in 1918-19 and it remains so today. The police are among other groups of workers in the public sector who are being insulted and whose pay and conditions are being eroded as the result of New Labour’s spending priorities. These are designed to please corporate capitalism rather than to address the needs of the working class. More and more groups of working people are being ‘proletarianised’, that is any relative income and status differentials they may have enjoyed in the past are being undermined.
The police are one of the arms of the state. This, Marxists have long explained, can ultimately be reduced to bodies of armed men who use force when required to defend the power and privileges of the capitalist class and its hangers-on. However the police cannot possibly avoid the class struggle, and the results of the recent ballot are evidence of that. The Labour and TUC leadership should support the basic democratic right of the police to join a genuine trade union and to use their collective strength to defend and develop their pay and working conditions.
This article first appeared on Socialist Appeal.
Over the last six months, 13 workers have died at the shipyards of Tuzla. Some of these workers, employed in the largest shipyard region of Turkey, one of the most important shipbuilding countries of the world, were burned to death by an oxygen cylinder, while others were poisoned by the smoke produced during welding. Deaths due to falls from platforms, heart attacks, and electric shocks have also been very common at Tuzla in recent years. The total number of accidents at Tuzla, 73 in 2002, by last year had risen to 227.
Unfortunately, these deaths and injuries are not mere accidents. Rather, they are largely due to the willingness of ship owners and contractors to violate labour standards, and of the Turkish government to turn a blind eye to these violations.
Turkey's emergence as a major player in the shipbuilding industry, and the industrial expansion of Tuzla, located on the outskirts of Istanbul, are generally viewed as a success story: many ships are exported, and profits are high. However, shipyards in the region are achieving international competitiveness at the cost of employing management practices (such as outsourcing and subcontracting) which create conditions that threaten the health and safety of the workers employed in the sector.
Today, over 90 per cent of orders in the region are being completed through the subcontracting system, which, while very favorable to ship owners, is the main source of negligence and labour standard violations. In this system, ship owners and builders outsource their projects to small and medium-sized contractors who offer lower labour costs. Contractors achieve these lower labour costs by offering their workers contracts with much worse terms, such as compensation and benefits, if contracts are offered at all. Often, they employ migrant workers who are especially vulnerable to exploitation and more likely to accept bad working conditions. Thus, ship owners and builders reap the benefits of lower labour costs while evading accountability for the conditons under which their work is done. In other words, the very reason why Tuzla is so successful is that it is so dangerous for workers.
While there has been a debate for some time about the lack of investment in occupational health and safety in Tuzla, and also about the possible expansion of the shipyard region beyond its capacity, Turkish public authorities, until very recently, have chosen to ignore these issues. The Turkish government has failed to respond to the alarming increase in the number of accidents, and no steps have been taken to improve working conditions and prevent further deaths. Thus, in Tuzla, death has become an ordinary fact of life.
Recently, under mounting pressure from the public, several investigations were carried out by inspectors of the Turkish Ministry of Labor. Finally, last week saw the first heavy penalty imposed on a shipyard in Tuzla. On May 22nd, the Selah Shipyard, in which two laborers had died on May 9th and 18th, was shut down due to lack of workplace security for laborers. However, after only six days, the shipyard was allowed to reopen on the grounds that security requirements had been met.
Failures to respect labour standards violate the most basic rights of workers. It is the responsibility of prosecutors to investigate the negligence and determine who is responsible for the deaths at Tuzla. And it is the responsibility of the government to strengthen the monitoring of working conditions in the region and to promote improved labour standards. Guaranteeing freedom of association for the workers and recognizing their right to collective bargaining are some of the ways in which the Turkish government could try to prevent further deaths. Another way is designing projects to address critical issues such as occupational safety. But as long as conditions remain what they are, Turkish shipyards will continue to buy their economic success at the cost of the lives of the very workers on whom this success depends.