Category Archives: Journalism

TRIBALISM IN POLITICS

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New Statesman & Society leader, 23 June 1995

The scandal of Monklands council in Scotland should teach Labour some lessons about the dangers of slavish loyalty to party

The independent report by Robert Black QC on the Labour council in Monklands in central  Scot­land, published this week, makes depressing reading. Black confirms nearly everything that the local Airdrie and Coatbridge Advertiser alleged more than two years ago about Monklands’ public spending and employment practices. The local Catholic-domi­nated Labour machine – the “Monklands Mafia” –  pumped money into Catholic Coatbridge rather than Protestant Airdrie, systematically hired the relatives of councillors as employees, and gave councillors priority in getting repairs done to their council houses. It is a shabby record of sectarianism and nepotism of which Labour should be ashamed.
Labour has acted decisively in suspending the Monklands Labour group, and shadow Scottish secretary George Robertson’s promise that “anyone in Monklands who has brought the party and with it the local commu­nity into disrepute will have to be brought to account” is wholly welcome.
But this is not the end of the matter. Leaving aside Labour’s behaviour in the early stages of the scandal –  when the local paper broke the story, it was denounced hysterically by the party establishment in Scotland, and the party was slow to act even after it accepted that it had a case to answer – the Monklands affair raises big ques­tions about Labour’s political culture, and not just in Scotland.
Of course, it’s the Scottish angle that is most obvious. If one Labour stronghold in central Scotland is still riven with the sort of religious sectarianism that Labour politi­cians have for years claimed no longer has any purchase except on the football terraces, how many others are in the same state? Monklands suggests that the final victory of secular, class-based politics is still to be achieved.
More generally, Monklands speaks volumes of what can happen when a single party machine dominates local politics for decades without ever being removed from office in an election – and that’s a situation in which Labour finds itself in large swathes of England and Wales as well as in Scotland’s central belt. This is not to say that every council in the country that has been solidly Labour for years is corrupt and nepotistic: contrary to the Tories’ claims this week as they desperately tried to divert attention from the arms-to-Iraq-and-Iran scandals, there’s no evidence to suggest that Monklands was not an extreme case rather than typical. For the most part, Labour local government is remarkably clean, thanks largely to the strong current in British socialism that places the highest values on public service and per­sonal integrity. On the whole, Labour is not the party of shysters on the make.
Nevertheless, there have been enough counter-exam­ples in recent years to make complacency dangerous. And one reason that they exist is that there are strong ele­ments in Labour’s culture that counteract the moral imperatives at the root of British socialism. The most important of these is a streak of almost tribal party chau­vinism, which manifests itself in several ways: a refusal to admit that the worst of Labour might not be better than the best of any other party, unremitting hostility to other political parties and to criticism “from outside”, unques­tioning loyalty to the evidently corrupt and incompetent. The adage “He may be a bastard, but at least he’s our bas­tard” could have been coined to describe one of Labour’s most persistent and unpleasant habits of thought.
Its deleterious effects extend far beyond toleration of local council malpractice, moreover. In the past few weeks, since Tony Blair declared in NSS that he was relaxed about dialogue with other parties of the centre-left, Labour’s numbskull chauvinist tendency has spent an inordinate amount of time and energy denouncing Paddy Ashdown and his party.
No matter that there are few significant policy differ­ences between Labour and the Lib Dems (and that, where there are, the Lib Dems are often more radical); no matter either that Labour might need support to form a govern­ment after the next election: the Lib Dems are not Labour, so they must be the enemy! This “reasoning”, which of course has its equivalent among some Lib Dems, will undoubtedly get more of an airing as the two centre-left parties slug it out in the by-election in Littleborough and Saddleworth by-election, which both think they can win from the Tories. It’s almost tempting to argue for tactical voting for the Tories to knock a little sense about coopera­tion into the party chauvinists’ heads.

THE ARMS SALES SCANDAL

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New Statesman & Society leader, 16 June 1995
Michael Heseltine has struck a welcome blow for Lord Justice Scott’s inquiry into arms sales to Iraq
“I was not briefed on this contract at any time during my non-executive directorship,” Chief Secretary to the Treasury Jonathan Aitken told the House of Commons in March after docu­mentation emerged proving incontrovertibly that BMARC, an arms company of which he was a director, had in the late 19805 sold naval guns to Iran, exporting them via Singapore to get round the government’s ban on arms sales to Iran or Iraq. The exercise was code-named “Project Lisi” by the company, and it was dis­cussed at board meetings at which Aitken was present. “Seven years after the event,” he said in March, “I have no recollection of ever having heard about Project Lisi or read about it in company reports.”
This week, it became clear that, even if Aitken knew nothing, the British intelligence services knew plenty. President of the Board of Trade Michael Heseltine stunned the Commons by announcing that, as early as 1986,  “intelligence was obtained” that Oerlikon, BMARC’s Swiss parent company until BMARC was sold to the British firm Astra in 1988, had concluded a con­tract with Iran. “The intelligence picture developed in 1987, when it was revealed that naval guns made by Oer­likon had been offered to Iran by a company in Singa­pore. In July and September 1988, two intelligence reports rounded out the picture by referring to naval guns and ammunition being supplied by Oerlikon through Singapore to Iran.”
And yet BMARC continued to be granted permission by the Department of Trade and Industry to export guns to Singapore. The intelligence reports were apparently not passed on to the DTI, and even if they had been it’s a moot point whether anyone would have taken any notice. The DTI Export Licensing Department was in the habit of granting military export licences without full documentation. Between 1986 and 1989, said Hesel­tine, 74 per cent of military export licences were granted without all the relevant papers being presented.
Aitken is sticking to the line that he knew nothing about Project Lisi, which, although even less credible than it was in March, is hardly surprising. Whether it saves his skin is another matter entirely. The chief secretary cannot escape the foul stench of dishonesty and graft that clings to him, and both he and his loyal colleagues know that it will not take many more revelations for his political career deservedly to be cut short.
But this is only a small part of the story. Far more important than the impact of Heseltine’s statement on the fate of Aitken is its devastating effect on the attempt by several prominent Tories to rubbish Lord Justice Scott’s inquiry on the sale of arms to Iraq. The clear impli­cation of Heseltine’s announcement that three-quarters of military export licences were granted without proper documentation is that there was a policy in the late 1980s of allowing just about anything to be sold to just about anyone – regardless of formal restrictions either secret or publicised. It is difficult to think of a more effective way of silencing those Tory politicians who have seized on the occasion of a couple of pre-publication leaks of Scott’s long-delayed report to bleat about the unfairness of the inquiry procedures and to claim that Scott had exceeded his brief. After Heseltine’s statement this week, the problem seems to be that, in concentrating just on Iraq, he has not cast his net widely enough. Indeed, we need nothing short of a full-scale independent public inquiry into the whole of Britain’s arms export business.
Of course, Heseltine has his own reasons to give Scott a boost. Alone among senior Tories in the current govern­ment, he has nothing to lose over the arms-to-Iraq affair. Unlike John Major and Douglas Hurd, he cannot have his competence or integrity called into question over his handling of exports to Iraq in the late 1980s: he was out of government at the time. And unlike Kenneth Clarke, he participated only unwillingly in the bodged cover-up of issuing Public Interest Immunity certificates to prevent a fair trial of the defendants in the Matrix-Churchill case.
But even if Heseltine is using the arms sales scandal in his campaign to seize the keys of Number Ten in the autumn, we should be grateful for his intervention. The attempt of the guilty men – notably William Waldegrave and Geoffrey Howe – to cast aspersions on Scott’s meth­ods and competence has been shameful. Any blow against their cynicism has to be welcome, even if it is delivered from the basest of motives.

SAFETY FIRST?

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New Statesman & Society, 9 June 1995

Contrary to chancellor Kenneth Clarke’s claims, there’s a world of difference between the Tories and Labour on the big issues of economic policy, shadow chancellor Gordon Brown tells Paul Anderson
Shadow chancellor Cordon Brown is in a happy, bullish mood  – and that, for him, is unusual, at least if you believe the Fleet Street con­sensus. Brown attracts the whole gamut of disapproving adjectives from journal­ists: glum, cagey, humourless, dour, cau­tious, workaholic to the point of driving his staff nuts. He talks in soundbites, they say. He doesn’t make jokes. Worst of all, he never mentions his personal life.
A couple of years ago, the caricature seemed cruel but almost apposite. I inter­viewed Brown at length just before Christmas 1992, after the debacle of Britain’s withdrawal from the exchange rate mechanism of the European Mone­tary System. Then, he came across as a man besieged in a bunker  – and in many ways he was. Labour’s Eurosceptic ten­dency, led by Bryan Gould, had revolted publicly over his backing for British membership of the ERM and his refusal to endorse devaluation: three months after the event and six months into his occupancy of the shadow chancellorship, he still had to be pressed to admit that, if Labour had been elected the previous spring, the new government would have devalued the pound as soon as it took office (albeit within the ERM). Brown wasn’t exactly downcast, but he was any­thing but relaxed. If he knew what he wanted, he also knew that it would be a long, friendless struggle to get it  – and he was right. The next year saw Brown sub­jected to near constant attackfrom the left and the unions. In autumn 1993, he just scraped on to Labour’s National Execu­tive Committee.
Now, however, as he leans back in his chair in his Westminster office, Brown seems a lot less anxious. He still talks in soundbites  – there’s no other politician in Britain today who comes up so consis­tently in conversation with the phrases he uses in his speeches  – but the joins don’t show as they once did. He is still just as serious, and he is still just as careful. But he smiles at awkward questions and shrugs off criticism. Gordon Brown, although he’d never admit it publicly, is a man who thinks his time has come.
It’s easy to see why. After the trials and tribulations of his first two years as shadow chancellor, things at long last seem to be going his way. Labour is not only well ahead in the opinion polls but has overtaken the Tories in ratings for economic competence. Brown’s populist crusade against the excess pay and perks of privatised utility bosses has struck a chord with both his party and the public at large. And, particularly since Tony Blair’s victory on Clause Four, left-wing critics of the leadership line on economic policy seem to have melted away. The only people to have had a go at Brown’s string of policy speeches in the past few weeks have been newspaper columnists.
“The principal reason for our defeat in 1992 was our failure to convince people on economic policy,” says Brown. “No matter what the truth was, we were seen by the public as the party that would tax for its own sake and spend wastefully, we were caricatured as the party that would take the soft option on devaluation and give in to special interests. Since then, we’ve pursued a strategy that hasn’t made me popular with some people at some times. But it’s now the Conservatives who are seen as the party that has taxed unfairly and spent wastefully and ineffi­ciently, on unemployment in particular, the party that has devalued and has repre­sented special interests, particularly with the privatised utilities. Labour is now seen as speaking for the public, as the party of economic competence as well as social justice. We’ve got a clear analysis of the economy, clear prescriptions. They are different from what we were saying 16 years ago. But the world has changed.”
There are those who believe that Brown has taken more from the Tories than their reputation for competence, and that the differences between the two parties on the broad questions of policy are now minimal. If his critics in the Labour Party have been quiet of late, their worries were given voice by Chancellor Kenneth Clarke the week before last, when he declared: “I must be the first Chancellor
who has a shadow chancellor who is not criticising what I am doing. Gordon Brown’s problem is he thinks what I am doing is working. He has not for some for time opposed anything I have done.”  
Brown is contemptuous of the accusation that he has adopted the Tory approach. “We start from a wholly differ­ent analysis from the Conservatives’ of what is wrong with the British economy. We believe that it simply doesn’t have the capacity to sustain the levels of growth, of living standards, of public services that we want. That’s a product of 16 years of a government with a wholly wrong philos­ophy. If the Tories take on our agenda, it’s a recognition that the political argument is moving in our direction. But for them to become believers in intervention for industry, skills, training and education will make them look like tourists in a for­eign country with a phrasebook they don’t properly understand.”
Labour’s promise to be “tough on infla­tion, tough on the causes of inflation” does not indicate an acceptance of the Tories’ priorities, he insists. “We’ve got an understanding of the causes of infla­tion and they haven’t. The cause of infla­tion is the same as the cause of high levels of unemployment: the limited capacity of the economy. Every time the economy expands, it runs into skills shortages and technology bottlenecks, and the result is inflationary pressures. Labour will be tougher on the causes of inflation than the Conservatives because we under­stand its causes. And it’s right that we should be tough. The war against infla­tion is a Labour war. It affects pensioners and those with savings, it damages investment and therefore jobs. The idea that Labour should be less tough on infla­tion is wrong.”
Similarly, “the Labour Party is not the party of devaluation: the Conservative Party is. The value of the pound against the Deutschmark has halved since 1979. Britain had to devalue in 1992 because of the Tories’ failure. Labour is not the party of the soft option.”
This stance is underlined by the com­mitments in the draft of Labour’s new macro-economic policy document, A New Economic Future for Britain, which goes to the party’s National Policy Com­mission this weekend and, suitably amended, will then be adopted by the Labour conference in the autumn. It states that “Labour’s economic objective is to deliver the highest possible level of sustainable growth consistent with low and stable inflation”, promising “an inflation target alongside a medium-term target for the trend rate of economic growth”. Labour will “eschew short-term, quick-fix, tax-spend-and-borrow solutions”: in particular, it will not bor­row to finance consumption and will “keep the ratio of government debt to gross domestic product stable at an appropriate and prudent level”.
Brown insists that this does not mean business as usual. The policy document includes the objective of meeting “the 1944 white paper commitment to achieve high and stable levels of employment”, he points out, and he is certain that a mixture of supply-side measures to encourage employment growth and a new emphasis on the long term in eco­nomic policy will deliver the goods. The document also explicitly backs moves towards European monetary union.
Brown won’t be drawn on the timetable for EMU  – “We’ve got to wait and see how things develop”  – and rehearses Labour’s familiar insistence on tougher pre-EMU convergence criteria and greater political accountability for the European central bank, but he is unashamedly enthusiastic about Europe: “The idea that Britain should distance itself from Europe is simply not credible. We ought to be leaders in Europe.” He points proudly to the proposal in the new document for the creation of a “new Euro­pean growth fund that would be explicitly countercyclical, that could run with a sur­plus during a period of recovery and run in deficit if necessary in a recession”. If Keynesianism in one country is no longer feasible, it seems that there is still room for it on a continental level.
What’s missing in all this, of course, is the detailed tax, spending and borrowing plans that Labour will put before the voters at the next election. The sort of budget measures Labour would intro­duce are familiar from the party’s sugges­tions at budget time in the past couple of years: bigger tax breaks for investment and more spending on education and training, paid for by tightening up on tax evasion and introducing a windfall tax on privatised utility profits. But, aware of the problems Labour faced in 1992, when it fought an election in the middle of a recession on policies decided at the height of a boom, Brown won’t even promise that his budget proposals from 1994 will find their way into the manifesto.
“It would be irresponsible to make promises two years before an election when we don’t know what the economic circumstances will be at the time,” he says bluntly.” I assure you that we are not going to hide what we’re planning to do. But we will make our decisions on spend­ing and taxation and so on at the appropri­ate time.” If Brown has reason to be pleased with the way things have turned out so far, it’s impossible to avoid the con­clusion that the most difficult part is still to come.

NO UN PULL OUT FROM BOSNIA

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New Statesman & Society leader, 2 June 1995
  
The UN must stay in Bosnia – but in the long term the answer to Radovan Karadzic is to let the Bosnian government have the arms to kick him out
The hostage crisis in Serb-occupied Bosnia has been waiting to happen since the very start of the deployment of United Nations forces to escort aid convoys in 1992.
From the beginning, the UN troops have been peace­keepers in a war zone. They have had to rely on the good will of the combatants to go about their business, and the enemies of the Bosnian government  –  initially both Croats and Serbs, since 1994 the Serbs  –  have used this to further their own interests. Aid convoys have been held up and pillaged, UN troops have been messed around and humiliated. It was always likely that, if Bosn­ian government forces started to gain military advantage or it seemed that the international community was plan­ning to intervene on the government side, the Serbs would take a desperate course of action. Which is pre­cisely what has now happened.
In the past few months, the military tide has turned against the Serb aggressors in Bosnia. Radovan Karadzic’s brutal Bosnian Serb regime is beginning to crumble both economically and militarily. The Bosnian Serb troops retain the superiority in heavy weapons, which they inherited from the arsenal of the Yugoslav army, and which allowed them to seize 70 per cent of Bosnia in the first place. But that superiority is declining as the gov­ernment finds ways of evading the arms embargo imposed by the UN “on all sides”, which came close to crippling Bosnian resistance to Serb expansionism.
To make matters worse, the dictator of Serbia proper, Slobodan Milosevic, decided last year that he had more to gain from the removal of sanctions on Serbia itself than from continuing to back Karadzic’s refusal to make even the small territorial concessions demanded by the Con­tact Group plan for carving up Bosnia (to dignify it with the title of “peace plan” would be a travesty) .
Milosevic retains his dream of a Greater Serbia: contrary to what the British Foreign Office and others would have us believe, he has not suddenly changed into a dove and should on no account be encouraged, let alone trusted. But from Karadzic’s point of view it appears that he has joined the ranks of the enemies of the “Republica Sprska”. Since Milosevic started trying to bully him into accepting the Contact Group plan, Karadzic has felt that the whole world is conspiring against him.
Hence, after Nato aircraft struck last week against Serb military targets in a belated response to continued mur­derous artillery attacks by Karadzic’s forces on unpro­tected civilians in Bosnian government enclaves, the Bosnian Serbs upped the ante, seizing hundreds of UN troops as hostages. In response, the Contact Group powers rushed further troops into Bosnia. As NSS went to press, each side was waiting for the other to blink.
The dangers in this stand-off are multiple – but, con­trary to the populist chorus in the Commons on Wednes­day, the greatest of them is not what might happen to the troops being held by Karadzic’s forces. Worrying as their predicament is for them and their families, it is less so than the prospects for Sarajevo and the Bosnian govern­ment enclaves in eastern Bosnia if the UN troops are withdrawn. Unless Karadzic is more stupid than he has so far appeared to be, the hostages will come to no harm. The same, however, cannot be said of Sarajevo and the defenceless communities of eastern Bosnia, which will be destroyed by Karadzic’s thugs if the UN pulls out. It is essential that the reinforcements sent this week are used to protect the Bosnian enclaves, not to facilitate UN with­drawal from Serb-occupied Bosnia.
But that can only be for the short-term. Critics of the UN deployments are right to argue that the international community cannot go on forever running food and other essential supplies into the besieged towns. Somehow, the sieges must be lifted and the besieged towns allowed to return to a normal peaceful existence.
The question is how. Karadzic and his cronies have this week shown just how naive were all those diplomats, from Lord Carrington on, who thought that the way to secure peace in Bosnia was to divide it on ethnic grounds, with Karadzic controlling the majority of territory. Never has it been clearer that the answer is to give the Bosnian government the tools and let it finish the job. Who cares if it upsets the Russians – it’s way past time to lift the arms embargo on the Bosnian government.

WILSON’S LEGACY

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New Statesman & Society leader, 26 May 1991
Tony Blair appears to have learned the bits of Harold Wilson he needs to emulate. But does he know what he should not copy in power?
The death of Harold Wilson this week has prompted a flood of commentary on his legacy to British politics – and that is hardly surprising. Although, as a result of illness, Wilson was not an active player for the last decade ofhis life, his contribu­tion to British politics in the 30 years immediately after the second world war was immense.
Consider the  achievements. He won four elections out of five he fought as Labour leader – and he would have won the fifth, in 1970, but for a combination of bad luck, the political naivety of chancellor Roy Jenkins and, it has to be said, a dulling of his own political instincts, brought on in part by several years of vicious party in-fighting. His first election victory, in 1964, saw Labour winning an absolute majority in the Commons, ending 13 years of Tory rule – the first and only time since 1906 that an opposition party has won such a majority against a Con­servative administration. Today, after 16 years that have seen four consecutive Tory general election victories, this appears even more remarkable than it did at the time. Then there was the revolution in social legislation in the 19605 – on abortion, homosexuality, divorce and reduction of the voting age – and the massive expansion of educational opportunities achieved between 1966 and 1970 (including the creation of the Open University, very much the brainchild of Wilson and his arts minister, Jen­nie Lee).
Even on the economic front, once the huge psychologi­cal hurdle of devaluation had been cleared, the record of the 19605 Labour government is remarkably good: the best sustained growth of any period since the war, and the transformation of the balance of payments and the budget deficit. Edward Heath was handed the most favourable set of economic circumstances of any incom­ing prime minister this century. In short, the first Wil­son administration bears comparison with the great reforming Labour government of 1945-51.
And yet, for all this – and despite the warm glow of nos­talgia with which the British view the 19605 – Wilson’s reputation has languished. It is only recently that there has been anything of a revival as time begins to lend some objectivity to assesments  of his record.
Some of that is down to the persistence of baseless smears about his private life and his alleged sympathies with the Soviet Union, put about by paranoiacs on the far right throughout his period in office. But Wilson hardly helped matters with his dubious choice of friends – to some of whom he gave peerages and knighthoods – and by his endless opportunist wheeling and dealing on everything from Vietnam and Rhodesia to trade union policy and nuclear weapons. Even – particularly –  among those on the left who admire his abilities as a pop­ulist electoral politician, there are few who defend the way in which he governed.
In the run-up to the 1992 general election, when Labour was well ahead in the opinion polls, the Tories toyed seriously with the idea of casting Neil Kinnock as a latter-day Wilson in their election propaganda – vigor­ous, attractive and even effective in opposition, but a cer­tain slave to prevarication, procrastination and unprinci­pled compromise in office. In the end, the plan was shelved, partly because Kinnock stopped looking quite as dangerous, but largely because the Tories discovered that many voters didn’t know why they were supposed to be afraid of a new Wilson.
Three years on, memories of the Wilson years are still hazier – yet Tony Blair looks and sounds more like the Wilson of 1963 than Kinnock ever did, right down to the rhetoric of modernity at the core ofhis political message. Blair appears to have learned the bits of Wilson that he needs to emulate. The big unanswered question is whether he knows what he should not try to copy when he gets to Number Ten.

LIB-LABBERY RULES OK

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New Statesman & Society leader, 12 May 1995
  
Last week’s local elections were great for both main opposition parties – and now they should be thinking seriously about cooperation
Last week’s rout of the Tories in the district elec­tions in England and Wales was phenomenal. As Rob Waller writes on page 8, the Conservative result was the worst on record. Although it would be foolish to conclude that the Tories can’t recover before the next general election, with or without John Major their prospects of victory are slim. Even if they make a substantial recovery in the opinion polls, the collapse of their base in local government will severely hamper their ability to run effective campaigns in much of the country. The Tories’ dire performance is not the only notable feature of the local elections: both Labour and the Liberal Democrats did extraordinarily well. Labour’s share of the vote, 47 per cent, was the highest it has received in a national election since 1966. The party made dramatic gains throughout the land, even in those parts of the south-east and East Anglia where it almost disappeared as a political force in the 19703 and 19805. John Prescott had good reason to crack open the champagne at Labour headquarters in the early hours of last Friday morning.
But the Lib Dems have even better reason to celebrate. In the past couple of years, particularly since the election of Tony Blair as Labour leader, most commentators have written off the Lib Dems as a force in national politics. Paddy Ashdown’s party might be capable of pulling off the occasional parliamentary by-election victory, the argument went, and it will remain in control of councils and continue to hold parliamentary seats in its south-­western and Celtic redoubts. But its days of expansion are over: Labour is the only centre-left party worth watching.
Last Thursday knocked that one for six. The Lib Dems gained nearly 500 seats and took control of 14 more coun­cils, taking 23 per cent of the vote nationwide, far better than their current opinion poll standing. They advanced not just in the south-west but in the south-east and East Anglia. Of course, translating local votes into support in a general election is easier said than done, but if the Lib Dems can keep up the momentum, they are well placed to make substantial gains in the House of Commons.
As NSS has said time and again, this is no bad thing for Labour. However well Labour has been doing under Blair in the south-east and East Anglia, it is a credible challenger to sitting Tory MPs only in a few seats in these regions: in most of the south, Lib Dems have the better chance of replacing Tories. Given that Labour cannot be sure of an overall majority in the Commons, it should at least welcome Lib Dem successes because they herald the possibility of a Lib-Lab parliamentary majority if Labour doesn’t make it alone.
But signs of Lib Dem health are not merely good for Labour on grounds of realpolitik. Despite Tony Blair’s declarations of his dislike for the “tribal attitude to left-of-centre politics”, too many in the Labour Party remain party chauvinists who are uneasy with the idea of plural­ism: a Liberal Democrat Party that Labour cannot ignore forces them to rethink Labour’s political culture. More important, there are many key areas of policy where Lib Dem thinking is far more radical than Labour’s: electoral reform, the environment, Europe, civil liberties. Rather than dragging Labour to the right, the introduction of Lib Dems to a Labour government would these days give it much-needed reforming impetus.
For all these reasons, NSS gives a warm welcome to the formation of the Labour Initiative on Cooperation (Linc), launched this week by a group of Labour politicians and intellectuals who would like to foster friendship between Britain’s two parties of the centre-left. Its first step, the publication of a pamphlet outlining the ways that Labour and the Lib Dems have worked together in local govern­ment, is modest enough – but there are grounds for believing that its way of thinking will find plenty of supporters. Blair has made it clear that he is relaxed about Lib-Lab discussion, and the whole process will be given a major boost if Ashdown declares, as expected, that he intends to abandon the stance of “equidistance” between Labour and Tories that his party has held since its incep­tion. Traditionalists in both parties will moan that any reduction of hostilities is a betrayal, but they will have few grounds for complaint in the absence of formal pre­-election pacts, which no one is now advocating. As last week’s results showed, the voters don’t even need prompting by party leaders to know that it makes sense to vote tactically.

BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO

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New Statesman & Society, 4 May 1995

Will Tony Blair do anything significant to change his party’s relationship with the trade unions before the next general election? Paul Anderson has his doubts
“Change and modernisation doesn’t stop at four o’clock this afternoon,” declared Tony Blair at last Saturday’s conference to change Clause Four of the Labour constitution. “It goes on – in the development of the party, in the development of policy.”
His remarks were widely interpreted as indicating an intention to transform Labour’s relations with the trade unions – and at first sight it’s not difficult to see why. Nine out often individual Labour Party members who had been given the chance to vote had opted for the new Clause Four, and the only union to ballot, the Communications Workers Union, had voted for change by a similar margin. But two of the largest unions, the TGWU and Unison, had stuck to deci­sions to oppose the new Clause Four made after consultations with activists.
Blair was obviously disappointed that these unions had not changed their minds at the last minute – and it only took a little off-the-record briefing from sources generally believed to be close to the Labour leader to convince many com­mentators that a radical shake-up of Labour-union relations is on the way.
It might be, of course – but it’s far more likely that Blair will decide not to launch himself into forcing through sig­nificant modifications of the party consti­tution this side of a general election. The one change that is almost certain, partic­ularly now that it has the backing of deputy leader John Prescott, is a reduc­tion of the union vote at party conference from the current 70 per cent to 50 per cent – but Labour conference in 1993 more-or-less agreed to make this reduc­tion when individual party membership reached 300,000 (see below).
Although there is undoubtedly some scope for unions to argue that Blair is moving too fast on this, the indications are that he will get his way in time for the 1996 conference. GMB general secretary John Edmonds told NSS this week that he has no problem with the reduction, and his thinking is echoed elsewhere in the upper echelons of the unions.
Although symbolically important, reducing the union vote will not make a lot of difference to the way that the confer­ence operates: the big unions will con­tinue to get their way on the overwhelm­ing majority of conference business. Ironically, the more prescient of them believe that the reduction will increase the legitimacy of their participation.
Beyond this, there are two possibilities being given an airing. The first is that Blair will push for a change in the compo­sition of Labour’s National Executive Committee: he told the Guardian this week that he would “like to see a broader NEC, with local government members, and a greater role for the way in which ordinary members of the party are involved in policy-making through policy forums”. But even this is far from certain: he said in the same interview that he did not have a blueprint for NEC reform and went out of his way to deny that he wanted to reduce union representation on the NEC. There is obviously quite a lot of drafting work to be done if the composi­tion of the NEC is to be changed at this year’s party conference, practically the last chance for it before the election.
The second possibility is some rule change to ensure that unions ballot members on certain Labour Party mat­ters – a simple enough idea in theory, but likely to meet serious union resis­tance if the leadership tries to push it through. One reason is that the unions resent the criticism of their representa­tive democratic structures implied by the argument that only ballots can give them a legitimate voice in Labour affairs, a point made forcefully last weekend by Rodney Bickerstaffe of Unison. Almost as important is the cost to a union of bal­loting all members (£500,000 for the TGWU). If Blair proposes the introduc­tion of ballots for anything other than fundamental changes to the party consti­tution, he will find it extremely difficult to get through conference.
Other reforms to the Labour-union link are even more unlikely – and in any case, Blair has more important tasks in the next six months than messing with the party constitution. An economic pol­icy is due to be presented to Labour’s National Policy Forum in June, and there’s a serious argument to be had over what it should contain, with the unions pressing hard for commitments on reducing unemployment and on the level at which a Labour government would set a national minimum wage. It is more than possible that the leadership will get its way on economic policy – but its chances will be reduced if it tries to force through constitutional change against the unions’ will at the same time.
Then there’s the small problem of money – in particular the war chest for the next election (see box). Unless Blair is a reckless gambler, he’ll put off trying to change anything significant about the Labour-union link until well after the next election – and by then, the unions hope, he should have more important things on his mind.

THE SMALL PROBLEM OF MONEY

One reason Labour is unlikely to break its links with the trade unions is its reliance on them for cash.

Trade union donations comprise more than half the party’s income nationally in a non-election year (£4.7 million out of a total of £8.8 million income in 1993, the last year for which figures are available, came from affiliated organisations) and the unions have pledged large sums for the party’s general election war-chest. The unions also contribute generously to local Labour parties and towards MPs’ research and administration costs.

Although Labour’s membership has increased in the past year, many of the new members are paying subscriptions at reduced rates(some of them so low that it costs more to service them than they pay in subs).The party’s income from corporate donors is minuscule.

So, despite the success that the party had in securing donations from individuals in the run-up to the 1992 general election (more than £2 million came in, mostly in small donations, during the election campaign), no one in the party believes that it could fight the next general election campaign without union support – although afterwards, if it wins the election, it could reduce its reliance on the unions by introducing state funding of political parties. The problem here, however, is that a subsequent Tory government could abandon state funding – and if Labour had by then alienated the unions, it could find itself in a financial crisis worse than anything it has seen in the past 15 years. 

       
 REFORMING THE UNION LINK: THE OPTIONS

All but one of the elements of the Labour-union relationship would be difficult to change

The role of the trade unions in Labour’s constitution has changed in recent years – but it remains crucial to the operation of the party at every level. There are four key areas where the unions play critical constitutional roles: the annual party conference, the National Executive Committee, constituency Labour parties and leadership elections.

Party conference The union role at Labour’s annual conference was modified by rule changes in 1993.The unions now have 70 per cent of the vote at party conference (as against 30 per cent for CLPs) and each union may, if it wishes, split its share of votes instead of wielding it as a block(although few do). According to the rules laid down in 1993: “The balance of voting between the two sections shall be reviewed by the National Executive Committee and annual conference once individual membership exceeds 300,000, with a view to changing the balance in favour of constituency parties provided that such adjustment does not reduce the proportion of the total vote cast by affiliated organisations to less than 50 per cent.”

Tony Blair seemed to interpret this as meaning that, now that membership has reached the 300,000 threshold, the union share of the vote at this year’s conference could be reduced to 50 per cent by a meeting of the NEC in the next couple of months: most others reckon that the rule implies that conference needs to approve the change before it happens (which would mean it could not take effect until the 1996 conference). Still others argue that the NEC should recommend not an immediate reduction to 50 per cent, but a phased reduction. How vigorous the argument about the interpretation of the rules will be is difficult to judge, but few believe that either the left or the trade unions will put up much of a fight if Blair insists on a rapid reduction to 50 per cent. No other reforms of the union role at conference have so far been suggested.

National Executive Committee Probably the most important role that unions have in Labour’s organisation is in the National Executive Committee (NEC), the body, 25-strong apart from the leader and deputy leader, that is responsible for the day-to-day running of the party and supervision of its policy-making. Through their membership of the NEC, trade unions are represented on all the party’s policy-making bodies: the domestic and international policy committee, the six NEC-shadow cabinet joint policy commissions and the National Policy Forum.

Twelve NEC seats are reserved for the trade unions: they are chosen by union votes at party conference (invariably after a little behind-the-scenes fixing). The unions also effectively determine who sits in the five-member women’s section of the NEC through their votes at conference. The unions have no influence over the election of the seven members chosen by constituency Labour parties or the single member chosen by affiliated socialist societies.

Proposals for changing the composition of the NEC have been recurrent, and have come from many different directions. In recent years, feminists and the left have argued that the women’s section should be elected by the Labour women’s conference, while Labour councillors have made the case for their own section of the NEC.

The problem with NEC reform for the leadership is simple: the massive union representation and the role of the unions in electing the women’s section act as a counterbalance to the constituency section whenever the latter shifts to the left (as it did from the mid-1970s until the mid- 1980s), and a simple reduction in the union role now could exacerbate tensions between party and government if the next Labour government loses popularity among ordinary party members. This problem might be overcome if reduction in the union presence on the NEC were compensated for by the introduction of a section for councillors and perhaps one for MPs and MEPs – but reform along these lines might create an unmanageably large committee or massive resentment among the unions or both.

Constituency Labour parties At the local level, trade unions affiliate to constituency Labour parties(CLPs), which allows their members to join at a reduced rate, gives them representation (up to a maximum of five delegates) on the constituency party’s general committee (GC), and allows them the right to nominate candidates in parliamentary selections. The GC handles everyday management of the CLP, can submit resolutions to annual conference, elects a CLP’s officers (including delegates to annual conference) and draws up shortlists in parliamentary selections. Before the introduction of one member, one vote for parliamentary selections and leadership elections, the GC also decided the CLP’s choice of putative MP and leader.

There have been no firm proposals from the Labour leadership for radical changes in the union role at CLP level-not least because, despite the recent increase in Labour Party membership, many local parties are too small to function without the participation of union delegates on the GC. There is some pressure for the extension of OMOV to the election of delegates to party conference, and there have always been complaints that the union delegate system is abused by political factions of left and right: the criterion for a union to have the right to representation on a CLP’s GC is merely that it has members registered in a particular constituency. How exactly such abuse could be stopped is difficult to workout unless union representation on GCs were to be removed entirely.

Leadership elections The role of the unions in Labour leadership elections was drastically reduced after uproar over the way that big union leaders announced their support for John Smith as leader after the 1992 general election. Under the system introduced by rule changes in 1993, Labour’s leader and deputy leader are elected by a three-section electoral college(comprising Labour MPs and MEPs, individual party members and affiliated unions and other organisations), with each section apportioned a third of the total vote and each section voting on a one person, one vote basis. It is extremely unlikely that any proposals for changing this system will emerge in the foreseeable future – not least because the Labour Party constitution forbids returning to constitutional changes for three years after they are approved except in emergencies.

BLAIR TRIUMPHANT

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New Statesman & Society leader, 28 April 1995

Tony Blair’s Clause Four victory is a massive defeat for the hard left-and it reinforces the argument that the left should work with, rather than against, the Labour leadership
This weekend the Labour Party’s special confer­ence in London will give a ringing endorsement to Tony Blair’s new statement of aims and values to replace Clause Four of the party constitution. That much has been certain since long before the Labour leader unveiled the new statement last month. Indeed, the only real question ever since Blair announced his intention of replacing Clause Four at Labour conference last year has been the margin of his eventual victory. Even before anyone, apart from Blair, had an inkling of the contents of the new statement, the overwhelming majority of Labour Party members at every level knew that defeat for the leader would be the sort of humiliation that could lose Labour the next elec­tion. If few would have predicted that the most substan­tial opposition to change would come not from the con­stituency Labour parties, but from the executive commit­tees of trade unions, few believed that the outcome was in doubt.
Despite this predictability, it would be wrong to play down the significance of the exercise. Getting rid of Clause Four is extraordinarily important symbolically. Although it has never accurately described Labour’s pro­gramme for government – even in 1945 the party stood for a mixed economy – for most of its life it has repre­sented the long-term aspirations of many if not most Labour members. After Hugh Gaitskell’s botched attempt to get shot of it in 1959-60, moreover, Clause Four became a symbol of the party rank-and-file’s ability to resist the attempts of opportunistic leaders to ditch principles in the pursuit of power. It was accepted as untouchable by both leaders and led. Right up to last autumn, the received wisdom in Labour’s upper eche­lons was that meddling with Clause Four was guaranteed to stir up a hornet’s nest. Hence the sharp intakes of breath when Blair announced his plan for change – even from those who, as they inhaled, realised that the received wisdom was nonsense and that Blair would get his way simply because the alternative was too dreadful to contemplate.
Seven months on from Blair’s declaration that the emperor has no clothes, his transgression of Labour’s unwritten law that no one touches Clause Four has been completely vindicated. No matter, as NSS said after the publication of his new draft, that the new wording is inel­egant and uninspiring: some 85 per cent of Labour Party members prefer it to the old. There’s no arguing with the results of the constituency ballots: those on the left who reckon that the absence of the old clause from the ballot papers made any significant difference to the result are insulting the intelligence of the electorate. Everyone who voted knew what was at stake – and the brutal reality is that the scale of support for Blair in the constituencies is a massive humiliation for the hard left, worse even than the defeat of Tony Benn and Eric Heffer when they chal­lenged Neil Kinnock and Roy Hattersley for the leader­ship and deputy leadership in 1988.
Then at least the hard left had the consolation of being on the winning side at party conference, as the leader­ship’s plans to ditch unilateral nuclear disarmament were unceremoniously dumped by the party. Now, the hard left has nothing. It has been stuffed by Blair, who can now argue, with reason, that his modernising project has complete democratic legitimacy in the Labour Party. He can do just about what he likes. No Labour leader before has ever had the authority that Blair now has.
Of course, this does not mean that Blair ought to behave as a dictator, riding roughshod over all criticism: it would make more sense for him to be magnanimous in victory – and indeed he insists that he intends to encour­age debate and pluralism inside Labour (see interview on page 24). But it does mean that he can simply ignore the left if it responds to its defeat by moping in a corner, wait­ing sullenly for its chance to get its own back. If the left is to have any influence at all, it must engage constructively with the modernisers who are now in command. That does not imply stinting on criticism when criticism is justified, nor does it necessitate hero-worship. Still less does it mean embracing the strategy of caution, inherited from John Smith, to which Blair clings when it comes to specific policies. After Clause Four, however, anyone in the Labour Party who refuses to recognise that, for the foreseeable future, Blair is the only show in town, is liv­ing in a dream-world.

NEARLY THERE

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New Statesman & Society, 28 April 1995

Tony Blair is heading for an overwhelming victory at Labour’s special conference on Clause Four this weekend. He talks to Paul Anderson about the ideas behind the new clause and about where Labour goes from here
It’s early Monday evening, and Tony Blair, travelling first class on the 16.20 non-stop from Preston to London Huston, watches the coun­tryside of Middle England flash by the window as he talks.
The Labour leader is obviously tired – hardly surprising after a six-week nation­wide speaking tour in support of chang­ing Clause Four of the party’s constitu­tion, which has involved adding 30 extra meetings (and hours more on trains) to an already busy schedule. But he’s also clearly jubilant. He is on his way back from the last of the speaking engage­ments, at the annual conference of the shopworkers’ union Usdaw in Black­pool, and he knows he has won a famous victory, not just in Usdaw but throughout the Labour Party. On Saturday, a special conference in London will vote over­whelmingly in favour of the new Clause Four. So far, only a single constituency party that has held a ballot has come out against change. There’s even a chance, according to transport workers’ leader Bill Morris, that the TGWU delegation will ignore its executive’s advice and vote for the new wording.
The speech Blair has just given in Blackpool was carefully drafted to max­imise his appeal among those trade unions that have yet to make up their minds. There was even a coded reference to class struggle, when he warned against being “Utopian about the potential for conflict between employees and manage­ment”. “There is a divergence of interests at some points inherent in the relation­ship,” he said. “There can be a clash on the balance between profits and wages or on how far and fast restructuring should go, never mind disagreements over the individual problems of employees.”
Not that Blair has suddenly turned Marxist in his pursuit of votes. “There’s no doubt that there are massive social divisions,” he says. “But to analyse soci­ety today in terms of Marxist definitions of class is unhelpful. It’s possible to do it, but it just doesn’t tell you very much about society.”
Blair would much rather talk about community and solidarity, as he has since long before becoming Labour leader: like John Smith before him, he is an austere Christian socialist for whom such ideas are at the very heart of social­ism. Echoing the language of the new Clause Four, he explains: “What distin­guishes the left from the right is the belief on the left that to advance individually we need to act collectively. Community is an expression of that. It means to me principally the notion of interdependence. But it also implies that we are prepared to act together to provide those benefits that we are unable to provide for ourselves as individuals. The notion of community for me is less a geographical concept than a belief in the social nature of human beings.”
If the rhetoric of community is an alter­native to that of class, it is also a way of talking socialism without embracing bureaucratic statism. “The definition of socialism as more and more power accru­ing to the state has had its day,” says Blair, leaning back in his seat, arms folded. “In the early part of the century, it was per­fectly easy: when people wanted the very basic things in life, the state was the way to achieve that. But there’s more diversity and choice nowadays. That doesn’t exclude a role for the state: the state is going to have to act on all sorts of ques­tions. It does mean that power, wherever it is exercised, should be accountable and that we should have a plurality of centres of power.”
But perhaps the most important func­tion of the language of community for Blair is that it allows him to talk of respon­sibilities of citizens towards one another, as well as of their rights. “I think it was a mistake of Labour politicians to stop talk­ing that language,” he says as the train streaks through Milton Keynes. “It’s the purest drivel to claim that because you believe that rights and responsibilities go together you’re in some sense authoritar­ian. The purpose of social action was never to substitute itself for individual responsibility. It was to make it more easily realisable.”
Blair dismisses critics who claim that his emphasis on responsibility is a ploy to win support from middle-class voters – being tough on crime and making it clear that Labour supports the family appeals to the party’s traditional voters, he argues – and he is scathing about the refusal of many on the left to embrace his approach. “The single biggest mistake of the left in the 19603 and 19705 was that its essential political philosophy got intermarried with, and at points almost dominated by, a crude form of Marx­ism – by which I mean not that people in the Labour Party ever particularly believed in the abolition of all forms of private enterprise, but that they became heavily influenced by a strain of thinking that is almost determinist in its view of social conditions and their impact on individual behaviour. Many Labour peo­ple thought that to talk about punishing people for crime was wicked or wrong – all we needed to do was talk about amelio­rating the social conditions. Any sensible person would have been talking about both.” The elderly couple at the table opposite, who are taking a great interest in the conversation, nod in agreement.
There are striking parallels here with the thinking of American communitarians like Amitai Etzioni, but Blair plays down any transatlantic influences. “I’ve read Etzioni with interest,” he says. “But what he’s saying is part of what’s happen­ing all over the world. The left is trying to recapture the spirit of its belief in solidar­ity while distinguishing it from the form that collective action took – which in many cases was bureaucratic state con­trol. That’s the task of the left the whole world over: finding a new relationship between society and individual that moves beyond either old-style collec­tivism or the crude market dogma of the right.”
Changing Clause Four is only the first step towards this goal for Labour: what comes next is serious policy work. Of course, there’s already plenty of policy. “If Labour were to implement all the pol­icy we have at the moment, it would be one of the most radical governments we have ever seen,” says Blair. There’s also a strong case for taking things slowly: “People forget that it took the Tories a second term before they got into ballots before strikes or privatisation. You’ve got to pace yourself, and I make no apologies for that.”
Above all, it’s necessary to avoid mak­ing specific commitments too long before the election. “In 1992, we ended up committing ourselves to tax and spending plans in a period of boom and found that there were different priorities in the run-up to the election. The same goes for tax and spending now – and in other areas. On the minimum wage, for example, it’s important to commit our­selves to a certain floor that no one falls below. But to get ourselves into a tangle over what precise level it should be now, when we’re two years off an election – what’s the point?”
Nevertheless, Labour does need to push on with policy, “generating a much greater excitement and openness of thinking”. “We often argue about the wrong things,” he says. “What we need to do instead is identify the new issues that the country faces – for example, the global marketplace, the challenge of tech­nology, the changing nature of the labour market, the reshaping of Europe, the existence of large numbers of elderly people who find their savings eaten away by the need for nursing care at the end of their lives” – once again the elderly couple opposite nod in agreement – ” and the requirement for a quite different commitment to education in society. We need to identify and describe much more clearly how we would tackle these problems.”
This means casting the net wide for ideas. Blair is keen on the Institute for Public Policy Research’s new Commis­sion on Public Policy and British Busi­ness, and does not rule out talking to the Liberal Democrats. “There are no propos­als for anything institutionalised, but there are clear areas of overlap and agree­ment, for example in relation to the con­stitution. I don’t see anything wrong with that. I don’t take a tribal attitude to left-of-centre politics. The problem for the Lib­eral Democrats is that the position of equidistance is not seriously tenable. It makes life difficult for those of us who recognise that there should be a proper dialogue of ideas.”
He is easy about the involvement of Labour backbenchers in plans for a par­liamentary Lib-Lab discussion group – “It doesn’t trouble me at all: it’s sen­sible” – and is warm about the prospect of cooperation with the Lib Dems in gov­ernment: “The most important thing is that we have a government that doesn’t just say ‘We’re the masters now, things have changed’, but is deliberately trying to change the politics of the country – and that requires working to achieve the broadest possible basis of consent.”
And consent, he insists, does not mean that he wants no one to disagree with him inside the Labour Party. “I don’t mind people disagreeing with me at all as long as it’s a genuine debate and is democrati­cally conducted,” he says. “A lot of the recent criticism of Labour – not least in the pages of New Statesman – has been either full of bile or plain feeble. What I ask of those who criticise is to deal with the argument. The left is never going to be a place where there’ s going to be a una­nimity of view, and neither should it be. Take Europe and the debates over Maastricht. I am strongly pro-European although I think that Europe must be greatly reformed. But there’s a perfectly justifiable intellectual argument against it. I don’t merely not disapprove of having that debate, I positively welcome it.”
By now, we’ve reached London’s inner suburbs. Blair has been talking animat­edly for the best part of an hour and is los­ing his voice. The elderly couple, who can no longer hear what he is saying, have lost interest. One of the two young aides trav­elling with him, who has said nothing throughout, tells his boss that he’s being too defensive about the whole Clause Four exercise: it has been a great tri­umph, he says, and he should make that clear. Blair grins. “It’s not over yet,” he protests, but there’s something about his demeanour that shows – for once – he doesn’t really mean what he says.

BAN THE TRADE, NOT THE PROTESTS

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New Statesman & Societyleader, 21 April 1995
The trade in live animal exports is morally repugnant – and by trying to prevent protests against it the police are stepping on basic rights
When the protests against live animal exports from British ports began last year, they divided left and liberal opinion down the middle.
For some, the outrage at the export of veal calves and other animals was a proportionate response to a cruel and unnecessary trade, an expression of a healthy public concern for the wellbeing – or even the rights – of animals. For others, the talk of animal rights smacked of anthropomorphism: to them, the demonstrations were no more than a macabre symptom of a deep-rooted British sentimentality about animals, the protesters people whose worries about soon-to-be-eaten sources of chops and escalopes had never been equalled by concern for their fellow human beings.
This argument will run and run, for the simple reason that both sides have a good case. For what it’s worth, NSS comes down in the end on the side of those who would like the export of live animals banned. It undoubtedly causes unnecessary suffering – there is no reason whatsoever that the veal calves and sheep should not be reared and slaughtered in Britain and exported as meat – and causing unnecessary suffering to animals dehumanises those who do it. One does not have to embrace the anthropomorphist notion of animal rights or be a hopeless sentimentalist to believe that cruelty should be stopped.
But this week, all that is in many ways beside the point. Even if we supported the export of live animals, we would argue that those who did not had an inalienable right to protest peacefully against the trade. And that right has now been seriously infringed by the actions of Essex police.
Last week, they delivered a letter to the residents of Brightlingsea informing them that anyone who organised a protest against the resumption of animal exports from the small port this week would be prose­cuted under the 1986 Public Order Act. The threats had the desired effect. Brightlingsea Against Live Exports, the local pressure group that had organised protests of several thousand people earlier in the year, disbanded itself. And on Tuesday, the day that live exports resumed, only 350 people, many of them outsiders, turned out to demonstrate.
According to Liberty, the civil liberties campaign, this use of the 1986 act is unprecedented: until last week, the police had not used their powers to ban marches and demonstrations. Although the police did not carry out their threat to make arrests, the danger is that Brightlingsea sets a precedent not just for animal exports protests, but for any demonstration that the police believe might be a little difficult to control.
The 1986 Public Order Act was intended, we were told at the time it was passed, to deal with serious disruption of the life of the community, serious threats to public order and serious intimidation. The government assured sceptical civil libertarians (and in those far-off days, they included the Labour front bench) that it would not be used to impose blanket bans on protest.
Yet in Brightlingsea the police did just that. A protest movement that has involved a majority of the local popu­lation cannot be said to be a major disruption to commu­nity life; nor can non-violent direct action – which is all that the overwhelming majority of the protestors have engaged in – be considered either a threat to public order or intimidatory.
Of course, the policing of protests such as that in Brightlingsea is expensive. Essex police estimate that the policing of the Brightlingsea demonstrations has cost them an extra £2 million, while recent parliamentary answers reveal that the total extra policing costs incurred by the live animal export protests has been more than £6 million. It is also obviously true that police who are at demonstrations are not catching criminals, doing their paperwork or helping old ladies across the road.
Sometimes, however, the exercise of fundamental democratic rights – and there are few more fundamen­tal than the right to free assembly – means that money and police time must be spent in ways the police find wasteful. And if the police really cannot afford the money or the hours involved in dragging non-violent protesters from the paths of sheep lorries, they should simply tell the would-be exporters that they have more important things to do than expedite their business.