>Will Britain go ahead? It seems extraordinary, but Foreign Secretary
>Robin Cook's recently floated 'humanitarian foreign policy' has already
>opened him up to demands that a more traditionally Tory incumbent would
>have faced down.
>
>Is it a good thing that British and Spanish Imperialism should act as
>judge of the Dictator that they supported in his heyday? That's another
>question. Turning their own former allies like Noriega, (or Mladic and
>Saddam?) is one way that imperialism is seeking to promote itself as
>'humanitarianism'. If Cook does go ahead, his ability to sell British
>imperialism as a good cause will be increased a hundred-fold.
I think this case illustrates concretely the question of how we analyse changes in how the ruling class and their representatives manage affairs under capitalism. I have been strongly suspected by some of being a cheerleader for the Blair government. This latest news is indeed good news, but I share James's view of the need to get it into perspective.
The Labour Government really is different and frankly that does matter, and is welcome in a number of respects. I cannot imagine Major's government giving this arrest a nod of approval.
But it is a mixed blessing. There are contradictions. It will indeed enhance the ethical foreign policy credentials of New Labour. *But* it also sets a standard against which other actions are judged. The Blair regime raises opportunism to a matter of principle. It will do nothing unless its focus groups say that this will benefit its image. But the fact that it has this freedom of manoeuvre on Pinochet is partly because it is now so much master of the middle ground, that support for the Conservatives is down to 23%. They won't even think of asking questions about the damage this might do to our trade with Chile.
It is always worth noting how the story breaks, to watch the spin. I was surprised on Sky News last night to see the political editor of the right wing Telegraph report the Observer's lead on this in sympathetic tones, and note that the Foreign Office says this is the year of the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights. That is the spin that has been injected, and the journalists have transmitted it.
The general agenda is, with Clinton, the imposition throughout the world of the capitalist logic of bourgeois democratic rights, going hand in hand with the free flow of commodities and finance, a level playing field that benefits the giant monopoly capitalist organisations best, while appearing to champion individual bourgeois democratic rights. This is the agenda of rational global governance.
Hand in hand with the arrest of Pinochet, I think correspondents from London must mention, will undoubtedly go the loss of traditional liberty in England for foreign "terrorists". Moves by the government this year make it clear they will greatly restrict this possibility for exiles in London. So opponents of the Saudi Arabian regime in exile here, for example will be under pressure and risk. Blair would probably not have allowed Marx and Engels a haven in this country.
It is typical of the agenda of these new managers of capitalism that they wish to make everything a matter of technical administration. Thus John Mage in his post quotes:
>Tbe British government
>rejected Chile's claim that Pinochet had diplomatic immunity, and Blair
<said it's "a matter for the magistrates and the police."
We need to be able to guess a lot of what may have gone on behind the scenes. The British government will have the advantage of close liaison with the Spanish authorities over this matter who will presumably be well informed about Chilean politics and law on this point. This arrest will not have taken place without the approval of the British government and it, in turn, will have notified the US government and got a nod and a wink of approval. The ongoing secret focus group analysis will probably by now have given the British government a good idea that middle Britain does not like terrorism but has a sense of "fair play" and order, and might rather approve of a dicator in a South American country being brought to trial so long as it is not too controversial, and not done by members of the Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Retribution Enforcement Centre. Reformist stuff but not without its merits.
This is therefore about conflict management, which did not exist as a conscious science in Lenin's day, and allows issues of force to be dealt with as issues of administration. This is not just a matter of illusion but a development in the functioning of the state.
I am sure James is right that this move, albeit done ambiguously as a technical matter, for the reasons I have stated, will enhance the status of the British Government. It therefore has reformist dangers. *But* it is necessary to analyse what is going on so that we are not merely cheering outside the gates of the British Embassy. Blair and Clinton are the most forward looking managers of global capitalism at present in power. They are progressive, whereas other capitalist representatives are reactionary. The best, *we*, the democrats, the informed members of the working population, can get out of this is to be vigilant about the standard set, use it, and demand that it really does serve ordinary working people, and that big companies get questioned as well as big dictators.
So, concretely again, this has happened in a week where Blair has cleverly split the Conservative Party again, by appointing Clarke, the Europhile to a position of responsibility in trade. In fact to represent British interests in trade with Mexico, where one of the companies on which Clarke is a director, is a large seller of tobacco products. *Therefore* while celebrating the news of Pinochet being called to account for the deaths for which he was responsible in Chile, let us prepare the ground for the tobacco monopolies to be called to account for the deaths they also cause in Latin America on a daily continuing basis. The first step helps the second step.
I have written at some length on these concrete questions to illustrate how I think we need to analyse these situations and the overall scenario dialectically, and in terms of the ultimate interests of different class forces. This is perhaps especially when the representatives of the ruling class are introducing reforms so that we can accelerate and propel the development of reforms in revolutionary direction.
Chris Burford
London.