The Week ending 26 November 2000
European Reaction Force: White Prestige revisited
Tory Party leader William Hague put the British government under pressure over plans for a 'European Army'. Prime Minister Blair was accused of betraying British sovereignty by putting British soldiers under foreign command - a prospect made all the worse by the news that the proposed European Reaction Force is to serve under a German commander, Rainer Shuwirth, whose father was a major-general in the Budeswehr serving under the Nazis. Hurt at the charge of unpatriotic behaviour, Blair chose to turn on his critics from a British military camp in Kosovo, wreathed in the glory of his recent bloody victory over the Serbian Dad's Army of farmers and goatherds.
The idea that the proposed European Reaction Force is a threat to Britain's sovereignty is wrongheaded. The European force will not be invading Dover or Calais. Rather, European military coercion will be turned against the non-European outsiders, either in the East, or Africa and Asia. The recent pattern of Western military intervention in the third world suggests that more small nations will be attacked and humiliated so that European leaders can feel like they are doing something worthwhile.
An excellent new book by Suke Wolton explains the racial motivations for European cooperation (Lord Hailey, the Colonial Office and the Politics of Race and Empire in the Second World War, Macmillan). Wolton quotes British colonial administrator Lord Hailey on the dangers of European conflict to White prestige in the face of the colonized: 'the effect of conflict between European nations, which extended to the soil of Africa itself and involved the use of native troops, must have affected the general prestige of Europeans' (p41). The pressure for European cooperation comes largely from a desire for solidarity in the face of the non-European native. As a consequence, the nations that can expect their sovereignty to be breached by the European Reaction Force are unlikely to include Britain.
Britain exports the BSE panic
News that French and German herds have been discovered with Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis (BSE, or 'Mad Cow Disease') have accelerated fears that Europe will suffer an epidemic of the 'human form' of BSE, Creutzfeld Jacob Disease (CJD).
Deaths from Creutzfeld Jacob Disease (CJD)
1995: 3 1996: 10 1997: 10 1998: 15 Total: 38
In other words, the numbers dying each year are less than those that die each year turning off their radio-alarm clock (20), or falling out of bed (20).
As yet scientists have failed to identify a link between CJD in humans and BSE. Government scientific advisors predict that the number of deaths from CJD will total at 100, and might be as low as 75. Professor Philip Thomas said 'We told the government more than a year ago that there would be no epidemic of new-variant CJD and that spending billions on slaughtering cattle would save only a few lives'. He added 'there will be a decline in deaths this year and these will cease by 2006'.
But food panics are not without effect. They have transformed the agricultural economy. With British beef banned in Europe and mass burning of cattle here, the impact upon agriculture has been profound, if unexpected. In 1998 the value of beef production had fallen by 14 per cent from the previous year, or by £326 million. During 1998 some 890 000 cattle were slaughtered under the Over Thirty Months Slaughter Scheme, making a total of 2.9 million since it was introduced on 3 May 1996. In 1998 payments of £281 million were made to beef farmers under the scheme.
For all this the rationale for the reductions is difficult to fathom. The number of BSE cases was declining before any selective slaughter scheme, or indeed the collapse in public confidence. BSE cases started to fall in 1993, due, according to MAFF to the measures taken in 1988 and 1990 - meaning that the slaughters have been undertaken principally for public confidence rather than health.
The major impact of the EC ban and the various regulations has been to accelerate the restructuring of European farming. For decades European beef production has outstripped effective demand. Politically motivated subsidies to farmers have glutted the market with unwanted beef, accumulated in the 'beef mountains' of Euro-legend, and distributed free to pensioners, the famine-struck and social security claimants. Under the guise of health measures, Britain's beef farms were concentrated in the hands of a few big agri-businesses, and smaller farmers forced out.
It is ironic that the BSE panic was informed by a hostility to agri- business, since agri-business enhanced its domination over small farmers through the very process of regulating the industry. The trend towards fewer but bigger farms and abattoirs is being forced along by new rules on hygiene brought in by the EC. According to the Ministry of Agriculture Farms and Fisheries there is an excess capacity in abattoirs, and 'hopefully the smaller less efficient firms will be forced to close'.
In 1997, following the public BSE crisis, total farm incomes fell by 35 per cent, and for farmers and their spouses (i.e. exclusive of partners, directors and workers) by 45 per cent. The value of beef production fell by six percent, or £111 million. The total number of full-time farmers dropped from 173,000 in 1995, to 170 000 in 1996, to 169,000 in 1997; the total number of farm labourers dropped from 248,000 in 1995, to 245,000 in 1996, to 243 000 in 1997; the fixed capital stock of farms rose between 1995 and 1996 by £30 million, but fell between 1996 and 1997 by £230 million.
Between 1993 and 1997 the number of small-holdings (1-19 beef cows) fell from 45,500 to 42,200, while larger herds (over 50) rose over the same period from 9,500 to 10,700. The small herds accounted for a steady 339,000 cows, while large herds increased from 842,000 to 983,000.
In other words, the BSE culling, regulation and ban had helped a reduction in the number of farms and farm workers, as larger businesses swallowed up the smaller. The unintended consequence of the new regulations on agri-business have been bigger agri-businesses, and fewer family farms.
There is an historical parallel. In 1906 Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle drew attention to the dirty and repressive conditions in the meat packing industry, leading to a meat inspection law that broke the Beef Trust - or at least that's how the official version runs. Reflecting on the storm over the Jungle, Sinclair wrote that he was primarily moved by the condition of the workers, not the meat: 'I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach. I am supposed to have helped clean up the yards and improve the country's meat supply - though this is mostly delusion. But nobody even pretends that I improved the condition of the stockyard workers.' (Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism, p103&7). Economic Historian Gabriel Kolko explained 'The reality of the matter, of course, is that the big packers were warm friends of regulation, especially when it primarily affected their innumerable small competitors.' (p107)
www.heartfield.demon.co.uk/week.htm -- James Heartfield