Crisis? What crisis?
The petrol protests in Britain were over before even one of Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott's Jaguar tanks had run dry, but that did not stop the government from making a crisis out of a protest. The protest movement was a wholly reactionary alliance of small business (see below), aided and abetted by the police and the oil companies. Well advised by Tory politicians, the protesters stood down before their action could have any effect.
However short the action, that did not stop the authorities from milking it for all it was worth. An ashen-faced Prime Minister Tony Blair demanded that the emergency services be given priority. Health Secretary Alan Milburn was sent around the country to declare an emergency in the health service. The police (having looked the other way when protesters blockaded refineries) took over garage forecourts to ensure that only essential services were served. The result is a histrionic version of the Blitz-spirit, where meals-on-wheels and the District Nurse must be kept mobile at all costs, and little Hitlers in blue ask you 'is your journey really necessary?'.
Blair's problem is that he is electorally (and emotionally) dependent on 'Middle England' but his government is committed to creating an environment that favours big business. The middle classes are suffering falling profits and bankruptcies, as they cannot compete with corporate capital. The middle classes squeal, but they have no alternative. Blair's resolution is to appeal to their instinct for order and authority. Already a law banning disruption to 'emergency services' is planned - something never achieved even by the crisis-management administrations of the strike-bound 1970s. A reactionary movement has brought forth a yet more reactionary response.
Crude arguments
Other than general disillusionment with their lot, there is little cohesion in the petrol protest and very few of the protesters have any idea what they are protesting for, writes Austin Williams
In essence, small businesses and hauliers are feeling the pinch and they are fed up about it. Their trade is down and their margins squeezed. But this protest sums up disquiet about bigger political issues than the price of petrol. Protesters are aggrieved at the disproportionately high level of tax paid in the UK compared to neighbouring European mainland countries. After the popular, but still relatively unsuccessful campaign to equalise car prices, the follow-on demand for equal taxation policy seems logical.
The idea that petrol is now 'too expensive' has been said every year since I can remember. It would seem therefore that petrol prices are no more than a symbol of their protest, in the same way that foxes were to the Countryside Alliance. But this protest has had a greater social impact than pleading to be allowed to shoot vermin.
'Petrol queues, pumps run dry -welcome to the 1970s'. So ran the Observer headline conjuring images of the militancy and inconvenience of the Winter of Discontent. The fact that the protests took hold around Liverpool added to the militant imagery. But the blockades represent a laager mentality rather than a conscious, positive protest for real goals; after all these are the employers and self-employed striking, rather than the employees! The blockades are a protest borne of frustration. There is no positive political objective unless you call random demands for 2p off a litre of unleaded, a call to arms. In fact, some members of the Trade Union Congress are advocating breaking up the unofficial picket lines!
By all accounts, in the beginning, the militants consisted of 10 lorry drivers, three pig-farmers and a disgruntled shepherd. There are not many more present, on what are euphemistically called 'picket lines', now. The fragmentary nature of trucking in Britain means that there can be very little coherence among the protesters.
The fact that OPEC is seen as the problem and the solution is more a shifting of the blame. With oil at approximately $35 a barrel and rising, Clinton demanded that oil producing nations produce more, thus encouraging the market mechanism to reduce the price. But unlike the situation in 1997-98, when excess crude oil could actually be moved internationally into vacant storage, this year tanker capacity is already fully utilised and operating at full speed.
More importantly today's price of crude is still only 60 per cent of its level, in real terms, 10 years ago during the Iran-Iraq war. Where were the lobbyists then? In fact, it should be obvious that the timing of the protests to coincide with OPEC's Vienna conference is purely coincidental, since three weeks ago, crude prices were at an average $20 per barrel, and not an issue.
However, fired by international concerns, the OPEC nations driven by Saudi Arabia, have agreed to release 800,000 barrels per day into the market in an attempt to reduce prices. Given that oil importing countries make, from taxes, three times what exporters realise in sales suitably debunks of the idea that petrol price rises are somehow directly determined by the rise in price of crude. As motoring organisations never tire of telling us, of every £20 spent on petrol £17 goes straight to the government in un-hypothecated taxes.
Austin Williams is Director of the Transport Research Group -- James Heartfield
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