Foot and Mouth A SHARED NATIONAL EXPERIENCE?
Farming creates one seventy-seventh of new value in the British economy, and just 500 000 of the 27 million-strong workforce are on farms, but the foot and mouth epidemic has become the focal point of British life, as well as the collective excuse for inaction and delay.
The opposition Conservative Party, along with the right-wing press is campaigning to suspend the mooted May General Election. It is hardly surprising that the Tories - currently at the lowest ebb of electoral support for years - are reluctant to face the people. But Labour, too, is hiding behind foot and mouth. Agriculture minister Nick Brown refused a parliamentary debate on the issue on the grounds that it would detract Ministers from dealing with the crisis, as if senior politicians would be spending their time culling livestock.
The Countryside Alliance called off its London demonstration - not for fear of a low turnout of course, but because of the risks of spreading the infection. The police have called upon animal rights protestors to call off their demonstration outside the Huntingdon life sciences laboratory on similar grounds. Even the hardened freedom fighters of Sinn Fein recently called off their annual conference, the Ard Fheis 'due to the Foot and Mouth crisis' (Republican News) - but not of course because they had little to show for their strategy of peaceful coexistence with British imperialism.
Culture Secretary Chris Smith coined the phrase 'Shared National Experience' (SNE) to describe the collective mourning after Princess Diana's death, speculating that this was a positive coming together. In recent times the SNEs have come thick and fast in the same morbid vein, from train crashes through petrol crises to the foot and mouth panic. Such hysteria does indeed embrace the whole country, but far from binding it together it only emphasizes the mutual distrust of town and country, commuters and transport chiefs, government and people.
US DIGS IN
US foreign policy reverted to Cold War nostalgia as military chiefs made China the target of American missiles, suspended talks with North Korea and renewed its 'Son of Star Wars' missile program. Dick Cheney's Green Light to Israel's policy of militarily defeating the Palestinians would have disappointed anyone who hoped that the end of Clinton's interventionist foreign policy would reduce global conflicts.
More remarkable, though, are the signs of a retreat from the global economy. President Bush's decision to increase energy production makes more sense than the alternative, deflationary policy of reducing consumption - but only just. Driving both the environmentalist energy- saving policy and the President's determination to increase oil and gas production is a chauvinist, and quixotic, ambition for energy self- sufficiency.
Spencer Abraham, the US energy secretary has already conceded that the proposed drilling program will do nothing for California's electricity shortage - indeed he promises other 'Californias', meaning more blackouts in the summer. Instead the exploitation of Alaskan oil is being promoted as a patriotic alternative to Middle Eastern oil. The US observes economic sanctions against Iran, Iraq and Libya that effectively keep US oil producers out of the market.
The American elite prefers to believe that economic difficulties are imported from abroad. In the New York Times, William Safire blames the falling stock market on the Japanese economy - though its difficulties are hardly recent. Now that Opec has decided to ease off the massive production increase of recent months, President Bush is using it as an excuse for economic nationalism.
-- James Heartfield