NEW AUTHORITARIANISM
New Labour's political exhaustion was laid bare in the Queen's speech opening the new parliament. Although the government faces neither serious opposition nor economic crisis, the core of its legislative programme amounts to a crackdown on misbehaving children.
The unravelling of the society's 'moral fabric', like the existence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, is an article of faith in British politics. Evidence is not required. In fact vandalism, graffiti, foul language, joy-riding and misbehaving with air guns is the sort of petty bad behaviour with which young people have been upsetting old people since the year dot. But according to the government, young people's anti-social behaviour is a primary cause of national decline, and the inculcation of civic responsibility is the only solution.
As part of its effort to revive civic responsibility and a sense of community, the government proposes among other things to exclude ordinary citizens from the administration of justice by reducing the number of jury trials; to make it easier to convict people of crimes on the basis of gossip about them or their past records; to make it easier for the police to prosecute people on poor evidence secure in the knowledge that, should the prosecution fail, they can try again later if better evidence turns up; to widen the discretionary powers of the police to punish people or restrict their movements without due process; to convert more of the work of voluntary and statutory agencies into police work.
These 'reforms' appear to have been designed to undermine the rule of law. Tony Blair calls it a programme for an 'enabling state'. Certainly state functionaries will be enabled at the expense of individual citizens' rights. But how any of this is going to encourage a sense of civic responsibility is not explained.
ALTRUISM CANNOT OVERCOME FIREFIGHTERS' ISOLATION
The PM's rhetoric about improving our sense of civic pride and duty must ring particularly hollow with one group of workers who are routinely required to risk their lives in the interests of others but are poorly paid for it. Nevertheless nostalgic claims from the left and the right that the firefighters' dispute herald a return to the industrial militancy of the seventies have been exposed by the first few days of strike action.
The firefighters themselves remain enthusiastic in support of their ambitious 40 per cent pay claim. But they are a group of workers who enjoy an unusually strong degree of internal solidarity and self-respect. The political strategy they and their supporters are pursuing gives away the truth that they are almost entirely isolated in believing that they can and should improve their pay and conditions by collective action.
The firefighters and their supporters argue that they deserve the pay rise because of the heroism of their special work. But relying on broad but shallow public sympathy for their altruism has forced them repeatedly to break their own strike when lives are threatened by emergencies. Nor could the firefighters' union make anything of the suggestion by the railworkers' union that railworkers should refuse to work if safety was threatened during the strike.
These developments have given a clear signal to the government that the firefighters' militant posture is superficial. However there is one thing that the firefighters may yet have going for them: they face a government which thinks acting tough means taking on clapped out third world regimes and teenage tearaways.
-- James Heartfield The 'Death of the Subject' Explained is available at GBP11.00, plus GBP1.00 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'