International Socialists

And suddenly, it all stopped. For more than half of last year the ruling class had been foaming at the mouth, wailing and gnashing its teeth, growling and glaring through designer sunglasses, prophesying imminent economic collapse. Things, those with power told us through their newspapers, television channels and radio programmes, were all Bad.

 

The Labour/Alliance Government was, according to Roger Kerr, similar to France's Communist/Socialist coalition of the early 80s; the world was about to end, the country had just entered a Great Leap Backwards. Brains were draining, markets crashing, business confidence  whatever this particularly vacuous term actually signifies  was in a slippery slope towards total despair, and our young people, those generations of promise, were fleeing in disgust.

 

But then, almost out of the blue, we heard no more about any of this. Despite the odd incompetent attempt at opposition from National, the Government in the last few months has had very few critics. Almost as quickly as the bile of reaction had been vomited, it stopped appearing. Why, after assuring us that the end was well and truly nigh, did the Right's business leaders shed their Millenarian suits and cease their prophesying?

 

First of all, some superficial explanations of this change of tune are helpful. The Right were wrong in almost every way about almost every thing. The economy hasn't collapsed; indeed, unemployment has fallen to a record low, the dollar has recovered and the Employment Relations Act hasn't - yet - led us back to the days of "union power." The ruling class also made a number of embarrassingly bad tactical mistakes: the whole "Brain Drain" campaign had neither evidence nor compelling arguments to back it, and stank so strongly of a botched and badly thought out plan to openly deceive the public and its own supporters that even the reptilian Paul Holmes was forced to distance himself from it. Having managed both prediction and description so badly, the ruling class has been forced to remain at least a little silent for a while.

 

Another factor that goes some way towards explaining the change is the concern amongst many businesspeople that their attacks on the economy might become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, if enough "important people" say that the dollar's worthless, our best and brightest are fleeing and the economy's in free-fall, these things tend to start happening.

 

But - and this is of far more worrying significance - the ruling class has even less reason to  attack the Government than it did a year ago. Labour has rushed to meet them not at the "middle of the road," but on the right lane. Helen Clark and Michael Cullen in 2000 both went on speaking tours their press secretaries openly described as "charm offensives in the business community."

 

The speaking tours - and the substance of the speeches given - are certainly offensive. Offensive to the working people who elected Labour to government. The ruling class have no longer any need to continue their hysterical attacks on the Coalition Government because the Coalition Government has gone out of its way to show these attacks are unnecessary - Labour has no intention of going against business interests.

 

The Council of Trade Unions has publicly stated that the new Employment Relations Act makes it harder for workers to take strike action than the old Contracts Act did. The new act allows fifteen people to call themselves a union. In other words, it encourages the formation of bosses' and scabs' unions. The Government's "good will" bargaining scheme suits Business precisely because it will have the power to ignore it and, when workers' rights need defending, the government will sit silent. Margaret Wilson in a statement recently parroted the lines of Carter Holt Harvey in the South Island waterfront dispute and called this a dispute between two unions! Workers could not fear worse from Max Bradford - the man who wanted to abolish Christmas - himself.

 

The ruling class have stopped their attacks on this Government for the simple reason that it is bad business sense to attack one's friends. Where has Labour been when Waterside Workers' Union wharfies have had their jobs stolen? Where has the government been whilst the vets have been subjected to a campaign of bullying and intimidation from employers and dairy farmers - their cheeks still rosy in the reflected glow of a $70,000 bonus given them - furious at their demands for a pay increase? If Helen Clark or Michael Cullen have not been at business breakfasts, doubtless they have been too busy to even speak a single word of support for these workers.

 

Meanwhile, throughout all this, the Alliance has distinguished itself only in new depths of mediocrity. It is a sad waste to see a party that has some of the country's best left-wing activists in its ranks reduced to political impotency, and to see this happen for what looks like only one major reason - the love Jim Anderton has for the feeling of his buttocks settled into a cabinet chair. Some Alliance MPs have shown integrity - Laila Harre's appearance at a Nelson watersiders' picket  is a notable example of this - but, tied so closely as they are to a Labour Party determined to stick to its dirty history of talking left and walking right, these acts, motions and pieces of defeated legislation are restricted to being only moments of diversion in a policy of general agreement  down to breaking an election promise to students  with Labour.

 

The Labour/Alliance Government has been better than National was, but - ask the question: what could be worse? After a year in power, it has become more obvious than ever that, without pressure for a tidal shift from below for real, substantive change, the ship of state will continue its listless rightward drift. We have suffered more than sixteen years of attacks on our living conditions, health, welfare, education and even on our hopes. Mäori have been disproportionately attacked by the cruel policies of these last decades, and even this Labour looks like it would rather deny.

 

There are still gaps that need to be closed, and this Helen Clark cannot wish away with the removal of a government phrase. But unless we force the government  of whatever party makeup that government might be  to make real changes, to improve the health and welfare systems, to seriously address the problem of student debt, to increase unemployment benefits and tax the rich, to pour money into Mäori health, we will be condemned to a future of ever worsening inequality, poverty and despair. The power lies in us  in the working people of Aotearoa, not in the hands of the coalition policy makers. This is a fact that seems to have forgotten, but one we can - and must - remember again.