Darryl d'Sa wrote
>
>
> Why Big Oil backed the fuel protests in Europe
>
> NAOMI KLEIN
> http://archives.theglobeandmail.com
> The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Canada
> Wednesday, September 20, 2000
>
> When I arrived in London on Sunday, the city was
> like a jittery heroin junkie who had just shot up.
Hmmm. I live here, and it is true the atmosphere got mometarily
unpleasant and jittery. But the reason was not so much because people
were afraid that petrol would run out, but that they *expected* it to
run out and *wanted* it to run out. This is because *everyone* has an
immediate personal interest in getting fuel taxes reduced. The
refinery pickets were popular, their action received massive albeit
passive popular support.
This does not mean that ordinary people are anti-Green (they are not)
and it does not mean that there is a sinister plot between William
Hague, Big Oil, the CIA and the truckers to destabilise Tony Blair, as
Guardian conspiracy-theorists seemed to be arguing, using the example
of how Allende was toppled: that is a simply absurd historical and
logical non sequitur.
>
> The companies -- Shell, BP, Texaco et al. --
> claimed they wouldn't ask their tanker drivers to
> drive past the blockades because they feared for
> their "safety." The claim is bizarre.
As a matter of fact, it is not bizarre at all, if only because the
tanker drivers and the picketers were often personally known to one
another. The tanker drivers are mostly on short-term contracts and owe
no loyalty to the oil firms. It seems unlikely that the oil firms
*could* have made them cross the picket lines even if they'd tried.
The devil is in the detail.
> the
> truckers' "pickets" were illegal blockades since
> the protesters were not members of trade unions --
No, they weren't, actually, and precisely *because* their action was
not organised officially (and nor did they commit trespass or build
barricades to physically obstruict access to the highway). It's
important to get the detail right if you plan to draw big conclusions.
> So why would the oil companies tacitly
> co-operate with anti-oil protesters? Easy. So long
> as attention is focused on high oil taxes, rather
> than on soaring oil prices, the pressure is off the
> multinationals and the OPEC cartel. The focus is
> also on access to oil -- as opposed to the more
> threatening issue of access to less polluting, more
> sustainable energy sources than oil.
What "more> sustainable energy sources" than oil? The whole problem is
that there *are* no realistic alternatives to oil, *especially* for
transportation. Only in Disneyland will wishing make it so. Of course
it is true that oil producers think their product is comparatively
over-taxed, and so it is. That does not mean that oil production can
be increased whatever level of tax is levied, because oil production
is at or near its peak. Opec countries in particular (but also,
Russia, UK, Norway...) are not able to increase output because they
are already producing to capacity.
>
> the
> protests likely caused more real economic damage
> than every Earth First!, Greenpeace and anti-free
> trade protest combined. And yet, on Britain's
> roads last week, there was none of the pepper
> spray, batons or rubber bullets now used when
> labour, human-rights and environmental activists
> stage roadblocks that cause only a small fraction
> of the fuel protest's disruption. "We need to
> maintain the rule of law," the police invariably
> say as they clear the roadways, stifling the
> protesters' messages while painting them as
> threats to our collective safety.
Is it argued that the British police are taking orders from Opposition
leader Hague, and are themselves undermining law and order in order to
destroy Blair?
We need to ground ourselves in reality. If the police had taken
draconian action, there almost certainly would have been widespread
civil disturbances in Britain. That is the reason why they were
seemingly inactive. If the pickets had persisted and volatile public
moods swung against them, there would certainly have been instant
police reprisals.
When protests are the lightning rod for generalised and often
inarticulate popular dissatisfaction, they serve an important and
well-understood political purpose. This was also true of the Poll-tax
riots which so undermined Mrs Thatcher's government. It was also true
of the British coalminers' strike of 1974, which won widespread
popular support. It was enough for miners to raise their banner on a
bridge over a railway, for passing trains to come to a stop -- because
the traindriver recognised the men on the bridge overhead as a 'picket
line'; and then too, the police did not intervene much. In that case,
it was a Tory government which was destroyed, and a Labour Government
which was elected. In that case too, the underlying cause of mass
protest was an inflationary hike in oil prices (which quickly fed thru
into dramtically increased grain prices: and shortage of bread has
always been a prime cause of popular mobilisations, from ancient Rome
to 1789 to 1917 to 1974; and may be so again, despite today's
seemingly glutted world grain markets).
Conspiracy theory does not make good history.
Mark
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