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Slash-And-Burn Tory Coalition Picks up Where New Labour Left

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Slash-And-Burn Tory Coalition Picks up Where New Labour Left Tells the Facts and Names the Names oct. 16-31, 2010 Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair vol. 17, no. 18 The Class Struggle Britain’s Tri-Partisan Electoral Monolith in France Slash-and-Burn Tory Coalition Picks By Larry Portis Up Where New Labour Left Off Montpellier lower power dans la gueule – By Susan Watkins “Flower power in your face!” This London was my favorite slogan seen at the he interregnum between the wide as before. Fdemonstration in Montpellier, France, on Crash of 1929 and the banking Britain’s draconian cuts only make October 16, 2010. It emblazoned a card- collapses and defaults of 1931, sense in the context of a broader pro- board sign and was carried by a young Twhich ushered in the Great Depression, gram: to shore up the financial sec- girl with curly hair and a headband. At exerts an eerie fascination today: where tor, at any cost, and to use the crisis to the bottom of the sign was printed in are we now, along the path from the Wall ram through a wish list of structural very large capital letters: Tous ensemble Street meltdown of September 2008? reforms. It was easy enough for the in- pour la Grève Generale – “All together With a depressed Atlantic core, its fi- coming Conservative-Liberal Democrat for the General Strike.” nancial system sodden with bad debt, Coalition to present its Coalition Curious, I asked the girl about the and a bubbling South, policies are set to Agreement as slightly to the left of New sign, and about the reverse side on which diverge. The Obama administration is Labour: a bill to roll back Blair’s surveil- was written, “Never trust a hippy” (“Ne pursuing a Reaganomics strategy: lower lance state, an inquiry into British col- fais jamais confiance aux hippies.”) “Is the dollar to make exports and boost the lusion in extraordinary rendition and this really a problem?” I asked, “Are there current account, while running a large torture, a mildly redistributive capital still hippies around?” Respectful of my fiscal deficit to prop up the financial gains tax; Cameron made it clear that age, she hesitated to respond, before say- sector. China, knowing very well what he was unenthusiastic about the war in ing, “Yes, there are. We are the hippies.” Reagan and Baker’s 1985 Plaza Accord Afghanistan. But once securely installed She is 15 years old and, I found, as capa- did to Japan, fears the decimation of its in office, with the unprecedented guar- ble of discussing the issues of neoliberal export sector. Fast-growing Southern antee of a 5-year fixed term brokered reform of public institutions in France economies, from Brazil to India, struggle by Whitehall chiefs, the Coalition has as anybody. At least people like her un- to control destabilizing inflows of capital. moved right to occupy New Labour’s derstand what might be called simple In Europe, while mainstream economists ground – relaunching the New Labour common sense. Students at all levels are divided over policy, political elites revolution in health, welfare and edu- and young workers know that requiring and central bankers are virtually unani- cation, which had petered out after the people to work longer, as the retirement mous on the need for austerity. trauma of September 2008, with renewed reform proposed by the Sarkozy govern- As under New Labour, so under the vigor, as part and parcel of the £80 billion ment calls for, will result in fewer jobs for new Conservative-Liberal Democrat cuts program. the young. Coalition, London’s aim is to be the van- The results will be catastrophic, as This is an ineluctable deduction, but guard in this. There is no convincing eco- Blairite marketization policies are deep- one avoided by almost all French politi- nomic rationale for the unprecedented ened in conditions of savage public- cians. Even the French Socialist Party, for four-year fiscal squeeze premised in New expenditure cuts. Osborne’s Spending example, also accepts that the retirement Labour’s March 2010 budget, trumpet- Review expects to make half a million age must be raised, in accordance with ed in the emergency budget in June put public-sector workers redundant; the ac- the decisions of the sacrosanct European forth by the new governing coalition and counting firm PwC estimates nearly half Union. Only the more radical organi- now detailed in the October 20 Spending a million more private-sector jobs will zations, such as the Communist Party, Review, laid out by the new Conservative go as well, due to reduced public-sector the Greens, the New Anti-Capitalist Chancellor George Osborne. Unlike demand and lower household spending – Party (former Ligue Communiste Greece or Ireland, the U.K.’s borrowing raising British unemployment to around Révolutionnaire) and, of course, revolu- costs are not soaring and the recession- 3.5 million, well into double digits, and tionary unions and political formations ary effects of the squeeze on government higher than the notorious jobless rates of like the CNT (Confédération Nationale revenues will likely match the reductions the Thatcher years. The governor of the du Travail), Alternative Libertaire, Lutte in spending, leaving the deficit almost as Bank of England reckons it will stay there portis continued on page 2 watkins continued on page 3 oct. 16-31, 2010 portis continued from page 1 of critical consciousness in France, the the help of her family connections and emergence of new pernicious forms of fabulous inherited wealth). “Super Sarko” Ouvrière, and the Fédération Anarchiste media distraction (typically originated in was born. call for real progressive fiscal reform, the the United States), the fact that there are It might have worked. But then, in reduction of work time, and other radi- more McDonalds restaurants per capita 2008, a bit more than one year after his cally structural changes. in France than elsewhere in the E.U., the election, the crash of the New York Stock We can analyze the facetious slogans dumbing-down of education, and all the Exchange changed everything for Super as we wish, and there are thousands of other symptoms of consensual one-di- Sarko. People in France, as elsewhere, them, conceived and formulated with mensionalism. began asking questions: Why are the humor and creativity. Whenever a move- But this is what a revolutionary tradi- banks and other financial institutions ment in France lasts for more than a few tion means. Regardless of adaptations to being given assistance, and not ordi- weeks, there is an impressive explosion of technological change, rebellious attitudes nary people? Why must the universities imaginative sloganeering, the comman- to authority persist. Popular uprisings in become unequal in status? Why are the deering of popular songs provided with France are part of a heritage going back numbers of schoolteachers being re- new and politically pointed lyrics (often at least to the seventeenth century. duced when it is generally understood far better than the originals), and street Resistance grows when a centralized that more are needed? Why are post of- theater of all types. state forces the populace to steadily give fices and railroad lines closed? Will pro- I’ve been to almost all the recent dem- up more and more of its personal liber- grammed privatization really result in onstrations in France, at least since 1986, ties and resources. In the present con- better services? when French students forced the govern- text, a good part of these liberties and At the same time, more and more in- ment to withdraw a reform of entrance resources are to be found in the fruit of formation about Sarkozy’s connections to requirements to universities. What I have former struggles. The eight-hour day and the industrial and financial elites became observed during these numerous occa- paid vacations were won through hard known. On the night of his election, he sions to participate in mass mobilizations popular struggle in 1936. The resistance gave a party for them in one of the most is what I learned during long-ago gradu- movements during the wartime occu- expensive restaurants in Paris. Sarkozy is ate studies focused on the history of pation and then the Liberation in 1945 a funny little man with a large ego, and he France and its popular movements, and gave birth to the present system of so- tends to call ridicule onto himself. Soon the ideas that accompany them or react cial security, public health services, and he became the butt of jokes, and the ob- to them – there is a revolutionary tradi- retirement benefits. These institutional ject of scurrilous speculations about his tion in France. changes quickly came to be considered need to vaunt his virility and to demean And yet, paradoxically, I’m always sur- inalienable social rights. his subordinates. Sarkozy came to be the prised. For, in between the movements, The present government in France most despised French president in recent I habitually lament the progressive loss has pledged to overturn the situation. history. Today his approval rating is in Privately, already in 2007, president the vicinity of 26 per cent. Nicolas Sarkozy said he would be the Far more important than Sarkozy’s French Margaret Thatcher. He would peccadilloes is what he represents so- force through fundamental changes, re- EDITORS cially. He is the point man for what the Alexander Cockburn ducing the power of the political left and sociologists Michel Pinçon and Monique Jeffrey St. Clair “modernizing” France by dismantling Pinçon-Charlot call the French oligarchy. state-financed social programs. During In September 2010, one month ago, these ASSISTANT EDITOR his campaign, he declared, “In this elec- authors published Le president des riches.
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