So … why isn’t Caroline speaking?

Saturday’s big London demonstration against the cuts matters.  It matters more in the face of a Budget that, predictably enough, has favoured big business and non-doms at the expense of ordinary people – and following economic indicators showing that Osborne’s slash-and-burn economic policies are failing.  Yes, marches don’t change the world. The biggest demonstration in London in recent years didn’t stop Blair going to war in Iraq.  But they can and do send important messages – especially where there is more than one party of Government.

So it’s unfortunate that, by playing party politics, the TUC appears to be setting itself up to reducing the impact of that march. It appears that the only politician invited to address the rally is Labour Party leader Ed Miliband.  Whether deliberate or not, the effect of that decision is to give the impression that the march is linked to the Labour Party.

But it needs to be bigger than that.  The movement against cuts is vast and inclusive – involving public sector workers, people defending their libraries in small towns in middle England, passers-by cheering on activists closing down Vodafone stores.  Many of those people voted for parties other than Labour – not a few voted Liberal Democrat, some will even have voted Tory on the basis of Cameron’s lies about defending the NHS.

Moreover, as the student demonstrations in London late last year showed, the game is changing.  Those who said that those demonstrations meant that we were entering post-party politics were, I think, wrong; but they did show that politics, especially the politics of opposition, is being re-moulded in a way that transcends traditional party politics.  The way in which the Liberal Democrats ditched overnight almost every commitment on which they fought the elections and became eager supporters of the Tory economic shock doctrine is part of that dynamic – the fact that their betrayal hit hardest an emerging generation of new voters was a key factor.

And this is about uniting all those who reject the economics of cuts and deficit extremism, and taking the economic debate into a different and new place. It’s actually a place where the Labour leadership – which fought the last election on a manifesto drafted by Ed Miliband that proposed cuts – is not yet comfortable, and is probably lagging behind its activists.

So, why just Ed Miliband?  Why not Caroline Lucas, who has become a far more consistent critic of the deficit consensus than Labour?  Why not other political groups like UK Uncut who have transcended the party system?  It seems to me that either you have a pluralism of party political speakers, or none at all.  I freely admit I have an interest in this; I’m a Green Party member (although circumstances mean my activism is about pounding the keys on my laptop than pounding the streets), and I’m proud that Caroline Lucas is my MP.  But what seems to me crucial is that the TUC recognise the strength that comes from diversity and pluralism in a situation where the big issues do not split along easy political lines.

Selling Wootton Bassett short

It has been announced that Wootton Bassett will henceforth be known as “Royal”, like Tunbridge Wells and Leamington Spa.  The decision was apparently taken in response to a personal initiative by David Cameron, and, we are told, recognises the vigils undertaken by people in the town as the bodies of British soldiers were repatriated after being landed at RAF Lyneham.  As that RAF base is closing, the bodies of British servicemen killed overseas will no longer pass through the town centre.  It’s a curious dedication – the two existing Royal towns acquired their honorific not to mark any particular distinction, but as places were Queen Victoria and her successor Edward VII enjoyed taking the waters.

When I heard this announcement, two thoughts came to mind.

First, I was reminded of Alan Bennett’s comments about remembrance in his play The History Boys:

We don’t like to admit the war was even partly our fault cos so many of our people died. And all the mourning’s veiled the truth. It’s not “lest we forget”, it’s “lest we remember”. That’s what all this is about – the memorials, the Cenotaph, the two minutes’ silence. Because there is no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.

I’ve long felt uneasy about the vigils at Wootton Bassett.  I don’t want in any way to impugn the intent or integrity of those taking part, and I do not want to denigrate the comfort that these vigils bring to those remaining behind, although it’s important to understand that some locals were concerned about what they regarded as “grief tourism”.  I do not want in any way to trivialise or disparage the bravery and loss that the vigils recognise.  But I do feel that they have been used – especially by the armchair generals of the tabloid press – to legitimise what is really a sordid and illegal war for oil, one which the West cannot win and one in which the deaths of young British men are utterly pointless and needless.  It uses solemnity and patriotism to deflect attention from the political reality, and to vindicate the politicians whose indefensible decisions have sent these young men to their deaths.

And, second, I wish I could rid myself of the belief that this gesture by Cameron’s government is utterly cynical.  Not just because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but because it is closely related to the Coalition’s domestic economic agenda.

The closure of RAF Lyneham will have a desperate economic effect on Wootton Bassett.  Local campaigners including former newspaper tycoon Eddy Shah claimed that some local business could lose up to half their trade.  Local Conservative MP James Gray told an adjournment debate in the House of Commons:

the local economy depends to a significant degree on the base. Something like 3,400 jobs are directly or indirectly dependent on it, according to a recent survey by Wiltshire council. About £90 million within the local economy comes from Lyneham. If the site were to be left vacant and nothing were to happen there it would be a disaster for the local economy.

In other words, Wootton Bassett is just one more community that is reeling at the effect of public expenditure cuts – another victim of the Coalition’s deficit fetishism.  One is bound to wonder whether this honorific is anything more than a rather hollow and empty sop to a town whose economic decline would conflict with the political narrative about the significance of the war in Afghanistan.

… but it's booming in Basra. Possibly.

The folks in Britain contemplating an economic situation that appears to be going downhull fast could at least celebrate the fact that, according to today’s Guardian, the economy in Basra is booming.  That was the message from the outgoing UK Commander, the splendidly-named Major General Barney White-Spunner.

It appears that property prices have doubled since March,  restaurants are opening up and oil-rich Kuwaitis are beginning to move in.

It’s no doubt considerable comfort to the locals if the security situation is improving – though some interviewed by the Guardian challenge this, and elsewhere in the paper Richard Norton-Taylor argues that the British military should be wary of taking the credit - but it’s the measure of prosperity that seems to me to be so striking.  The things the Major-General are essentially privatised pleasures, and closely echo the language that New Labour politicians in Britain use to identify a “thriving community” – more cafes and restaurants, a dynamic housing market (not that there’s been much of that lately).

Values

It’s a take on prosperity that I find hard to accept.  I still cannot understand why a rapid increase in the price of that most basic commodity, a roof over one’s head, can be taken as a sign of well-being; the reality is that those in need are excluded.  And why is a “thriving community” never defined in terms of the collective things – schools, libraries, allotments, public space?  In the chaos of post-invasion Iraq, surely the most important aspiration of the population is security – the dissenting voices in the Guardian piece surely imply that.  Why, then, if the Major-General has a good story to tell, does he find it necessary to resort to the language of consumer frippery?