Fuel blockades expose union leaders' lack of fight

Picketing works!

Finally, someone is taking action against the Blair government! While socialists should welcome the fuel depot blockades, it is unfortunate that this first real test of the Blair regime has not come from the organised labour movement, but from the ranks of 'middle England': farmers, self-employed haulage contractors and taxi drivers. The protests themselves may be the work of a very small group of people, but the effects are being seen all over the country as petrol supplies run out.

Importantly, the popular support for the action is not running out along with the fuel. Even those inconvenienced by the protests, car drivers interviewed by the media queuing for fuel at service stations, have recognised that though those directly involved in the action are predominantly self-employed businessmen, the issue of high indirect taxation is one that affects most working people. With petrol prices at around 85p a litre and tax making up 63.5p of that, it's a very straightforward business to identify who is responsible for the cost of fuel.

But it's not just that. In comments and interviews, public support for the fuel protesters quickly broadens out into more general frustration at the government. The lorry drivers on the blockades are becoming figureheads for people who know the government is not listening to them - about the NHS, about pensions, about the minimum wage - but don't see any way to make their anger heard.

There is a vacuum in British politics where the organised Labour movement ought to be - a vacuum created first by Thatcher's anti-union laws, and later by the craven refusal of the union leaders themselves to mount any kind of resistance to either the Tories, or the Blairites that have followed them. Into that vacuum, finally, someone has stepped; but the rather unlikely alliance of small farmers and lorry drivers cannot be a long-term replacement for the trade union movement.

Blair's reaction to the blockade has been appallingly predictable. He has donned his 'earnest statesman' demeanour and tried his hardest to weasel out of any responsibility or action, first putting the blame on OPEC for the recent rises in the international price of crude oil, then on the protesters for having the gall to use direct action, and finally on the oil companies for not trying to drive through the blockades! Blair has said that pickets and blockades have no place in a democracy. The irony here is that this dispute reveals precisely what a sham his 'democracy' actually is - the clear majority of the population agree that fuel taxes are too high, and yet the government is still not prepared to cut them.

Other calculations - the Treasury's tax income and a determination not to raise income tax, in the first place - come first. In that kind of society, direct action is not only appropriate but essential. Pickets, strikes, blockades and occupations are not out-dated or unnecessary, they are vital tools that the workers' movement in Britain needs to start using again to ensure that our interests are served.

Even in this case, where the demonstrators are largely led by the self-employed, rather than workers, taking the action has developed much further a real understanding of what democracy could be like. On the blockade lines in Ellesmere Port in Cheshire, the pickets are voting on a case-by-case basis whether to let the tankers out of the refinery - supplies for emergency services are being let through, and if there is a query over the merit of a particular load, the driver presents his case to the picket line and awaits their decision. Replicate this experience across the country, and you begin to see how workers' democracy - active decision-making by the people rather than by professional political charlatans - could transform society.

Against the power of the multinationals, big business and the state, direct action is an essential weapon - it has been central to every gain the workers' movement has made - from the creation and legalisation of trade unions in the nineteenth century, to women winning the vote, to defeating the Poll Tax.

If this kind of protest can have such a startling effect with small numbers, just think what impact mass workers' protests would make if we decided to resist privatisation or PFI, or took action to secure better funding for public services. If a campaign to cut fuel prices can garner this much public support - even while the protest inconveniences millions of people - just think what support could be mustered by a campaign in defence of the NHS or of education. And just think what we could achieve if the battles over privatisation, the health service, factory closures and fuel prices were being waged all at the same time.

It is probably these very thoughts running round inside Bill Morris's head that led him to condemn the protests as 'anarchy'. For the union leaderships, the success of the fuel blockades must be terrifying. If this protest can go outside the law, close the majority of petrol stations up and down the country, and still retain mass public support, then most of their arguments against their own members taking action have been knocked down in one go.

Morris's members inside the refineries seem to have a much better attitude - fraternising with the picketers and, apparently, pledging to only move emergency supplies.

It's not just the union leaders that have condemned the action. On the other side of the class struggle, business leaders are now beginning to join the propaganda campaign against the blockades. Initially reticent to do so, since the protesters - for once - are not their class enemies, but in many cases small businessmen themselves, representatives of capitalism must now be worried that the action has been just too successful, and they're keen to see it wound down.

If the blockades remain throughout the next few days, then Blair's tough stand will be increasingly difficult to maintain. He has put all his faith in the ability of the police to break the blockades by force - a tactic that thus far the police have seemed remarkably reluctant to use (in striking contrast to their behaviour during the miners' and printers' strikes) - and in the desire of the fuel companies themselves to 'win' the dispute - which is questionable, at best; if the protesters win, and fuel tax is cut, the oil companies' sales revenues are likely to increase without any loss of profits. As things stand, they can't lose. That's just one reason why socialists should combine support for the protests with calls for the oil companies and their distributors to be brought under democratic public control, through nationalisation.

But even if the blockades are beaten down, the value of this protest should not be underestimated. The blockades seem to have been established startlingly easily and with little forward planning. Their success suggests that even victory for the government this time will only be a temporary respite in this dispute. And we can hope that activists in the union movement have been taking notes.

A permanent victory for the protesters can only be achieved if they link their fight with the other simmering disputes against the government, and broaden their demands to take on some of the other aspects of the transport problems - proper funding for public transport and taking bus and train services back into public ownership, for instance. That will inevitably cause strains inside the current coalition of farmers and truckers, who historically have been opponents of such demands. The logic of the protests has taken those now blockading for lower fuel taxes into a confrontation with the system that both allows them their living and impoverishes them at the same time. Socialists - and the working class generally - need to convince them that an alternative system is possible and desirable, and that the working class is capable of securing it.

We should be supporting calls to cut tax on fuel - it is a reactionary and regressive tax and one that fails to fundamentally address any of the environmental questions, whilst penalising the poor for the lack of adequate public transport. We need high quality, reliable, safe public transport - not high fuel prices.

Environmental campaigners and green activists can - and must - find common ground with the blockaders in demanding a reduction in fuel prices alongside increased taxation of the rich to pay for improving the public transport system. And while they may be a minor player in the calculation of petrol prices at pumps in Britain right now, the oil companies are as complicit as any government in keeping international oil prices high and boosting their profits at the expense of workers. The only solution is to take all the oil companies into public ownership, and to use the natural resources of the planet for need instead of profit.