01.08.2001
Foot and mouth
Blair scapegoats farmers
Foot and mouth disease (FMD) is back on the front pages. The political motives for this resurgence of interest should be pretty obvious to anyone.
Back in March, with Labour geared up for a May 3 general election, Blair?s spin doctors dutifully informed the media that, despite FMD, Britain was defiantly ?still open for business?. When it became apparent, however, that public opinion was broadly against holding a poll in the middle of such an epidemic, and given the prospect of party political broadcasts being relayed alongside TV footage of massive funeral pyres across the countryside, the story changed virtually overnight. Suddenly, it was ?in the national interest? to delay a vote.
Blair duly took charge of the cabinet office committee charged with handling the crisis. At the time, his intervention must have seemed almost risk-free, though its cynical aims were transparent: first, to distract public attention from the appalling way in which the already discredited and since abolished Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Maff) had been handling the problem; secondly, and most important of all, to get the story out of the headlines. The latter objective was, of course, effortlessly accomplished on May 3 itself, when the prime minister gave a press conference telling the nation, on the basis of expert advice from epidemiologists, that the fight against FMD was ?in the home straight?, and that by June new cases of infection would be virtually down to zero, thus clearing the way for a June 7 election which would certainly preoccupy the media for weeks to come.
In fairness to their professional impartiality, the experts did warn that the epidemic might have a ?long tail?. Months later, this ?tail? shows no signs of withering. At the time of writing, 1,914 cases of FMD have been confirmed, with a further 1,450 cases estimated to have occurred within the area of ?dangerous contact culls?, in which animals were put down without specific testing for the disease. Total case load to date, therefore, is around 3,364 and steadily rising. So far, some 3,626,000 animals have been destroyed, and the number of premises affected by the disease is touching the 9,000 mark. True, the average daily number of new cases has been in single figures for some time, but now we find that many tens of thousands of free-roaming sheep farmed in the hills of Wales and Yorkshire are apparently contaminated. What is more, the prospect of a mass outbreak in these areas, some of which have been hitherto unaffected, and which border on regions heavily dependent on the rearing of cattle and pigs, must be regarded as a statistical probability. To speak of another impending crisis for farming is no exaggeration.
It is against this background that recent government-inspired press and TV comment needs to be assessed. In an interesting parallel with the crumbling peace process in the north of Ireland, the main problem, from the point of view of the government, is now about apportioning blame for the failure of a major policy with the successful outcome of which the prime minister has personally associated himself. Hence, last week, financial support for cleaning and disinfection operations on English and Welsh farms was - again thanks to Blair?s direct personal intervention - suddenly and arbitrarily suspended. Why? Because, as a result of alleged ?collusion? between farmers and contractors, the scheme was costing far too much.
Within a couple of days, and without any prior consultation with the National Farmers Union or other interest group, it was announced that the standardised compensation scheme for livestock, introduced back in March to provide the financial basis for urgently needed restocking, had also been suspended. Why? Because of supposedly fraudulent abuse of the scheme by farmers and valuers; thereafter, on the basis of confidential, unattributable briefings, the press revealed that the newly created Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) was investigating cases in which farmers had purportedly infected their own herds and flocks in order to claim compensation.
The message was clear: farmers have been ?on the make?. It is they and not the government who are to blame for the fact the epidemic continues and that it is reportedly threatening to cost upwards of ?2 billion - minimum.
To those who have been involved in trade union struggles - whether the government is Tory or Labour - this scenario must ring some familiar bells. Whenever it finds itself painted into a corner, whether through bad administration, or in the battle of ideas, the first thing any government does is to use its privileged access to the media in order to smear its opponents by disseminating lies and distortions. Where the FMD situation is concerned, New Labour?s tactical and strategic interests dictated that it had to isolate and scapegoat farmers: tactically, it was necessary in order to deflect attention away from the Blair government?s catastrophically inadequate handling of the crisis itself; strategically, given the avowed intention of the already powerful Countryside Alliance to broaden its field of campaigning to incorporate all issues affecting the rural economy and way of life, including the interests of those many businesses who derive their earnings from tourism and such like, rubbishing the farmers is an essential part of a broader plan to defuse the potentially dangerous extraparliamentary backlash which the Countryside Alliance - especially in conjunction with the Conservative Party - could represent to Labour, particularly in the wake of an expected economic downturn.
Let us look at the facts in relation to the most serious allegations: namely that farmers have been infecting their own livestock. It emerges that on Friday July 27 Defra ministers Lord Whitty and Elliot Morley gave non-attributable briefings in which it was disclosed inter alia that Defra are investigating a case in Cumbria involving the discovery of a lamb?s tail infected with FMD. What is more, a mysterious bag of sheep?s tails and innards had been spotted outside a fish and chip shop in Kikby Stephen (believe me, I am not making this up!). Another bag of innards, a cow?s shin bone and a cow?s tail had been discovered within recent weeks in other separate areas of Cumbria. Ergo, there is prima facie ?evidence? of deliberate ?self-infection? by farmers eager to rescue themselves from the threat of bankruptcy by milking the system.
The July 29 issue of The Independent on Sunday topped its front page with the tale of Nuala Preston, a small farmer from Pembrokeshire, who had allegedly been approached by telephone by a ?businessman? willing to provide her with an infected sheep in return for a payment of ?2,000 in unmarked notes to be left in a lay-by. This ?event? had apparently taken place weeks before and the police had rightly argued that there was nothing for them to investigate. By last weekend, however, the story obviously had a political purpose to serve, so it was duly produced with a journalistic flourish. No agency - neither the police nor Defra?s own investigative branch - will say that they have any hard evidence relating to such claims; merely that ?rumours? have been rife - hardly a novelty in the countryside.
As regards claims about overspending on cleaning and disinfection, and manipulation of compensation payments, there seems little reason to doubt that some farmers have taken advantage of the broad leeway afforded them by Maff and Defra?s own policy parameters, hastily devised ?on the hoof? in response to unforeseen contingencies. But again, reportage has been uninformed and misleading - particularly in relation to compensation. By setting a ?generous? level for standardised compensation back in March, Maff hoped to speed up the disposal of infected stock, but, given the wide range of values involved, it sensibly allowed farmers the option to go for independent valuation. Unsurprisingly, the majority did so, not least because many of the affected animals were from valuable pedigree and blood lines whose worth in terms of stock breeding was intrinsically way above the projected level of putative payment.
Hence, thanks to entirely imaginary market conditions, what was intended as a ceiling became a floor for subsequent valuation. The contradictions and absurdities of the ensuing situation derive not from the greed or rapacity of individual farmers, but inherently from the market itself. If faced with the instantaneous ruin of a life?s hard work and the prospect of penury, who of us would not have sought to get the best price for our assets?
Given the current debacle, it is noticeable that Blair has so far steadfastly resisted proposals for a full public inquiry into the outbreak from its inception. Instead he wants to limit things to a ?scientific review?, with no specific remit nor any date, save that it must be held only when the epidemic is ?under control? - notwithstanding the fact that Blair?s mouthpieces have been telling us for months that FMD already was ?under control?.
But the bourgeois establishment is no monolith. The overwhelming arrogance of the executive is already being challenged by the national audit office (NAO) - the public expenditure watchdog. Under the leadership of the resplendently named ?comptroller and auditor general?, Sir John Bourn, it will conduct its own inquiry. This is unwelcome news for Blair, who is currently busy lecturing people on the other side of the world on the virtues of democracy and open government.
Had it not been for the intervention of the NAO, the prime minister would eventually, in all probability, have assigned an inquiry to a parliamentary select committee, which, under the rules of the House of Commons, can only question current ministers as to the actions of their departments. By pure coincidence, of course, in the wake of the June 7 election, not only was Maff abolished and replaced by Defra, but all the ministers intimately involved in handling the FMD crisis found themselves either running other departments or consigned to the back benches. That stratagem will not now succeed. The NAO has the power to order witnesses to give evidence in public before the Commons public accounts committee, and its findings, due to appear early next year, should make interesting reading.
In their habitual knee-jerk reaction to the problems raised by FMD, many comrades on the British left will say in response to all of this, ?Who cares?? After all, whether they are the titled landowners of the aristocracy, the ?barley barons? of the big rural bourgeoisie or just petty bourgeois small proprietors or tenants scratching an often meagre living from mixed arable and livestock holdings, farmers represent one percent of the population at most and are they not, to borrow a phrase, just ?one reactionary mass? - all Tories anyway? Why should we give a damn about their plight? What have they got to do with the working class?
In its ultra-leftist philistinism, such an approach ignores the obvious fact that here we are confronted by a genuine grievance, just as we were last year, with the spontaneous petrol protests staged by the likes of Farmers for Action, hauliers and other small transport businesses. Our task must be to create splits by making alliances. Split the rural petty bourgeoisie from the big rural bourgeoisie. Split the rural workforce and self-employed farmers from the Tories and the Countryside Alliance. Do we merely write off the rural petty bourgeoisie as irredeemably reactionary and doomed to economic extinction or do we try to win them as allies to a common struggle against the state and the anarchic irrationalities of the market? Our minimum programme and its vision of a planned and democratic system of food production and countryside conservation is surely one that can be used at least to neutralise sections of the petty bourgeoisie.
Such an approach is aimed at winning the maximum concentration of forces against our main enemy - the UK state, behind which lies the system of capital. Hence, in the CPGB?s ?Socialist Alliance draft programme? we include under our immediate demands a section (3.18) addressing the needs of small businesses and farms (See Jack Conrad Towards a Socialist Alliance party). At the March 10 Birmingham national conference of the Socialist Alliance, it was good to see that this message had got across and that an amendment to the proposed policy document, passed nem con by all those present, specifically acknowledged the existence of a ?rural crisis in Britain? and proposed concrete measures to overcome it as part of the manifesto on which the Socialist Alliance fought the June general election.
In relation to the petty bourgeoisie in general the CPGB argues for a set of immediate programmatic demands, including the abolition of VAT, the cancellation of small business debts and mortgages, cheap credit and generous subsidies. Measures which do not save anyone from the concentrating logic of capital, but temporarily serve to stave off its effects by putting politics in command.
As communists, we struggle for the rounded development of all human beings, a fight which even now intrinsically challenges the distinction between urban and rural living. This means, for one thing, a variegated agricultural sector which includes some large but many small farms, the latter being adequately remunerated and incentivised to provide the people with cheap, plentiful and wholesome food; a countryside served by frequent and cheap transport; a distribution of industry and population that is rational, shortening the distance between the point of production and consumption in a way that must put an end to the profligate use of finite resources in the haulage sector.
All this can only be fully achieved on the basis of a society where, not production for profit, but production on the basis of need, production geared to a central, democratic plan, becomes a reality.
Michael Malkin