
Issue No 67		18 August 2000

LaborNET	Ask Neale	Tool of the Week

Away For The Games

You Are Watching Big Brother

By Peter Lewis

England is currently mesmerised by a TV game show that puts a group of strangers in a house to be filmed as they rip each other to pieces. The popularity of the show 'Big Brother' says a lot about Blair's Britain.

The deal is this: ten people from different walks of life set up camp in the house - which is really a series of TV studios dolled up into living quarters. The cameras never stop rolling and each night highlights are screened on TV - once in prime time, with a special adults version (complete with swearing) at 11pm. Each week one contestant is expelled from the house until there is only one person left; and they walk away with 70,000 pounds. The twist is that while the flatmates vote for two people to be expelled each week, the final choice lies with the home viewers, some one million of whom are voting each week.

It's cringe material that has captured Britain, the tabloids run front page attacks on various characters and expelled housemates get to tell their real story once they return to the outside world. Because the contestants have no contact with the outside world, they are filmed slowly going mad, exposing themselves to public scrutiny, ridicule and sometimes outright hate, all in the name of a fistful of dollars. At the end of the day, every single contestant except the final winner will be publicly rejected by the British public - a fate hitherto reserved for their political leaders.

In fact, there are those in the British labour movement who wish it was that easy to punt Tony Blair - or 'Tory Bland' as more and more unionists from both the right and left are coming to know him as. If Blair delivered the trade unions from a long era of Conservative rule, the goodwill is fast dissipating. The criticisms come from the left, right and centre, and range from irritation at his apparent preference for wealthy corporate types over normal working people to fundamental issues with the direction he is taking England.

On the positive side of the ledger are reforms to labour laws that have created, for the first time, a minimum wage and made it easier for trade unions to be recognised in workplaces - the threshold that must be passed before a union can play a formal representative role in the workplace. But to many these reforms amount to little more than a few crumbs; unions have been locked out of many of the key policy making bodies, their places going to the new entrepreneurs and old money. Blair talks like any other populist politician, more interested in pandering to public opinion by reacting to the issue of the day than charting a real way forward. At a time when the opposition Conservative Party are in disarray and miles behind in the polls, the Blair model of pragmatism now being seen as a missed opportunity.

They key area where this is driving him apart from the trade union movement is in his attitude to Europe. Faced with a xenophobic press that has mobilised public opinion against integration with Europe Blair is reluctant to drive the issue forward, even though the economic arguments are irrefutable. For the union movement this is looming as a missed opportunity to embrace the social democratic models of western Europe over the rampant individualism of American capitalism, a chance to join a large and wealthy block of nations who see organised labour as part of the solution not part of the problem. Blair may not be hiring the union-busters, but his policies are making them feel very much at home in Britain.

For a movement seeking new ideas and new momentum, it's a clear choice and right now Blair seems to be going in completely the wrong direction on so many levels. It's not just the refusal to address the excesses of Thatcherism; they also see Blair's organization model of New Labour as an explicit attempt to push the party to the centre - more like the US Democrats, where organised labour are a fringe group and big business is the real constituency. Socialism is dead but the finance markets are booming, the City is awash with money and those who have been born into privilege know they have nothing to fear. Which is all well and good, except that those who have been Labour all their lives wonder whether this is what they really fought for. This is not the USA, they say. This is not a classless society where opportunity is based on merit. In a nation as dense and rigid as England, your chances of success are still linked to your station in life.

The New Labour policies have overshadowed and marginalised the Trae Union congress, who under John Monks, has embraced what it calls 'New Unionism'. Recognising the Cold War is over, the TUC has palced a prioirity on forming partnerships with British companies that will deliver long-term security for workers. What frustrates the TUC is that Blair's public plays of centrism carry an implicit message that trade unions are still old-style dinosaurs who would seize state control if given half a chance. It's a cricature that has been put to bed, buit Blair still uses it to position himself as the moderate politifcal force.

The problem is that behind all his Third Way rhetoric, Blair's Labour is about playing the game, not shaping it - it's about showbiz and pizzazz and really big stunts. Walk around London and everything is 'millennium' - there's the giant ferris wheel 'the Millennium Eye'; the new Millennium Bridge and of course the much maligned Millennium Dome, a giant 1km marque that now dominates the docklands. But there's an artificiality about the new attractions that might serve as a warning for a government that places more stock in style than substance. As one Londoner observed: 'the Dome is crap, the Eye broke down on New Years Eve and the Bridge wobbles whenever there's a crowd.'

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Issue 67 contents

Interview: Slyly Selling the Silver
In their recently published book Privatisation, Sell-off? or Sell out? (ABC Books), Bob and Betty Walker took a long hard look at the major government asset sales of the last decade. Here they tell Workers Online what they've learnt.

Politics: Dysfunctional Society
Noel Pearson looks at the plight of Aboriginal people through a prism of class and comes up with a challenging perspective on Aboriginal welfare, law and order and the state of our society.

History: Money Power
Should the People or the Banks Rule? Reserve Bank Governor McFarlane thinks he knows the answer. Eddie Ward was pretty strongly of the opposite view when the ALP introduced the Commonwealth Banking Legislation in 1945.

International: Soccer Pro Tackles Nike
Olympic sponsor Nike is under pressure over its human rights record in the run up to the Sydney Games.

Economics: Globalony
Frank Stillwell looks at the contradictory nature of the globalising economy and fears it is turning into a race to the bottom.

Satire: IVF Debate: Federal Government Tells Lesbians: "Get Fucked"
MELBOURNE, Monday: The Federal Court decision to allow single women and lesbians to use infertility treatment in Victoria has been attacked by the Federal Government, the Catholic Church and by pro-family community groups.

Review: Confessions Of A Union Buster
It's not a new tome but the threat for Australian Unions remains the same if not greater as when this book appeared five years ago.

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» East Timor's Year One Celebration

» Senate Applauds Australian Seafarers