LABOUR premier Tony Blair spoke about the fight against ‘global terrorism’ and called for free-trade ‘globalisation’ in his foreign policy speech at the City of London’s Guildhall on Monday night.
Having spent last week as an advocate of the police in the debate on the anti-terror laws, he was addressing his other major constituency, the bankers, monopolists and business leaders of British imperialism in the City of London.
Blair began by saying: ‘Occasionally we debate globalisation as if it were something imposed by governments or business on unwilling people. . . It is the individual decisions of millions of people that is creating and driving globalisation.’
So he began with the big lie! He claimed that every individual is responsible for the capitalist mode of production – private property and production for profit – from low paid workers stacking shelves in supermarkets to subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.
The imperialist politician Blair was showing that he is determined to defend and maintain capitalism at all costs.
However, he exposed his fears for the future when he warned: ‘Pressure grows on energy supply. As the global financial markets become bigger and reach out further, so the confidence on which they rest becomes simultaneously more powerful and more vulnerable to anything that destroys that confidence.’
He is haunted by the oil crisis and fears of a financial meltdown as share and property prices, inflated by rampant speculation, face a catastrophic collapse.
In order to dispel his demons, Blair spoke out against ‘hundreds of thousands on the streets to protest against America’, ‘extremism’ that is ‘fanned through the thoroughly malign use of modern communications’ and the ‘bogeyman’ of ‘global terrorism’.
In relation to this, it has been reported that the British Army, which is to head the occupation of Afghanistan when the US withdraws 4,000 troops in the New Year, is attempting to get Australia, Canada, New Zealand and several other countries to provide troops for this US-inspired military adventure.
The main thrust of Blair’s Guildhall speech was to advocate the success of the Doha round of trade talks, which are to be continued at the G8 summit in Hong Kong next month, under the British Presidency of the G8.
Blair welcomed the ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign as ‘entirely benign’ because he wants to continue to use the issue of poverty in Africa as a propaganda weapon in bludgeoning European and other trade rivals into accepting President George Bush’s and his free trade agenda.
He said: ‘I want to concentrate tonight on another example: trade. The challenge is clear – can we make trade work for all of us; or do we continue with a system with two billion locked out of prosperity and denied a chance to work their way out of poverty. This is the test for all of us. A test of our commitment to make globalisation work. . . that is what the Doha Development round is about.’
As Bush’s ‘Trojan Horse’ in the EU, Blair went even further declaring: ‘The US President recently threw down the gauntlet to the rest of the world in his speech to the United Nations in which he called for the removal of all agricultural and industrial subsidies, and said the US would do it if other countries did too. We must take up this plea and answer it.
‘We need a comprehensive, ambitious agreement to cut barriers to trade in three key areas: agriculture, non-agricultural market access, and services.’
The bankers and monopolists in Blair’s audience were no doubt happily working out how many billions they could make, if Bush and Blair can pull it off.
But nobody was misled by the Labour leader’s performance. An Oxfam spokesman said: ‘Tony Blair wanted this to be a “Year for Africa”, but rich countries have put self interest ahead of everything else and what’s on the table now, if agreed in Hong Kong, would actually make the continent worse off.’
A TGWU spokesman also attacked the speech. He said: ‘Tony Blair is addressing the business-friendly free trade agenda rather than the people friendly fair trade agenda. Free trade opens the way to the exploitation of labour which cannot surely be acceptable if we are trying, at heart, to alleviate poverty.’
It is clear that Blair represents British imperialism and has declared war, on the working class at home and on the labouring masses of the world.
The way to end poverty is to bring down the Blair regime, smash British imperialism and go forward to a workers’ government that will implement socialist policies, including providing material support to the liberation struggles of the oppressed peoples in the Middle East, Africa and throughout the world.