L’état – c’est New Labour

Absolutism is defined in the Encyclopaedia Britannica as “the political doctrine and practice of unlimited, centralised authority and absolute sovereignty”. It adds: “The essence of such a system is that the ruling power is not subject to regularised challenge or check by any other agency, be it judicial, legislative, religious, economic, or electoral. Louis XIV, who ruled France during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, furnished the most familiar assertion of absolutism when he said, ‘L'état, c'est moi’ (‘I am the state’).”

Although we don’t live under feudalism, and have the trappings of a parliamentary democracy, the tendency towards absolutist rule in Britain becomes clearer with each passing day. In place of Louis XIV we have the New Labour junta, whose chief absolutist is the Home Secretary, David Blunkett.

What New Labour is doing is - quietly but surely - drawing the machinery of state into its own being. In doing so, it is creating a kind of party-state bureaucracy of the type last seen in the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe. Only in Britain’s case, the New Labour regime is tied into promoting corporate and financial interests at the expense of ordinary lives in the most blatant way.

As usual in Britain, the real reasons behind changes in the state are not the ones officially given. Take the latest Blunkett move, to drop the word ‘Crown’ from both the prosecution authority (CPS) and the prison service. Blunkett says this will get the “people to feel greater confidence” in the prosecution process. Obviously, the monarchy is not involved in prosecutions. But use of the concept of ‘Crown’ has allowed the state to keep a distance from governments of the day.

That is what is disappearing. So it is hard to disagree with the Tory spokesman on constitutional affairs, Alan Duncan, who said: "The government thinks Downing Street is top of the pile and the world can follow suit. It is better that our courts, prosecution and prison service should remain distinct from the interference and arrogance of politicians."

Only last December Blunkett said he “couldn't give a toss” about complaints that he had jeopardised the trial of a terrorist suspect. Blunkett described him as “a very real threat to the life and liberty of our country”, even though no charges had been brought. He has repeatedly condemned judges for challenging his diktats. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, has remarked that the times were like the 17^th century, when “a lot of judges lost their heads” for defying the state. He suggested that ministers wanted to stop the judiciary “protecting the public from governments exceeding their democratic powers”.

The government’s disdain for the finer points of bourgeois democratic rule is not confined to Blunkett, however. The crude manipulation of the state machine for political purposes was most evident in the dossiers produced on Iraq’s so-called weapons of mass destruction (WMD). These justified the invasion and swung the vote in the House of Commons in favour of war. Yet there is convincing evidence that the intelligence agencies embellished the September 2002 dossier to please Prime Minister Blair. Apparently, this has led to a new term in Whitehall – “a John Scarlett”. He was the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee that produced the final report.

Now state officials it seems do not even require prompting to do political bidding. Take the case of Sir Andrew Turnbull, the Cabinet Secretary and head of the civil service. He took it upon himself to send Clare Short a warning letter after the ex-minister had revealed what everyone knows – that British spies bug the United Nations. Turnbull said he was “extremely disappointed” with Short’s behaviour. One constitutional expert said he was surprised at Turnbull’s action because he was merely the adviser on the ministerial code of behaviour. He told The Guardian: “The point of the code is that it is for the Prime Minister to decide whether it has been broken. Does this letter now mean that the Cabinet Secretary has now become its enforcer?” Put more bluntly, Turnbull had done “a John Scarlett”.

This increasingly despised government rests more and more on the state. Short’s outburst has Labour MPs and ministers queuing up to defend MI5 and MI6 and confirm their loyalty. We get the message. Behind the cloak of the “war on terror”, New Labour is building an absolutist regime. Its victims are asylum seekers, petty offenders who fill the jails to bursting point, protesters, trade unionists – literally anyone with a dissident point of view about free-market global capitalism or who opposes dictatorial regimes supported by New Labour in other countries, such as Israel and Turkey. The parliamentary process is passing into history as New Labour “modernises” the state in its own image.

All these changes, however, have the merit of directing our attention to the issue of the state, its class character, and what state power is actually for. In France, Louis XIV’s successor was executed in the French Revolution that began in 1789. The feudal absolutist state was toppled. A similar process took place in Britain during the 17^th century Cromwellian revolution against Charles I. When a state has outlived its purpose and oppresses the people, it demands to be overthrown. Donning the mantle of an absolutist capitalist state is a dangerous road for New Labour to have embarked on.

Movement for a Socialist Future
3 March 2004