Make oil bosses pay

The remaining gloss on the Blair government has finally come off. Opinion polls taken at the end of the oil crisis show a sharp fall in Labour support and of Blair's personal rating.

Even a relatively small number of people blockading refineries were able to challenge the power of the government and halt fuel supplies, and won widespread popular support. At the same time, the oil bosses who Blair has lionised and promoted treated the elected government with contempt, at first tacitly backing some aspects of the protest and then when it finished, hiking the price of petrol.

The situation created contradictory feelings among socialists. It was evident straight away that direct action works and that had it been called over any one of a number of disputes by the TUC it would have won mass support. The sense of a government on the rocks, and of a society where people suddenly started discussing and arguing about the real issues they confront, was apparent. But it was also true that many of those involved in the dispute were removed from and previously hostile to the labour movement. Its demands did not confront the much greater iniquities of the tax system. Its composition was not workers but sections of farmers and hauliers, including some quite big businessmen. Many were the same people who broke the miners' strike in 1984-85.

Some drew the conclusion that this meant we should support the government breaking protests. Bill Morris, the TUC and a number of Labour activists drew the analogy with previous right wing protests and uncritically backed Blair. This missed the other dimension--the widespread support was an encapsulation of the bitterness against the government, of its arrogance and contempt for ordinary people, and of the decay of the democratic process which means most people have no expression for their grievances. They are pleased to see action on whatever basis which appears to remedy this.

The attitude of the union leaders who slavishly support this government despite repeatedly being kicked in the teeth can only further alienate many workers. Instead they should be putting forward class demands which can begin to turn this crisis to our advantage. Investment in public transport, taxation of the oil companies, earnings-linked pensions and subsidies for the old and poor would all bring substantial gains for workers and open up the argument about what sort of society we want.

The protesters have given the government 60 days to meet their demands. We should use those 60 days to put forward our demands for taxing the oil companies, proper investment and resources in public services and for the Labour government to start delivering the reforms its supporters want. We should point to the dangers that this kind of protest can create, as the right scents it can go further on the offensive. But the right remains weak and the Tory Party still has serious problems--not least its difference with the majority of the ruling class over joining the euro. Labour's problems stem from its failure to deliver reforms on the one hand, and its failure to stand up to the employers and to groups like the Countryside Alliance on the other. Caught between a rock and a hard place, it has been seriously weakened.

If the left is to gain it has to go on the offensive now. If the working class movement stays passive, it will be defeated. The oil protests have demonstrated how easy it is for direct action to win. We need the strikes and protests over hospital closures, education cuts, job losses and pensions which can begin to shift the balance of forces.