CENTRE POINT
Consumer boycotts are not democratic.
They are just money fighting money
SIMON JENKINS
The anarchist's task is to make reason so costly that a ruler opts for chaos. As I watched pictures of the Brent Spar being towed out to the Atlantic last week, I won- dered how soon chaos would force it to turn back and dump its filth in the bowels of mother earth. The answer was 24 hours.
Every account of the argument that I have read indicates that this will be more dangerous. Every account suggests that Shell was doing the right thing. The amount of toxic waste involved — whether a tumblerful or 130 tons — was being sent one and a half miles deep in the Atlantic. There it would have been diluted a million times to the point of total harmlessness. The procedure met all guidelines set by the International Maritime Organisation and was defended by perfectly reputable marine ecologists.
So Greenpeace was wrong? Greenpeace is never wrong. It is small against big, weak against strong, romantic against dull, young against old, denim against suits. Shell can- not be right. Like Tory governments and commodity brokers, multinational compa- nies have 'wrongness' built into their articles of association. What they do is self-interest- ed, cynical and anti-public. Thus when Greenpeace accuses Shell of dumping 14,000 tons of toxicity in the sea, the hun- dredfold distortion does not need correc- tion. A leaked government paper opposing a different proposal is described by the BBC as 'devastating'. The Independent on Sunday devotes one paragraph of an editorial to saying that Shell was right and the rest to saying that it still must be wrong because Shell, the oil industry, the Major govern- ment and anyone to whom Greenpeace takes exception can never be trusted. Shell must therefore be prevented from what is termed 'enjoying the benefits of being right'.
The result of this McCarthyite double- think was a boycott of Shell products across Europe. Shell filling stations in Germany and the Netherlands were deserted and sales down by 20 per cent. Garages were fire-bombed and the German chancellor was reduced to buttonholing John Major at the G7 summit.
While these antics have been taking place on the high seas, a no less bizarre negotiation has been under way in White- hall. The transport department is offering to compensate the Tarmac construction company for the delays cased by 'green' protesters against the digging of the Twyford Down M3 motorway in 1992. Tar- mac wants over £20 million while the Gov- ernment is prepared to offer just £8 mil- lion. Since companies get penalised for not ending contracts on time, they feel govern- ments should be penalised for not allowing them to start on time. They will deliver the road; ministers should have delivered the politics.
Like the Brent Spar, the Twyford Down road was more than a matter of money, but could well have resolved itself the same way. The desecration of what had been declared an 'area of outstanding natural beauty' appeared to be (and in my view is) an environmental outrage. There would be no question but that in France, Germany or Italy the motorway would have been tun- nelled under this great hill. British govern- ments are prepared to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayers' money on tunnels for the Channel Tunnel railway or the Lime- house-Poplar road link because these are politically 'high profile'. Twyford Down was somehow provincial and unfashionable.
Yet the protesters were able to impose a huge cost on the motorway builders. Tarmac and others estimate that the extra amount caused by opponents of the Twyford Down road, including public enquiries, surveys, lawyers, security and above all contractors' delays, was more than the entire cost of the road contract itself, at £25 million. Add both together and the sum could run to over £50 million. The original, much contested esti- mate for the tunnel was £80-100 million. In other words, had the protesters threatened to employ Greenpeace from the start, they might conceivably have made the tunnel `economic'. That might not have stopped the Government, which came to see the cutting as a sign of machismo. The white scar on the hill above Winchester was meant to prove that Big Government was boss. A few loonies camped in trees or draped over JCBs would not stop it in its tracks.
In the case of Twyford Down I believe the protesters were environmentally right, `This steak's off, my compliments to the chef.' but they lost. In the case of Shell they were wrong but have ended up winning. But all depends on money. Both groups of protesters can now impose such huge costs on governments and companies that right- ness and wrongness only matter to the devotees of reason in politics. What is signifi- cant is the power of these protesters to throw their weight about. They can show two fin- gers to anyone, including democratic govern- ments and taxpayers, and blackmail any big project into being abandoned or only com- pleted according to their specification.
Marxism Today once ran a special issue on the new agitprop called Weak is Strong. This Good Trotskyite Guide showed how capital- ism might be crippled by manipulating tech- nology and the media through quasi-terrorist spectaculars. The catalogue ran the gamut from sit-ins, computer viruses and poisoned food tins to kidnapping and mortaring tourist buses. (The magazine did not advo- cate such activities, merely pointed out the vulnerability of capitalism to them.) Small groups using simple weapons could bankrupt companies, render big projects uneconomic and punish tourist economies. They could also turn democratic leaders into frightened despots distanced from the public by security screens. Bourgeois governments would become unpopular and capitalist investment impossibly expensive.
Greenpeace seems to have taken some of this to heart. Had Shell always intended to bring Brent Spar ashore, break it up and sink its toxic waste in the earth, the green commandos would have abseiled into the pit to defend the integrity of the British water table. They would have demanded that the rig be towed out to sea and buried in the depths. In the present climate, Shell could not win. Commentators, too embar- rassed to admit that Greenpeace might be wrong, accuse Shell of having messed up its `presentation'.
Shell's caving-in to the green anarchism has been for the same reason that Green- peace claimed it was towing Brent Spar out to sea. The protesters merely changed the commercial equation and Shell have put profit before the environment. Consumer boycotts are not democratic. They are just money fighting money. They are the result of somebody having lost a reasoned argu- ment and chosen to continue it by other means.
Simon Jenkins writes for the Times.
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