Well, Blair did say he had no reverse gear (unless Bush says otherwise, of course). And who can deny that Tony was right when he said that he wanted to "listen"? If you are big business or tell him what he wants to hear then he is all ears. If you are merely the population whom he claims to represent then that is a different matter. Then "listening Tony" becomes "Tone deaf" and democracy is best served by, well, ignoring the majority. "The public was unlikely to be receptive," the minutes note. They also noted that a ban on GM crops would be "the easy way out." So following the wishes of the majority is undesirable for a so-called democratic government? While anarchists are not surprised at such nonsense, hopefully it will make supporters of the state question whether or not it exists to represent the people or not.
Yet the problem remains. The people do not want GM. Rest assured, there is an answer -- blind them with science. "Opposition might," it says, "eventually be worn down by solid, authoritative scientific argument." This is similar to the approach used to bolster the government's case for invading Iraq. And as weak for "scientific argument" does support GM, for obvious reasons
GM modification is new, with unknown consequences. Until we know more about it, it seems incredulous to give it the opportunity to do who knows what kind of damage. Given this, it is the government which is avoiding the scientific argument in favour of a "suck it and see" approach. While such short-termism may make perfect sense in the market, it makes little sense if you place human and environmental needs at the core of sensible decision making. If GM goes ahead, it will spread. Non-GM farming will become impossible as nature does not stop for human made property lines. As well as being unknown, the long term impact on nature of GM is, in all likelihood, non-reversible. But why worry about that when there are profits to be made?
The arguments most commonly raised in favour of GM are hardly scientific. A common assertion is that humans have been genetically modifying plants via crossbreeding for centuries. Very true, but irrelevant. When was the last time a farmer crossbred a flower with a lobster? It is nothing like evolution or selective breeding. It is the mixing of genes from different species.
So the environment secretary, Margaret Beckett, was simply showing her ignorance when she said there was no scientific case for an outright ban on the cultivation of GM crops. She also indicated the second prone of the attack, stating that people did acknowledge there could be benefits from GM technology in the future for developing countries. She did not explain why growing GM crops in the UK will benefit people in developing countries, but the propaganda aim is clear.
That the government aims to place the debate in a context of helping people is a clear sign of a dodgy policy. The maxim seems to be if you cannot convince them by rational argument, make them feel guilty over the oppressed and exploited in other countries. Blair used this on Iraq when WMD line was convincing no one. As part of this approach, the government wants supportive MPs to speak out: "There was a merit in preparing the ground with key MPs, particularly those with an interest in science or food security in developing countries." How, exactly, does copyrighting seed help "food security" in any country? How will terminator genes ensure anything beyond dependency on big business? How will growing GM food in the UK help peasants in the developing world? Surely it will harm them, if GM is as productive as its supporters say it is? Would it not result in a dumping of cheap products onto these countries, driving peasant farmers from the land and into the labour market. The same would result if such farmers had to buy their seeds and related products from GM transnationals.
This is not to glorify the peasant lifestyle. Far from it. The use of technology to lighten their load would be a good development but only if that technology was under their full control. In other words, appropriate, human scale and human understandable technology which is not dependant on suppliers for its continuing use. After all, we have had the means to feed, clothe, and shelter the world for several decades for some time now. Instead, the world's governments prefer to built war machines and invest in "profitable" research for the benefit of corporations. The $200 billion plus wasted in occupying Iraq could have been used to help people build a better life.
Investment in appropriate and green technology would seem a better use of resources than GM. Blair's government argues that to ban GM would be "an irrational way for the government to proceed" in the light of its desire to back and encourage UK science . Yet encouraging UK science is not the aim of GM research, encouraging the profitability of UK transnational corporations is. Surely it is no coincidence that the government's decision comes as the WTO is considering a legal case brought by the US, Canada and Argentina, which maintain that the EU's effective ban on GM crops until they are proven safe is illegal and merely a smokescreen for a trade barrier?
Rest assured, pro-GM scientists will be recruited to further forward the government's (and the corporation's) message. But raising the profile of GM may backfire. Last year's national GM debate showed that the more people know about GM the more worried they became. That debate concluded that more than 80% of people were against GM crops and that just 2% would eat GM foods. So why grow it? Perhaps it could be argued that we should let the people (or the market) decide. But GM crops contaminate non-GM crops so allowing the former will result in no choice (the government admits that it does not know how to avoid this). This would mean the small minority who favour it would dictate to everyone else the nature of their food. As for letting "the market decide", this simply fails to acknowledge the inequalities of power within the capitalist economy. And it also assumes that the price of a product provides the consumer with all the information they need to make an informed decision, a blatant piece of nonsense. Simply put, if big business use its economic clout to subsidise the price of GM products then "the market" may result in a result which benefits the corporations, not the customer (never mind the planet).
For all their concern about the public being unaware of the facts, it is clear that it is the government that is swallowing the PR of the GM lobby. For Blair and co, it appears only pro-GMers have unbiased and relevant science. Thus they ignore the science of ecology, which stresses the unknown effects of contamination, the pushing of large volumes of GM corporation's expensive pesticides and herbicides, river and sea pollution and so forth. What of sustainable agriculture? What of biodiversity? Trying to fix the problem after the damage is done is the worse kind of science you could practice.
However, while there is "solid, authoritative scientific" reasons for opposing the commercial growing of GM crops it does not get to the heart of the matter. Opposition to GM is not only on scientific grounds. It includes the key issue of whether we want our food to be copyrighted products of corporations. That, when you get to the bottom of it, is what this is all about. GM will benefit no one apart from the corporations that already have the patents on nature. It will not help feed the world. It will just line the pockets of big business (and the coffers of the Labour Party).
GM is a technical fix for social problems. For all the claims that it's owners seek to end world hungry, the fact is that food production is not the issue. Food distribution is. Land reform is. Women's liberation is. Workers' control is. And these are rooted in inequalities of power, inequalities GM crops will increase due to the copyrighted nature of such products. At the heart of GM is the commodification of nature, the turning of our shared heritage into private property. It is seeking to enclose more of the commons, to privatised more of our common heritage.
Yet again "Progress" (with a capital P) is at work, providing a mask behind which power and property is seeking to extend its reach. This is to be expected. Technology in a hierarchical society will be used as a weapon in the class war. It is rarely neutral, being more often than not a means of maximising the profits and/or power of the bosses and their state. GM is part of this struggle of capital against labour, a means of enhancing corporate profitability directly and indirectly and weakening our ability to exist outside the corporate power nexus. It is doubtful a free society would experiment with such technology, seeking social solutions to social problems.
And that is what we must do now. We must place the people back into progress by refusing the irrational demands of capitalist progress. This does not mean we simplistically reject technology. This would be a different side of the same coin. Rather we should take a Luddite approach. The Luddites were not the "anti-technology" mob the ruling class and their history has portrayed them. A mass working class movement, the Luddites were not opposed to technology as such. They directed their angry at technology which harmed people. A perfectly sensible position.
We must spread the Luddite message. We must make GM stand for "Get Militant" and ensure that the biotech companies know that they and their modern enclosures are not welcome.