Bullying Burberry

January 26, 2007

Rhondda’s dynamic duo Chris Bryant MP and Leighton Andrews AM attempt to bully Burberry at a press conference held at the Welsh Assembly this week. They are photographed looking steely faced and determined whilst holding a Burberry poster alongside their own “Made in China” poster. They aim below the belt, hitting Burberry hardest where it hurts : the Burberry brand name.

Leighton Andrews is a skilled campaign manager. His indelible signature is visible on Burberry news stories that have reverberated around Wales and beyond for months. The campaign drum-beat grows louder. His former employer the BBC fawn and wag their tail at his every move in the Burberry campaign. It is a modern wonder of Wales to see this one-man political campaign feeding journalists from the palm of his hand : the journalists fly away and parrot Leighton Andrews’ Burberry story-lines as if he was some sort of latter-day Biblical prophet.

The Welsh Assembly Elections are less than one hundred days away and the Burberry Campaign is a convenient weapon of mass distraction for Labour. There are few people who want to hear about gloomy unemployment or interest rate statistics, rising prices and environmental degradation on their doorstep. There are sexier stories. Like two Rhondda ‘knights’ in shining armour defending their ‘damsel’ workers against corporate ‘villains’. If only life were like a Leighton Andrews fairy-tale.

The fact is that the Labour politicians fighting against one corporation moving production to China, where they can pay less wages, are the same Labour politicians that are content to fight on behalf of corporations in every other sphere of life : schools, transport, hospitals etc. You name it, they’ll sell it. When Rhondda Cynon Taff Council recently cajoled and bribed their Council Tenants into voting for the privatization of council housing, they did so because they were threatened and bullied by the Labour Welsh Assembly Government. The Welsh Assembly Government were themselves told what to do by the bigger fish, the sharks in the form of a Labour Government in London.

Capitalism is a system of exploitation and domination. Let’s drop any pretence that Labour is a socialist party offering an alternative vision. They may erect as many busts to as many Party forebears as they like, but nonetheless, they are a party that exists to perpetuate a capitalist oligarchy. Those politicians who defend the ‘disciplines’ and ‘freedoms’ of the market, cry foul when it appears on their doorstep and bites them in the proverbial back-side. Either one believes in Capitalism or one does not believe in it. And Leighton Andrews is not unsure.

Rhondda has an exceptionally talented AM. He is a successful business man and an entrepreneur who can make things happen (as if by magic) in the modern era of information technology. He knows how to shape and manage events, communicate a message, and use media resources efficiently. A valuable asset on the eve of the Welsh Assembly Election.

So how would this anti-Burberry AM react if he was told precisely where he could locate his office and how to run it ? He would walk away in protest. Yet he is campaigning to dictate to a corporation precisely where and how it should do business. This is disingenuous. It is the capitalist system that needs to be abolished.

Thus “Do as we say, Not as we do” could be the Labour Party’s slogan for the Welsh Assembly Election in May 2007, reflecting their double-standards. A short drive across the mountain from the Burberry factory, and one reaches Bryngelli Trading Estate in Hirwaun, which is in the Cynon Valley. It is home to Ferraris Bakery which is threatened with closure. The Ferraris bakery employs 600 people across South Wales, many of them in the village of Hirwaun.

Are Rhondda workers more interesting or worthy than Cynon Valley workers ? The Hirwaun story commands little interest in the local media. Cynon Valley’s Labour AM (Christine Chapman) and Labour MP (Ann Clwyd) have pledged their support at a photo-call for the local newspaper. Alas, sweet words from suntanned socialists give no comfort to a workforce that face the dole in a few weeks time.

A little over a decade ago Ann Clwyd MP had the courage to stage a protest sit-in underground at Tower Colliery, the last deep mine in Wales situated nearby Ferraris bakery. Two hundred and forty jobs were then at stake. What will Ann Clwyd MP do for Hirwaun today ? There are no signs that Cynon Valley’s Labour MP has the urge to don her pinafore and stage a sit-in in the proofing room at the bakery, or barricade herself in the creaming room until her demands are met. The livelihoods of bakers and shopkeepers are worth much less to the Labour Party than the livelihoods of miners it seems. So much for the fraternite and egalite they sang about at Rock Grounds, Aberdare a few weeks ago.

In fairness to Christine Chapman she has, at least, acknowledged there are serious problems affecting Hirwaun. She has visited the area and organised several meetings, but only after considerable public disapproval. No politician from any other political party has visited the area, made any attempt to help those involved in any way shape or form, or spoken about the issue in any forum (such as the local newspaper).

Plaid Cymru pretend they are the opposition party in Rhondda Cynon Taff. Their current Chief Executive apparently grew up near Hirwaun. They have chosen to remain silent on the issue of Ferraris Bakery, as indeed they have chosen to remain silent on the issue of Cynon Valley’s first Wind Farm, and the gross housing development blighting Hirwaun. Until Plaid Cymru hereabouts (and any other Party that has ambitions of replacing the Labour Party ancien regime) practice a more constructive form of politics - a “new politics” for a post-Devolution Wales - they will remain political parasites feeding off the Labour ‘body’, at best an irrelevant irritation and a local joke. Ha, bloody, ha for Hirwaun!

In the Rhondda, the Labour Party election machine are altogether more businesslike and serious. They have chosen a sacrificial corporate goat in the form of Burberry. Symbolism and drama (the theatrical approach) are very important in Welsh politics. Leighton Andrews and Chris Bryant attempt to bugger the name of Burberry and bully the company to further their own political cause.

In Hirwaun the same Labour election machine offer different strokes for different folk. There is a fairly widespread perception in Hirwaun that people are victimised by an economic and political system that is degrading their environment and impoverishing the community, as discussed at innumerable public meetings. For example, hundreds of new houses are being built, millions being made by capitalists, but no extra public services available. The community enables the capitalist to prosper by providing the local resources, however the community sees little or no benefit. It’s straightforward exploitation, but on a grand-scale.

The Hirwaun economy is overheating, but the political choices available to the community are non-existent. It is ‘a society without opposition’ much like that Herbert Marcuse describes in his insightful book ‘One-Dimensional Man’ (Routledge, London, 1964) published forty three years ago : Capital and business interests, the politicians and the media speak with one harmonious voice. It is a collusion. This collusion reflects the essential nature of one-dimensional industrial capitalist society.

Marcuse’s book offers a useful analysis. It ages well. It’s available for free online in the Marcuse Archive. It is a hearty, nourishing read for anyone interested in the bullying, dominating modern Welsh politics as it unfolds before our very eyes in the South Wales Valleys :

The totalitarian tendencies of the one-dimensional society render the traditional ways and means of protest ineffective – perhaps even dangerous because they preserve the illusion of popular sovereignty. This illusion contains some truth: “the people,” previously the ferment of social change, have “moved up” to become the ferment of social cohesion. Here rather than in the redistribution of wealth and equalization of classes is the new stratification characteristic of advanced industrial society.

However, underneath the conservative popular base is the substratum of the outcasts and outsiders, the exploited and persecuted of other races and other colors, the unemployed and the unemployable. They exist outside the democratic process; their life is the most immediate and the most real need for ending intolerable conditions and institutions. Thus their opposition is revolutionary even if their consciousness is not. Their opposition hits the system from without and is therefore not deflected by the system; it is an elementary force which violates the rules of the game and, in doing so, reveals it as a rigged game. When they get together and go out into the streets, without arms, without protection, in order to ask for the most primitive civil rights, they know that they face dogs, stones, and bombs, jail, concentration camps, even death. Their force is behind every political demonstration for the victims of law and order. The fact that they start refusing to play the game may be the fact which marks the beginning of the end of a period.

Nothing indicates that it will be a good end. The economic and technical capabilities of the established societies are sufficiently vast to allow for adjustments and concessions to the underdog, and their armed forces sufficiently trained and equipped to take care of emergency situations. However, the spectre is there again, inside and outside the frontiers of the advanced societies. The facile historical parallel with the barbarians threatening the empire of civilization prejudges the issue; the second period of barbarism may well be the continued empire of civilization itself. But the chance is that, in this period, the historical extremes may meet again: the most advanced consciousness of humanity, and its most exploited force. It is nothing but a chance. The critical theory of society possesses no concepts which could bridge the gap between the present and its future; holding no promise and showing no success, it remains negative. Thus it wants to remain loyal to those who, without hope, have given and give their life to the Great Refusal.

At the beginning of the fascist era, Walter Benjamin wrote:

Nur um der Hoffnungslosen willen ist uns die Hoffnung gegeben.

It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us.

Unlike Marcuse we are unable to offer any ‘conclusion’ concerning Burberry or Hirwaun, or the other issues we raise. We are content merely to try to ask some questions in a way which we hope is open-minded. Leighton Andrews AM himself sums up what we are trying to achieve here. In his book “Wales Says Yes - The Inside Story of the Yes for Wales Referendum Campaign” (1999), he writes about the “new politics” created by the Campaign based on “principles of openness, sharing, co-operating, working on solutions. That Campaign itself opened up areas of agreement which will enable the National Assembly to develop its work co-operatively and in a spirit of solution” (pp. 196-197). To our ears, this sounds like a man arguing against a bullying one-dimensional society. We hope this will one day become a reality in Wales.

Filed Under Ann Clwyd, Christine Chapman, Corporations, History, Media Analysis, Politics, Rhondda Cynon Taff Council, Wales, Welsh Assembly

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Bullying Burberry

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