COVER -> DAY ONE
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There were no porters to carry my bags from one London rail terminal to its neighbour. The system was almost completely disrupted by a combination of flooding and a programme of emergency repairs triggered by a recent fatal accident, attempting to compensate for decades of neglect. Although there were thousands of stranded and severely delayed passengers, almost all the officials were taking lunch so a beggar helped me through a rainstorm of tropical proportions.
At the second terminal all trains were cancelled for the day. The combination of incessant rain - at least six, unseasonable, weeks of it - a rail disaster and disruption and the beggar brought to mind former trying days in Lagos and Bombay, an awareness of massive wealth, disruption and incompetence.
A few days later, hoping to stave off threatened disruption by truckers, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer sacrificed his reputation for toughness by appeasing a lobby whose greed knows no bounds.
As the rain, triggered by global warming, lashed down and as rivers burst their banks yet again, the cost of transportation was reduced, reversing a bipartisan policy which had operated since the Kyoto Summit. Still, the concessions were not enough; the airwaves transmitted a kaleidoscope of dissatisfaction.
Who could blame the Chancellor for being so craven, in the face of a threatened fuel blockade, coming on top of the rail disruption and the flooding?
During the September blockade when the British Government promised to stand firm it lost 22 percentage points in a week. As he made his statement to Parliament the Chancellor must have been aware that in the United States a decade of uninterrupted economic growth stood for nothing in political terms; Florida had not declared but the Republican Party was within a whisker of controlling both Houses of Congress and the White House. Why should the Labour Party count on its prudence being rewarded? Why not give in to the powerful and hope to keep disruption under control?
The disruption, the flooding, the poor state of our infrastructure and political nervousness are all part of the same phenomenon. The majority of us are now so rich that we are beyond contentment. And, so, to drive our incomes ever higher, we are prepared to risk the implosion of physical and social infrastructure. Never mind that our poorer neighbours will have no public transport; never mind that our children will be forced onto higher ground as the plains and valleys flood incessantly; never mind, for that matter, if the Maldives disappear, there will be other places to scuba dive.
The rich shall grow richer; those that invest in the political lobby shall reap their reward; those who are tantalised by the prospect of another automobile or another holiday shall have their tax cut.
As I write, not knowing the outcome of the Presidential election, I am horrified at the terms in which the Florida ballot is being discussed.
Thousands of poor people, subjected to a deeply flawed ballot form, are tagged as stupid for miscasting their votes. Had democracy simply been created for the wise, Governor Bush would have been barred from standing for office.
Devout Jews are supposed to have deliberately voted for a pro-Hitler candidate. Ballot boxes have disappeared and re-appeared without any apparent concern. The richest country in the world has a Flintstone ballot infrastructure.
The good, old Constitution has been uncritically wheeled out in defence of a system deliberately designed by the Founding Fathers to frustrate direct democracy.
Vice President Gore is being urged to concede, thus retaining the moral high ground which is, after all, a proper distribution of territory as the Republicans can be counted on never to occupy it.
Bush has lost the popular vote and Gore's policies are much nearer to Nader, so if Florida becomes totally impossible to count then Bush should concede.
Behind all this is a question I have not heard asked: had a State other than Florida declared last in such a narrow race would we have found fewer bugs under the stones? As long as the Electoral College is preserved, as opposed to an aggregate popular vote, we will all know where to pour the money, concentrating on marginal States.
The democratic process, much praised everywhere, is only tolerated by the powerful as long as it keeps them in power, otherwise they subvert it.
Whatever else can be said about Bill Clinton, he has stood in the way of total Republican, industrial/military, grasping hegemony.
If it hadn't been the entrapment engineered through Monica Lewinsky it would have been something, anything, else. Clinton never quite caved in to bipartisan subservience to the plutocracy and it loathed him for his continuing, if uncertain, resistance.
I see it in Britain in the threatened fuel blockade. Farmers, already heavily subsidised, have allied with reactionary truckers to force yet another subsidy out of a progressive government. They claim to be the democratic voice of the people and accuse the Government of being undemocratic simply because it will not meet all their demands.
The bulk of the Conservative Party and its supporters are still furious that it lost the last election and feel that it has somehow been robbed of its legitimate entitlement to rule. If democracy doesn't deliver the right result then it isn't democratic at all.
There is enough history to indicate how matters will proceed. As social and physical infrastructure crumbles the rich will become more defensive and defended. They will become feudal chiefs over their domains, leaving the troublesome urban sprawl to its own vices and devices. Better to be a slave on an estate than free born in the dangerous city. Better to have a lobby and a grip on a piece of a life-sustaining cartel than serve or save, care or create.
To prevent such a social catastrophe, progressives need to hang tough and together against the 'Right'. Sadly, there's no room for people like Nader, pure but puerile.
After a century in which liberals extracted a degree of social justice, the rich are clawing, clawing back. If they want to use an antiquated Constitution to justify Bush's position then Gore should use the same instruments for as long as it takes.
