The BBC, Workers and Gaza

Why are the BBC, and Sky refusing to screen the Appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee for Gaza’s benighted people suffering under the weight of the huge and terrible onslaught of the Israeli war machine? For some, such as “BrianClough” whose simplistic notions, and reactionary nationalist politics were spewed forth over recent days in our debate over Gaza and Israel See: Here the answer is simple; “The bourgeois media is a tool of imperialism”. But, clearly not that simple, because other parts of that bourgeois media ARE putting out the Appeal. Worse still for Cluffy’s argument, Britain’s Imperialist Government, has called on the BBC to show the Appeal!!!

So why is the BBC not doing so, in particular? Good question. The answer the BBC gives is that it wants to defend its “impartiality”. Well, possibly. But then, one would have to agree with Cluffy to this extent, the bourgeois media, including the BBC IS NOT impartial. The BBC was not impartial over its coverage of the Miners Strike, or pretty much any other strike. There is plenty of evidence that the BBC select journalists on the basis of them having generally some conformity with bourgeois norms. But, the mechanisms by which the bourgeois state, and its ideological arms work – including the media, but this applies to Education and other parts of the ideological state apparatus – is far more complex, far more subtle than Cluffy’s vulgar presentation would suggest.

The strength of bourgeois ideology does rest on the idea not just of pluralism, but of impartiality and fairness. Pluralism in that it gives the superficial impression that a range of alternative views struggle for acceptance – without of course, making clear that these plurality of views are a plurality of BOURGEOIS views representing different interests of different sections of the ruling class, and of its executive within the bourgeois state – whose supreme representation is the electoral competition between ideologically, Bourgeois Parties, including those that claim to represent workers interests, and, for whose success, on which, the votes and support of workers they rely. Impartial, in the way it is implied these contending views are presented equally, and, therefore, the success of any of which is based on its merits, just as workers treat equally with employers in the determination of wages.

In order for this façade to be maintained the dissemination of bourgeois ideas cannot be undertaken crudely in the way that Cluffy supposes. It does require a DEGREE of impartiality, it does require dissenting voices, especially when those dissenting voices represent interests within the ruling class itself. Given the experience of the BBC over the Iraq War, and the hammering it took for not being impartial, its understandable that sections of the BBC bureaucracy should fight shy. Of course, sections of the international capitalist class do not share the approach of the British Government over the recent slaughter of Palestinians by Israel. In the US, the State has not condemned Israel for its actions, reserving the bulk of its criticism for Hamas. It is, perhaps then no coincidence that Sky, part of the Murdoch Newscorp Empire, derives a considerable amount of revenue from its US operations in all forms of media, and indeed, the BBC in its growing commercial operations also derives a considerable amount of revenue from such US activities. That cannot be said of most of the other TV channels in Britain, or of the newspapers that have carried the Appeal.

But, even that may be too deterministic and vulgar an understanding of the motives. The BBC, which has carried similar appeals in the past in conflict situations, last year commissioned a report, which concluded that it did risk undermining its impartiality, and let’s remember that in its daily operations it is BBC reporters that have to live with the consequence of being seen to be taking one side or another. No one, would, of course, want to besmirch the humanitarian intentions of aid workers, or the work that they do. But, the very nature of such aid work means that in order for it to be distributed, it is those in authority who have to be dealt with, and often there is little way of controlling what these authorities do with it. There have been many instances of such aid being used by ruthless governments – Zimbabwe was a high profile recent case, though Cluffy no doubt thinks that Mugabe is a valiant anti-colonial freedom fighter – to blackmail their populations into conformity, and many more of such regimes, or organisations using aid to feed their troops and supporters rather than those for whom the aid was directed.

In addition, we have the experience of the “Stockholm Syndrome”, of the way that captives can come through their situation to form a bond with their captors. There is nothing more understandable in the world than that aid workers in the field, often suffering alongside the civilian population in which they are embedded, come to share the anguish of those with whom they are personally tied, and to eschew the same resentment of those seen as immediately the cause of that situation. It is inevitable that the two things become mixed up, and in a situation like Gaza it would be all too easy for Hamas to take credit for the relief brought to it, and to use such relief in the ways other unscrupulous organisations and governments have done in the past.

In fact, this highlights both the problem, and the solution. The fact is that aid, has always been a powerful ideological and political tool. It was used on a grand scale during the Cold War by both sides to win friends and influence people. So long as the provision of aid is left in the hands of the bourgeoisie, of its state institutions, or of private bourgeois organisations – some of which as we have seen recently have their own religious agendas too – then such situations will arise, and aid will be utilised to promote the interests of one or other section of the bourgeoisie. As with so many other areas of life discussed here recently, for example, over the question of nationalisation by the bourgeois state, Marxists cannot call on that State to act impartially. That would be like asking the lion to lie down with the lamb. Workers have to rely on their own self-activity and their own organisation to resolve these problems, and we should not be afraid to do so as impartially as do the bosses.

We need to develop workers aid organisations for the many instances where such aid is required around the world. After all, in the same way that millions of workers hand over their savings and pension funds to the bouregoisie to use on its own behalf and aginst workers interests, it is often millions of workers who hand over their hard earned savings to the bourgeoisie to distribute, much of which goes to finance well paid jobs for bourgeois bureaucrats in this multiplicity of charitable organisations. Workers would need just one such Charity, one set of bureaucrats paid the average workers wage, and under the constant democratic control of the labour movement, through its established channels. Such aid could be directed to where it is needed, to the poorest in these societies, to the workers and peasants, and unemployed, and more importantly could be directed to those in these societies who are working to provide the real solutions to the problems, to those that are building Trade Unions, Workers Parties and Co-operatives, and other forms of workers and peasants organisation. The most common saying within these charitable circles is “Give a man a fish and he will eat today. Teach a man to fish and he will eat everyday.” It is, of course, a thoroughly bourgeois notion. You can teach a man to fish, but without the means of production, the fishing rod or nets, without access to the sea or river, that skill is useless. And in modern society, indeed in the society that has existed for the last 200 years, production is not about individual effort such as that, but about co-operative effort by many workers to produce the basics let alone the comforts of life. Teach a man to fish, and he may end up fishing for some Capitalist who does own the nets or the river, and might eat only to the extent that he can win a decent wage from that employer.

The solution is not in that direction – indeed its often patronising to suggest that people who have lived by rivers, or lived off the land for centuries and even thousands of years don’t know how to farm or fish – but, in the assistance for such workers and peasants to develop solidaristic and co-operative organisations to further their collective needs, and collective interests. In the main bourgeois organisations will not do that, precisely because it will be argued that to do so would be “partial”, would be “political”. But, it is precisely, partial and political solutions that workers and peasants in such situations require. It is effective Trade Unions to at least defend wages at the subsistence level as the precondition for them being raised higher, it is Workers Parties that can fight on the political plane for workers interests, it is Co-operatives that can take out of the hands of Capital immediately important aspects of the basic necessities of life of ordinary workers and peasants. At best, these bourgeois organisations might promote the idea of producers co-operatives similar to those of small farmers in Europe, but such Co-operatives are – whilst in some ways progressive – a far cry from what Marxists see as the type of Co-operative that needs to be built, a co-operative that is not just a business enterprise, but is an integral part of the class struggle, a vehicle that supports workers in struggle, that sets out to change the balance of forces and which exists not just as some isolated bastion of the workers, but which forges ever closer ties with other co-operatives not just on a national, but on an international scale.

As Karl Marx put it more than 150 years ago the workers problems cannot be resolved by appeals by or to the bourgeoisie, but by the workers themselves. In an age of globalisation the simple solution he put forward then resounds now.

“Workers of the World Unite.”