Everywhere we've been so far, I've picked up a sense of excitement I've never felt in Britain before. But the numbers, unprecedented though they may be, are less impressive than the unity of purpose. In London, green activists stood and cheered an RMT official as he left the stage to join the Tube strike. In Coventry, car workers demanded an end to global warming. No one denies that there are issues which divide us, but in contesting the neoliberalism to which almost every major political party on earth has now subscribed, we have discovered an oppositional accord which overrides our differences.
Neoliberalism demands the privatisation of everything.
While the general agreement on trade in services, due to be negotiated next month, would force governments gradually to transfer their mandate to the corporations, Britain has anticipated it with the universal application of the private finance initiative. PFI serves companies better than overt privatisation, as the government guarantees their income stream. Neoliberalism also insists that companies be permitted to dump their costs on to people and the environment. As deregulation allows firms both to pollute the planet and to sack their staff without consultation, steelworkers and global warming campaigners have discovered, to their surprise, that they're on the same side. New corporate freedoms, moreover, can be sustained only by denying freedom to everyone else.