| George Monbiot -
Guardian, Tuesday May 29, 2001 |
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Had the ministry of agriculture set out to spread foot and mouth as far
and wide as possible, it could scarcely have done a better job. While
refusing to vaccinate susceptible livestock, it has been carting diseased
corpses through unaffected zones. Two weeks ago, Maff officials in Devon
botched their slaughter of a herd of bullocks so badly that the animals
stampeded, spreading foot and mouth to 12 farms.
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At the beginning of the month, the disease arrived in north Somerset,
allegedly on the boots of a farm worker who had been attending a training
course in Devon's foot and mouth epicentre, which the organiser had
forgotten to cancel. The organiser was, of course, the ministry of
agriculture. The course - which proves, I think, that there is a God after
all - was on vaccinating farm animals.
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So it isn't hard to see why some people are claiming that the spread of
the disease through Britain is a government conspiracy. The obvious flaw
in this theory is that it credits the ministry with both a coherent
strategy and the capacity to implement it.
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But we shouldn't be too hard on Maff, for though it's incapable of
pursuing a programme, it does at least possess an objective. As it first
revealed in 1999, the ministry wants to cull all but a handful of farmers.
The Labour manifesto confirms that the government will use the opportunity
provided by foot and mouth to accelerate its human slaughter programme.
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Maff argues that "consolidating" the industry into a few
enormous farms will help farmers compete in the global economy. For some
time I've been arguing that this makes no sense. Our tiny islands are
being pushed into direct competition with million-acre grain farms in
Canada and Russia, and million-sow hog cities in North Carolina. British
farming will survive only by recapturing local markets.
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Labour's manifesto appears, implicitly, to recognise this, when it
maintains that "the economic hub of a rural area is often a thriving
market town". But joined-up government has seldom been New Labour's
strength. What the party of both globalisation and devolution refuses to
accept is that globalisation favours the centre at the expense of the
margins.
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Take a look at the map. London, for four centuries the world's great
beneficiary of globalisation, squats on the page like a perfect
histological diagram of a cancer, commandeering the nation's blood supply.
Follow the infrastructural arteries north and west and you'll see how the
economy drains into the capital.
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You can travel from London to Holyhead without changing trains, but you
can't travel by rail from north Wales to south Wales without passing
through England. With the exception of the tourist line from Dingwall to
Kyle, there is no east-west railway service in Scotland north of Fort
William.
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When we see this pattern elsewhere in the world, we have no difficulty
in understanding what it means. In his remarkable book The Open Veins of
Latin America, the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano points out that his
continent's infrastructure was developed solely to suck its wealth into
the ports, and thence into the colonial and neo-colonial economy. Even
today, Latin American governments invest massively in new roads to the
ocean, but fail to provide links between villages and market towns. Latin
America, Galeano argues, is so poor because it is so rich in resources: it
has been developed as an extractive economy. Its infrastructure is
designed to leave as little wealth behind as possible.
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Ports, roads and railways in Wales were built with similar intent: to
remove coal from the Rhondda and slate from Snowdonia and to deliver
English travellers to Ireland. Transnational infrastructure favours those
who have access to economies of scale. As soon as slate and coal became
cheaper elsewhere, those parts of the Welsh economy which were competing
in the global marketplace collapsed. Caenarfon, surrounded by some of the
richest natural resources in the UK, has an average income of just over £4,000.
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People whose economies are dominated by small businesses and local
infrastructure, by contrast, are doing rather well. Indeed, it's arguable
that the triumph of the service sector over manufacturing in Britain
represents the triumph of the local economy over the global economy. As
the peasant farmer and pamphleteer Simon Fairlie has pointed out, service
industries are principally local, while manufacturers must compete
worldwide.
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Tragically, the solution prescribed by some of those who claim to
defend the victims of the colonial economy is more of the problem. When
the A55 from Chester to Bangor was upgraded 10 years ago, the people of
north Wales were promised it would bring them jobs. It has all but
completed the destruction of their residual economy
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As Friends of the Earth Cymru has pointed out, since the road was
finished, the three westernmost counties through which it passes have
qualified for funding reserved for Europe's poorest regions. It's not hard
to see why. As transport costs are lower than warehousing costs, companies
have taken advantage of the faster road link by centralising their depots
in England.
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The Post Office has closed its sorting offices in Bangor, Colwyn Bay,
Rhyl and Wrexham and moved its operations to Chester. British Gas has
followed it, while Northern Foods has shifted its factory from Colwyn Bay
to Warrington.
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Tourists have shunned the A55 corridor: that visitors come to Wales to
find peace and natural beauty surprises only the transport planners.
Superstores have taken advantage of the new road to move shoppers out of
town and into their own hands.
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But, like the British government, the champions of big business in
Wales refuse even to acknowledge this disaster, let alone to learn from
it. Six weeks ago Rhodri Morgan, head of the Welsh assembly, opened the
extension of the A55 from Bangor to Holyhead. The Bangor and Anglesey Mail
marked the occasion by predicting that the road would be "the key to
prosperity". Sue Essex, the Welsh environment minister, told the
paper "it will spur the economic regeneration of Anglesey as a whole,
and Holyhead in particular".
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On May 16, the same newspaper reported that Holyhead's economy has
collapsed. It is now in danger of becoming "a ghost town with
tumbleweed blowing down the street". A town councillor lamented that
"if only 10% more of the millions of ferry passengers that travel
through the port every year could be attracted into town it would be a
great help". But the purpose of the new road, of course, is to keep
passengers out of town and shift them on to the ferries as swiftly as
possible. Big roads do to local economies what superstores do to small
shops.
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Everywhere we are assured that bigger is better, that we will prosper
only by competing with the largest and fiercest corporations on earth.
It's a macho fantasy which has destroyed local economies all over the
world. If you want your farm or your region to thrive, then dig up the
roads.
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Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2001
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