Lawrence spoke to Militant reporters three days before protest leaders lifted the blockades they had set up to protest the fuel tax, calling on the government to reduce the tax within 60 days or face further actions.

The consumption tax accounts for some 80 percent of the cost of gasoline here. With prices at over $4 a gallon, workers, farmers, and small business people have been hit hard. Farmers also face a near doubling of red diesel prices to run tractors. In the short space of a week, the nationwide protests and pickets by truck drivers and farmers, with the active support of oil tanker drivers, won the admiration of working people. They also starkly revealed the vulnerability of the capitalist distribution system today, which is set up with "just in time" inventories as the norm.

The protests caused up to 90 percent of filling stations to run dry, had a serious impact on the economy, and precipitated a crisis inside the ruling Labour government of Anthony Blair. Opinion polls show his ratings slumped 10 points to below that of the opposition Conservatives.

The announcement of the end of the protests was made September 14 by Brynle Williams, a farmers' leader from North Wales, outside Shell's refinery in the northwest of England where the actions had started.

They had been inspired by similar actions in France, which then rolled through Europe. The protests spread to the main oil refineries and fuel depots throughout England, Scotland, and Wales and included truck and taxi drivers staging go slows or "rolling blockades" on motorways and in city centers including London. Fishermen in the southwest of England and in Scotland were also involved.

"Britain comes to a standstill" read the Daily Telegraph headline the day the protests were called off. The newspaper wrote Britain stood "on the verge of its gravest period of economic and social disruption since the Seventies," referring to a period of widespread strike action by workers in the UK. Food supplies, mail services, bus and train operations, rubbish collections, schools, and the banking system were disrupted to varying degrees around the country. Amid reports of businesses at risk of bankruptcy and widespread job layoffs, Digby Jones, director-general of the main bosses organization, the Confederation of British Industry, said, "We need this sorted out fast."

Bosses at the Honda car plant in Swindon, west of London, halted production September 14 until parts supplies could be guaranteed. The London Chamber of Commerce claimed 10 percent of all economic output was being lost daily.

Working farmers began the protest because of the growing crisis in agriculture that threatens their livelihood. Prices for fuel, fertilizer, animal feed, and other costs have escalated, while the prices many farmers receive for their produce have declined steeply.

"I don't know one farmer who has gotten rich through land alone," Lawrence explained at the picket. Belonging to no organization, he had come to the picket after getting a phone call. When the call came "me and my wife were shoveling the last 15 tons of wheat out of a silo. She said to me, 'Do you know, we're not earning anything doing this.'"

Truck drivers are having to work longer hours in order to make a living, with rising fuel costs, taxes on their vehicles, and debt repayments. Reflecting the different class forces involved in leading and organizing the protests, truck drivers who participated varied from owner-drivers with just one vehicle to the bosses of smaller haulage companies with fleets of vehicles. A fishermen's leader told the Daily Telegraph, "We all see ourselves going to the wall. Fuel is now accounting for up to 50 percent of the cost of our vessels. The figure is growing...enough is enough."  
 
Support from oil truck drivers
Crucial to the rapid impact of the protests was the active support of the workers who transport petrol (gasoline) to filling stations. Many of these oil tanker drivers are union members, up to two-thirds are either self-employed or work for subcontractors. On the first day of the picket at Stanlow, protesters blockaded the entrance to the refinery to prevent the movement of petrol. The blockade was removed by police. In subsequent visits to pickets in the southeast and northwest of England, Militant reporters found protesters had no need to repeat this as oil tanker drivers were not moving their vehicles.

At an Esso terminal in Purfleet, Essex, pickets said Esso drivers had agreed not to cross their line. The Independent newspaper reported drivers "from the main companies have been openly giving support to the protesters."

Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw whined: "It was weird that by last Tuesday and Wednesday the entrances to the oil terminals were clear...and yet the oil was still not coming out." Rather than precipitate a fight with these workers, oil company bosses did not force them to move petrol, falsely claiming, along with the government, that there was widespread intimidation by the pickets. The oil profiteers most likely favor lower fuel taxes themselves, to allow room for further increases in prices--and profits.

Leaders of trade unions, meeting in Glasgow at the annual Trades Union Congress (TUC), took sides with the Labour government over the actions. TUC general secretary John Monks called them a "bosses' blockade." The protest actions were also condemned by Bill Morris, leader of the Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU), which organizes tanker drivers.

Union leaders however had to send two high-ranking officials to plead with 70 TGWU members at the Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland. After a two-hour late-night meeting, they finally persuaded them to resume deliveries. On September 18, the Labour government swiftly retreated from proposals that had been aired to enact laws forcing oil company drivers to move fuel.

There was a nationalist tinge to the protests, with farmers blaming cheap food imports for the farming crisis and signs with Union Jacks common. One issue of concern to haulage company bosses and owner drivers is their ability to compete with haulage firms from Europe who travel to the UK and undercut their prices because of the cheaper fuel available on the Continent.

Meanwhile, different right-wing forces have attempted to make gains out of the actions. Two hundred protesters from the right-wing Countryside Alliance who had gathered to protest a possible ban on fox hunting took up the demands to lower fuel taxes and reportedly trapped Blair in Hull Town Hall September 11.

The right-wing Daily Mail newspaper championed the protesters' demands and linked them to other issues such as the government's attempts to repeal anti-gay legislation. Conservative leader William Hague called the farmers and truckers "fine upstanding citizens." Because of this, government ministers sought to slander the protesters as part of right-wing efforts to topple the Labour government.

The press meanwhile contains reports of splits between government ministers, with the Chancellor of the Exchequor--the finance minister Gordon Brown--refusing to commit to reductions in fuel taxes.

While some big business newspapers expressed support for the actions, others reflected the alarm among the capitalist rulers at the abject failure of their government to prevent a crisis. The Financial Times, which vigorously opposed the protests, said Prime Minister Blair had "seriously damaged his reputation for competent government." The Sunday Times said the government "blustered, pleaded and lied... Until the pickets staged their tactical retreat, we were on a fast road to even greater chaos," adding, the "reputation of the whole political process has suffered."

Tony Hunt is a member of the Transport and General Workers' Union in London.