Organized by the People’s Fuel Lobby (PFL), the action demanded government relief from the high price of fuel. Combined with other rising costs and a slump in prices, many farmers and independent owner-operators are being driven into bankruptcy.

"This is about peoples’ lives and peoples’ livings," protest leader Andrew Spence told the crowd. "We will not go away. We will fight this government and the next government until they do something about fuel duty." A cut in fuel tax has been the main demand of this and earlier actions across the country.

Spence, who owns a small trucking business, led a four-day convoy of 70 trucks and cars from Newcastle in the northeast of England to London. The convoy was subjected to police intimidation and harassment, and a hostile media campaign that sought to minimize the size of the protest and divide the participants.

A total of 400 trucks, vans, and tractors converged on London from several parts of the country, according to the Daily Telegraph. The government dispatched police to force most of these vehicles to park on a major road to the west of the city, causing major traffic disruption. Drivers had to leave their vehicles and walk to the rally. Other protesters were threatened with having their vehicles seized if they left them, according to rally organizers. A separate protest took place in Scotland where 82 vehicles followed a five-mile route through the center of Edinburgh, the Scottish capital.

The mood of the protesters in London was spirited and determined. "Meet a poor farmer," Frank Di Claudio told Militant reporters, extending his hand. Di Claudio, of Italian descent and a tenant dairy farmer in Wiltshire, joined the protest with other members of Farmers For Action. He was anxious to dispel the myth that all farmers were wealthy.

"My income last year was minus £3,000," he said. Before hurrying away to meet a police deadline to move their tractors, Di Claudio and the other Wiltshire farmers explained why they had decided to get organized. "No one speaks for us," one said, noting that the National Farmers Union, the main farmers’ organization, is "part of the establishment." "We need more direct action. We need to be more militant like the French farmers," Di Claudio added.

The protest convoys and Hyde Park rally grew out of militant actions by exploited working farmers and truckers in September outside oil depots and refineries. The actions tied up fuel supplies for several days nearly shutting the country down and causing a major political crisis.

The blockades were widely supported by working people, including oil tanker drivers who refused to move fuel through picket lines. Protesters suspended their action, setting a 60-day deadline--until November 14 --for the government to meet their demands. At the rally, PFL leader Martin Francis said, "Next year, when the time is right, I will be outside the oil depots again."

Les Parrat, a trucker from near Buxton, in Derbyshire, employs one driver and operates two trucks. He traveled here by bus with other farmers and truckers from his area where a meeting of 450 people was organized the previous week. "It never stops!" he said. "I pay £8,000 a year in vehicle tax, fuel prices are rising, and the list goes on."

Parrat’s wife does all the paperwork without pay, including ensuring that all the various taxes are paid. The trucker also pointed to how the assault on his living standard was part of a broader social crisis. "My kids sit at the same desks in the village school, as I did 40 years ago," he said, "they are using the same books."  
 
UK, U.S. farmers face same conditions
Randy Jasper, a dairy farmer from Wisconsin, traveled from the United States to join the rally and was invited to speak after meeting a number of farmers and others at the action. "In the United States they tell us UK and European farmers are doing well," Jasper said. " In the UK they tell you U.S. farmers are doing well. I am here to tell you that’s not true. We are losing six dairy farmers a day in Wisconsin. We all face the same conditions. I and other small farmers in the United Sates stand with you in your fight."

Farmers at the rally were eager to meet Jasper and exchanged experiences about the struggles and conditions of farmers in the United States and the United Kingdom. Jasper told them of his discussions with farmers in revolutionary Cuba, where he traveled as part of a delegation of farmers from the United States earlier this year. "Unlike here and in the United States," he said, "farmers in Cuba are respected."

Leading up to the convoys and rally, the Labour government of Prime Minister Anthony Blair sought to divide the fuel protesters, undercut support for them among workers, and boost his party’s prospects in a general election expected in early 2001. Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequor, announced some concessions November 8 in the form of modest fuel and vehicle tax cuts, along with increases in the state pension and other spending measures. The tax cuts, larger than expected but falling well short of addressing the needs of working farmers and truckers, were dismissed by rally participants.

"All he’s given me is enough to buy 12 gallons of diesel a week," said Pat Jagger, an owner-operator truck driver from Shropshire. "I use 1,000 gallons a month. He’s trying to buy us off."

David Handley, the outgoing chair of the People’s Fuel Lobby and a leader of Farmers For Action, repeated his call at the rally for "a 15 pence across-the-board cut in fuel taxes for everybody."

While Brown’s measures were small concessions, he was fiercely criticized in the big-business press, reflecting concern among the ruling rich that other working people may follow the militant example of the farmers and truck drivers to press their demands. "There is a risk that it has left the impression that protest can divert official policy," said The Times.

As well as this small carrot, the Labour government used what they described as "robust" police tactics against the protesters, denying both the truck drivers and farmers their basic democratic right of freedom of movement.

Convoy participants were handed a three-page letter from the Northumbria police at the beginning of the protest detailing 12 offenses for which they would face instant arrest. "Exclusion zones" were declared around Leeds, London, Manchester, and York where demonstrators were barred from entering with their vehicles, although the order imposed on London was not fully enforced.  
 
‘Heavy handed’ cops
Police tactics included driving alongside trucks and recording the drivers on video cameras, noting registration numbers, and splitting up the convoy in an obvious effort to disrupt it. Protest leader John Coxon said the police "have been very, very, heavy handed." In addition, Metropolitan Police Commissioner John Stevens raised the scare that "terrorists" might infiltrate the protest convoy on its way into London.

Prior to the latest protests, Prime Minister Blair said he would not give in to the demands of the farmers and truck drivers, claiming that doing so would threaten the living standards of other working people through increased interest rates as well as undermining government spending plans on health and education.

The Blair government has not sought to increase taxes on oil companies, which have just reported large increases in profits. In the third quarter of the year British Petroleum’s profits rose by 90 percent to £2.56 billion and Shell’s rose 80 percent. Shell is currently raking in £25 million per day in profit, according to The Times.

Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth mounted reactionary counterprotests along the convoy route and at the November 14 rally. A leaflet distributed at the rally by Greenpeace activists said the price of oil "must remain high to limit its use and reduce the damage we do to our environment." Meanwhile, in a provocative act, members of Friends of the Earth, holding umbrellas, stood in the road by the front of the lead truck of the small protest convoy as it neared the rally site.

Many farmers at the rally were keen to explain how high fuel prices are part of the broader crisis in agriculture, especially the declining prices they receive for their products from capitalist agribusiness. Linda Mycock, who raises sheep in Derbyshire, said in an interview that 27 years ago she sold lambs "for £30 each. This year I sold them for £4.50 less."  
 
 
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