SPECIAL EDITION

Burma's shame

The fat-cat lawyers are licking their lips

Nick Cohen (The Observer)

The burden of being a groovy Observer reader is hard to bear. Our food, clothes,restaurants and haircuts, our very soft furnishings and kitchen utensils may come to life at any moment and denounce us. They 'say so much about you', as our crack team of style correspondents warn weekly. If we make a mistake on our choice of lemon squeezer, for instance, will we be able to get away with passing off vulgarity as irony and turn the tables on our mockers? Or will we merely rebrand ourselves as jerks in the eyes of right-thinking people? Treason festers in every scatter cushion. The pressure is constant.

Holidays bring no respite. Stress begins with the task of telling everyone we know that we do not fly out as 'tourists', thank you very much. Tourists are plebs. They are fat, smelly and thick. We are 'travellers' and, by definition, none of the above. Once the nuances of this important distinction have been explained, we must agonise about where to travel to and calculate what our decision might 'say' in evidence against us. Last year Cuba and New England looked pretty good. But nothing is as dated as yesterday's fashion. Syria, then? Or perhaps Paraguay? A friend on Life magazine was informed the other day that 'Scotland is the new Ireland'. Can this be true? If so, what on earth does it mean?

To direct us through the social minefield are the Lonely Planet guides. Christ but they're cool. Every volume oozes concern for the environment and local cultures.Lonely Planet takes you 'past the tourist traps', the publishers assure readers, by'building bridges' and 'breaking barriers.' The company is a beacon for those who don't 'buy into brochure blurbs' but crave the authenticity that can be found only when they 'are sent out with the right attitude about travel'.

Our reliable friend has saved us from making a crass error by answering that ticklish where-to-go question decisively.Burma is the place to see and be seen this summer.

Well, Burma's certainly different. Ten years ago almost to this day the Burmese armed forces refused to accept the oerwhelming victory of the National League for Democracy in free elections and suppressed the population. If you wanted to be hyperbolic you might get away with describing the regime that resulted as the most wretched on Earth.There are tens of thousands of refugees from torture and attempted murder. The democrats who remain are persecuted.The economy has collapsed and the army makes its wealth by cutting deals with heroin suppliers. Last week the United Nations demanded that the junta end a 'saga of untold misery, suffering oppression and exploitation' brought by its use of 'forced labour', or slaves as we used to say.

Lonely Planet is concerned, but it also wants to sell guidebooks. There's a niche market to corner as the editors of the Rough Guide series, its business rivals, refuse to cover Burma on a point of principle. Lonely Planet's new book on Burma begins by dismissing such concerns and the requests of the legitimate government not to fund the terror. The Burma Campaign UK and Tourism Concern responded by calling for a boycott of Lonely Planet's merchandise. They might have expected to at least have started a reasoned debate. Instead the suggestion that globe-trotting liberals should sacrifice any gratification has led to the opponents of tyranny being denounced as tyrants themselves.

Lonely Planet supplied hacks with a letter of thanks from the Burma Relief Centre in Thailand, which tries its best to comfort refugees. The company had given it Ł4,500 and seemed the model of the caring stakeholding corporation. No one reported the response of the aid workers to being manipulated in a PR offensive.Pippa Curwen, the director of the Relief Centre, said she was 'dismayed' to see in the Daily Telegraph that the present was used by Lonely Planet to justify visiting Burma. 'This has led us to question your organisation's motives in donating to us,'she wrote to the company. 'As you are aware... we believe that foreign tourism is one of the factors sustaining the regime, and prolonging the kind of misery we are witnessing daily. Thus we would prefer not to be complicit in any defence your organisation is making.'

Curwen needs every penny she can get,yet decided that she could do without Lonely Planet's money and returned the cheque. She will probably be vilified as some sort of monster. For the Burma spat has been distinguished by the extremism of the invective of bohemian travellers. Dea Birkett, a travel writer, whined rhetorically in the Guardian of all places: 'Aren't holidays supposed to be carefree times for suntans and self-indulgence? Is it really such a crime to seek out somewhere where you can simply enjoy yourself? Tourism Concern and the Burma Campaign's moral outrage is designed to make us feel bad about being good to ourselves. To restrict freedom of movement is the hallmark of totalitarian regimes.'

Forget her wheedling style for a second, and consider the implications of Birkett's words. The opponents of dictatorship, who fight without resources, international support or any military force which might defeat the junta on the field of battle, are totalitarians. Rich Western tourists, by contrast, are the true victims even when they stay in Rangoon hotels built on the site of the homes of the Burmese poor - which were bulldozed without compensation - or travel on a moving staircase built by forced labour to catch the marvellous view at sunset from Mandalay Hill. Only a sadist would want to make them 'feel bad about being good to ourselves.'

Birkett wasn't an isolated ranter. Sue Ockwell, spokeswoman for the Association of Independent Tour Operators, agreed that the Burma campaigners had 'adopted a totalitarian approach'. These people must lie awake every night waiting for the hammer of the secret police on the door.

Neither Ockwell nor Birkett seemed to know that New Labour won't restrict anyone's freedom of movement. True, it promised sanctions in opposition and a moist-eyed Tony Blair virtually broke down when he stammered out his sincere compassion for Aung San Suu Kyi, the elected leader of Burma who has been harassed by the military for years. In government, Labour not only broke its word - which is to be expected - but successfully sued American states and cities which refused to use European Union firms that traded with the regime.

Though I'm all for boycotting Lonely Planet, the real significance of the argument is cultural. Discerning liberal consumers are now so self-confident and self-pitying that they pose, without irony,as the victims of Stalin and Hitler when anyone suggests they might make the tiniest moral choice. It says so much about them.

On Tuesday, the most radical measure of this government will come into force and be welcomed with an embarrassed silence from Downing Street.

Despite the opposition of Tony Blair, the Labour leader who boasted in the election campaign that under his administration Britain will still have the strictest anti-union laws in the Western world, workers will be able to vote for the right to represent themselves.

It was a hell of a battle to push the legislation through. The magnificently old Labour Ian McCartney used all his duplicitous skills to out-manoeuvre Blair and Peter Mandelson. But he had to make concessions. The union votes will be the hardest ballots to win in Britain.

It won't be enough to secure a majority of those who vote. The pro-union camp must eligible to vote. (If these conditions had applied at the general election,incidentally, there would scarcely be an MP in Westminster.) There will be arguments about who is entitled to vote.Victory will be followed by rows about what unions can talk to management about.

A central arbitration committee, chaired by a judge who represented Rupert Murdoch in his campaign against the print workers, is meant to resolve disputes amicably.But the real action will be in the courts.

'There are huge grey areas,' beamed Martin Warren from Eversheds, a City law firm whose rates are of the 'if you have to ask you can't afford them' order. 'There's loads and loads of potential for litigation.' Eversheds has flown its lawyers across the Atlantic to study how US firms shut out unions. Last week, the traffic was in the opposite direction when it brought an American union-busting lawyer, one Alan Lips, to tell Gap and McDonald's executives how to keep the staff in line.

Some tactics had a sweet touch to them.'Companies should win the hearts and minds of employees by demonstrating care,' he cooed. The charm offensive will be limited, however. 'Unions and employers are natural enemies,' Lips told People Management magazine. They are'an economic heart attack'.

corporations should 'threaten to exercise the employer's economic power to coerce rejection of unions. This can be useful'.What can he have meant? He couldn't have suggested that union organisers should be fired because that would be illegal. But he did hint that McDonald's and the rest should make it clear that promotion depended on obeying orders.

Staff must be told that their 'loyalty should be to the company, not the union'. They should be encouraged to wear badges declaring that they found the thought of democratic representation vile. Those who refused would, presumably, be making a bad career move.

With opponents like this, unions will inevitably lose as many battles as they win. The rest of us will be able to enjoy the spectacle of all those firms which assert that their people are their greatest asset employing some of the most expensive lawyers in the country to ensure that their assets are seen but not heard.