Blog

17^th October 2020

Chaotic, uncoordinated, directionless – all terms which have at various times been used to describe the Tory government’s handling of the current COVID-19 pandemic.  Ostensibly it is hard to deny such accusations, given the debacle which emerges following each set of policy announcements in relation to dealing with the crisis.  Johnson’s government may well be inept but it is not entirely without purpose.  The guiding principles of the handling of the pandemic to date have been to protect private wealth over public health and this continues to be the case.

How can this be, when the strategy of the government appears to threaten the livelihoods of many small businesses and entrepreneurs, previously just making enough to get by but now in danger of going under, as the furlough scheme ends and the government support on offer is barely enough to cover the bills, never mind pay the wages of staff?

In reality, not only is the government not in control of the virus, it is not in control of the basic laws of capitalism.  One basic tendency of capital is that towards monopoly, the swallowing up of smaller competition by bigger providers, thus creating ever larger conglomerates which dominate particular fields of industry, retail or communications.

Dealing with competition by takeover has long been a key feature of capitalism and is no different in the modern world of digital and virtual technologies.  Facebook dealt with the threat from WhatsApp and Instagram by buying them up for example.

The demise of the high street shop may not be on quite such a scale but the opportunity is there for the bigger retailers to step into the void left by independent retailers, no longer able to make their way.  This may take the form of more ‘local’ Tesco or Sainsbury’s outlets, or a high street Starbucks, but nonetheless increases the reach of the corporate pyramids.

Capitalism also functions according to basic laws governing the supply and demand of labour.  In times of crisis, when jobs are going and labour is being shed, pay becomes a buyers market.  In spite of minimum wage legislation and working time rights, employers have managed to get round much of this by the simple trick of not being employers.  Nowadays many companies will contract ‘self employed’ individuals, paid on piece rates to deliver goods or produce product.

Apart from driving down the hourly rate of pay such an approach divests employers of the responsibility for national insurance or pension payments.   In the short term this may sustain profits but crises of job insecurity, a low skills low wage economy and a future pensions crisis are undoubtedly in store.

Large sections of the population effectively living hand to mouth, in areas of work where it is difficult to co-operate or unionise, will continue to increase as the pandemic progresses.  This reserve army of labour, either unemployed or in unstable employment, will continue to be a resource for the suppression of wage rates and will continue to be a threat to those in low paid work, in danger of falling into the twilight world of semi-employment.

In any crisis there are also winners.  There are no signs of Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook or Netflix going under.  Nor are there any signs of any of the major profiteers from the pandemic coming under pressure to pay their share of taxes, to support those suffering at the sharp end.  It is not in their interest to offer, nor in the interests of the Tories to ask.

The day to day practicalities of what it means to be in Tier 2 and what cannot be done in Tier 3 are in danger of consuming many, as the pandemic moves into the winter flu season and the trajectory of infections increase.    To a certain extent that is inevitable as people attempt to make sense of a system almost designed to obfuscate and confuse.

However, many are also increasingly seeing that, beyond the present crisis there are questions to be answered about how society is organised and managed; how the means of production are distributed and controlled; why over 40,000 have died in the world’s fifth richest economy while the death toll in China, with a billion strong population, has not yet hit five figures; how a struggling  developing economy like Cuba is re-opening its doors for tourism.

Different politics, a different view of the world, means different priorities. When the profits of the international corporations are not your number one concern it is possible to do things differently and genuinely do things in the interests of people, not private profit.

11^th October 2020

Panto – enough to save the cultural sector?

With anticipated new measures to further lockdown huge areas of England expected this week and much of Scotland already under significant lockdown, there has been a glimmer of good news.  There may be some pantomime this Christmas.  This would be more welcome if the government’s handling of the pandemic so far had not been such a performance.  However, the joy with which the news of National Lottery funded pantomime in ten cities was greeted is symptomatic of a nation desperate for something to do, somewhere to go and some distraction from the grim realities of COVID-19.

Music venues are tentatively testing out the possibility of socially distanced performance to the same rapturous response.  A modest, socially distanced, autumn music programme announced by the Sage Gateshead for example sold out within hours.  Theatres and venues across the country are tentatively dipping their toes in the water of performance, on a limited scale.  Most local authorities have opened up library services, albeit on a reduced basis, providing many local communities with a lifeline both to literature and the possibility of human contact beyond their immediate family.  Local museums have similarly seen a gradual return of visitors, although most report that this is at little more than 30% of usual levels.

While the gradual return of some cultural life is to be welcomed the context of rising infection rates, growing hospitalisations, and the creeping up of the death rate does raise the question as to how sustainable any cultural revival will be.   

The cultural sector more widely has been one of the hardest hit by the pandemic, with theatre and live music venues closed, the summer festival programme cancelled and cinemas operating on a restricted basis with little new film product.

The sector relies more that most on freelance workers, both in the creative and technical sides of the industry, while many organisations necessarily rely upon significant grant aid, sponsorship and, critically, ticket sales to survive; the so-called three legged stool of cultural funding.

The shift in emphasis over many years in the cultural sector has been away from state aid, as Arts Council budgets are regularly slashed, and has moved increasingly towards philanthropy and income generated through ticket sales.  While this has resulted in some creative responses to funding and income generation in the cultural sector, with a sharpened approach to product differentiation and merchandising, these still rely upon significant footfall and spend at the venue.  Only so much marketing is successful online if you have not seen the show!

As a business model in relatively good times, when there is enough disposable income in the economy, this has allowed the sector to survive, if not always to flourish.  Community theatre, grass roots music venues and local authority support for seedcorn arts projects, have continued to struggle against the tsunami of austerity over the past ten years.  The pipeline of new talent from working class and black and minority ethnic communities, trying to find a foothold in the cultural sector, has suffered accordingly.  Local museums and libraries, often the lifeblood of engagement at a community level, have increasingly fallen victim to austerity as council budgets are squeezed.

The various packages so far offered by Chancellor Rishi Sunak have done little to help cultural workers at the sharp end survive.  Self employed artists and local theatre companies, reliant on commissions from local government, the education sector and the private sector have found the well running dry. Many freelancers did not qualify for individual support while business loans were little compensation to arts organisations uncertain of their future prospects and their ability to meet repayments.  Little in the current packages on offer from the government indicate a significant change.

Whatever largesse the private sector may have found for arts sponsorship is unlikely to be forthcoming for some time, as most retrench and restructure as a result of the pandemic.  Ticket sales will be affected by whatever social distancing measures venues have to observe as well as some degree of audience reluctance, if infection levels are not brought under control.

There will no doubt be protection for the national institutions in the cultural sector.  Will the government allow the British Museum, V&A, Royal Opera, the RSC, Tate Modern and other national cultural icons to disappear?  It is unlikely.

However, while the pandemic has dramatically exposed the fragility of an NHS which has been under resourced for over a decade and has been overwhelmed by a surge in demand, it has also exposed the fault lines in the funding structures for the cultural sector.  The £1.57bn Cultural Recovery Fund administered through Arts Council England, currently dispersing this fund, may address some short term issues but even there demand has very much outstripped supply.

At some point sponsorship will return to the big names and, with greater confidence, so too will audiences.  How much of the sector is left at a local level though may well depend upon the extent to which funding through local authorities can be increased to target cultural activity and support community arts and education. It will take more than a few high profile pantomime announcements to address these issues.

2^nd October 2020

There are many ironies to the news this morning that Donald and Melania Trump have tested positive for COVID-19.  There is the fact that Trump spent months in denial that the virus existed.  He moved on to suggest that an injection of bleach may be a suitable cure.  Trump has subsequently done all in his power to weaponise the pandemic, as part of his anti-China campaign and his attempt to maintain the global economic and military power balance in favour of the United States.

It is an irony that the greatest perpetrator of fake news, a term regularly used by Trump in order to deflect criticism from the liberal media, has fallen prey to many being prepared to believe that his positive diagnosis is just the latest in a long line of pre-election stunts to bolster his faltering campaign for re-election.

Whatever the reality, for the military industrial complex and the alt-right social conservatives in the US, Trump may be reaching the point of being expendable.  In four years Trump has effectively eradicated any hint of liberal social policy, limited though it was, that Barack Obama was able to introduce in his two terms in office.

The ‘Make America Great Again’ mantra was always a tilt at the perceived failings under Obama, even though foreign aggression and wars of intervention were a feature of Obama’s watch. The persistent condemnation of the New York Times and what passes for liberal media in the United States has helped undermine what little trust many Americans had in their government and given succour to the bully boys of white supremacy, from the Ku Klux Klan to the Proud Boys.

For the conservative alt-right a key achievement of the Trump presidency is undoubtedly the shift in power balance on the US Supreme Court.  With the likely appointment of dedicated Catholic and anti-abortionist, Amy Coney Barrett, Trump will have succeeded in shifting the balance of the court 6-3 in favour of conservative judges.

Access to abortion in the US relies upon a landmark 1973 ruling, Roe vs Wade, which legalised abortion nationwide.  It has long been a target of the alt-right in the US to have the ruling overturned and the shifting power balance in the Supreme Court is seen as a key means to achieving the reversal.

The shift reflects the pattern of white supremacist organisations being allowed to gain ground as a result of the upsurge in the Black Lives Matter movement, following a string of deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers in the US.

Trump has actively encouraged this trend. During Tuesday’s presidential debate with Democratic nominee Joe Biden, Trump was asked if he was willing to denounce “white supremacists and militia groups” and tell them to stand down amid violence that has marred anti-racism protests in some US cities.

Trump requested a specific name, and Biden mentioned the Proud Boys, an organisation that describes itself as a club of “Western chauvinists”.

“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” Trump said. The comment drew widespread criticism and was viewed by many to be a sign of encouragement for the group.  Trump has subsequently back pedalled, claiming that his comments were misinterpreted, but given his history of inflammatory comments on the subject of racism the ‘climb down’ appears to be little more than a PR exercise.

The terms of political debate in the US have shifted so far in the past four years that Trump can routinely characterise Joe Biden as a socialist.  In reality Biden, like Obama before him and every US President of modern times, is a representative of the super rich elite which are central to US politics.  An American presidency is never won without being bankrolled by the vested interests which are at the heart of the US finance and military industrial complex.

The Obama presidency, with its emphasis upon increased healthcare for the poor and a limited thawing of relations with Cuba, was about as liberal as the US bankers and corporations were prepared to allow.  Even that was too much for the neo-cons, who have channelled their agenda through Trump, turning his phoney ‘man of the people’ rhetoric to advantage while deepening poverty, increasing unemployment and killing thousands during the course of the pandemic.

23^rd September 2020

Less than a week after local authorities in the North East of England requested local restrictions, which were subsequently approved by the Secretary of State, Matt Hancock, the rest of England is now facing similar restrictions in the face of an exponential rise in the COVID-19 virus.  

Having spent the summer encouraging everyone to ‘eat out to help out’; go to the pub; go to the beach; return to town centre shopping; get back to work where they can; and take overseas holidays along so called air corridors, the government strategy of prioritising private wealth over public health is once again exposed.

The second wave of COVID-19, which is now officially acknowledged, was predicted by everyone except the government.  The exhortation to ‘control the virus’ was always doomed to failure.  The virus cannot be controlled.  It’s spread can be suppressed, through effective test, trace and isolate or its impact neutralised through the development of an effective vaccine.

While the vaccine option is not yet within reach, more effective test and trace has been demonstrated in various parts of the world, including China, Cuba, Vietnam and New Zealand.  It is little surprise that ideological bigotry will prevent the UK government taking any lessons from the first three of those countries but even the example of New Zealand, or for that matter South Korea or Germany, seems to be a step beyond the government’s capability.

As ever, the Johnson government has been too quick to listen to the interests of the breweries and alcohol manufacturers, euphemistically branded as the hospitality sector, rather than those of its own public health professionals.  The former saw the summer as an opportunity to cash in on fine weather, the easing of lockdown restrictions and the general desire of many sections of the population to get out of the house.

Public health professionals saw the summer as an opportunity to put in place an effective test and trace system, engage with local environmental health teams to gather intelligence, and prepare for the inevitable rise in COVID-19 cases over the autumn and winter period.  Not surprisingly, this did not happen on a wide enough scale.

It is widely held that the test and trace operation headed up by failed mobile phone company Chief Executive, Dido Harding, is a debacle.  Stories of people having to drive hundreds of miles for tests, only to find that sites are at capacity, are legion.  It is no use Tory millionaire Jacob Rees-Mogg suggesting that people should stop ‘endless carping’ about the failures of the test and trace system.  Unlike Rees-Mogg, most of those relying on tests are having to travel for miles, take time off work and then, if they need to isolate, potentially losing income they can ill afford.

There is the rub.  Apart from any systemic failures with test and trace there are the personal calculations families are making about whether or not they can afford to isolate.  Poverty is lurking and unemployment is just around the corner for many already on the breadline.  These are the realities for millions of working class families.  They have every right to ‘carp’ at a system which is failing to give them protection and is set to see thousands more die over the winter.

The government has once again implemented a series of measures which are too half hearted to have an impact.  Closing pubs and restaurants at 10pm is not enough, unless it is followed up with strict and well resourced enforcement action against businesses which continue to abuse the rules.  Failing that, closure altogether.  Visiting between households is no longer permitted in Scotland or the North East of England.  This needs to be a national position if chains of transmission are to be broken.

All of which needs to be implemented with a properly resourced and managed test and trace operation in place.  It is no good Johnson proclaiming that we are a ‘freedom loving people’ therefore it makes it difficult to enforce the rules.  That is simply baloney.  Keep the rules clear, simple, enforceable and applicable to all, even Prime Ministerial advisers, and they may begin to have an impact.

In the meantime, if the government are calculating that the current situation is to be with us for up to six months, a review of the furlough and other compensation schemes for businesses and individuals is essential.  Those hit hardest by the virus are those least likely to have the cushion of savings, multiple income streams or inherited wealth. A further tranche of short term support is vital. 

In the longer term it is not just systemic failures of test and trace but those of capitalism which need to be addressed.  For most people getting through their day to day lives and trying to keep up with the stream of obfuscation from the government is as much as they can manage.  However, people are increasingly seeing the realities of a system in crisis and once again, who is being made to pay.  Jacob Rees-Mogg and his ilk may not like the ‘carping’ but it is only going to get louder and, with the right leadership, more organised.

12^th September 2020

COVID-19 – is the message hitting home?

Just when it seemed that the bungling incompetence of the Boris Johnson led UK government could not find new depths to explore, this week we were proved wrong.  As the infection rate for COVID-19 soars, doubling every seven days, ahead of a likely upturn in deaths in hospitals, communities and care homes, the UK Prime Minister announced Operation Moonshot.

In a Downing Street propaganda stunt, dressed up as a press briefing on Wednesday, Johnson announced new measures to tackle the pandemic, the most immediate being the so-called ‘rule of six’, whereby from Monday, 14^th September in England gatherings, indoors or outdoors, will be illegal if they involve more than six people.  There are some exclusions relating to outdoor sporting events, the overall numbers allowed in restaurants and organised public gatherings, such as weddings and funerals, but the core principle for the public is, no more than six.

In addition, eventually catching up with Scotland, test and trace arrangements will be mandatory in England from the 18^th September.  This is aimed at the widespread flouting of the voluntary test and trace arrangements, which have effectively been a case of take no test and leave no trace, as people pack out bars and cafes with little heed to social distancing thus generating an exponential spread of the virus.

None of this should be any cause for concern however.  Why? Because the government which brought us herd immunity; inadequate test and trace at the start of the pandemic; the scramble for sufficient and appropriate PPE for health workers; the failure to lock down soon enough; the easing of lockdown restrictions too soon; and the exam result and return to schools debacle; that very same government has now promised Operation Moonshot.

Moonshot will allegedly accelerate testing from the current 200,000 a day to 10 million a day by 2021 at the cost of a mere £100 billion.  The plan is for at least two to four million tests by December before full roll out in 2021.  Moonshot will allow those testing negative to go to mass events such as football matches without spreading the virus.  The government scientific advisory body Sage does acknowledge however that this will require “superb organisation and logistics with rapid, highly sensitive tests”, not qualities on display so far during the present crisis.

Sage also point out, though the government do not seem keen to publicise the fact, that mass testing “can only lead to decreased transmission if individuals with a positive test rapidly undertake effective isolation.”  Evidence to date suggests that this may be a big ask.

Still, why be sceptical?  As ever with this government we will be cradled safely in the arms of the private sector.  Deloitte, a major partner in the government’s current hugely successful test and trace programme, in which you can drive hundreds of miles to a test site, will be there!  Better still, at least sixteen other companies and university partners will be along to play.  Big pharma gets a look in with GSK, Smith and Nephew, as well as Astra Zeneca.   Sainsbury’s and Boots are in the mix from the retail sector, all of this with the aim of “buying their large scale capabilities to build a large scale testing organisation.”  Private sector snouts in the public finance trough.

Johnson is said to have compared the programme to the Manhatttan Project, the US drive to develop an atomic bomb, in a typical moment of bombastic self aggrandisement.  It is revealing that a project to save lives should in any way bear comparison to one to develop weapons of mass destruction.   

While the basis of Moonshot is the development of tests which do not need to be processed in a laboratory but, like a pregnancy test, can give a result in minutes there is as yet no reliable science to suggest this is achievable in the timescale outlined by the government.  In fact, Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, said on Thursday,

“There are prototypes which look as though they have some effect, but they’ve got to be tested properly.  We would be completely wrong to assume this is a slam dunk that can definitely happen.”

A word in the Prime Minister’s ear perhaps?

The private sector continues to profit from the pandemic with sales of possible vaccines generating billions in revenue.  The UK alone has ordered 340m million doses of possible vaccine from six manufacturers.  The EU is alleged to have done a deal worth £2.2bn with one company.  The US programme, Operation Warp Speed, already has orders with six companies for 800m doses with options on another 1.6bn.  Currently 321 vaccines are being developed globally, of which 32 are at the clinical trials stage.

While the Western economies do their best to corner the possible vaccine market there are some mitigations for poorer countries.  The World Health Organisation (WHO) has set up the Covax programme, established to allow countries to share in the benefits of vaccine development, once working vaccines emerge.  There is also the ongoing vaccine development work in China and Cuba, where economies not driven by the interests of private sector profit will take a more supportive approach to the needs of developing nations.

Meanwhile in the UK, as the infection level climbs, the population are tied to a failed government, which has failed in its response to the pandemic so far, shooting for the moon. It would be funny if so many lives did not depend upon it.

Johnson has proved beyond doubt that he is a clown, but no-one is laughing.

6^th September 2020

Boris Johnson – past his sell by date even for the Tories?

Boris Johnson has carved out the unlikeliest of political careers based on bluster, bigotry and blagging his way out of a tight spot, like the class clown at a public school.  As the class clown, Johnson has been able to get by on a whim and a smirk, poking fun, getting the odd laugh and finding a way to scrape through when any tests come up.

Only in the English class system, with a private education, a privileged university and the right connections, could such a combination of attributes land you the top job in 10, Downing Street.

There was always the minor matter of becoming leader of the Tory Party and winning an election but Johnson has had the remarkable knack of being in the right place at the right time and the eye of opportunists throughout the ages of being able to adjust his politics to suit the moment. 

The right wing press and the BBC, now under fire for having too many left wing comedians, have been complicit in his rise.  A four year long assault on the politics of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn, and the robotic performance of the Tories under Theresa May, helped many Tory MPs and party members buy into the illusion that Johnson was fit for leadership.

To suggest that the joke is wearing thin is to put it mildly.  Over 40,000 deaths from COVID-19 by the official count, inept handling of everything to do with the pandemic from late lockdown to lack of PPE, inadequate test and trace arrangements and confusion over the exams and return to school process, have left even Tory MPs wondering at Johnson’s incompetence.

The chattering classes are already talking up Chancellor Rishi Sunak as a successor, as Johnson is regularly out manoeuvred by Kier Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions.  Resorting to accusing Starmer of being an IRA supporter this week, because he had served in Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet, even caused some blushes on the Tory benches.  Press outrage seems to have been confined to the accusation against Starmer rather than the slur against Corbyn.

Johnson was always a compromise for the British ruling class, a populist figure who could temporarily unite the Tories and be a focal point for opposition to Labour under Corbyn.  Having served his purpose UK ruling circles face a quandary.  Do they stick with Johnson through to the next General Election, by which time his character fault lines and political charlatanism will have been completely exposed, or do they change horses early to allow another leader to establish themselves?

The question is widely discussed in the columns of political commentary at the moment but for much of the nation the outcome will be academic.  Whoever leads the Tory Party will preside over another round of austerity in order to pay for the costs of the pandemic.  Rishi Sunak will soon be presenting a budget which will take the first steps down that road.  Unemployment over the 3 million mark already looks likely by Christmas, as the furlough scheme comes to an end.

As it stands, a Labour Government under Kier Starmer is unlikely to change that trajectory.  The desire to live up to some right wing media, Bank of England and City of London definition of economic competence will freeze out any radical thinking from a Labour manifesto, effectively taking us back to a choice over who can manage capitalist austerity most competently.  Competence being defined as the least threatening path for existing ruling class interests.

That can all change.  Pressure from within the Labour Party and mass extra parliamentary action to resist an austerity programme which makes the poor pay, more than they do already, for the pandemic is possible and is certainly desirable.

As the party conference season looms the first formal signs of how the Tories and Labour are looking to set out their stalls will become evident.  Popular pressure must build to make those who can afford to, pay their share.  Redefining economic competence, as running an economy by, for and in the interests of the working class must also be a battle cry going forward. 

Mealy mouthed words about ‘heroic’ health workers will no longer cut it.  For any change to be meaningful it needs to be seismic.  Labour need to grasp that reality.

29^th August 2020

Protesters in Washington, 28^th August 2020

No one thinks Joe Biden is a radical.  He certainly does not.  His address to the Democratic Convention last week was all Mr Middle America.  Mr Don’t Rock the Boat.  Mr Mainstream American Dream.  Nowhere did he suggest, or even hint, that he was Mr Radical.  He got the Democratic nomination precisely because of his lack of radical credentials.  In short, he was not Bernie Sanders.

The Republicans for their part are doing their best to portray Biden as a radical.  A vote for Biden, they claim, is a vote to open the floodgates to a socialist America, an America of conflict, an America in which opportunity is trashed and the State steps in to make every decision for you.

Any reasonable person will of course see this as arrant nonsense but that is not the audience to whom the Trump team are playing.  Trump is playing to an audience he expects to believe when he says,

“I say very modestly that I have done more for the African-American community than any president since Abraham Lincoln.”

To be fair, that is not a very high bar, given the record of successive US Presidents on the race question but it is still a bold claim, especially in the context of recent events and the growing momentum behind the Black Lives Matter protests.

Trump is also bold enough to claim that he took “swift action” to control COVID-19, in spite of the US death toll now being at 181,000 with more than 1,000 people dying every day.  However, in a world where your target vote gets its news diet from Fox News and Breitbart any relationship with reality is at best tangential.

The campaign to mobilise against  racism and for reform of policing in the United States continued yesterday with the Get Your Knee Off Our Necks March, timed to coincide with the 57^th anniversary of the March for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, which culminated with Martin Luther King’s famous, ‘I have a dream…’ speech.

Organised through the National Action Network under the slogan ‘No justice, no peace’ the march mobilised a powerful lobby of speakers from the families of those who have most recently been victims of racist policing methods in the US.  Many moving declarations and expressions of solidarity followed but little in the way of political analysis or any explanation that systematic racism is endemic to capitalism in the US, as it is elsewhere in the world.

The suffocation of George Floyd on 25^th May brought the Black Lives Matter movement front and centre into America’s homes. However, black people are dying quite unnecessarily in the United States in other ways.

Life expectancy is far shorter and infant mortality far greater for U.S. blacks, for example, than for white people.  The COVID-19 pandemic is having a disproportionate impact upon the black community as more people from ethnic minority backgrounds play key roles in frontline health and care services.

W.T Whitney, writing recently in the US People’s World observed that,

“Racism serves as an adjunct to classed-based oppression. Causing pain, racism works for maintaining social-class boundaries. The combination of the two has resulted in Black people being relegated to a generally precarious role within U.S. society and remaining vulnerable to lethal violence.”

This is the reality which the Black Lives Matter movement ultimately has to come to terms with if it is to make progress and really make an impact upon the shape of society in the United States. 

In the short term the exhortation is to get the black community to register and then to vote on 3^rd November to get Donald Trump out.  The Trump camp are already preparing their response.  Wheeling out conservative blacks who applaud the United States as the land of opportunity, while condemning violence in black communities, thus portraying victims as perpetrators, is one tactic.  Portraying a Joe Biden presidency as the gateway for an unleashing of all the evils of the world is another.

Getting Trump out would undoubtedly be a step forward.  Whether Biden can make any great strides in terms of tackling racism and inequality in the United States, even if he really has the inclination, will depend upon the momentum the Black Lives Matter movement can continue to build.

The extent of change that Black Lives Matter can affect will in turn be dependant upon the extent to which that movement becomes class conscious, recognising the need for the unity of the black and white working class if progress is to be made.

The Democrats will embrace Black Lives Matter to the extent that it serves their purpose, to get rid of Trump.  History shows however that it is not so much black lives as black votes that matter in US elections.  It will certainly take a movement more radical than anything Joe Biden is likely to acknowledge to move on from that position.     

18^th August 2020

Students opposing the A level results debacle

The failings of the Boris Johnson government become more evident daily, as one debacle follows another and control remains just out of reach at every turn.  The handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has been a calamity at every level for the working class, ethnic minorities and the elderly in care homes.  The death toll includes very few from the leafy suburbs and gated properties of the rich, while thousands who started out in poor health and poverty have paid the ultimate price.

There is little, if any, indication that the government cares about this.  The welfare of the poor has never been high on the agenda of any Tory government, even the most benign, and Johnson and his cronies will not be winning any accolades in that regard.  While not quite at the level of the systematic destruction of working class communities in the Thatcher years, Johnson is clearly more closely aligned with that brand of Conservatism than any so called One Nation approach.

Talk of ‘levelling up’ is purely that, talk to keep the newly elected Tories in Northern seats onside, in the hope that a few crumbs from the Westminster table will fall their way and they might scrape through into a second term in Parliament.   There is not, and never will be, any levelling up with the Tories for the simple reason that their whole raison d’etre is to ensure that the playing field is not level, that their class interests are defended and their privileges are protected.

None of this will every appear in any manifesto.  Just as their racist immigration policies, antipathy to local government and craven adherence to weapons of mass destruction over social investment and hospitals, will never appear in black and white in those terms.  Credit where it is due, the Tories have always been smarter than that.  Their core strategy of keeping enough of the people fooled, enough of the time, with a helping hand from a compliant BBC and right wing press has generally paid off.

Home ownership, share ownership, a stake in the country’s wealth, private health schemes, more private cars than ever, get rich, win the lottery; all holding out the hope to people of jam tomorrow. A flurry of Royal Family sagas and more war anniversaries and commemorations than anyone thought possible in recent years have also reinforced a national narrative that plays into the narrow jingoism of the Tory nationalists.

When did VJ Day ever merit two minutes silence?  Certainly, no discussions have featured the US war crimes in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as part of the ending of the Second World War narrative, over the past weekend.

The government is now embroiled in a debacle over A level exam results, with what can only be seen as a class based algorithm handing out lower grades in underprivileged areas, while reinforcing top grades for the private school sector.   It is being presented as a problem with regulator Ofqual but is part of a wider picture of reinforcing the privilege of those who ‘expect’ university places, rather than those who deserve them on merit.

In a further move to reinforce its support base part of the function of Public Health England will be hived off to be merged with the NHS Test and Trace organisation, to be led by Tory peer Baroness Harding.  Test and trace is currently being run by private sector sharks Serco and Sitel, yet another example of profit from public health being put ahead of public health itself.  How much the private sector has made from government contracts throughout the pandemic will be a revealing calculation.

There is no levelling up, there is no people’s government, there is pocket lining and reinforcement of privilege.  The Tory leopard cannot and will not change its spots.  A less compliant Labour leadership would be landing blow after blow, exposing the scandal of the government’s handling of the entire pandemic, calling for investment in public health rather than shoring up opportunities for more private wealth.  The Opposition needs to find some bite to its strategy to oppose.

 

14^th August 2020

Iranian workers, part of the current strike wave

An unprecedented wave of strike action is underway in the gas and oil fields of Iran, as workers down tools over the late payment of wages, insecure employment contracts, poverty wages and intolerable working conditions.  Temperatures in Iran’s refineries can reach up to 50 degrees Celsius, a danger to health and almost impossible to work in.

An estimated 10,000 workers have been involved in wildcat strike action which has hit major refineries and industrial projects in Iran’s South Pars gas fields.  The strike has remained solid for over a week.  Localised protests have been common in recent years, as employers have squeezed pay and conditions in order to maximise profits, but the co-ordination of action, affecting a number of refineries and many contractors, is a new dimension.

By Saturday, 1st August, of the 10,000 workers on strike, 5,000 had abandoned the gas fields entirely and returned home.  Other remained in their dormitories, waiting for employers to give in to their demands.

Those on strike cover a range of trades including builders, electricians, welders and pipefitters, who work for employment agencies and gang masters on a variety of industrial projects in the world’s largest natural gas field. They work a shift cycle of 20 days on, ten days off, and are housed in dormitories close to the workplace while on shift.

The action has seen hundreds of workers protesting outside the offices of the contractors, declaring their intention to refuse to work for an entire 20-day shift cycle.

IndustriALL Global Union’s Iranian affiliate, the Union of Mechanics and Metalworkers of Iran (UMMI), has to operate under restrictive conditions in which independent trade unions in Iran are not officially recognised by the regime.  In spite of this UMMI is optimistic that, given the scale of the action, workers may have a chance to win concessions and possibly gain representation at major industrial sites.

The development of the South Pars fields is Iran’s flagship hydrocarbons project. The economy depends on the project for foreign exchange as it experiences hyperinflation. The significance of the fields is underlined by the fact that it is the state-run oil and gas company that has jurisdiction over all projects in South Pars.

Lost revenue therefore has a direct impact upon the beleaguered Iranian exchequer.  While this may augur well for a negotiated solution the Iranian regime is not noted for conceding to workers demands and a long struggle may yet be ahead. Organisers are already wary of retaliation by the security forces, a common tactic in Iran, as the strike spreads. There are already reports of arrests and surveillance against key activists.

French energy giant Total signed a deal to develop the fields in 2017, but pulled out due to US sanctions.  The fields are being developed in partnership with other multinational energy companies, but Iran has struggled to raise the necessary financial commitment. Contractors are under pressure to complete work on projects which are behind schedule, and often face liquidity problems due to delayed payments on government contracts due to banking sanctions.

International support will continue to be a crucial factor in sustaining the immediate action but also raising the profile of the struggle for wider trade union recognition in Iran.

Sources inside Iran have stressed the significance of the actions as this is the first time in the history of Iran’s labour strikes that contract workers in the country’s oil, gas and petrochemical industries have managed to organise strikes on such a scale.

Contract workers, make up about 70 percent of the total workforce in the sector, but are generally unable to organise such large-scale protests due to their dispersal across a range of companies and contractors.

The fears of the regime that the action could spread from economic to political demands were intensified recently when 14 independent organisations, from different social classes and spheres, issued a statement in support of oil, gas and petrochemical workers’ strike movement. “A general strike is the only way” is the final sentence of this statement.

Trade union, human rights and solidarity organisations have been quick to respond to the action by the Iranian workers and show expressions of support and solidarity.  In the UK, the Committee for the Defence of the Iranian People’s Rights (CODIR), has been at the forefront of leading calls for solidarity with the Iranian workers action and soliciting expressions of support from labour and trade union movement organisations.

More details at www.codir.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9^th August 2020

Chancellor Rishi Sunak – is a wealth taxing budget likely?

The UK economy is tanking, there is no two ways about it.  Redundancies in the past week alone include Hays Travel, DW Sports, Pizza Express, Currys PC World and WH Smith.  Many others have only been hanging on due to the coronavirus furlough scheme which is now being phased out as employers have to contribute to pension and national insurance costs.  By October, wage subsidies in any shape or form will be over, leaving businesses to make their own way without government support.

The virus is not a crisis of the government’s making but the response to it, being too slow to lockdown, too slow to provide adequate testing and too slow to deliver personal protective equipment, is certainly at the door of the government.

The package of measures introduced by the government to mitigate the crisis is likely to cost upwards of £300bn in additional borrowing in this financial year.  Even so, an estimated 25% was wiped off national output in March and April alone.  The prospect of 4 million unemployed by the end of the year is not an unrealistic one.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak is preparing for an Autumn Budget in October when it is widely expected that measures to set out who ‘pays’ for the cost of the pandemic will be articulated.  The traditional Tory approach in these circumstances has been to punish the poor.  The outcome of the 2008 banking crisis was ten years of austerity, in which job prospects, wage levels and local services were suppressed in order to pay off the banker’s gambling debts.

The fact of thousands being furloughed and millions potentially facing the prospect of job loss is a clear indication of who is already paying for the crisis.  Redundancies may be on the rise everywhere else but the 15 best paid executives in the technology sector alone have a combined income of more than $83bn.

Older, highly educated and highly paid workers, many working from home through the crisis, have been able to save money.  Bank of England data suggests that household deposits in bank accounts have increased by almost £70bn since the onset of the pandemic.

At the other end of the spectrum it is inevitably a different story.  In poorer households, especially where there have been job losses, savings are a dream.  It is estimated that up to £6bn will be owed in unpaid Council Tax, utility and credit cards bills.

The cost to local authorities, always the area to assist the poorest in our communities, runs into the millions for each local authority, with choices to either cut jobs, services or both inevitably looming.   Rent arrears from Council house tenants are mounting, while homelessness is likely to increase once again as temporary support measures are withdrawn.

The obscenity of capitalism’s disparities is further compounded by the most recent figures for UK wealth, measured by financial and property wealth, which stands at a record £14.6 trillion on latest official figures.  The top 10% richest people control almost half of this wealth; the poorest 30% control as little as 2% of all wealth.

The case for systemic change, which brings control over wealth and power into the hands of those who genuinely create or support that wealth creation, could not be clearer.  While asking workers to make the leap from resisting the pandemic to supporting the case for social revolution may be a step too far for some, there will be many for whom the iniquities of the system have become all too real in recent months and will be open to such conversations.

Sadly, this is not a path down which the current Labour Party leadership is likely to go. Kier Starmer’s most recent priority has been to pay off Labour HQ staff, who worked systematically to undermine the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.  Opinion polls still put the Tories in a strong position, in spite of the mishandling of the pandemic and mismanagement of the economy.  So far Starmer’s strategy, even with its limited objective of getting Labour back into office, is not working.

The very least that should be expected from Labour in the current circumstances is the demand for a wealth tax, hitting at least the top 1% richest people in Britain, to help alleviate the impact of the crisis upon the poorest communities.  These are not uncommon in other capitalist economies including, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland.

Spain imposes taxes on assets above €700,000 while France raises €2bn a year from wealth taxes paid by the 150,000 richest households.

A recent YouGov poll found 61% of the public supported a tax on those with assets in excess of £750,000, excluding pensions and the value of their residential property, with only 14% against such a tax.  City University’s tax reform advocate Richard Murphy has argued a wealth tax could raise as much £174bn, which could go towards paying down record levels of borrowing.

As measures to address the impact of the crisis go, even a wealth tax would be a limited one.  However, it would genuinely raise finance and symbolically it would shift the emphasis of who pays to those who can afford to, those who have been least affected by the pandemic and those who do not earn or deserve the wealth in which they revel.

At the very least, Labour need to take up the cause and make it clear that they are on the side of the many, not the few.