THIS IS CAPITALIST CLASS WAR!

The Tories don't bother preaching class war because they're far too busy practising it. 

They and the capitalist class they are part of have launched the most bitter assault on working-class people in living memory - as we persistently warned they would do, during the pandemic.

Inflation has reached the highest levels in at least 40 years. 

The global food price index is at the highest ever recorded. 

New official reports in Scotland confirm 20% inflation in the cost of supermarket shopping over the past 2 years. 

And the poorest Scottish people suffer far higher inflation than the richest: 10.2% already, compared with 8.7% for the wealthiest tenth of people. 

All the different schools of capitalist economists and their political echoes try to convince us that inflation is caused by rising wage demands. Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, who recently claimed under questioning at the Westminster Treasury Committee that he “can't remember” his salary of £575,000, lectured workers that “we do need to see restraint in wage bargaining”. 

The Tories perpetrate the same lie and do everything in their power to slash wages and neuter the collective strength of trade unionists in the defence of living standards. 

ASLEF members demonised and granted some concessions 

Class Hatred Towards Train Drivers 

We see their class hatred in response to the demands of a modest pay rise by train drivers in the face of inflation already at 9%, with forecasts of at least 14%. 

The full might of the media - broadsheet and tabloid alike - has been unleashed to demonise these workers. MPs, 200 of whom have second jobs that brought them in an additional £9million on top of their £84,000 salaries – use the media to denounce the drivers as overpaid, with utterly false and hypocritical sudden ‘concern’ for the comparative wages of nurses and teachers, dredged up to try and isolate and defeat ASLEF members. 

Of course, meantime not a word is muttered about giving inflation-matching pay rises to the very same NHS workers, after the hell they've lived through during the pandemic, with rampant burnout, early retirement, and a growing crisis in an underfunded, understaffed healthcare system. 

Defend the Right to Strike 

Faced with the power at the point of production held by London Underground workers and railway workers in general, and their critical role in the wider economy, the Tories have unleashed renewed threats of effectively banning the right to strike, with proposals to legislate ‘minimum service requirements’ on the railways (and other essential services) during any industrial action - which would effectively mean strikes were banned. 

On that issue the Tories did preach class warfare, but only in the hidden depths of the Tory election manifesto, as we exposed at the time; they now aim not just to preach class war on railway workers but also practise it. 

Like a second-rate echo chamber of Tory propaganda, SNP Education Minister Richard Lochhead has joined the shoddy chorus of demands that workers should restrict themselves to what he calls “sensible wage claims". 

Spreading Strikes 

A vast variety of workers are already taking action on pay as the skyrocketing cost of essentials like food, energy, transport and housing devours their real wages. 

FE College lecturers are striking for decent pay, with a claim for 5,000 staff which would only cost approximately £1.5million in total, whereas the combined salaries of 26 College Principals cost the public purse £2.7million. 

School teacher members of the EIS have overwhelmingly rejected a 2% pay offer by COSLA, as have hundreds of thousands of local authority workers, ranging from Social Care staff to cleansing workers and many others. 

RMT members in Network Rail and 15 Train Operating Companies have smashed the Tory anti-union barriers with a 71% turnout and an 89% majority for strike action, which would be the biggest such industrial showdown on the railways in 40 years. 

The sheer scale of this vote for action may well force some concessions from the employers, but anything short of inflation-proofed pay rises after 2 years of zero increases, alongside reversal of the planned loss of 2,500 Network Rail maintenance jobs, would be unacceptable. 

RMT members on ScotRail are voting for action after a derisory 2.2% pay offer, while the SNP/Scottish Green Party government try to square the circle, claiming credit for ‘nationalising' ScotRail on 1st April, then claiming “we are not in the room" when it comes to this pay dispute, whilst of course ScotRail is not only owned and funded by the Scottish government, but their (grossly overpaid) bosses have to get Cabinet permission for any pay rise above the same government's public sector pay cap. 

Royal Mail workers are balloting to protect their pay, and are about to be joined by fellow members of the Communication Workers Union in the BT Group. 

Countless groups of Unite the union members are likewise squaring up to the employers with demands on pay to catch up with inflation. 

Tories Battered into U-turn 

This rolling thunder of industrial fightback by hundreds of thousands of workers is what helped to terrify the Tories into a U-turn on a windfall tax on oil and gas companies, as they face fights on far too many fronts for their own liking. 

After months of stubbornly rejecting the notion of taxation of the grotesque super-profits of the energy giants, as their profiteering drives millions into fuel poverty, the Tories have conceded a temporary 25% tax on the profits of North Sea oil and gas companies, which they claim could raise up to £5billion. 

Whilst that figure dwarfs the pathetically weak windfall tax demands by the Labour leadership - which they themselves estimate would have raised £2billion - it still goes nowhere near matching the life-threatening hike to energy bills which have already been imposed, with an additional £800 increase forecast by Ofgem's chief executive for October. 

Whereas the universal £400 energy subsidy is a welcome, hard-won concession, it doesn't match even half the rise in bills. 

And in contrast to everything the Tories stand for, they've felt compelled to offer targeted (but totally inadequate) additional aid on mounting fuel bills, in a battle for electoral survival. To pensioners, a demographic with a higher than average propensity to vote; and to some of the most impoverished of the working class, to appease their rage in the so-called Redwall seats of northern England - former Labour fortresses recently conquered by the Tories. Classic ruling class tactics: limited reforms from above to prevent 'revolution' from below. 

Public Ownership of Energy 

And the windfall tax is tied to bountiful concessions to the Big Polluters, which threatens to not only subsidise their profits from taxpayers’ money but also vastly exacerbate the climate crisis. 

Shell, BP and the other fossil capitalists have been promised 91 pence back out of every £1 windfall tax provided they invest in energy production - with absolutely no precondition that such investment should be in clean, green renewable energy. 

It feeds into the renewed drive by Boris Johnson for increased fossil fuel production alongside a binge of nuclear power investment, neither of which offers any short-term answer to the energy crisis, and both of which only add to pollution and the threat to the lives of people and our planet. 

And the super-profitable electricity generating and supply companies and privatised National Grid are sheltered from the Tory windfall tax, which targets only oil and gas producers - leaving profiteering out of people's misery intact. 

Nothing short of public ownership of all forms of energy, democratically controlled and managed by elected boards comprising union representatives of energy workers, alongside representatives of the wider working class and governments, can begin to tackle the underlying energy crisis, cure poverty and pollution - all of which requires the planned production of clean, affordable green energy in a People's Energy Service. Made affordable by taking the profit out of it. And made clean by a worker-led transition to renewables. 

Tories party whilst thousands die in isolation 

Tories Can be Beaten! 

However, the £15billion package of concessions on the cost-of-living crisis, wrung out of the hands of Rishi Sunak against all the Tories’ ideology and inbuilt instincts, holds rich lessons for the wider struggles of working-class people. 

Despite their parliamentary majority the Tories are not invincible. They can be beaten. This is something like the 25th U-turn in their short period of office since December 2019. 

They are in crisis, as is the capitalist system they are part of, and can be driven back or even toppled. 

Public outrage at ‘partygate’ has laid siege to Boris Johnson's callous cabal, who arrogantly partied, quaffed alcohol to the point of vomiting all over 10 Downing Street and abusing cleaning staff, at a time when everyday people couldn't even say goodbye to dying relatives, at the height of the pandemic. 

Fury at the outrageous behaviour of this entitled, upper-class razor-gang, led by a serialised liar, has fused with rage at the rising cost of food and fuel, leading to a very significant upsurge in the readiness of workers to strike back through collective action. 

Coordinate the Strikes 

Instead of allowing employers and the government to isolate and pick off one section of workers at a time, national trade union leaders should urgently organise coordination of strike action, including the potential for a 1-day general strike, with common demands on wages, prices and job protection. 

The TUC’s ‘We Deserve Better’ national demonstration in London on June 18th is a welcome opportunity to rally the combined forces of the trade union movement. 

It cannot just be an exercise in going through the motions and letting off steam. Instead, it should be used as the launch-pad for systematic coordination of struggles, including strikes, across different sectors, to demand pay rises that at least match inflation; in round figures, at least 10% across the board. 

In doing so the TUC and individual national union leaderships need to take up the cudgels to bury the malicious myth that wage rises are what cause inflation. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Wages are lagging behind prices, and have been doing so for years. To illustrate the point, figures from the USA show that in the 20 years before Covid, corporations systematically suppressed wages, making labour's share of national wealth the lowest ever by 2019. 

Wages Don't Cause Inflation 

Real weekly wages only rose by 0.4% per annum, whereas annual growth in the national economy (GDP) was over 2% a year. In the period 2012-19, corporate America (excluding the financial companies) made $1trillion a year in profit; in contrast they made $1.7trillion profit last year alone. 

Corporate profit margins are at their highest since 1950 – increased by a median 49% in the last two years, whereas workers’ wages have only risen by 1.6%. The same pattern applies across the globe, including in this country. 

It's fattening profit margins which are causing inflation, not wage rises, which are failing to keep up with inflation. As the Economic Policy Institute sums it up, 54% of all price increases are due to increased profit margins, with labour costs only accounting for less than 8% of price rises. 

One more stark example: the big energy companies recently reported their profits had doubled in the last quarter, at the same time as most people's energy bills have doubled, as their real wages are collapsing, after over a decade of wage stagnation. 

Fattening profits fuel inflation, combined with the bottlenecks in supplies of certain goods because of snarl-ups in the logistics of shipping supplies across the oceans, which was previously hailed as the magic of globalisation, with its ‘just in time production’ slashing costs and turbocharging profits for global multinationals. 

The impact of Covid lockdowns, including port shutdowns, has thrown the globalisation ‘dream’ into chaos, creating supply chain bottlenecks and terrible costs to the working class worldwide, as scarcity of supplies pushes up prices. 

The crises of capitalism create inflation, not wage rises. 

Demand Price Controls 

The TUC London demo should also be used to demand price controls, as at least some governments did in the aftermath of a similar inflationary spiral caused by blockages of goods supplies in the aftermath of World War Two; to be monitored and implemented by Price Committees of workers and consumers. Cut prices and profits, not pay! 

Going beyond that, the trade union movement needs to crank up a serious campaign for democratic public ownership of key sectors like energy, transport, construction, food production and retail, to end the grotesque profiteering and horrendous escalation of food poverty, fuel poverty, substandard housing and social isolation. 

Trade unionists and socialists need to bombard the Scottish government and local authorities with demands for an emergency plan to retrofit every home free of charge, with insulation, draught proofing, new eco-friendly boilers and fast broadband – to slash energy consumption, fuel poverty, and create tens of thousands of skilled jobs into the bargain. 

The Scottish TUC missed an opportunity for far greater mobilisation of workers in Scotland on 18th of June; instead of just laying on transport to London they should have organised a Scottish demonstration to pound the employers and politicians closer to home with demands for pay increases of at least 10% across the board, underpinned by a Scottish minimum wage of at least £12 plus inflation. And investment in a Socialist Green New Deal based on public ownership of energy, all forms of transport and construction, rather than allowing the Scottish government hide behind the limitations of devolution as an excuse for following fundamentally the same path of real terms wage cuts as that being pursued by the Tories. 

Build a Scottish Mass Demo 

The STUC summit on the cost-of-living crisis on 17th of June is a golden opportunity to plan just such a mass demonstration in Scotland, to build solidarity with the various groups of workers taking industrial action, mobilising communities alongside trade unionists, and to rally behind an emergency programme on wages, job creation and a Socialist Green Recovery Plan to combat the cost of living crisis - which in reality is the cost of greed crisis, the cost of profiteering inherent to a capitalist system of production.

Protesting P&O, an obnoxious example of class war by employers 

 Seize the Billionaires' Wealth! 

We live in a fabulously wealthy economy, with no excuse for people having to choose between heating and eating; making all the more reprehensible the reports by Energy Action charity of people in Scotland literally burning furniture and floorboards to heat their homes. 

The combined wealth of Britain's 177 billionaires rose by 9.35% last year, to £653billion. A rise of £55billion in a year for 177 bloated fatcats. No ‘sensible wage demands’ for these creatures, one in three of whom have funded the Tory party. 

 The state of crisis facing millions of working-class people screams out for seizure of these exploiters’ ill-gotten wealth. For a socialist overturn of the class-ridden system that condemns millions to impoverishment whilst blessing the billionaires with wealth beyond human imagination. 

It’s time to meet the Tory class war on workers with equal determination and collective action. And we are many, they are few! 

ORDER A COPY OF OUR BOOK SPELLING OUT A FULL-BLOWN SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE TO CAPITALIST CRISES AND CLIMATE CATASTROPHE:

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STRUGGLE OR STARVE! - pay, prices, profit

There's no evidence of low paid workers and apprentices doing the Conga in the closes, celebrating in the shopping centres, or throwing street parties in the housing schemes. 
The Westminster government's increasing variety of national minimum wage levels have risen this month, but not so you'd notice. 

Workers aged 21-24 are now guaranteed £6.95-an-hour; those aged 18-20 £5.55 - in both cases a paltry 25p rise. And it gets stingier still: workers aged 16-18 have 'enjoyed' a 13p rise to the giddy heights of £4-an-hour. Worse still, apprentices have been granted an insulting 10p increase to a £3.40 minimum wage. 

Discounted Young Workers

How the hell are people meant to live on such basement level wages? Young workers or apprentices don't encounter sales banners in retail outlets or supermarkets declaring vast, special youth discounts. But that's precisely what the bosses - many of them billionaires - enjoy under the pernicious regime of age wage discrimination in this fabulously rich country. 

And don't go thinking workers over 25 have it cushy. Try living on the Tories' maliciously, deliberately misnamed 'National Living Wage' of £7.20-an-hour. Or indeed the Living Wage Foundation figure - currently £8.25, about to be increased - which builds in several self-imposed caps on what is actually required for a basic but reasonable standard of living. For instance, the Foundation itself admitted that a full three years ago, in 2013, it should actually have been set at £9.08 in Scotland to match living costs. And it's entirely voluntary, left to the whims and fancies of employers, with no power to legally enforce it. 

Profits Plunder Pay

Profits for big business are at record highs. Company chief executives award each other salaries that defy human imagination. On average they earn 183 times as much as their average worker. To keep all the figures bandied about for a real and genuine living wage in perspective, if the government's national minimum wage had kept pace with the rocketing pay levels of these company bosses since it was introduced in 1999, it wouldn't be £7.20, nor the Living Wage Foundation figure of £8.25, nor even the immediate £10 which the Scottish Socialist Party is demanding, but at least £18.99-an-hour, here and now in 2016! 

Wage Stagnation 

Workers' wages are stagnating, and have for over 30 years. Real wages have plunged by 10% since the 2008 financial crisis, brought about by bankers, billionaires and the political choices of their capitalist system. Wages have been consciously slashed to boost profits, with the aid of the legal chains forged to stop unions fighting back for a better share in wages and public services. 
And it's set to get worse for millions of workers' families over the next couple of years, as inflation re-enters the political economy after a period of very low official inflation figures. 

Food banks for Food workers

Even before the Brexit vote, workers' wages were slaughtered by the cost of basics like housing, transport and food. 

An astonishing six million UK families - five million of them with one or more people in jobs - are what the Tories have christened "just managing families". In poverty, working to remain poor, in more honest English. 

As the Resolution Foundation think tank has measured, these families now spend 25% of their incomes on housing - equivalent to a hidden income tax rise of 14p in the £1 compared to their situation in 1995. Transport costs are the highest in Europe. And contrary to the press propaganda, most of us haven't noticed the alleged fall in the price of food the last couple of years! On the contrary, as I recounted in my book Break the Chains, there are cases aplenty of fast food and supermarket staff serving food but having to rely on food banks to stave off hunger on their starvation wages. And as the Food Foundation recently commented, 

"Higher prices force families who are struggling to go for the cheapest calories. Children in the most deprived areas already experience twice the levels of obesity than children in the least deprived."

Before and after Brexit vote 

Now the Brexit vote has triggered a nosedive in the value of sterling, which spells disaster for the cost of living for low and middle-income families.

A lot of economically illiterate dross has been pumped out by some capitalist commentators about the fall in value of sterling against the Euro and US dollar meaning a heyday for British exports. What exports? For decades the dominant finance wing of the capitalists, and their hired politicians, have decimated industry in the likes of Scotland. Instead, they've concentrated on making big bucks through financial speculation and slaughtered wages. 

With wages so low, they shored up demand and sales through a glut of credit for a period, which then crashed in 2008, with workers made to pay twice over: through the £1.3trillion bailout of the banks from public funds, and eight years of austerity cuts since to recover that debt. 

Plunging Pound and Inflation 

The central fact is that the uncertainty post-Brexit Referendum has added to panic on the money markets and amongst manufacturers, with an 18% fall in the value of the £pound since May. Already car manufacturers like Fords, Vauxhalls and Peugeot have passed on price increases in the UK to compensate their profits for the weakened pound. The price of raw materials and goods needed by UK factories have in August grown faster than at any time since 2011. 

The very public spat between suppliers Unilever and retailers Tescos over the price of Marmite, PG Tips and Pot Noodle highlights the looming price rises for food. Prices at the petrol pumps are set to rise this month. Foodstuffs and other daily items are already being priced beyond the reach of the lowest paid, including a million people below the breadline in Scotland. For instance, butter prices have rocketed 75% since May; items like shampoo by 17%. 

All this has led economists at several leading banks to forecast inflation will leap to 3% or 4% in the next year, eating away at the value of workers' wages as they fork out for food, everyday essentials, housing and transport. That's also the view expressed forcibly by the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney - not noted for his trade unionist or socialist tendencies! 

Pay Cuts - With Worse to Come 

Meanwhile, wages are stagnant, and capitalist employers, governments and local governments are poised to make things even worse by protecting profit margins and implementing austerity cuts through de facto wage cuts. For instance, Deloitte did a recent survey of the chief financial officers of major UK companies, and found 94% of them view cutting costs as the key priority for the next year; in other words, cuts to wages and/or jobs. 

Numerous retail giants - with profits measured in £billions rather than £millions - have won kudos for increasing hourly pay rates, in a very few cases volunteering the Living Wage Foundation rate of £8.25. The same ruthless profiteers have tried to bury the bad news that they've robbed back some or all of that wage concession by slashing premium payments for anti-social hours on Bank Holidays, Sundays, nightshifts or overtime. In several instances, workers are literally worse off each week - but their bosses win extra customers through appearing like 'ethical employers'. 

What Alternatives to the Tories' Atrocities?

Most people won't be fooled by the stomach-churning guff from Theresa May (or Ruth Davidson) about the Tories being "the party of the working class", concerned about "the just managing families". This is the party driving people into starvation, even suicide, with their benefits sanctions regime, and whose anti-Trade Union Bill makes Britain the most repressive anti-worker state in the entire western world.

But what alternatives are on offer from other, anti-Tory parties?

Since our foundation in 1998, the SSP has persistently fought for a living national minimum wage - for all over 16, apprentices included, with equal pay for women - based on a formula that would challenge poverty head on, and automatically upgrade pay with rises in average pay or prices: a minimum calculated as two-thirds male median wages. Since 2014 that has meant we've demanded £10-an-hour, here and now, not in some distant future. 

In September 2014, the TUC - representing nearly seven million organised trade union members - unanimously voted for "a £10 minimum wage for all workers". 

In the last month or so, Labour's socialist Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell (and less volubly Jeremy Corbyn), have echoed that demand of the TUC.

TUC and Labour

But here's the problem. The TUC leadership - and most of the individual affiliated unions - haven't lifted a finger to pursue that aim, two years on, despite the demands of SSP members and other socialists in the unions. It's been left hanging as 'an aspiration', with no timescale fixed for achieving it, no plans laid to agitate and organise a battle for it, with union negotiators lodging pay claims that include a £10 minimum. 

In the case of Corbyn's and McDonnell's Labour, whilst an extremely welcome addition to the clamour for a real living wage, they only ask for £10 by 2020! Provided the Labour leadership advocate that for workers of all ages, it would obviously be better than the Tories' 'promise' of £9 by 2020 - but only for those over 25.

It would also be substantially better than the £8.70-an-hour by 2020 which the SNP committed to in an independent Scotland since the 2014 Referendum campaign. 

But £10 in 2020 would be nothing like the £10 now, today, in 2016, which the SSP and an honorable minority of unions - especially the Bakers' Union - are demanding. It would be drastically devalued four years hence, given the forecasts on inflation already explained. 

Waiting for Westminster?!

We can't just sit back and wait for generous handouts from the Westminster government - increasingly likely to be Tory for at least another parliamentary term, given the shameful civil war against Corbyn by Labour MPs and the Scottish Labour leadership around Kezia Dugdale. 

Workers and socialists need to agitate and organise for £10 now in their unions and on the streets, and bombard local councillors, MSPs and the Scottish government to implement a Scottish living minimum wage of £10 for all without further delay. 

The SSP campaigns for devolution of power to Holyrood over setting the statutory minimum wage. But whilst fighting for that, we should also demand that all Scottish councils and the Scottish government not only gain the kudos of volunteering as Accredited Living Wage Employers, but also insist on them implementing it through contracts and procurement... and set the (voluntary) Living Wage for Scotland at £10 here and now. 

SNP Shortcomings 

The SNP government claims to be 'Stronger for Scotland'. At the recent SNP conference, they made the wholly welcome call for an end to the lower youth rates for the so-called Living Wage. The original Motion, from the SNP Trade Union Group and Chris Stephens MP, only asked for the feeble £7.20 for all ages. A Paisley branch amendment improved that substantially to the Living Wage Foundation's £8.25. But the Motion agreed merely asks the Westminster government to implement this, rather than any concrete proposals on how to archive this within Scotland - even within the confines of devolution - and furthermore puts no timescale on when Westminster should implement it!

Slave Wages at Sea

At the same SNP conference, a lobby of seafarers in the RMT union demanded an end to the scandal in the Northern Isles where a shipping company (Clipper), registered in the notorious Bahamas tax haven, is paying foreign workers a criminal £3.66-an-hour for working the contract they won off the Scottish government. That's the brutal realities behind the headlines, which must be outlawed immediately. 

Join the SSP's Struggles 

The SSP won't relent on our campaign for £10 now, for pay before profit, for a radical redistribution of the wealth produced by the working class in the first place. Join us in battling for a genuine living wage, with no age or gender discrimination, and put the employers, councillors and Scottish government under relentless pressure to outlaw the crucifying poverty pay suffered by about half a million workers in Scotland. 

It's increasingly, literally, a case of the old 1930s socialist slogan: Struggle or Starve!