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:

https://scottishsocialistparty.org/product-category/pamphlets/

UNELECTED JUDGE TRAMPS ON WORKERS' RIGHT TO STRIKE: stand by the posties!

An unelected High Court judge today trampled basic, democratic workers' rights in the muck, as he rushed to the defence of absentee multi-millionaire Royal Mail boss, Rico Back.

Mr Justice Swift was quick to ban the right of 110,000 postal workers to go ahead with strike action in defence of their jobs, dignity at work and the vital public services they deliver, despite 97.1% of them voting for such action, in a landslide 76% turnout in the ballot.

This upper-class representative of the rich and powerful - who has the brass neck to be adorned with the title 'Justice' Swift - was obscenely hasty in his defence of the profiteers who've taken over the reins in Royal Mail, only to shred the Four Pillars Agreement signed with the CWU union a year ago. 
As CWU postal section leader Terry Pullinger rightly, angrily, declared, "The Courts of Justice are here to defend millionaires and the establishment."

Members of the CWU are raging at the outrageous accusation that their union is guilty of "improper interference" during the strike ballot in September,  in what the bewigged dictator called "a form of subversion of the ballot"
His bogus accusations were based on the claim the union had encouraged a Yes vote, and that some members opened their ballot papers at work rather than in the privacy of their homes. 

Not One of 110,000 Complained! 

As CWU leaders from every region of the country spelled out, not one single member of the 110,000 workforce ever complained to the independent scrutineers about interference in the ballot, or about being pressurised by the CWU, or any other objection to how this phenomenally successful exercise in mass democracy was conducted. 

The brutal truth is that Swiss-based Rico Back and his unelected Royal Mail Group board are hellbent on smashing the working conditions and jobs of these workers, hoping to scrap 6-days-a-week delivery, renege on the agreed transition to a 35-hour week by 2021 without loss of pay, and create an insecure Parcelforce operation modelled on the gig economy, bogus self-employment and zero hours contracts  - as practised by Rico Back already on the European continent. 

The equally ugly reality is that this boardroom of vandals fear the impact of united strike action prior to Black Friday and Christmas, and have employed the services of the class-ridden judiciary to invent stories of irregularities and ban such strikes. 

A Threat to All Workers 

The entire trade union movement needs to awaken to the profound significance of this assault on the CWU and its membership. 
It's an assault on the right to campaign as a union; the right to vote and uphold that vote;  indeed the right to strike.  
The wider unions need to rally behind the CWU, in whatever action their members decide to take in response to this crusade by the marauding millionaires and their Courts, in what Dave Ward has described as "a call to arms". 
This is as-near-as-damn-it to a ban on the right to strike, even the right to vote... without "improper interference" by the Courts, in "a form of subversion" of what masquerades as democracy under the rule of the capitalist rich. 

A Mandate for Defiance 

The strength of feeling in the sorting and delivery offices had already triggered unofficial walkouts at the rate of one a week, and then fuelled the phenomenal vote to take the first national strike action in a decade. 
Whatever the CWU decides to do in response to this brazen trampling on workers' rights by the Courts, media and Boris Johnson's outgoing Tory regime, this mood for resistance should not be allowed to dissipate. 

As we've written previously, the scurrilous attacks on the posties for daring to vote to strike at the busiest time of year, and during a snap General Election, should only serve to highlight just how critical these workers are to the functioning of several aspects of society.  
And that pivotal role should be harnessed as leverage in defiance of this High Court bosses' subversion, to stop the industrial vandals from obliterating not only the postal service,  but fundamental rights won through hard battles by past generations of trade unionists and socialists. 

Stand by the Posties

Likewise, just as the Courts, mainstream media and Tories have combined forces, so too the workers' movement needs to rally behind the posties in this hour of greatest need for solidarity. 
The Scottish Socialist Party is on standby to help enlist support in our unions and communities for that call for solidarity from the posties and CWU. 

STOP THE TORIES STAMPING ON THE POSTIES!

Royal Mail workers recently voted by a whopping 97.1% YES for strike action. A statistical display
of the levels of anger and readiness to defend their jobs, pensions, wages, conditions - and the
public service these 110,000 CWU members help deliver. 

But what are the broader issues driving the posties towards the first national strike action in a
decade? 

It's about the threat to 20,000 jobs as the Royal Mail Group Board plan to offload Parcelforce
as a separate business. 

It's about bosses reneging on the Four Pillars Agreement signed last year, which protects
pensions, and sets out a 'flightpath' towards a 35 hour week. 

It's in response to the rampant bullying by management which has provoked local office
walkouts at the rate of one a week. And the Amazon-style threat of tagging workers' every
 movement at work.  

But overarching the multitude of grievances is the entire direction of the service, which the
Four Pillars Agreement promised the workforce union would have a say over, whereas the
new Board has contemptuously shut them out.

Privatisation Robbery 

Royal Mail was privatised by the Tories and LibDems in 2013 - at a time the public service had
notched up profits of £400m - after threatened strikes had stopped earlier attempts by Blair and
Mandelson's New Labour government to flog it off to the privateers. 

It was a bargain basement sale; given away for £1.5billion less than it had been  valued at by
a government-hired team of investment bankers! 

It was run by Moya Greene on an annual salary over £1m; she then got a £2.6m golden
handshake when she left. 

In steps a new Board, led by Rico Back, who received an 'encouraging' golden hello of £6m,
on top of his £2.7m annual salary. Not that Rico is in bad need of a handout; he commutes
500 miles to his RM job from his £2.3m luxury penthouse, which overlooks Lake Zurich, in
Switzerland. A bit of a contrast with the average CWU member's salary of £28,274, for traipsing
up and down closes in all weathers. 

Royal Mail hatchet-man Rico Back has more than a room with a view

In fact, the make-up of the Board gives a clue to the future that the 500-year-old Royal Mail faces,
unless the force of argument by the posties' union is combined with the argument of collective force,
 in the form of strikes and political campaigning. 

Bosses Want a Gig Economy 

Rico Back has previous! He was head of GLS, a European courier service which specialises in
use of bogus self-employment, 14-hour days, and as little as €3-an-hour! Their horrendous,
precarious employment standards - and sackings - have provoked strikes and rooftop protests
in northern Italy in 2016 and April 2019. 

Rico Back is not unique on the RM board. His 8-person team includes Michael Findlay, long-time
banker, who for seven years was Director of UK Mail, one of the larger private courier companies.
They too rely on bogus self-employment, plus hefty fines for workers being off sick, including a
courier who was hammered for £800 after being in a car accident whilst on duty. 

Then Findlay helped sell UK Mail to Germany's Deutsche Post, gaining £130m for the founding
 family, the Kanes, whose senior member gave £550,000 to the Tory Party.

Corrupt Tories in Charge 

The murky, tangled web of links between ruthless capitalist directors and the Tories is further
personified by Royal Mail Group Senior Independent Director, Baroness Sarah Hogg. Her
husband, Douglas Hogg, was the first Tory MP to resign from parliament after the 2009 MPs'
 expenses scandal. The pair of them enjoyed the generosity of the public purse in their Lincolnshire
Manor house, for such items as upkeep of a moat, an Aga cooker, £18,000 annual gardening costs,
and money for 'a mole man' (?!). 

But Sarah is her own woman: she was head of John Major's Tory policy unit in the 1990s; lead
author of their 1992 Manifesto which advocated rail privatisation; and was made Director of the
Treasury by George Osborne in 2016/7, as he wielded austerity measures like a mad axeman. 

Baroness Hogg's husband's rip-off claims for moat, Aga and 'mole man'

Rico's cohort also boasts two former British Airways directors, Keith Williams and Maya da Cunha,
who bitterly clashed with BA unions in their drive to cut costs.

And we shouldn't ignore Donald Muir, who carries the mind-boggling title of 'Transformation Director'
at Royal Mail. To be fair, he prefers the self-description of 'Transformation Guru'. 

And the type of transformation in mind? As CEO of Global Titanium Solutions, he previously
charged the NHS £935,000 for lending his expertise to handing over large chunks of the NHS
to private profiteers. 

Fear the Worst - and Fight it! 

With a gang like that in charge, in cahoots with the Tory government that some of them openly
help to fund, the posties and CWU are absolutely justified in fearing the worst, and fighting it. 

The Board members not only want to renege on the agreed 35-hour week by 2021, but have
blatantly refused to defend the Universal Service Obligation, which guarantees 6-days-a-week
delivery to all 30 million UK households, at the same price regardless of location. 

They clearly want to shift to a 5-day or 3-day delivery, which would not only threaten 20,000 jobs,
 but add to social isolation for millions of people who often rely on their local postie for human
contact, help in emergencies, and support. 

Breaking up Royal Mail, setting Parcelforce apart as a separate entity, would be the first step to
GLS-style employment; bogus self-employment, insecure work, poverty pay, and back-breaking
workloads.

Two Futures - Them or Us 

As new technology and patterns of behaviour change the service from predominantly letters to
parcels and packages, the boardroom dictators are hellbent on slashing jobs, wages, rights,
dignity at work and public services, to turbocharge profits. They are trying to avoid or crush the
union, fully aware that the CWU and its members stand for an entirely different future, where
social provision trumps profiteering every time. 

And the nightmarish likelihood of a Boris Johnson government, boosted by a general election
majority, adds to the privateers' arrogance - and to the gravity of this battle between two futures. 

Demand Workers' Voice 

The CWU wants to uphold the Four Pillars Agreement, including the chance to have a voice
over the entire role of the service in the modern world.  

And France gives us a glimpse of one aspect of this alternative vision. When postal service
bosses there wanted to cut costs and compete with the gig economy, the posties and their
unions resisted, demanded and won reforms. This includes formal recognition that part of the
posties' job description is called 'veiller sir mes parents' - 'keep an eye on my parents'. This
involves them checking in with pensioners on their rounds, and sending messages to their
family to keep them abreast of the wellbeing of their older relatives.

Stamp Out Tory Assault

These contrasting futures are in collision, as Royal Mail bosses make no meaningful concessions
in talks, and massive strike action looks unavoidable and necessary to turn back the tide of assaults
on workers and the communities they service, alike. 

Trade unionists and socialists have a duty to build solidarity with the posties in this fight for their lives. 

The bosses are deploying the media to whip up fear at the impact of strikes pre-Christmas, or the
impact of strike action during a general election.  

We need to counter this with the truth; the bleak future if this marauding gang get away with looting
the vital public services millions rely on, after they've already plundered public funds for their own
grotesque financial gain. 

And the impact of pre-Christmas action, endorsed by an unprecedented mandate in the 97.1%
majority, is precisely the leverage required to halt the capitalist looters in charge of Royal Mail.  

Renationalisation and Democracy 

In building solidarity, the case for renationalisation of Royal Mail - for public ownership, but with
democratic working class control of plans and decisions - should be broadcast loud and clear.
The two contrasting, colliding visions and plans for the future make it starkly clear who stands
for a decent, civilised society, looking after people rather than profit. 

Stand by your posties! Build solidarity, in your unions and communities, to beat back the
capitalist looters. Demand renationalisation of Royal Mail and telecoms, to provide secure,
well-paid jobs and twenty-first century services to the public, instead of stuffing the pockets
of a few shareholders and Tory-funding directors. 

DRIVE OUT THE TORIES WITH MASS DEMOS - not reliance on judges!

Anyone worth their salt will rejoice at the humiliating denunciation of Boris Johnson's illegal suspension of the Westminster parliament by the unanimous decision of all eleven judges in the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court.   


Johnson is an unelected Prime Minister, chosen by 90,000 Tory party members. He used arcane powers resting within the entirely appointed, unelected Privy Council to enlist the powers of the unelected, medieval monarchy to prorogue parliament - to bypass any limited checks and accountability imposed upon him by MPs. 

So, the unprecedented and excoriating verdict of the Supreme Court judges against this marauding would-be dictator, with his Eton-educated sense of upper-class entitlement, is to be celebrated. 

But reliance on the unelected, upper-class judiciary to win justice for the working-class majority against the rampaging Tories is a dangerous delusion, which far too many mainstream (i.e. pro-capitalist) politicians are only far too eager to feed to the population. 

Instead of relying on judges for protection, we need to agitate and organise for action led by the single biggest civic organisation in society, the trade union movement. Which has been all too lacking so far in these tumultuous times.  

Johnson's Classic Trumpism 

Johnson has consciously cultivated the image of a lovable, bumbling buffoon. Far from it. He's a vicious, calculating, dangerous enemy of working-class people, prepared to go to any lengths to maintain the rule of the grotesquely privileged elite that he is an integral part of.

Just one of many illustrative examples: he was the first prominent Tory to publicly call for a ban on the right to strike for public sector workers, while he was Mayor of London. Thus setting the pace and the foundations for the Tory government's subsequent 2016 Trade Union Act - which has erected more and higher hurdles to a democratic majority for trade union action than the average horse encounters at Aintree. 

Now, amidst all the dizzying twists and turns, all the bizarre and archaic parliamentary manouevres, one thing is clear: Johnson is trying to paint himself as ‘the people's champion’, the hero without a cape who is determined to deliver 'the will of the people', only obstructed by the rotten, corrupt politicians. Classic Trumpism. 

Right wing populism designed to fool the people 

The idea of BoJo (or Trump) being the people's champion against the establishment is a vomit-inducing joke. Millionaires standing up for the millions? Aye, right! 

The real and present danger is that by these manoeuvres, posing as the Brexit hardman, Johnson could mop up most of the Brexit Party voters, and with the treachery of his own parliamentary Blairites splitting Corbyn's Labour asunder, win an outright majority in a general election.  

Which would usher in a period of class-war savagery not witnessed since the dark days of Thatcher's dictatorial regime in the 1980s. For Johnson is hell-bent on winning a mandate - through demagogic, populist lies about representing the people against the widely unpopular parliament - to be an uncontrolled semi-dictator, shorn of the checks and balances of parliament. 

Johnson Wants a Trump Deal

Then he would unleash his preferences for ripping up even the limited protections of workplace rights enshrined in some of the more progressive EU Directives (there are many utterly regressive ones too!) - such as on paid holidays, breaks, the Working Time Directives, and "ripping up red tape" on health and safety regulations. Not to mention proposals by the same Tory think tank that initiated Universal Credit which recently recommended retirement at 75.

And his vision of a post-Brexit Britain is based on a Trump Deal, where whole swathes of the NHS would be handed over to US multinationals for profiteering at the expense of public health. 

As an aside, dewy-eyed EU fanatics (SNP and Scottish Green leaders included) should also be reminded that the same plans were afoot under Britain's EU membership, through the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – TTIP – between the EU and United States. 
In or out of the EU, capitalism means ruthless exploitation for profit, and threats to the single greatest achievement of the post-War workers' movement, the NHS. 

 

Capitalist justice being handed out at Orgreave, 1984

Don't Rely on Unelected Judges for Justice!

It's right to rejoice at the Supreme Court ruling against Johnson's proroguing of parliament, and to use that judgement as an extra argument for his immediate resignation. But when even Labour left-wingers praise the neutrality and righteousness of the judiciary - or fall over themselves with concern at the Queen being lied to by Johnson - they are sowing extremely dangerous illusions, and dodging the central task of helping to build a mass movement of the working class to protect ourselves from the rampages of Johnson and the Tories.

An extra-parliamentary movement, rather than total reliance on parliamentary manoeuvres alone, let alone reliance on the judges for justice (or the monarchy for some mythical neutrality that rises above the murky world of politics).

For starters, the judiciary are divided on this whole issue, with different Court bodies declaring Johnson's actions legal in some, illegal in others. So not a solid defence of democracy there, then!

But far more to the point, justice - like most things in life - is class based.

The Courts have frequently been used to mete out brutal injustice to workers who dare defy the rule and ruin of the rich. 

A Dirty History of Repression 

In the 1970s, Ricky Tomlinson, Des Warren and the Shrewsbury pickets were jailed - and tortured - for their role in a building workers' strike, on trumped up charges, under an obscure law that was exhumed as a weapon against these workers in struggle - the 1875 Conspiracy Act.

In the 1980s, miners and their communities were hammered with the help of the Courts - and the millionaires' media, the police, secret services, undercover use of army personnel, jail sentences and legislation on benefits to starve them into submission. Thatcher and her parasitic, financial wing of the capitalist class were aided by the judiciary as they laid waste to industry and sought to smash the key obstacle to their mission, the organised trade union movement.

Numerous groups of workers and their unions have been denied the right to fight back and resist assaults by the government and employers in Court rulings against democratic majorities in strike ballots.

And that's not to even elaborate on the dirty, inglorious history of the British capitalist judiciary in brutal miscarriages of justice against the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, the Maguire family, the Hillsborough 96, and countless more.

Speaking at USDAW Annual Delegate Meeting 

Call Trade Union-led Demos

No, we urgently need those in authoritative, leading positions in the trade union and labour movement to stop peddling illusions in the judges and start organising and agitating for rallies and demonstrations to defend the working class against the rampaging attacks planned by Johnson and his upper-class crew. 

At the national Executive Council of my own union, Usdaw - which I was elected onto by the Scottish members last year - I've argued for such action to be fought for in the structures of the TUC and STUC. At the May, June, July and September Usdaw EC meetings I've repeatedly put forward the proposal for the TUC and STUC (plus their equivalents in Wales and N Ireland) to call and mobilise for demos around the theme 'We won't pay for Boris's Brexit'. For putting forward concrete demands in defence of our jobs, wages, workplace' rights, migrant workers' rights, the NHS... with the aim of uniting workers who voted Remain and Leave.  

Nobody disagreed each time I proposed this. All agreed the toxic division in the working class over Brexit must be fought with action and arguments based on the common class interests of workers who voted differently in the 2016 Referendum - introduced by Cameron to fend off Farage and the Tories' own right flank. 

No Call for Action at TUC Congress

As a delegate at the more recent TUC Congress, we heard many excellent speeches on the very same theme of wanting to heal the division in the working class arising from Brexit - including one that particularly chimed with me from Unite's Howard Beckett, about growing up in a country where people were defined by their attitudes to a Border, which he (and I) chose to reject in favour of trade unionism and socialism.

But I sat (and tried to get in to speak!) awaiting a clear call for unifying union-led rallies and demonstrations to defend working class interests - and topple the Tories - in vain! 

Yet even now, at this eleventh hour, that's what is urgently needed, if we are not to sleep walk into a majority Johnson government that feels emboldened to decimate our rights, jobs and services, confident in the belief that the leadership of the TUC won't match fire with fire. 

Posties gear up for huge conflict with cowboy millionaires

Unite the Many Separate Struggles

The heroic fight put up by the united workers of Belfast's Harland and Wolff shipyard - occupying the yard since the end of July, demanding renationalisation to save the yard, jobs and skills, and for a plan based on green energy production - was rightly and roundly applauded at the TUC Congress.

So were the fighting speeches of CWU leaders Dave Ward and Terry Pullinger, as they won the unanimous backing of delegates from all 48 unions present for the planned strikes by 100,000 Royal Mail workers, against the vicious assaults on the workforce and postal service by the latest millionaire cowboy to take over the privatised Royal Mail.

Similar warmth and solidarity was given to other groups of workers waging their own strikes and struggles, including librarians, NHS staff and cleaners in the civil service. 

All of which points to the potential for pulling workers together in action in our common, class interests - regardless of how people voted in 2016 on Brexit.

New generation take action 

Furthermore, a whole new generation could be enlisted to such anti-Tory demonstrations, if calls for defence of workers’ rights, jobs and public services is married to concrete demands for a Green New Deal to combat the climate crisis, creating at least 1.5 million new, quality, unionised jobs and apprenticeships. 

#StopTheCoup Rallies

Substantial demonstrations have been staged against Johnson's brazen trampling on even the vestiges of democracy that capitalism has conceded, in the form of parliamentary elections, under the banner #StopTheCoup. But these have been mostly called - and dominated in terms of platform speakers - by groups wishing to block or reverse the Brexit vote, advocating Remain and claiming undiluted virtues for the EU. By definition, that alienates workers who voted Leave - vast numbers of whom are not racists, but were lashing out their disgust at the establishment's decades of neglect, whether at EU or UK levels. 

No Such Thing as 'The National Interest'

During all the current parliamentary shenanigans, we are subjected to calls for 'a government of national unity' to steer us through the Brexit crisis. 
Loud amongst these voices is that of new LibDem leader, Jo Swinson, who of course draws the line at the notion of Jeremy Corbyn being a caretaker Prime Minister - proffering instead the option of somebody like Tory grandee, Kenneth Clark. 
Hardly a surprise from someone who was instrumental in assaulting sickness and disability benefits; imposing student tuition fees; cutting funding for youth training; preventing caps on fees charged by landlords; and blocking a tax on bankers' bonuses...  in her tenure as a Coalition partner in crimes with Cameron's Tories. 
The same Jo Swinson famously advocated a monument to Maggie Thatcher - something I suspect she didn't highlight in her election manifesto in former mining villages around East Dunbartonshire!

There's no such thing as one national interest 

Two Nations - Us and Them

Instead of peddling the dangerous nonsense of needing SNP, Labour, LibDem and rebel Tory politicians to “come together in the national interest”, we need to recognise there is no such thing as ‘the national interest’.

Which ‘nation’ does this refer to? The 0.01% of the population whose income has tripled, or the millions of workers whose wages have suffered the longest, harshest fall since the time of the Peterloo Massacre, 200 years ago?

The Big Six energy companies piling up mountains of profit, or the million Scottish families shivering through winters due to fuel poverty?

The giant agribusinesses and supermarkets, or the workers turning in desperation to food banks?

It’s the interests of the working class we need to act in defence of; the vast majority of the population.

Instead of perpetuating and exacerbating the Remain/Leave divide, we need action based on the common class interests of working-class people, regardless of how they voted in the false, binary choice offered them in 2016. 

The power of united workers in action needs to be called up 

TUC and STUC - Call Demos to Unite Against the Tories!

The TUC,  Scottish TUC and individual unions should urgently step into the breech and give such a lead, naming the day for mass rallies, then linking together solidarity for those in struggle (like Royal Mail workers, RMT members, etc) with youth climate strikers and working class communities facing the axe of escalating cuts and deprivation. 

The crisis in the Tory party is historically unprecedented. The oldest capitalist party in Europe is ripped asunder. Their appointed Prime Minister now has a parliamentary 'majority' of about MINUS 43! 

They shouldn't be let off the ropes. More than any other single organisation, the trade unions have the potential to give a decisive lead, winning the support of other sections like climate strikers, by calling rallies and demonstrations that could heal the wounds and divisions over the false choices of a capitalist EU or a capitalist Britain.

The time is rotten ripe for trade union and labour movement leaderships to step up to the plate, rather than sit back and rely on judges and parliamentary shenanigans to save us from the savagery planned by the people's enemy, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

1919-2019: CUT HOURS - NOT JOBS OR PAY!

A century ago, a mammoth crowd of 100,000 marched on Glasgow’s biggest ever May Day. An even more impressive 100,000 rallied in the substantially smaller city of Belfast.

At both mass rallies, motions were carried in solidarity with the Russian socialist revolution, still fresh and inspirational to workers on these islands - as the Bolshevik government fought off 21 invading imperialist armies, hell-bent on overthrowing their attempts to reconstruct society on socialist lines.

Revolt on the Clyde and the Lagan 

But the scale and power of these workers’ rallies was more than an outpouring of international solidarity. It was primarily fuelled by the momentous mass strikes and struggles just weeks before (in January/February 1919) when 100,000 on Clydeside and 60,000 in Belfast challenged the rule of the employers, government and their armed state, seizing temporary control of production, emergency services, to a degree transport. In Belfast, they formed their own, united Picket Peace Corps of 2,000 strikers, which established workers’ law and workers’ order for the two-week duration of a virtual general strike. A terrified ruling class feared socialist revolution, mobilising the media and police to try and bludgeon the strikers into submission. When that failed, they hesitantly resorted to use of troops to break the strikes.

What makes this glorious chapter of workers’ history so richly relevant in 2019 is the issue that Belfast and Glasgow workers fought on in 1919: they threw down the gauntlet with the clear-cut, unifying demand for a shorter working week, without loss of pay.

They dreaded mass unemployment, as hundreds of thousands of demobbed soldiers returned from the imperialist First World War. Equally, they revolted against the joyless drudgery of a 54-hour week, which lengthened further during war production. Matching the needs both of workers suffering the tyranny of endless work, and those facing the starvation of mass unemployment, Belfast workers downed tools, demanding a 44-hour week without loss of pay; on Clydeside it was the Forty Hour Strike.

The heroic exertions of these workers were undermined by national union treachery, ruthless deployment of military force by a terrified capitalist class, and tactical mistakes by the Strike Committees. However, they won a record-breaking seven hour cut to the working week in both cities – without loss of a penny’s pay. 

Order the pamphlet here: 

https://scottishsocialistparty.org/product/1919-revolt-on-the-clyde-and-the-lagan/

Shorter Working Week – Without Loss of Pay

The demand for a shorter working week – but, critically, without loss of earnings - is as urgent today as 100 years ago, if not more so!

It should be vigorously fought for by the socialist and the trade union movement, with thorough preparation in workplaces and union forums, out on the streets, in collective bargaining with the employers, and through political struggle. Which is why I’m proud that my own Usdaw union branch, Glasgow no.1, is proposing precisely this policy and course of action at the Usdaw national conference (ADM), with the aim of then taking it into the wider trade union movement – just as we have the parallel policy of a guaranteed 16-hour minimum working week.

Why? Just as in 1919, when workers took mass strike action to cut long hours of drudgery and simultaneously mop up mass unemployment, so too in 2019 we need policies to combat agonisingly long hours for millions, along with solutions to the dread of mass unemployment through automation - the ‘fourth industrial revolution'. 

Longest Hours in Europe

If capitalism was a person, it would be declared clinically insane. Whilst at least 3.8 million workers in the UK suffer insecure and short-hour contracts (with the attendant poverty pay and mental ill health), over 3.3 million work more than 48 hours a week. And 500,000 of them put in 60 hours or more!

It’s official; full-time workers in the UK work the longest hours in the whole of Europe. An average of 42.3 hours a week; 2 hours more than the EU average, and 4.5 hours more than Denmark’s 37.8 hours.  

Scotland’s last population Census recorded 39% of all workers - 984,000 – worked between 38-48 hours a week. Even more disturbing, 295,000 Scottish employees toiled for more than 49 hours... a century after our forebears fought and won a maximum 47-hour week!

Other sources show at least 54,000 people in Scotland chained to their work for over 60 hours a week.

But surely things are getting better? Well, very recent research for the British TUC found the number working over 48 hours has increased by 453,000 since 2010 – a 15% rise in ‘over-employed’ workers. And going back to the European averages for full-timers, Britain’s working week has only shortened by 18 minutes in the past decade. At that rate - assuming no reduction in hours worked in other countries - it would take the UK 63 years to catch up with the EU average!

The long hours culture that blights family life for millions isn’t even good for the economy. Danish workers have the shortest week in Europe but are 23% more productive than Britain’s. German workers have the shortest annual hours in Europe but are the most productive. 

Tiredness from overwork can kill

Burnout Britain

Exhaustion, stress and burnout are the increasingly common hallmarks of working life for workers – side-by-side with millions of others suffering poverty, anxiety and mental health problems as a result of mass under-employment and job insecurity. Numerous medical studies have linked overwork with heart disease, diabetes, stress, depression, and a five-fold increase in the risk of strokes.

Remember the tragic death last Christmas of 23-year-old junior doctor, Lauren Connelly, in a car crash after a 12-hour night shift? Even after that tragedy, Scottish Health boards still had rotas of over 90 hours a week – 104 hours in Glasgow. And we had the undercover journalist who filmed Amazon workers falling asleep literally standing up, during a 55-hour week, with relentless, impossible targets. Glimpses of the curse of long hours on workers’ wellbeing.

Add to that the grand theft of wages through unpaid overtime - the equivalent of working for absolutely no pay until 1^st March this year!

And the employers’ robbery of statutory paid holidays – which unpublished government (ONS) figures reveal steals £3billion a year off workers who are dragged in to work when they should be on paid leave.

Plus the growing proportion of our lives taken up commuting to work, as capitalist employers ‘rationalise’ and centralise their workplaces; rocketing housing costs drive many further away from their place of work; and chaotic, privatised public transport shoves motorists into lengthening traffic queues, polluting our planet - and lengthening the working day (unpaid), by an average of 24 working days last year!

The demand for a shorter working week is an urgent answer to those devouring their lives at work – living to work, with little time for anything else - and for job-creation for those impoverished by the chronic under-employment of zero and short hours contracts, or simply unemployed.

Make Automation a Blessing, not a Curse

It’s also at the heart of the answer to one of the biggest challenges of the 21^st century: the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ of automation, Artificial Intelligence and robotics. The scientists argue over the scale of impact on jobs, but all agree this threatens mass displacement of people in jobs as varied as retail, manufacturing, transport, fast food, logistics, office admin, carers, nurses, paralegals – even doctors, writers and composers!

New technology should be a blessing, a means of escaping endless hours of often unfulfilling work; a way for humans to be liberated into expanding their interests, skills, family and social life, participation in the democratic running of communities, workplaces and government. But under the rule of capitalism, the rule of profit, this new wave of technology is a dystopian nightmare, with the real and present threat of mass unemployment and impoverishment. For example, it is widely predicted that one million of the UK’s 3 million retail jobs could be obliterated within 10 years. 

Drive For 35!

An immediate, all-too-modest demand for a maximum working week of 35 hours – without loss of pay – would itself free up millions of new jobs, based on the obscenely long hours endured by several million UK workers (3.3 million on 48+ hours, for starters).

It would be good for workers’ health, physical and mental; reduce accidents at work, caused by fatigue; reduce sickness and absenteeism; and as several experiments here and abroad prove, it would boost productivity.

The CWU last year won a deal that will cut the working week for 120,000 Royal Mail workers from 39 to 35 by 2021, with the first hour reduction already implemented – without loss of pay. 

We need a generalised, immediate ‘Drive for 35’ across the unions.

We already have the technology to retain or boost output of goods and services whilst cutting the working week much more radically than that, for instance to a 4-day week, and a 6-hour day. That's in stark contrast with 1.4 million people working all seven days of the week right now, in Britain 2019! 

4 Days’ Work for 5 Days’ Pay

A 4-day week would not only enhance the quality of workers’ lives, and facilitate childcare (especially benefiting women, and encouraging more men to share caring and domestic responsibilities), but also reduce the damage to workers’ wallets and the environment, by slashing commuting times.

But reduced hours must be without reductions in earnings. With the odd, bizarre exception, workers aren’t chained to their jobs because they’re incurable workaholics. They work endless hours for two main reasons: to try and survive on the rotten hourly pay rates that have been systematically imposed to boost profits, and out of fear of losing their job, in a world of rampant job insecurity, leading to the modern phenomenon of ‘presenteeism’.

In 2018, the TUC found 81% of workers want to reduce working time; 45% of them want a 4-day week. But if it means an equivalent cut in wages, how can working people afford it?

Capitalist employers often use short-time working and layoffs – with equivalent cuts in pay – to offload a crisis in their business onto the shoulders of workers who have produced their profits for previous years. Or simply slash hours – and pay – to increase workload and turbocharge their profit margins – as the multi-billion Tesco's and ASDA are currently doing. That’s decidedly not what we mean by a shorter working week. 

The battle for an 8-hour day was at the heart of the international workers' movement & May Day since the 1880s

Gigantic leaps in technology make a 6-hour day eminently reasonable 

Cut Hours – Not Pay!

The socialist and trade union movement should make far more of an outcry for policies like 4 days’ work for 5 days’ pay, and a 6-hour day for 8 hours’ pay.

This would be a radical redistribution of wealth – from profit to wages. That’s precisely why most capitalist employers will resist, in the belief that such rational, humane change to the nature of work would take a slice off their profit margins.

Aside from the fact that’s debatable (given the potential for increased productivity), it’s not really the point. We can’t afford a system that condemns millions to working longer than the 47-hour week that was conceded in the teeth of mass workers’ revolts a century ago. We can’t afford to continue with a system that is wrecking the health of millions of workers and adding to pollution of the planet.

We need a society where an adequate, decent wage is earned in a far shorter working day, week and year, freeing up time for the pursuit of real democracy and human fulfilment. But it won’t be gifted to us by a benign class of capitalist vultures. The events of 1919 demonstrated the brutal lengths their class predecessors were prepared to go against the Forty Hour Strike.

We need to take our inspiration from the readiness to struggle displayed by masses of workers in Belfast and Glasgow a century ago.

We need to battle to cut hours, not jobs or pay, harnessing all the marvels of 21st century science for the benefit of people and planet, not profit for the plunderers.

These demands should become the battle-cries on and beyond May Day 2019, standing on the shoulders of the (extra)ordinary workers’ struggles of 1919.