Unions demobilize Canadian railway workers

Carl Bronski

A threatened lockout by Canadian National Railway’s management of 4,800 safety inspectors and rail maintenance workers was averted late Monday night when Unifor officials and company negotiators reached an eleventh-hour tentative contract settlement.

With the signing of the deal, all major sections of the over 11,000-strong unionized workforce at Canada’s two major railways—Canadian National (CN) and Canadian Pacific (CP)—have either been forced into binding arbitration or been covered by recently initialed tentative agreements.

No details of the proposed CN contract will be released until Unifor members vote on the agreement over the next three weeks. However, it can be said without fear of contradiction that the Unifor-CN agreement will not reverse any of the major concessions the union has made in previous deals. CN shares rose on the Toronto Stock Exchange in early morning trading after the announcement of the settlement. The railway, which consistently posts multi-billion dollar annual profits, has already recorded one of the strongest growth and earnings ratings of any Canadian company over the past year.

While Canada’s Conservative government did not publicly threaten to introduce legislation ordering an end to any disruption of CN’s operations, illegalizing any future job action by the CN safety inspectors and rail maintenance workers, and imposing binding arbitration, it hardly needed do so. Time and again, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has intervened to "suspend" workers’ right to strike or threatened to do so. Just in the past four years, the government has criminalized strikes by Canada Post, Air Canada and CP Rail workers. It has also permanently stripped tens of thousands of federal government employees of the right to strike under a new essential services law.

Only last week the Conservative government threatened to again criminalize a strike by 3,300 CP Rail engineers, conductors and yardmen, and publicly vilified the striking workers for destabilizing the Canadian economy. In the face of this threat, the Teamsters union quickly capitulated and agreed to binding arbitration. (See: Citing government threats, Teamsters suppress Canadian Pacific rail strike 

CN's own lockout threat was clearly made with the intention of precipitating government intervention. Labour Minister Kellie Leitch, for her part, chose to wait and see if Unifor could be cowed without the government having to take center stage.

Over the weekend, Unifor President Jerry Dias quickly moved to demonstrate that the last thing he wanted was a confrontation with the Harper government. He held direct talks on Sunday with CN’s president and pledged that even in the event of a lockout he would instruct his members to ensure passenger traffic in Montreal—where CN has commuter tracks—would not be disrupted.

The outcome and logistics of the several railway contract negotiations underscore the role that the trade unions play today in enforcing “labour peace” even as Canadian corporations wage an all-out offensive on the living standards, jobs and working conditions of workers across the country.

Only ten days ago, contracts for 1,800 Unifor inspectors and rail maintenance workers and 3,300 Teamsters Canada Railway Conference (TCRC) locomotive engineers at CP plus another 1,800 Teamsters locomotive engineers at CN were being negotiated at various bargaining tables. Added to this equation was the expired Unifor-CN contract encompassing another 4,800 workers.

In all cases, the railways were intent on upholding and expanding the concessions they have pried from workers in recent years—concessions that have allowed them to impose a brutal work-regime, including for many workers12-hour days, and squeeze ever larger profits from a shrinking workforce.

Yet there was never any question of uniting railway workers in struggle against CN and CP, let alone joining their struggle with those of locked-out US West Coast longshoremen and striking US oil refinery workers. The longshoremen’s lockout had in fact created serious bottlenecks in freight transport in Canada, as US shippers moved cargo to the increasingly overloaded Canadian port of Vancouver and thereby placed railway workers in an economically even more critical and powerful position.

The unions did everything to divide the workers by union bargaining unit and company. As the CP engineers and yardmen were preparing to strike on the evening of Feb. 14, action that put them on a collision course with the hated Harper government, Unifor came to CP Rail’s aid by signing a tentative contract deal on behalf of 1,800 CP inspectors and rail maintenance workers. The Teamsters union meantime initialed a contract deal with CN Rail on behalf of 1,800 CN engineers.

While the Unifor CP Rail workers had themselves been in a legal strike position as of midnight on Feb. 14th, the union had failed to take the requisite steps to place its members at CN in a position to legally strike alongside them. Yet at the latter company, just as at CP, there had been months of fruitless negotiations.

In a statement issued last weekend CN Rail management itself expressed some puzzlement that Unifor, while long complaining negotiations were at an impasse, had not deigned to consult its membership on a strike mandate.

So as to further divide the workers at CN and CP, the release of the full terms of last week’s Teamsters’ deal with CN and the contract ratification vote are being delayed until April. No doubt cognizant of the experience with their last contract, Teamsters officials have left themselves plenty of time to try to ram through the agreement. In 2014, when the union took another “fully endorsed” deal to the membership, rail workers repudiated it. Citing the contract’s failure to properly safeguard workers against excessive hours and violations of rest-scheduling protocols, they voted 67 percent to reject it.

As for the Canadian Labour Congress, the country’s principal labor organization, it didn’t so much as issue a press release to denounce the government’s moves to illegalize the short-lived, February 14-15 CP Teamsters’ strike.

New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Thomas Mulcair similarly issued no statement on the CP strike and Harper’s pending legislation, nor on CN’s threat to lock out the Unifor workers. The trade union-backed NDP views support for industrial action as an electrified third rail in national politics. In the face of historic attacks on the right to strike, the social democrats occasionally mouth empty phrases about “unfairness,” but like the union leaders they are utterly opposed to any defiance of the strikebreaking laws.

The last thing the trade unions want is the mass mobilization of their members in an open challenge to the dictates of big business and the Canadian state. The actions by Unifor and the Teamsters over the past ten days only underscore that the trade unions today serve only to demobilize and block worker resistance and police the diktats of big business.

It is now some 18 months since the creation of Unifor—the country’s largest industrial union and arguably its most politically influential—as a result of the merger of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) and the Communication, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP) unions. At the time, the merger was hailed as an “exciting new beginning” by numerous representatives of the pseudo-left, from Sam Gindin, himself a former CAW official and leader of the “Socialist Project,” to Naomi Klein and “Fightback,” an ostensible Marxist group that tenaciously upholds the authority of the NDP.

Instead, as the World Socialist Web Site warned, the new union has served not as an instrument of working class struggle but as a bureaucratic apparatus for suppressing any fight against concessions contracts and government austerity and for politically subordinating the working class to the parties of big business.

Last spring, Unifor played a leading role in rallying union support around the re-election of the big business Liberal government of Kathleen Wynne. Union president Jerry Dias, like most Canadian union bureaucrats, is now directing his energies to promoting the election of the pro-austerity federal Liberal party of Justin Trudeau or possibly a Liberal-NDP coalition government. As Dias said last September, when announcing that his union’s chief 2015 priority is the electoral defeat of Harper, “If my choice is Stephen Harper or Justin Trudeau, then that’s a no-brainer.”

New Zealand to send troops to Iraq

Tom Peters

Prime Minister John Key announced on Tuesday that up to 143 New Zealand soldiers will be sent to Iraq in May to join the US-led war, ostensibly to help fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Conscious of widespread anti-war sentiment, the government has sought to portray the deployment as a “non-combat” mission. Key said the troops would be stationed at Camp Taji, north of Baghdad, where they will work with Australian forces to train Iraqi army soldiers “behind the wire.” However, only 16 of the soldiers being sent are specialist trainers.

Investigative journalist Jon Stephenson told RadioLIVE on Tuesday that according to “very reliable sources” New Zealand’s elite SAS commandos are already secretly operating in Iraq. Stephenson, whose reporting in Afghanistan helped expose the complicity of New Zealand forces in war crimes, dismissed the claims of “training and mentoring” as a “cover” and said New Zealand was going to be “part of the killing process.”

The decision to send troops was made following consultation with New Zealand’s main allies in Washington, London and Canberra, behind the backs of the population and in a thoroughly anti-democratic manner. Just five days before the September 20 election last year, Key told Newstalk ZB that the chances his National Party government would join the war were “particularly low.”

During the election campaign, Key and the opposition Labour Party leader David Cunliffe both expressed support for the US bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria. Labour’s allies—the Greens, New Zealand First and the Internet-Mana Party—remained virtually silent on the war in order to prevent it becoming an election issue.

Since the election, the government and corporate media have carried out a propaganda campaign to justify dragging the country into the war. With the support of Labour, the government has also trumpeted the supposed terrorist threat posed by ISIS to justify legislation allowing the Security Intelligence Service to carry out warrantless surveillance. Key has repeatedly claimed, without producing any evidence, that the SIS is monitoring dozens of ISIS sympathisers in New Zealand.

Tuesday’s Dominion Post editorial hailed the decision to send troops because ISIS “is a gang of murdering fanatics who must be resisted.” The New Zealand Herald asserted that the government was “doing the right thing in a just cause.”

In reality, the war has nothing to do with combating Islamist extremism. Washington’s aim is to strengthen its grip on Iraq and its oil, while intervening directly in Syria, where the US has funded militias like ISIS and used them as proxy forces in an attempt to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. The rise of ISIS, the by-product of Bush’s 2003 US invasion of Iraq and Obama’s bloody interventions in Libya and Syria, is being used as the pretext for unending war across the Middle East.

Key revealed the government’s real reason for joining the war in an interview with the BBC on January 20, stating that it was the “price” of being “part of a club like we are with Five Eyes”—the alliance of New Zealand, British, American, Australian and Canadian spy agencies, which gathers information on hundreds of millions of people. New Zealand’s ruling elite depends on its alliance with Washington, in particular, to support its own predatory imperialist interests in the South Pacific and around the world.

The US and its allies are counting on New Zealand to lend both practical support and a veneer of legitimacy to the war. Earlier this month Britain’s foreign secretary Philip Hammond visited New Zealand and publicly urged New Zealand to join the fight “alongside the US, the UK, Australia, as part of the family.” This was followed by a visit from Iraqi foreign minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who formally requested New Zealand troops. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott revealed after Key’s announcement that his government is preparing to despatch hundreds more ground troops to Iraq to work alongside the New Zealand contingent.

Every party in parliament supports the alliance with the US. The 1999–2008 Labour government strengthened military and intelligence collaboration with the US by sending troops to Afghanistan and Iraq. Over the past two years, US troops have carried out large-scale exercises in New Zealand, as the Obama administration seeks to integrate the country into its “pivot” to Asia—the military encirclement and preparations for war against China.

In parliament on Tuesday, Key ferociously denounced Labour for opposing the latest deployment to Iraq. He yelled at the party to “get some guts and join the right side,” pointing out that the social democratic opposition in Britain, Canada and Australia all supported joining the war. Key declared, no doubt correctly, that if Labour was the government it would send troops, as it did in 2003.

Labour’s mild criticisms of the deployment are a cynical ploy aimed at containing popular opposition to the war, which the party has made clear that it fully supports. The Herald reported on February 17 that Labour leader Andrew Little “said he supported [US] airstrikes, and he also supported the use of New Zealand spy agencies to identify targets.” The Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) has helped to target air strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they have killed thousands of civilians.

New Zealand First, which contested last year’s election in a de-facto alliance with Labour and the Greens, made demagogic statements against the troop deployment. At the same time, the right-wing nationalist party repeatedly called for more spending on the military and indicated its support for US imperialism. In parliament on Tuesday its defence spokesman Ron Mark declared that “if we’d maintained the promise the National Party gave to re-establish our air combat capability, we might have been able to send that [to Iraq instead of ground troops]... but we don’t have those options.”

Greens co-leader Russel Norman declared that the government was “entering another bloody conflict that will only make things worse in the Middle East.” The Greens, however, supported New Zealand’s decade-long contribution to the occupation in Afghanistan. The party’s main objection to the current war in Iraq is that it lacks the fig leaf of a UN mandate. Labour and the Greens have previously denounced the UN Security Council—in particular China and Russia—for failing to pass motions that would have paved the way for a direct assault on Syria.

Australian prime minister’s leadership continues to unravel

Mike Head

More than a fortnight after 40 percent of his own Liberal Party members of parliament voted to oust him in a party room “spill” motion, Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s leadership is continuing to fall apart. Media headlines such as “Liberals paralysed over leadership,” now appear daily, accompanied by damaging leaks and allegations targeting the prime minister.

Underlying the destabilisation is mounting business dissatisfaction with the government’s failure to impose deep cuts to social spending, and workers’ wages and conditions, amid a rapid deterioration of the Australian economy.

After surviving the leadership spill vote on February 9, Abbott declared that everything was resolved and “good government” would begin from that day. But all his efforts to shore up his position, primarily pitching to his right-wing base by posturing as a strongman on the alleged threats posed by terrorists, Muslims and refugees, have backfired.

Last weekend, the Murdoch media’s Australian newspaper, effectively undermined Abbott’s credentials on “national security” by reporting that last November he proposed a unilateral Australian intervention into Iraq, with 3,500 ground troops, to confront the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

“Flanked by his chief of staff Peta Credlin in a meeting in Canberra on November 25, the Prime Minister said the move would help halt the surge of Islamic State in northern Iraq,” the Australian reported. When Abbott raised the idea with Australia’s leading military planners, they were “stunned,” telling Abbott that sending soldiers without any US or NATO cover would be “disastrous.”

Abbott claimed that the report was “fanciful, absolutely fanciful,” only to have the Australian’s editor Clive Mathieson insist: “We stand by the story 100 percent.” This may indicate a shift in the stance of the Murdoch media, which up until now has urged Abbott to find ways to turn his government around, and push ahead with budget-cutting and pro-business economic “reform.”

The Australian’s revelation came as part of a series of articles by associate editor John Lyons critical of Credlin, Abbott’s long-time chief of staff. For weeks, ever since Rupert Murdoch tweeted that Abbott should sack Credlin, the Australian has been agitating for her removal.

Lyons upped the ante by reporting that “Credlin had a key role in developing last year’s budget, including on occasions acting as the chair of the expenditure review committee” and “Abbott has allowed Ms Credlin a role previous prime ministerial advisers have never had.”

The pressure on Abbott intensified last Sunday when the Liberal Party’s treasurer Philip Higginson, a prominent businessman, wrote an explosive letter to the party’s federal executive. He condemned the “dysfunction” caused by an inherent “conflict of interest” between Credlin, the PM’s chief adviser, and her husband, Brian Loughnane, who is the Liberal Party’s federal director.

Credlin is closely associated with the right-wing constituency on which Abbott has relied since winning the Liberal Party leadership five years ago at the expense of Malcolm Turnbull, who is now Abbott’s putative challenger. As against Abbott, Turnbull, a wealthy ex-merchant banker with deep ties throughout the financial elite, is positioning himself as the man who can deliver on the demands for a wholesale cutting of social spending and wage levels.

Dressed up in a more socially “progressive” guise, Turnbull presents himself as a more sophisticated and commanding salesperson who can somehow convince millions of ordinary working people to make painful financial sacrifices. As part of this pitch, he has called for the Labor Party, which has blocked some of the most unpopular budget measures, and feigned opposition to austerity, to join him in fashioning a bipartisan effort to implement the requirements of big business.

Turnbull’s posturing, and the growing concerns in ruling circles with Abbott’s leadership, reached a new level this week as the prime minister stepped up his vitriolic attacks on Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs, who earlier this month released a damning report on the suffering of refugee children inside Australia’s detention camps.

On Tuesday, Abbott denounced the report as “a blatantly partisan, politicised exercise” and confirmed that the government wanted Triggs’s resignation. That morning, Triggs had testified in a Senate committee hearing that Attorney-General George Brandis’s departmental secretary requested her resignation during a meeting on February 3, and offered her another posting as an inducement to quit. The Labor opposition has asked the Australian Federal Police to investigate whether this constitutes bribery, a serious offence under the Criminal Code.

Turnbull, who remains a cabinet minister, pointedly took an opposite stance to that of Abbott. He dismissed the debate about Triggs’s impartiality as one that “misses the point” and described her as a “very distinguished figure.” He boasted instead of the government’s record in reducing the number of children in detention by blocking all refugee boats from reaching Australia. As with the austerity agenda, he is touting his ability to provide “progressive” window-dressing for fundamentally reactionary policies.

The corporate discontent with Abbott escalated another notch when the government ruled out seeking to cut the minimum wage and overtime penalty rates, even if its own Productivity Commission inquiry into the workplace relations system recommends reducing them. The Australian Financial Review condemned the government for “giving up” and “waving the white flag” on the issue.

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Kate Carnell said employers were “really disappointed” after Employment Minister Eric Abetz, a key Abbott loyalist, declared that the government would leave the minimum wage and penalty rate in the hands of the Fair Work Commission. Carnell accused the government of “trying to avoid all controversy.”

The government’s decision flies in the face of intensifying calls by dominant sections of finance capital for a wholesale restructuring of the Australian economy, including a drastic reduction in real wages, in order to make it “internationally competitive” by matching the cuts in living standards imposed on workers in the US, Europe and around the world.

Yesterday’s editorial in the Melbourne Age again warned that the slide in iron ore, coal and liquefied natural gas prices over the past year had “cut deeply into profits for Australian producers.” The resulting fall in tax revenues, combined with the government’s failure to get key cuts from last year’s budget through the Senate, could produce a deficit of “as much as $50 billion this financial year.”

The Age declared: “The government, though, is looking like it has lost the appetite for reform and the courage to try.” Unless there was a shift, “Australia will have endured three years of drift and equivocation by another government with its eye fixed on the short term.”

As far as the corporate elite is concerned, it is no longer tenable for the minimum wage to sit at about double that of the US and for average weekly earnings to remain about 70 percent above the global mean. Moreover, welfare payments, along with other social services, must be slashed to force the unemployed to accept work at poverty level wages.

Whatever the immediate outcome of the intense political crisis that has engulfed the Abbott government, the result will be a massive assault on the jobs, wages and social conditions of the working class.

US-Iran negotiations inch toward a nuclear agreement

Peter Symonds

Talks this week in Geneva between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif appear to have taken a step toward a long-term agreement over Iran’s nuclear programs. The prospect of a deal to end the protracted US confrontation with the Iranian regime has already fuelled considerable tension between Washington and its allies in the Middle East, particularly the Israeli government.

Details of the closed-door negotiations leaked to the American media point to a pact that would limit or reduce Iran’s existing uranium enrichment capability for a lengthy period, then allow it to increase the number of gas centrifuges that are used to enrich uranium. The US and its allies have accused Tehran of seeking to build a nuclear weapon, a charge that Iranian leaders have repeatedly denied.

The presence of US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Ali Akbar Salehi, director of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, in Geneva points to high-level discussions of various technical aspects of an agreement. Many questions remain unanswered, including the time frames involved and the ending of crippling US-led sanctions—the critical issue for Iranian leaders.

Press reports this week suggesting that the freeze on Iran’s uranium enrichment could be 10 years provoked sharp criticism from US Congressional Republican leaders and Israeli ministers.

Republican Senator Bob Corker, the foreign relations committee chairman, declared that 10 years was not long enough and was “very concerning.” Another Republican, Lindsey Graham, denounced the Obama administration for negotiating with Iranian officials who are “hell bent on expanding their influence in the Mideast in a destructive fashion.”

Israel’s Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz said on Monday that Israel considered the negotiations “totally unsatisfactory,” as a deal would allow Iran to be “extremely close” to a “dangerous breakout program.” He condemned a 10-year time frame as “sacrificing the future of Israel and the US, and the future of the world.”

The Israeli government has bitterly opposed the negotiations from the outset and repeatedly threatened military action against Iran if all Tehran’s nuclear facilities were not dismantled. Israel, which has an arsenal of nuclear weapons, is determined to ensure its unchallenged military superiority in the Middle East.

Relations between the Obama administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will address the US Congress next week at the invitation of Republican leaders, have become rancorous. Obama has declined to meet Netanyahu, who will undoubtedly use his speech to denounce the talks with Iran.

On Tuesday, Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice declared that Netanyahu’s decision to travel to Washington before next month’s election in Israel was “destructive of the fabric of the relationship” between the two countries.

Addressing US Senate hearings on Tuesday, Secretary of State Kerry defended the talks with Iran and dismissed suggestions that a time-frame was decided. “The answer is the proverbial ‘don’t believe what you read.’ I’ve told you it’s not true,” he said. Kerry said he expects to know soon if Tehran would agree to “an acceptable and verifiable plan” to curtail its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

The US has always placed the onus on Iran to demonstrate that it has no plans to build a nuclear weapon. In practice, this means severe restrictions on its uranium enrichment to ensure no possibility of “break-out”—that is, to produce enough weapons-grade uranium—within a year. The US has also demanded a highly intrusive inspection regime, on top of the International Atomic Energy Agency monitoring of all Iranian nuclear facilities.

The negotiations involving the so-called P5+1 group—the US, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany—began with an interim agreement in November 2013 that followed the election of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in June. Iran was compelled to freeze or limit much of its nuclear activity in return for limited sanctions relief. After the initial deadlines ran out, the talks were extended last November to the end of next month to secure the framework of an agreement, and June to finalise it.

The Obama administration has deliberately dragged out the talks to force Iran to agree to its terms. Punitive US-led economic sanctions have halved Iran’s oil exports, sent inflation spiralling and slashed government revenue. The current slump in global oil prices has further hit the Iranian economy, with growth expected to more than halve to 2 or even 1 percent in the coming fiscal year.

Iranian President Rouhani insisted on Wednesday that a comprehensive nuclear agreement would have to include the lifting of international sanctions. “The side negotiating with us should know that conclusion of the talks and the result of a deal should be removal of the whole oppressive and illegal sanctions,” he said.

Rouhani had the backing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to proceed with the negotiations. Khamenei, who has the ultimate say over foreign and defence policies, has to date kept conservative critics of the talks inside Iran in check. He warned yesterday that if the US and its allies retained the sanctions, Iran could retaliate by holding “back gas that Europe and the world is so dependent on.”

While pressing for an agreement to end the sanctions, the Iranian regime is keeping its options open should the talks fail. Last week, Defence Minister Hossein Dehghan signed an agreement in Moscow to expand military ties between the two countries. Noting their shared viewpoints, Dehghan said: “Iran and Russia are able to confront the expansionist intervention and greed of the United States through cooperation, synergy and activating strategic potential capacities.”

Any nuclear agreement faces numerous obstacles. The National Council of Resistance of Iran, a pro-Western Iranian exile group, claimed on Tuesday to have evidence that Iran was conducting secret nuclear research and some uranium enrichment at a site dubbed Lavizan-3. These claims are clearly aimed at undermining the negotiations. This organisation has in the past been used by Israeli intelligence as a conduit for publishing allegations against the Iranian regime.

While Israel has publicly opposed the talks, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states are no less hostile to a deal with Iran. Saudi Arabia, which regards Iran as a dangerous regional rival, has threatened to develop its own nuclear programs if Tehran is permitted to maintain its nuclear facilities. An unnamed Arab official told the Wall Street Journal last week: “At this stage, we prefer a collapse of the diplomatic process to a bad deal.”

With further US-Iranian negotiations due next week, tensions will undoubtedly continue to rise. Provocations or military action aimed at sabotaging the negotiations cannot be ruled out. In the five years up to 2012, Israeli intelligence engaged in a criminal campaign of assassinations and sabotage inside Iran aimed at undermining its nuclear programs. Israel’s Channel 2 aired a program on Tuesday suggesting that Saudi Arabia was on the point of granting Israel permission to overfly its territory “en route to attack Iran if an attack is necessary.”

UK joins US, Poland in sending military trainers to Ukraine

Jean Shaoul

Prime Minister David Cameron announced that Britain is to send military “advisors” and “nonlethal aid” to Ukraine. The purpose, according to defence sources, is to “improve the survivability” of Ukrainian troops who have taken a beating from separatist forces in the east of the country.

The move is widely seen as a bid by Cameron in the run up-to the general election in May to counter criticism from the military and political establishment that Britain has become virtually invisible on the international arena. A parliamentary committee denounced the government for not being “active or visible enough” in dealing with the situation in Ukraine.

More crucially, it signifies that Washington and London are determined to arm Ukraine, up the ante against Russia, and further undermine the ceasefire agreed between Russia, France, Germany and the Ukrainian regime at Minsk earlier this month.

Britain’s deployment of a training force coincides with the deployment of a US battalion to train Ukrainian battalions, and expectations that other NATO countries will follow suit.

After the US announcement that it could directly arm the right-wing regime in Kiev at the beginning of the month, leading European officials publicly acknowledged that the world was on the verge of “total” war between NATO and Russia. London is joining the US and Polish governments in aggressively arming Ukraine and stoking the risk of world war.

Polish Defence Ministry official Boguslaw Pacek announced yesterday that Warsaw would send military advisors to help train Ukrainian non-commissioned officers.

The Ukrainian government is also trying to obtain military support from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a key US ally in the Middle East.

US Secretary of State John Kerry accused Russia of backing the separatists and failing to abide by the Minsk ceasefire, though he admitted that there had been a lull in the fighting. “To date, neither Russia nor the forces it is supporting have come close to complying with their commitments,” he said, renewing warnings that Moscow would face further sanctions.

Cameron promised, “What we need to do now is deliver the strongest possible message to Putin and to Russia that what has happened is unacceptable. These ceasefires need to hold and if they don’t, there’ll be more consequences, more sanctions, more measures.”

Shortly afterwards, Royal Air Force jets were scrambled to escort two Russian military aircraft seen off the Cornwall coast, although both the prime minister and Defence Secretary Michael Fallon acknowledged that they had not entered British airspace.

Britain will be sending 75 trainers to western Ukraine in the next few weeks to provide instruction in command procedures, tactical intelligence, battlefield first aid, logistics, and the planning and execution of urban operations. They will also assess the training needs of the army’s infantry.

While Britain has deployed troops as part of NATO exercises in Ukraine, this is the first explicit British mission there.

Fallon denied that this was the beginning of a wider deployment of troops and claimed that there would be no mission creep. “We are not deploying combat troops to Ukraine and we will not do so,” he said, adding: “We should come to the help of a friend in need.”

In the next breath, however, he acknowledged that his officials were looking at what other training might be needed, in addition to that announced on Tuesday.

He also said that the Ukrainian government had requested all kinds of military equipment, but insisted that “at this stage” any British military supplies would be “nonlethal,” an indication that heavy weaponry as well as “nonlethal” supplies are indeed being actively considered.

Cameron called on the European Union to examine wide-ranging sanctions on Russia’s economy, which is already on the rocks due to the fall in oil prices.

His move to send British troops to Ukraine has the Labour Party’s support, according to Shadow Defence Minister Kevan Jones. In what amounted to a call for stepped-up intervention, he asked how the plan accorded with “broader NATO strategy” on Ukraine, and “what the overall objective of the deployment is and how long has it been in the planning.”

On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko also signed a deal with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for military and technical cooperation while attending the IDEX military trade fair in Abu Dhabi.

In the wake of the virtual secession of the eastern manufacturing belt of the country following the Berlin and Washington-backed fascist-led coup a year ago, Ukraine has been forced to find new suppliers for its armed forces. Poroshenko said that Ukrainian companies had signed contracts worth tens of millions of dollars to accelerate the modernisation of its armed forces.

The UAE is the fourth-largest arms purchaser in the world, buying mainly from the US and to a lesser extent, France. Thus, any military deal between Ukraine and the UAE must have US approval.

The semi-feudal Gulf monarchy that presides over a migrant labour force forced to live in slave-like conditions is—in terms of arms per capita—the most heavily armed country on the planet. It has tried to build up its own defence manufacturing capacity and taken an increasingly open military role, sending forces to Kosovo and Afghanistan, and carrying out airstrikes in Libya, Iraq and Syria.

Speaking to reporters at the IDEX trade show, Poroshenko said that he hoped that Washington would agree to provide arms to Ukraine. He had reportedly planned to meet chief Pentagon weapons buyer Frank Kendall at the show.

He said of his talks with Washington, “We are in a very practical dialogue, and we hope in the very near future, we have a decision to help us attain defensive weapons.”

German Left Party votes for austerity measures in Greece

Peter Schwarz

The Left Party fraction of the German parliament—along with the Greens and the representatives of the parties in the government—will vote Friday on the so-called “stability aid” for Greece. A test vote was held on Tuesday, in which 29 Left Party members of parliament voted “yes,” four voted “no,” and 13 abstained.

Previously, the Left Party had always voted against “aid programs” for Greece. They had based this decision on the fact that the austerity measures demanded in exchange for the bailout packages had worsened the social and economic crisis in Greece, and that the Troika overseeing the programs lacks any democratic legitimacy.

This is also true of the extension of the “aid program” by four months, which is the subject of Friday’s parliamentary vote. In the list of austerity measures it sent to Brussels, the new government of Alexis Tsipras committed itself to “carrying out numerous earlier demands, which the previous governments had continued to reject,” the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported.

As before, the loans will not be extended until the experts of the “institutions”—as the Troika of the EU Commission, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank is now called—have confirmed that all the austerity measures demanded by the EU have been implemented.

Only one thing has changed: neither the conservative New Democracy (ND) nor the social democratic PASOK now rules Greece, but rather Syriza, the Greek affiliates of the Left Party.

By voting in favor of prolonging the credit program, the Left Party is not only legitimizing the Troika and supporting the attacks on the Greek working class. It also signals its readiness to take on the same task in Germany. The very fact that all parties in parliament agree on such an important question and that there is no—even nominal—opposition, is a clear signal that the established parties are responding to the growth of social tensions by uniting around a policy of attacks on the working class.

Leading representatives of the Left Party went out of their way to justify the capitulation of the Tsipras government, which broke all its campaign promises in less than four weeks.

The fraction president, Gregor Gysi, explicitly welcomed the Greek list of austerity measures, adopted in close coordination with euro group president, Jeroen Dijsselbloem and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble.

In a press release, Gysi said that the “reform program submitted by Greece” shows “the first way out of the logic of cuts and impoverishment of the previous austerity programs.” Gysi claimed “the most devastating social and humanitarian ramifications are being corrected,” though he knows very well that this is not true.

Gysi placed a lot of weight on the idea that only the politics of the new Greek government and its European partner parties can guarantee “that these countries will be in position to pay back their debts at all.”

Left Party member of the European parliament Fabio De Masi emphasized that Syriza’s capitulation will relieve the German treasury. “In the case of an uncontrolled exit by Greece, the money of the German taxpayers would be gone,” he wrote in a press release. He praised the Tsipras government as the “first government in Athens interested in sustainable state finances.”

The federal manager of the Left Party Matthias Höhn explained that Europe could “already thank the new Greek government.” He said he was sure that the debates and decisions of the past few weeks would change European politics.

The deputy chair of the Left Party fraction in parliament, Sahra Wagenknecht, wrote on the web site of the Left Party fraction, “Syriza has achieved great successes in the past few weeks.”

She admitted that the new government would first have to sacrifice “a few campaign promises” and could “not provide any money for the implementation of its program.” Nevertheless, “the struggle against the European policies of cuts and privatizations” were “not lost with the extension of the credit program, but have only just begun!”

Like De Masi, Wagenknecht argued in favor of Syriza’s policies by referring to “German tax money.” She claimed that a departure of Greece from the euro zone and the return to a weaker Greek national currency, the drachma, would have serious repercussions

“Then we can receive back all the €60 billion of tax payers’ money, which Germany invested there, in the form of drachmas—then the money is practically all gone. We would have senselessly pulverized all the tax money,” she told the television station Phoenix.

It would be naïve and dangerous to believe that the Left Party is merely trying to make the best of a bad situation and downplay the capitulation of its Greek sister party. In reality, the Left Party is just as determined as Syriza to defend the national and European institutions of capitalism, including the European Union and the euro.

It does not represent the interests of the working class, but wealthier layers of the middle class and sections of the former bureaucracy of the DDR who did not receive their perceived fair share of the spoils when Germany was reunified and who are now demanding access to the fleshpots and privileges of power.

In several state governments in Germany, the Left Party and its predecessor, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), have already demonstrated what they are capable of doing. The PDS and Left Party, which led the Berlin senate together with the SPD between 2002 and 2011, played a pioneering role in cutting jobs and wages in the public sector and cutting spending in education and social programs.

With its defense and justification of the capitulation of Syriza, the Left Party is demonstrating its readiness to carry out a similar task at the federal level.

Talks remain suspended as US oil workers continue strike

Jerry White

US oil workers are locked in a bitter battle with some of the largest corporations in the world, but the United Steelworkers union continues to undermine their nearly four-week strike by limiting the job action to only 6,500 of the 30,000 industry workers who are members of the USW.

No new negotiations have been scheduled since talks broke down last week, and the oil giants have refused to budge on workers’ demands for improved wages, safety provisions and working conditions. The lead industry bargainer is insisting that the companies have “sole and exclusive rights” to determine staffing, including the replacement of union workers with part-time and temporary contractors.

Pickets at BP 's refinery in Whiting, Indiana

The corporations’ criminal disregard for the safety of workers and surrounding communities was highlighted once again Wednesday morning when a crude distillation unit malfunctioned at the BP refinery in Whiting, Indiana, leaking inflammable vapors and triggering evacuation sirens around 7:30 am, according to striking workers. This followed a gas flare-up Monday morning at the refinery, which is being operated by management and contractors and is located just 17 miles from Chicago.

In the face of the intransigence of the oil companies, the USW and the AFL-CIO continue to isolate the strike.

On the picket lines, there is mounting criticism of the USW’s selective strike policy, and support for a national strike. At the Tesoro Carson refinery, outside of Los Angeles, a worker with 35 years in the industry told the World Socialist Web Site: “They should bring the hammer down. I’m talking about the United Steelworkers. They should be pulling everybody and everything out to win this strike.”

He added, “We don’t get told anything by the union. I don’t know what the union’s strategy or anything is. We’re just out here on the picket lines. But I’ve read everything you guys have written, and I think you’re right.”

In an effort to mollify opposition, the USW last weekend called out 1,500 additional workers at three refineries and a chemical plant owned by Motiva Enterprises—a joint venture between Shell and Saudi Refinery Inc.—in Port Arthur, Texas and in Convent and Norco, Louisiana. The USW continues to block action at the biggest US energy giants—ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips—even though workers at these companies want to join the strike.

On Tuesday, Gerard hinted that the strike might expand further, telling Reuters it “depends on what happens in the next round of negotiations and that those negotiations resume fairly quickly.”

Gerard acknowledged the dangerous conditions oil workers face, telling Reuters that fires or explosions have occurred every eight days on average since an April 2010 blast at Tesoro’s refinery in Anacortes, Washington that claimed the lives of seven workers. “From 2010 to now, there have been 27 people who have been killed” in accidents at refineries, Gerard said.

The USW president spoke to Reuters by phone from Atlanta, where the AFL-CIO Executive Council was convening its annual winter meeting. Predictably, the union officials took no action to mobilize wider sections of the working class in defense of the oil workers. This recalled similar inaction in 1981, when the AFL-CIO Executive Council refused to oppose Reagan’s firing of 13,000 PATCO air traffic controllers, paving the way for a decade of union-busting, mass layoffs and wage-cutting.

Instead, the union officials said they would hold several “Raising Wages” summits between now and the end of 2015 to drum up support for the Democratic Party in the first four presidential primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. USW President Gerard is himself a political confidant of President Obama.

Indicative of the paltry raises the union bureaucrats have in mind, the AFL-CIO praised the decision of Walmart to increase pay from $7.25 to $9.00 an hour.

The unions have been complicit in the decades-long assault on working class living standards by big business and the Democratic and Republican parties. Loyal to American capitalism and allied with the Democratic Party, the unions isolated and betrayed strikes and collaborated in downsizing and wage-cutting in the name of boosting the “competitiveness” (i.e., profits) of corporate America. This was accelerated after the financial crash of 2008, when Obama utilized the services of the United Auto Workers union to halve the wages of all new-hires and eliminate the eight-hour day at GM and Chrysler as part of the forced bankruptcy of the two Detroit auto makers.

The union heads, like the Obama administration, are aware of the growing anger and combativeness of workers, who, after the longest period of wage stagnation since the Great Depression and amidst soaring corporate profits and stock prices, are determined to recoup years of lost income. Since 2009, management compensation has grown 50 percent faster than union workers’ income, Bloomberg News reported recently. In the auto industry, real wages have declined 24 percent since 2003, according to the Center for Automotive Research.

In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, a spokesman for the AFL-CIO said roughly 5 million union members work under labor contracts that are set to expire in 2015.

But far from mobilizing these workers—dockworkers, auto-workers, teachers, Verizon workers and others—the unions intend to isolate and strangle each section of workers individually. Last week, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) caved in to the Obama administration’s demands and aborted a potential strike by 20,000 West Coast dockworkers that would have immeasurably strengthened the oil workers.

The unions want to prevent a broader movement of the working class that would take on a more openly political character and lead to a confrontation between workers and the Obama administration. This would further expose the falsity of the claim promoted by the unions that Obama and the Democrats are “friends of labor.”

While the Democrats are no less beholden to the corporate-financial elite than the Republicans, they generally favor utilizing the services of the unions to suppress the opposition of the working class. The Republicans are more inclined to dispense with the unions altogether.

The only way forward for oil workers is to break the grip of the USW and the AFL-CIO through the organization of rank-and-file strike committees. The first task of these committees would be to extend the strike throughout the oil industry and rally support from the widest sections of the working class in the US and internationally. Such a mobilization could become the starting point for the development of political movement against both big business parties and the profit system they defend.

On the picket lines at the Tesoro Carson refinery, Marc Cavarlez, who has eight years in the industry, summed up many of the issues that are of concern to the strikers. “The cost of living goes up at least six percent every year,” he said. “The union asked for two percent, and the company slapped us with a counteroffer of one percent. Both are inadequate.

Striking workers at Tesoro’s Carson refinery in southern California

“During shutdowns and turnarounds, when we repair all the equipment to get the refinery up for production, operators and maintenance people are required to work 19 days in a row, 12-hour shifts, with two days off, either at the end of those 19 days or in between. According to the union contract, we are required to put in 14 days in a row and 12-hour shifts. Then we get two days off. Well, you can imagine, we have families. And we want to see them!

“One of the most important things we’re striking about is ‘successorship.’ Three years ago, Tesoro bought this refinery from BP. When that happened, the new owners had to abide by the existing contract. They couldn’t just rip up all the rules and guidelines. The companies don’t want that. But these are our protections. If Tesoro decides to sell to a sister company, we know our wages and benefits will be cut.

“A couple of weeks ago, I was watching Bloomberg News. They were interviewing the CEO of Shell Oil. He makes $8 million a year! I know the rest of the CEOs make around that much. If they’d cut their pay by one-quarter, that would go a long way for us.

“Some people say we make too much money. Yes, we make between $80,000 and $100,000 a year, but we work sometimes 14 or 15 hours a day and are exposed to highly flammable and explosive stuff. If we don’t fight for this now, then every company will pay people dirt wages.”

Child poverty at devastating levels in US cities and states

Patrick Martin

Reports issued over the past week suggest that child poverty in America is more widespread than at any time in the last 50 years. For all the claims of economic “recovery” in the United States, the reality for the new generation of the working class is one of ever-deeper social deprivation.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation publishes the annual Kids Count report on child poverty, which was the source of state-by-state reports issued last week. These reports use the new Supplemental Poverty Measure, developed by the Census Bureau, which includes the impact of government benefit programs like food stamps and unemployment compensation, as well as state social programs, and accounts for variations in the cost of living as well.

The result is a picture of the United States with a markedly different regional distribution of child poverty than usually presented. The state with the highest child poverty rate is California, the most populous, at a staggering 27 percent, followed by neighboring Arizona and Nevada, each at 22 percent.

The child poverty rate of California is much higher than figures previously reported, because the cost of living in the state is higher. Moreover, many of the poorest immigrant families are not enrolled in federal social programs because they are undocumented or face language barriers. The same conditions apply in Arizona and Nevada.

The other major centers of child poverty in the United States are the long-impoverished states of the rural Deep South, and the more recently devastated states of the industrial Midwest, where conditions of life for the working class have deteriorated the most rapidly over the past ten years.

It is a remarkable fact, documented in a separate report issued February 23 by the Catholic charity Bread for the World, that African-American child poverty rates are actually worse in the Midwest states of Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana than in the traditionally poorest parts of the Deep South, including Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.

Several of the Midwest states have replaced Mississippi at the bottom of one or another social index. Iowa has the worst poverty rate for African-American children. Indiana has the highest rate of teens attempting or seriously considering suicide.

The most remarkable transformation is in Michigan, once the center of American industry with the highest working-class standard of living of any state. Michigan is the only major US state whose overall poverty rate is actually worse now than in 1960.

This half-century of decline is a devastating indictment of the failure of the American trade unions, which have collaborated in the systematic impoverishment of the working class in what was once their undisputed stronghold.

The United Auto Workers, in particular, did nothing as dozens of plants were shut down and cities like Detroit, Pontiac, Flint and Saginaw were laid waste by the auto bosses. Meanwhile, the UAW became a billion-dollar business, its executives controlling tens of billions in pension and benefit funds, while the rank-and-file workers lost their jobs, their homes and their livelihoods.

In Detroit, once the industrial capital of the world’s richest country, the child poverty rate was 59 percent in 2012, up from 44.3 percent in 2006.

The social catastrophe facing the population in Detroit also exposes the role of the Democratic Party and the organizations around it that have for decades promoted identity politics—according to which race, and not class, is the fundamental social category in America. The city, like many throughout the region, has been run by a layer of black politicians who have overseen the shocking decay in the social position of African-American workers and youth. (See, "Half a million children in poverty in Michigan".)

Cleveland, also devastated by steel and auto plant closings, was the only other major US city with a child poverty rate of over 50 percent.

The Detroit figure undoubtedly understates the social catastrophe in the Motor City, since it comes from a study concluded before the state-imposed emergency manager put the city into bankruptcy in the summer of 2013, leading to drastic cuts in wages, benefits and pensions for city workers and retirees.

Wayne County, which includes Detroit, had the highest child poverty rate of any of Michigan’s 82 counties. Southeast Michigan, which includes the entire Detroit metropolitan area, endured an overall rise in child poverty rates from 18.9 percent in 2006 to 27 percent in 2012.

The state-by-state reports issued by Kids Count were accompanied by a press release by the Casey Foundation noting that the child poverty rate in the United States would nearly double, from 18 percent to 33 percent, without social programs like food stamps, school meals, Medicaid and the Earned Income Tax Credit.

This was issued as a warning of the effect of widely expected budget cuts in these critical programs. It coincided with the first hearing before the House Agriculture Committee on plans to attack the federal food stamp program by imposing work requirements and other restrictions to limit eligibility.

The food stamp program has already suffered through two rounds of budget cuts agreed on in bipartisan deals between the Obama White House and congressional Republicans, which cut $1 billion and $5 billion respectively from the program. Now that Republicans control both houses of Congress, they will press for even more sweeping cuts in a program that helps feed 47 million low-income people, many of them children.

Pentagon provocation on Russia’s border

Bill Van Auken

US armored vehicles flying American flags were paraded Tuesday through the Estonian city of Narva, just a few hundred yards from the Russian border.

The provocative action, coming on the heels of the first anniversary of the US-orchestrated coup in Kiev, underscores the transformation of the entire region into a zone of military confrontation, with potentially catastrophic implications for the peoples of not only Eastern Europe, but the entire planet.

Spearheaded by the fascistic Right Sector militia, the coup that toppled the government of President Viktor Yanukovych on February 22 of last year was carried out with the direct support and intimate involvement of the US government. Washington’s execrable representative on the scene, the State Department’s Victoria Nuland, went so far as to name those to be allowed into a post-coup regime.

The installation of this right-wing nationalist, anti-Russian regime in Kiev provoked mass popular opposition in the largely Russian-speaking eastern Donbass region. The Kiev government, with Washington’s support, sought to drown the rebellion in blood.

After ten months of fighting and the deaths of at least 5,000 people, this repressive campaign has proven a disaster for the Kiev regime and its American patrons. The Ukrainian military, dominated by fascistic militias, has virtually disintegrated after being forced into a headlong retreat. The country is on the brink of bankruptcy, with its currency, the hryvnia, in free-fall, having lost half its value since the beginning of this year.

The regime’s response consists of political repression, a largely unsuccessful attempt to forcibly draft youth into the army, and drastic austerity measures against the working class.

By any objective measure, last year’s US-orchestrated coup has yielded yet another foreign policy debacle. Far from seeking to quell the crisis it unleashed in the region, however, Washington has responded by moving to escalate and spread it.

This is because the central target of the US regime-change operation was not Yanukovych, but Russia. Its aim was to draw Ukraine tightly into the US sphere of influence and position NATO on Russia’s western border. Ultimately, the havoc unleashed in Kiev was directed at destabilizing the regime in Moscow and paving the way for the dismemberment of the Russian federation and transformation of its parts into semi-colonies of US imperialism.

In the wake of the rout of Ukrainian forces in the Donbass, the US is moving ahead with plans to arm the Kiev regime, bringing the US and Russia closer to military conflict. Thus, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was dispatched to Abu Dhabi this week for the annual International Defense Exhibition, where he claimed to have signed nearly 20 contracts for weapons. The United Arab Emirates, which served as the conduit for arming the US-backed Islamist “rebels” in Syria, is apparently providing the same service in relation to Ukraine.

One of Poroshenko’s top security advisors, Anton Gerashchenko, posted a giddy comment on Facebook, asserting that “unlike Europeans and Americans, the Arabs aren’t afraid of Putin’s threats that a third world war may start if weapons and military equipment are provided to Ukraine.”

Now we have the US armored column parading on the Estonian-Russian border. This is only one of the more inflammatory manifestations of an ongoing US military buildup in the three Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—that have all been brought into NATO.

Last September, speaking in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, Obama vowed that the US commitment to defend these former Soviet republics was “unbreakable.” Obama added that Washington’s pledge to use American military power to protect the three tiny countries was “unwavering” and “eternal.” He boasted that in all three countries there would be more “American boots on the ground.”

This was reiterated Wednesday in testimony delivered to the House Armed Services Committee by Gen. Philip Breedlove, the head of the US European Command and NATO’s supreme allied commandeer. He told the congressional panel that his “top concern is a resurgent Russia.”

He enumerated a long list of US military exercises and deployments that constituted a “near-continuous air, land and sea presence” on Russia’s borders, while arguing that such a “rotational presence” was no substitute for the “fielding of credible and persistent deterrent capabilities” that would allow the US to “respond within hours…as crises emerge.”

This has begun, he said, with the establishment of a “NATO command and control presence” in the Baltic states. The US European Command, he added, had conducted 67 “significant military-to-military engagements” with the Baltic states and Poland between April and October of 2014 alone.

Gen. Strangelove…or rather, Breedlove…also stressed the role of the US “theater nuclear deterrent in support of NATO and enduring US security commitments” in the region. The US military, he said, “stands side-by-side with our NATO allies to provide safe, secure, reliable and effective nuclear forces to deter aggression,” adding that STRATCOM (successor to the Strategic Air Command—SAC) had been integrated into NATO’s “regional exercises.”

In other words, behind the backs of the American people and the population of the entire planet and with virtually no notice in the media, not to mention any public debate, Washington has turned three small Baltic states on Russia’s border into the trip wire for a nuclear Third World War.

It could not have picked more unstable allies—in reality, puppets—upon which to risk nuclear annihilation. All three Baltic states are headed by right-wing, ultranationalist and rabidly anti-Russian regimes. The Estonian independence celebration in which the US military participated was dominated by the slogan “Estonia for the Estonians,” a reactionary chauvinist demand for the expulsion of Russians, who comprise fully a quarter of the population. The town of Narva, where the US column joined the parade, is a stronghold of Russian speakers, making the demonstration an implicit threat against the local population.

In Estonia, as in the other two Baltic states, there are regular public rallies featuring swastikas and celebrating the Waffen SS, which carried out the mass murder of Jews and other minorities in these countries during World War II.

There has not been any Russian threat against these states since they established their independence from Moscow in the course of the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union nearly a quarter of a century ago, and there is no such threat now.

The claim that the corrupt regime of capitalist oligarchs in Moscow is “resurgent” is a pretext for Washington to scrap the assurances it provided 25 years ago that NATO would not deploy its military on Russia’s borders, and to embark upon a policy of military provocation and aggression that threatens to ignite a war between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.

Without the intervention of the working class to put an end to the profit system, the root cause of war, Washington’s attempt to offset the economic decline of American capitalism through the use of military force confronts humanity with the prospect of nuclear annihilation.

Sierra Leone: Private Life Vs Public Life and the 2017/18 Elections

Sulay B. Conteh

So far it has been so personal that there seems to be no place for public life in the political life of Sierra Leoneans. Practically, political life is more or less a public life just as much as private life is largely a personal life. Whereas in a private life the individual decides spheres of affairs, the people decide the spheres of affairs in a public life. In successful public organizations, the subjects learn to respect and abide by the popular decisions of the people; irrespective of whether such decisions are fair or otherwise. Although such decisions are hardly fair in political life, the subjects nevertheless must always exercise control over personal feelings in the larger interest of the political body. Clearly, private life seems to have been mixed with public life in the political life of the SLPP Party and is devastatingly ripping the party apart since the new founding of Sierra Leone following the NPRC takeover.

While the decisions of the individual prevail over those of the people in private affairs, the reverse always holds true in public affairs. This implies that those in public life should not see the decisions of the people as contravening their personal principles, irrespective of the moral, socio-cultural or economic basis of such principles. In political public life, fair or even unfair decisions reached by cross-sections of responsible bodies are viewed as democratic and should be respected by all members of the party.

Time and again, however, personal life weighs in more than public life in the political life of the SLPP Party. The growing rise of individuals who feel far bigger than the SLPP Party is hurting the party. The custom of carrying personal principles into the conduct of the political affairs of the SLPP Party is not helping the situation in any way.

Personal conduct of some high-profile figures

The SLPP Party, founded in 1951, is the alma matter party of all political parties in Sierra Leone. It was over a protracted controversy of “election before independence and vice versa” that a vibrant but personally motivated group broke away to form the APC Party in 1960. This was where all the endless cracks in the party today started and the SLPP Party would govern only until 1967 before it was reduced into opposition role by its breakaway APC Party. Since then, APC has ruled pretty much of our post-independence period. While the Stevens’ APC regime was extremely brutal, it is pretty much true that the conduct of personal life in the political life of the SLPP Party stifled any comeback of the party until 1996 following the NPRC junta intervention 1992. The Sir Albert Margai and John Karefa-Smart controversies (laden with personal rather party principles) could have prevented any comeback of the SLPP Party during that spell. Karefa-Smart eventually ended up pulling out and never again went back to the SLPP Party.

The other instances where the conduct of personal life in political life widened the endless cracks in the SLPP Party were during the post-NPRC period that saw the Kabbah-Margai controversy, the Margai-Berewa controversy, the Bio-Boi controversy and on and on. It is clear that the Electoral College of the SLPP Party is out of date, and the party internal elections are no longer free and fair. Charles Margai, the strongest steward of the SLPP Party throughout the trying days of the pre-NPRC APC rule, knew of the shortcomings of the Electoral College, but decided to keep it in place in the hope that it would work in his favor. Dramatically but not unexpectedly, Kabbah turned the tides on Margai by exploiting the lapses in the Electoral College to win the 1996 Flagbearership over Margai. Stunned, Margai reacted on personal principles instead of keeping a cool head, accepting the outcome and working to fix the lapses in the Electoral College. The meddling of Margai’s personal life into his political life eventually led to his breakaway, setting up his own brand new political party and eventually partnering with the APC Party. Horrible to say the least!

The same lapses in the Electoral College created the rift between Bio and Boi, eventually leading to Boi’s exit from SLPP and his absorption into APC. John Benjamin, another strong SLPP Party figure, inherited the fraudulent Electoral College as Chairman of the party but deliberately refused to fix it on the same illusion that it will someday play in his favor. Now most recently, Bio capped it all by exploiting the lapses to install a pro-APC figure (Kapen) into the seat of Chairman of the SLPP Party. Or may it rather be said that the ruling APC Party exploited the lapses in SLPP Electoral College to implant mole into the seat of Chairman of the SLPP Party? Whichever is the case, SLPP today solidly plays into the hands of APC and APC is making the best use of that.

Where there is absolutely no yardstick for measuring the competency of people running for public offices, personal agendas mar the election process and such agendas can be very economic in a largely illiterate and impoverished nation like Sierra Leone. This is exactly what the ruling APC Party exploits in the fraudulent SLPP Electoral College today, making impossible any regrouping efforts by the so-called opposition SLPP Party to win national elections.

These lapses in the basic setup of the SLPP Party have heated substantial bad blood among prominent SLPP Party members, be it in the current Bio, Boi, Benjamin, etc., etc. usurp, the  more recent past Kabbah, Margai, etc., etc. usurp or the distant past Margai, Karefa-Smart, etc., etc. usurp. All of these sagas which have marred and still continue to mar the viability of the SLPP Party are the telltales of extraordinary circumstances where the principles of private life prevail over the principles of public life.

By definition, a political party is always a public entity. Unlike all other public entities, a political is, in principle and practice, always opened to all, irrespective of past records. This makes a political party a very unique public entity, where there is no basis to project the principles of private life into the principles of public life. More too often have high-profile SLPP figures quit the party on the basis of personal principles, without any consideration of the impacts of such actions on their own public life. It all likely that Charles Margai is in the footsteps of John Karefa-Smart and mare could follow suit of the principle of our private lives are not separated from the principles of our public life in the political life of the SLPP Party.

So before all is lost, we urge all key stakeholders of the SLPP Party to drop these personal egos and ambitions and come together for the common good of the SLPP Party in particular and for Sierra Leone at large. This principle of “me or nobody else” is hurting the party and costing the country an untold suffering, and nobody stands to benefit from it but the leftwing parties. For far too long have we been disloyal to our alma mater SLPP Party.