Australian building workers hit by construction company collapse

Declan O’Malley 

About 100 construction workers and sub-contractors were suddenly thrown out of work on an apartment building site in the Queensland state capital of Brisbane earlier this month when a major development company, CMF Projects, went into receivership.

The liquidation of the company came as a shock to the workers on the inner-city Woolloongabba site, who arrived to start work, only to be turned away. Later, they were allowed to enter the site in groups of five to collect their personal tools and belongings.

This shut-down is another indicator of the possibility of a wider collapse in the residential construction boom seen in the east coast capitals of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane since 2012. The jobs of an estimated 200,000 building workers and other people in the real estate industry are threatened.

By industry estimates, the apartment building boom recently peaked at 548 cranes on high-rise developments across Australia, up by 323 percent since late 2013. This unsustainable growth, fuelled by speculative investment, has kept the economy from plunging into recession since the mining boom began to implode in 2012.

CMF’s collapse, which left at least two apartment complexes unfinished in Brisbane, also sheds light on the complicit relations between employers and the main construction trade union, the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU).

While the closure came as a bombshell to the rank and file workers on the site, it did not surprise the union delegate. The delegate, who did not wish to be named, said: “The company has been in trouble for months.” Yet the union did nothing to forewarn the workers.

According to the CMFEU delegate, CMF Projects co-operates and works closely with the union. He said the union and the company were now working together to ensure that workers’ entitlements, such as unpaid wages, leave and superannuation payments, would be paid out.

The delegate immediately ruled out any action by the union to fight the retrenchments. When asked what the union would do about the sacking of scores of workers, he said: “It’s all perfectly legal, we can’t do anything about it. So we’re not doing anything about it.”

This has been the response of every trade union to the ongoing destruction of jobs throughout the mining, manufacturing and other basic industries.

There are warnings that the CMF closure is part a gathering rout. Subcontractors Alliance spokesman Les Williams told reporters he expected at least one construction company to collapse in Brisbane every month as the market unravelled. Williams said that since Christmas creditors, including sub-contractors, had already lost an estimated $100 million, as building companies went under.

According to the Australian Financial Review, CMF Projects “which has completed at least a dozen high profile apartment projects in Brisbane, is the first builder of any real significance to go into administration in a market where the number of planned apartment developments has dropped significantly.”

Several other companies have collapsed in Brisbane in recent months. Newstead-based CKP collapsed last month after it racked up debts in excess of $3 million and left four uncompleted projects around the city.

Brisbane-based Bloomer Constructions also went under, owing an estimated $15 million. Brisbane/Gold Coast-based Cullen Group collapsed just before Christmas, owing subcontractors an estimated $18 million and leaving a string of unfinished projects.

Brisbane has become the sharpest indicator of a precipitous downturn that is also emerging in Melbourne, with Sydney not far behind. According to property analysts Urbis, the number of new apartment developments approved in Brisbane has dropped by more than two-thirds over the past year. “In the December 2016 quarter, only 1,496 apartments were approved—compare this to 5,521 apartments one year ago,” Urbis said in its last snapshot of Brisbane.

This slump is intensifying. The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates that new unit approvals in Queensland fell 29 percent in the month of March. As a result, builders are now finding it difficult to fill their order books, forcing them to cut staff and wind up work teams.

Last October, the Morgan Stanley research unit forecast a 33 percent fall in construction nationally in 2017, from 225,000 homes and apartments to 150,000 over the year, estimating that this could wipe out 200,000 jobs.

Rather than housing demand, much of the boom has been based on speculative investment, searching for capital gains and tax concessions, with many apartments remaining empty after completion. Property prices have soared, placing home ownership out of reach for many working people.

By some estimates, including by the CoreLogic real estate research firm, as many as 200,000 apartments are uninhabited in Sydney alone. Investors, rather than home-buyers, have accounted for about half of all unit purchases in Sydney and Melbourne in recent years, far higher than in previous periods.

In order to prop up property prices and protect their own profits, the banks, other finance houses and real estate firms are seeking to reassure investors that the bursting of the building bubble will not lead to a meltdown. Global investment banking giant UBS this month said the Australian housing market had peaked, but predicted that it would “correct but not collapse” to 180,000 dwelling commencements in 2018.

For the thousands of construction workers already losing their livelihoods, however, this is cold comfort. The housing boom and threatened bust underscores the irrational nature of the private profit system of capitalism—apartments are built that nobody occupies and kept on the market for prices few can afford. Meanwhile, the workers and sub-contractors bear the brunt of this gamble.

Massacre of 17 prison escapees highlights deep social crisis in Papua New Guinea

John Harris 

On May 12, seventeen prisoners were shot dead by police and prison guards, after 77 inmates escaped Buimo jail’s main compound near Lae, the second largest city in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The incident is the latest demonstration of a mounting social crisis within the Pacific Island nation and the ever-greater resort to deadly force and repression by the country’s ruling elite and state apparatus.

The jailbreak was the fourth mass escape to occur since 2014 at Buimo prison, one of the largest in PNG. In February last year, 94 inmates were involved. Police indiscriminately opened fire on the escapees, killing 12 and wounding 18. In 2015, fifty-five men escaped, while in 2014, one detainee was shot dead when 44 made a break from the facility.

The Lae police department is conducting an operation to re-capture those prisoners still at large. Police Chief Wagambie bluntly declared that any associates or family members who were caught harbouring the escapees would be arrested and charged. In a threat that the men risked being shot and killed, Wagambie declared: “I am warning them that they will be caught. They must do what is good for them and surrender.”

Correctional services commissioner Michael Waipo admitted that Buimo could only safely house 500 prisoners, while currently holding 900. The facility is also severely understaffed, Waipo said. Due to a freeze on recruitment, the ratio between staff and detainees, “instead of one to three, it is one to one hundred in a shift.”

According to the US state department, in its Country Reports for Human Rights in Papua New Guinea, 70 percent of those held at Buimo are on remand, denied bail and condemned to confinement before proven innocent or guilty. Some of those who escaped from detention in 2016 had been waiting nearly a decade to face trial.

The report labelled prison conditions “very poor” and “seriously underfunded.” It declared Buimo had “inadequate medical facilities and was overcrowded,” noting that PNG’s prisons were “designed to accommodate 4,166 inmates, but as of October (2016) they held 4,945 inmates.”

Highlighting the dire conditions in jails across the country, prisoners at the Baisu jail in Mount Hagen, Western Highlands Province, were deprived of food for at least five days in February, because Correctional Services had not paid suppliers. A report also pointed out that the full nature of conditions in PNG’s prison system could not be investigated because of the “Ombudsman Commission’s” lack of “adequate resources to effectively monitor and investigate prison conditions.”

In response to the actions by state officials, the Australian head of Human Rights Watch, Elaine Pearson, told the Guardian that “Papua New Guinea authorities don’t have a licence to kill.” In reality, they effectively do. Incident after incident has taken place, in which PNG police or army personnel have used deadly force in response to expressions of discontent and anger over inequality, official political corruption and appalling social conditions.

In June last year, police opened fire on a peaceful march by university students in Port Moresby to the parliament house, injuring at least 23. Notwithstanding the clear abuse of human rights, no officers responsible for this act, or for the massacres of prisoners, have faced charges.

State repression in PNG is aimed not only at protecting the corrupt local ruling elite. PNG became nominally independent from Australian colonial rule in 1975. US and Australian-based banks and conglomerates, however, still dominate major aspects of the country’s economic and social life. PNG’s military and police are funded through Australian government grants, and trained and advised by Australian forces.

Companies such as Newcrest and ExxonMobil operate lucrative mining and gas ventures, looting the country’s resources for the profits of transnational investors, at the direct expense of working people and the rural poor.

Newcrest operates PNG’s Lihar mine, one of the biggest gold mines in the world. It has extracted an estimated 10 million ounces of gold over the past 20 years. Local landowners have protested over the fact that next to no benefit has flowed to them from this vast wealth.

ExxonMobil has directed major investment into opening-up PNG’s vast natural gas reserves, bringing with it an ever greater interest in the country on the part of Washington. US concerns were candidly spelled out by former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who declared in 2011 that “we are in competition with China… ExxonMobil is producing it [natural gas]. China is in there every day in every way trying to figure out how it’s going to come in behind us, come in under us.”

The appointment of Rex Tillerson as US Secretary of State, ExxonMobil’s former chairman, was welcomed by PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill, who declared him to be a “very good and genuine friend.”

Last December, the relationship between corporate interests and the PNG state was demonstrated by the deployment of the military into Hela Province, to protect ExxonMobil’s gas operations from angry villagers. Troops have intimidated the local opposition, to prevent disruption to the company’s profit interests.

While the corporations amass huge profits, nearly 40 percent of PNG’s population lives in poverty, subsisting on less than $US1.25 a day. The country has one of the highest rates of maternal death in the world, second only to Afghanistan in the Asia-Pacific region. According to OSAC’s 2016 Crime and Safety Report, nearly half the population lived in squatter settlements, and illiteracy is rampant, particularly among women.

Papua New Guinea has the highest percentage of its population in the world—60 percent—living without access to safe water. In 2016, a particularly harsh El-Nino left 2.7 million people with water shortages, food insecurity and susceptible to disease. Inadequate social infrastructure has seen an epidemic of malaria and HIV/AIDS.

The youth who move from rural villages to the towns and cities, seeking paid work, face endemic levels of unemployment. As a result, PNG also has one of the highest crime rates in the world.

And conditions are only worsening. The collapse in global commodity prices has hit PNG particularly hard; economic growth plunged from 13.3 percent in 2014 to 2.5 percent in this financial year. The austerity package imposed through the O’Neill government’s supplementary budget has devastated government programs and essential services. Public servants now receive little to no payments, while health and education funding has been gutted by 40 percent and 23 percent respectively.

The gunning down of desperate inmates by police and prison officials should raise immense political concern among workers in PNG and internationally. It is of a piece with the brutal state violence unleashed by governments internationally, in order to defend the interests of finance capital and the local elites.

The massacre took place amid the campaign for the coming PNG election, with polls due to open on June 24. Regardless of which coalition of establishment political parties ultimately forms government, it will carry out the dictates of the international banks and corporations, intensifying austerity measures and state repression against the working class and rural masses.

The critical question in PNG, as across the South Pacific, is a turn by the most serious layers of students and workers to a serious study of the history, program and perspective of socialist internationalism, and the fight to build sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), the world Trotskyist movement.

UK wage performance “worst in over 200 years”

Margot Miller 

Wages in the UK have fallen by a 11 percent since 2007 and are expected to be almost £1,000 a year lower in 2017 in real terms than previous forecasts.

The Resolution Foundation think tank’s pre-Brexit prediction for cuts for wages in 2017 has been revised downward by £320 to a £915 drop by the end of the year.

In addition, new figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show a further fall in living standards as inflation outstrips growth in pay. In the first three months of 2017, average weekly earnings excluding bonuses rose by 2.1 percent compared to a rise in inflation of 2.3 percent. Overall, the ONS concludes that average UK workers will still be earning less in 2021 than they did in 2008.

Bank of England governor Mark Carney confirmed that the year ahead would be a “more challenging time for British households.”

Two years ago, inflation was hovering around zero. The latest rise in inflation to a four-year high of 2.7 percent is linked to last year’s Brexit referendum vote, which caused the value of the pound to slump and a resulting rise in the price of imports. This is set to worsen. The senior economist at Hargreaves Lansdown, Ben Brettell, said, “With inflation forecast to carry on rising—Bank of England policymakers predict inflation will peak a little below three percent in the fourth quarter—household budgets look certain to be squeezed further in the coming months.”

Commenting on the ONS figures, Stephen Clarke, an economic analyst at the Resolution Foundation, said, “Coming so soon after the big post-crisis pay squeeze, this new phase of falling pay means that this decade is set to be the worst in over 200 years for pay packets.”

Britain already lies third from bottom in a comparative league table of wages of 34 developed nations, in research published by the Trades Unions Congress (TUC) based on Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) figures. The UK is one of five countries, including Italy, Austria, Greece and Portugal, where wages are expected to be lower in 2018 than before the financial crash of 2008.

One example cited by the Resolution Foundation of how workers are being robbed of a decent wage is companies forcing an effective pay cut to fund shortfalls in defined pension schemes. An average 10 percent of money paid into defined-benefit schemes over the past 16 years has been funded by suppressing wages, an effective 0.6 percent cut compared with employees in companies that do not have a deficit. Fully 85 percent of the 6,000 defined-benefit schemes are closed to new members.

Poverty levels are set to rise further, as a result of new policies unveiled by the Conservatives in their election manifesto. To cite just one example, the Tories propose to scrap free school dinners for primary school children (up to age seven years), under conditions where a third of children are being brought up in families below the poverty threshold. With this single policy alone, families stand to lose out by an additional £440 a year for each child affected. The government has already pencilled in £9 billion in welfare cuts leading up to 2020, of which three-quarters have yet to be implemented.

In the face of this deepening social catastrophe, the Labour Party has focused on a headline commitment to raise the minimum wage to £10 an hour, but only by 2020. By this time the Tories would have raised the minimum to £8.75 an hour. A worker employed on a 40-hour week at Labour’s Living Wage—and many work shorter hours—would earn £1,600 per month before deductions, so the family would remain either around or below the poverty level. According to the Child Poverty Action Group, the poverty level after housing costs for a lone parent family with two children is £1,261 per month, and for a couple with two children it is £1,703.

Equally, Labour is telling barefaced lies when it proposes to redress the gross inequality that exists in the UK, a country where the wealthiest 1,000 individuals are worth as much as the poorest 40 percent of the population. The manifesto outlines a tax on income of earners over £80,000 of 45p in the pound, with a new higher band of 50p for income earners over £123,000. These still-low rates are similar to those imposed for a time by Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown following the 2008 crash. Careful accounting will ensure that any hit on the wealthy is minimised. Moreover, they are a tax on income, not wealth and assets in their myriad forms. The super-rich would therefore remain safe under Labour.

The manifesto also speaks of an “excessive pay levy” for companies that pay high salaries—by which is meant a 2.5 percent levy on earnings above £300,000 and 5 percent on earnings above £500,000. This is set at a very high level, given that the average pay of a CEO is around £92,000. Labour proposes a maximum pay ratio of 20:1, but only as a condition for those private companies being awarded government contracts. This sum would be easily avoided by a shift to executive bonuses by the targeted companies.

The weekly wage of a worker, before tax, is £400 at Labour’s Living Wage rate, whereas the targeted CEO will still be taking home up to £8,000 a week.

Just as tellingly, the Resolution Foundation estimates that at least £7 billion of the planned Tory cuts will be retained, according to its appraisal of Labour’s manifesto.

As for the trade unions, TUC President Francis O’Grady said earlier this month, “British workers have endured the longest pay squeeze since Victorian times, and now even more pain is on the horizon.” But after noting that “in the world’s sixth richest economy” it is a disgrace “that nurses are having to use food banks to get by” and that “Britain badly needs a pay rise,” O’Grady then meekly urged that “all the political parties...explain in their manifestos how they will boost living standards in the UK.”

Over the past 30 years, the trade unions have collaborated with various governments in attacking jobs, wages and services. This was stepped up after the 2008 global financial meltdown, when more than £1 trillion was handed over to the banks to bail them out.

The last united day of strike action called by the trade unions was in 2011 against the gutting of pensions in the public sector. This struggle was wound down to a few single strike days on a union-by-union and regional basis, and then called off altogether. As a result, workers now have to work longer and pay higher contributions for smaller pensions. As the election unfolds, the unions are working might and main to sabotage struggles of rail, car workers, health, education and IT workers at Fujitsu.

Macron prepares enabling act to slash contracts, labor rights in France

Alex Lantier 

Newly-elected French President Emmanuel Macron is preparing a historic assault on jobs, wages and labor legislation, to be rammed through by presidential decree in the face of overwhelming public opposition.

Details of Macron’s plans emerged Monday in the run-up to his meetings Tuesday with trade union and business representatives at the Elysée Palace.

After next month’s legislative elections, Macron will demand an enabling act from parliament authorizing the president to decree changes in French labor law. “The reform of the Labor Code has been well planned,” incoming Prime Minister Edouard Philippe told the Journal du Dimanche. “We will now discuss it to enrich it and explain it. This means discussions with the trade unions, which are indispensable, and a parliamentary discussion which will take place during the vote on the enabling act that will allow the government to impose decrees in a context defined by the parliament.”

Philippe said that he and Labor Minister Muriel Pénicaud would work closely with the trade unions and meet bilaterally with each of the major union confederations. “But once the discussion has taken place,” he added, “we will have to act fast. We cannot wait two years to finish the job. Emmanuel Macron has heard the anger of the French people. He also knows how urgent it is to transform the country.”

The decrees being discussed indicate that Macron aims to tear up the entire framework of labor relations in France as they emerged from the liberation from Nazi occupation and the social concessions of the immediate post-World War II period.

Many of these decrees aim to re-introduce provisions into the 2016 labor law that the previous Socialist Party (PS) government removed in order to halt strikes and protests against the law. The PS rammed the law through without a parliamentary vote in the face of opposition from 70 percent of the French population, as riot police were sent under the state of emergency to assault protesters and striking workers. Nevertheless, in order to prevent a social explosion, many provisions favored by Macron were removed. He now wants to reinstate them. They include:

● Placing a ceiling on the fines that labor courts can assess employers for illegally firing employees. It was widely feared that the imposition of low fine ceilings would emasculate the labor courts: bosses could simply foresee and incorporate the fine for firing employees “without real or serious cause” into the cost of doing business. According to Le Parisien, the ceiling Macron is considering, three months’ wages, is half the current minimum fine of six months’ wages. The goal is clearly to allow businesses to hire and fire at will.

● Enabling individual firms to negotiate contracts violating industry-level contract agreements and the national Labor Code. Currently, firms can only negotiate contracts that are more beneficial to the workers. Macron’s decree would turn all this labor legislation into a dead letter, since firms could blackmail workers, threatening their jobs if they did not accept contracts inferior to the wages and benefits supposedly guaranteed by industry-level and national agreements.

● Enabling employers who are proposing contracts supported by only a minority of trade unionists at the workplace to demand a referendum of the workers at the site on whether or not to accept the contract despite union opposition. Insofar as yellow unions are present in the vast majority of workplaces in France, this would effectively allow employers to dictate contracts, obtain minority support and then demand that workers accept the contract or face the loss of their jobs.

Other proposals backed by Macron are inspired by anti-social legislation elsewhere in Europe, notably the Agenda 2010-Hartz IV laws imposed by Germany’s Social Democratic Party. These include pushing workers to enter into supplementary private pension schemes, a step towards eliminating the right to a state-funded pension, and enforcing strict testing of workers claiming unemployment benefits. This would allow the state to kick workers off unemployment unless they meet stringent tests to prove they are looking for work.

The Macron administration is trying to present these proposals as part of a plan to “modernize” France, notably by playing up policies ostensibly aimed at defending women’s rights. All of France’s different maternity leave programs would be combined into one, whose features, according to one proposal, will be “aligned on the most advantageous program.” There would also be random testing of workplaces, supposedly to check that bosses do not discriminate against women.

This is a reactionary fraud, however. The legislation is a massive step backwards, submitting all workers, including women workers, to the diktat of the bosses and the state. The fact that proposals on gender equality include anti-democratic restrictions on religious liberty at work, and a ban on “proselytizing,” are an ominous sign: they could be used to allow employers to fire veiled Muslim women and generally to feed anti-Muslim and pro-war hatreds.

The capitalist crisis and the austerity drive the European Union (EU) launched after the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and accelerated after the 2008 Wall Street crash, are undermining democratic forms of rule.

The Macron government has no mandate whatsoever to carry out the program it is proposing. The labor law was deeply unpopular even without its most controversial provisions. Former PS President François Hollande’s economic policy, which Macron helped formulate, had a 4 percent approval rating. Now Macron is advancing such a program after an election that he won largely by default, because he was facing the deeply unpopular neo-fascist candidate Marine Le Pen.

Macron, a former investment banker at the Rothschild bank, aims to impose the arrogant diktat of the banks. Under Hollande’s presidency, as workers’ living standards fell, the wealth of top French multi-billionaires like Liliane Bettencourt and Philippe Arnault nearly doubled. With the world economy still mired in crisis, however, and France’s economic position and its weight in world trade continuing to fall, the ruling class is determined to squeeze even more money out of workers and place it in the hands of the super-rich.

The working class is faced with a political struggle against an absolutely ruthless government that is willing to resort to forms of repression unseen in France since the 1940s in order to ram through the diktat of the banks. The new administration is aware that it faces massive popular opposition and is making detailed plans to crush strikes and protests.

Last week, the media revealed that the PS had made plans for a coup d’état after the presidential elections to be implemented had Marine Le Pen won. Its purpose would not have been to topple Le Pen, but to crush anti-fascist protests and suspend normal parliamentary procedure by imposing a PS government on Le Pen.

Incoming Interior Minister Gérard Collomb said on Friday that he will review the state of emergency and that he would support extending it yet again past its current expiration date, July 15. “I think at some point we will have to end the state of emergency. But is now the right time? Maybe not right after the formation of the government,” Collomb told RTL.

Under the state of emergency, workers exercising constitutionally-protected rights to strike and protest can be targeted with bans on demonstrations, arbitrary detentions and house arrest by police. That is to say, the French capitalist class is repudiating the promises it made in the aftermath of World War II never to return to the arbitrary and unrestrained oppression of working people that characterized the Nazi occupation.

This situation vindicates the Parti de l’égalité socialiste’s call for a boycott of the second round of the presidential election between Macron and Le Pen. The PES argued that Macron was not an alternative to Le Pen and that the critical question was presenting a politically independent and revolutionary perspective on the basis of which the working class could fight the attacks of whatever president was elected. This position has been confirmed in the aftermath of Macron’s election.

Trump calls for $1.7 trillion in social cuts

Kate Randall

The Trump administration will unveil a fiscal year 2018 budget today that includes $1.7 trillion in cuts to major social programs. The plan marks a new stage in a bipartisan social counterrevolution aimed at eviscerating what remains of programs to fight poverty and hunger and provide health care for millions of workers.

The unveiling of the budget underscores the reactionary character of the Democrats’ response to a gangster government headed by a fascistic-minded billionaire and composed of Wall Street bankers, far-right ideologues and generals. The Democratic Party has chosen to base its opposition to Trump not on his assault on working and poor people, his attacks on democratic rights, or his reckless militarism, but on his supposed “softness” toward Russia.

In the political warfare in Washington, the Democrats are aligned with those sections of the intelligence apparatus and the “deep state” that are determined to compel Trump to abandon any notion of easing relations, and instead continue the Obama administration’s policy of escalating confrontation with Russia. As the Democrats and the so-called “liberal” media pursue their anti-Russia campaign, the Trump administration continues to advance its brutal domestic agenda.

Trump’s budget is the opening shot in a stage-managed tussle between the two big business parties over social cuts that will end with the most massive attack on core social programs in US history.

The budget includes a cut of $800 billion over a decade in Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income people jointly administered by the federal government and the states. More than 74 million Americans, or one in five, are currently enrolled in Medicaid, including pregnant women, children and seniors with disabilities.

Like the American Health Care Act (AHCA) passed earlier this month by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, Trump’s budget plan would put an end to Medicaid as a guaranteed benefit based on need, replacing it with per capita funding or block grants to the states.

The AHCA would also end the expansion of Medicaid benefits under Obamacare and allow states to impose work requirements for beneficiaries. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that an earlier version of the Republican plan would result in 10 million people being stripped of Medicaid benefits.

Trump’s budget would also cut $193 billion over a decade from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps, a 25 percent reduction to be achieved in part by limiting eligibility and imposing work requirements.

Welfare benefits, known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, would be cut by $21 billion. Spending on the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit, which benefit mainly low- and middle-income families, would be reduced by $40 billion.

The budget reportedly includes changes in funding for Social Security’s Supplemental Security Income program, which provides cash benefits to the poor and disabled.

While gutting social programs, Trump proposes to sharply reduce taxes for the wealthy. In addition to slashing income tax rates for the rich, he is proposing to dramatically cut estate, capital gains and business tax rates. At the same time, he is demanding a huge increase in military spending.

While Democrats will make rhetorical criticisms of the Trump budget, the fact is that the administration is escalating a decades-long assault on the working class overseen by both big business parties.

The outcome can be seen in the reality of social life in America:

Poverty

More than 13 percent—some 43.1 million Americans—were living in poverty in 2015. Of these, 19.4 million were living in extreme poverty, which means their family’s cash income was less than half of the poverty line, or about $10,000 a year for a family of four. The poverty rate for children under 18 was 19.7 percent.

These are the official poverty rates, based on absurdly low income baselines. In reality, at least half of the population is living in or on the edge of poverty. These are precisely the people targeted by Trump’s proposed cuts to Medicaid, welfare and food stamps.

Hunger

Almost one in eight US households, 15.8 million, were food insecure in 2015, meaning they had difficulty providing enough food for all their members. Five percent of households had very low food security, meaning the food intake of household members was cut. Three million households were unable to provide adequate, nutritious food for their children.

Lack of health care

In 2016 under Obamacare, 28.6 million people of all ages, or about 9 percent of the US population, remained uninsured. Many of those insured under plans purchased from private insurers on the Obamacare exchanges were unable to use their insurance because of prohibitively high deductibles and co-pays. Many who gained insurance under Obamacare did so as a result of the expansion of Medicaid. Trump plans to reverse this, throwing millions of people back into the ranks of the uninsured.

A bipartisan assault

In the wake of Trump’s budget proposal, the Democrats have responded with their standard empty rhetoric. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer—one of Congress’ biggest recipients of Wall Street campaign money—decried Trump’s “hard-right policies that benefit the ultra-wealthy at the expense of the middle-class.” Just three weeks ago, Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi were hailing the passage of a bipartisan fiscal 2017 budget that cut food stamps by $2.4 billion, slashed funding for education and the environment, and added billions more for the military and border control.

Obamacare paved the way for the present assault on Medicaid and the coming attacks on Medicare and Social Security by further subordinating health care to the profit demands of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and imposing higher costs for reduced benefits on millions of workers.

Nothing less than a mass movement of the working class will prevent the destruction of Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, public education and every other social gain won by the working class. But this movement must be completely independent of the Democratic Party, the historic graveyard of social protest in America. That includes left-talking demagogues like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

It is not a matter of appealing to or seeking to pressure the Democrats or any other section of the political establishment. They are all in the pocket of Wall Street.

The working class needs its own program to secure its basic social rights—a decent-paying job, education, health care, a secure retirement. These rights are not compatible with a capitalist system that is lurching inexorably toward world war and dictatorship.

Workers and youth must intervene in this crisis with a socialist and revolutionary program geared to the needs of the vast majority, not the interests of an obscenely rich and corrupt financial oligarchy.

Trade splits emerge at APEC meeting

Nick Beams

The meeting of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) trade ministers held in Hanoi, Vietnam, over the weekend was the third major international meeting to abandon a commitment to resist protectionism, following similar decisions at G7 and G20 summits over the past two months.

Like the earlier decisions, the statement issued by the 21 APEC trade ministers was a response to the “America First” program of the Trump administration in the US. Since coming to office Trump has scrapped the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and demanded the renegotiation of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada.

After somewhat tense back-and-forth negotiations on the wording of the text, leading to conjecture as to whether there would even be a statement, the meeting simply called for officials to “deepen APEC’s structural reform agenda to remove barriers to trade and investment.”

It was very different from the statement issued at the last APEC meeting held in Peru in November last year.

That statement had declared: “We reaffirm the pledge made by our leaders against protectionism through a standstill commitment that we recommend be extended until the end of 2020 and to roll back protectionist and trade-distorting measures, which weaken trade and slow down the progress and recovery of the international economy.”

What has changed between the two meetings is the coming to power of the Trump administration in the US and its insistence that international agreements, including the operations of the World Trade Organisation, have disadvantaged the US. The White House wants to pursue bilateral agreements, rather than all-embracing arrangements and commitments.

The role of the US at the meeting, which was attended by trade representative Robert Lighthizer, was the subject of some pointed remarks by Russia’s economy minister Maxim Oreshkin.

In an interview with Bloomberg on Saturday, in the midst of discussions over the text, he said there was a risk there may not even be statement as there was one country opposed to a commitment to fight protectionism. “When there were talks about the memorandum of the forum, there were 20 countries that agree on everything and one country that has not agreed on anything,” he said.

Asked what country that was, he replied: “You can guess.”

Lighthizer said the US faced a huge trade deficit and it would fight against what he called “unfair trade,” reiterating the commitment to pull out of the TPP.

“This does not mean we will not engage in this region,” he said. “The president thought it was so important that I come here and demonstrate to this region how important it is to the US to be involved.”

Trade talks and economic arrangements, however, have been thrown into disarray because no one is sure how the “America First” agenda of the Trump administration will play out and what exactly it is demanding.

“It’s not only us, it’s everybody on this forum wants to get clarity on what the US thinks about its trade policy,” Oreshkin told Bloomberg .

These views were echoed by He Weiwen, a former Chinese trade diplomat in San Francisco and New York.

“They claim that US policy is free trade but what they say they want is what they call fair trade. They haven’t explained what fair trade really is and are just claiming that it is something different. This is certainly not workable. It won’t help APEC, the G20 or the whole course of the global economy. It is a pretext for protectionism.”

There were other expressions of concern. Vietnam’s industry and trade minister Tran Tuan Anh told a press briefing that the APEC group strongly support a multilateral trading environment, and warned of “signs of protectionism.”

Some countries tried to avoid the threat posed to the trade environment posed by the US administration, and downplay the significance of the scrapping of the commitment to resist protectionism.

Canadian trade minister Francois-Pilippe Champagne said the focus should be on actions rather than statements and that economies have agreed to maintain rules-based, open and free trade. It was necessary to look at the “big picture,” he asserted, and the countries represented at the meeting had expressed a desire to strengthen the system that exists in the Asia-Pacific.

The New Zealand trade minister, Todd McClay, said that “we should not become overly concerned where we can’t reach agreement on a statement, clearly and quickly, at every meeting.” There would only be concern, he said, when countries were not willing to come back and talk to each other.

He said the US had “different views” about what fairness in trade meant and “from what I have seen I have a lot of sympathy for the view that seems to be forming in the US.”

Notwithstanding such attempts to downplay the significance of the Trump agenda, the divisions are widening. The commitment to resist protectionism was introduced at the G20 heads of state meeting which followed the global financial crisis of 2008. It was endorsed in recognition of the enormous dangers of a return to the kind of beggar-thy-neighbour policies which played such a disastrous role in the Great Depression.

Now such a commitment is not able to be made at any major international economic gathering. It is a sign of the growing division of the world into rival trade groups and the abandonment of a multilateral approach.

On the sidelines of the meeting, Japan held talks with other members of the TPP in pursuit of its push to make the agreement effective even without the participation of the United States. The Japanese desire to continue with the agreement, which excludes China, signifies an intention to advance its interests against the growth of Chinese economic power.

China held discussions at the conclusion of the meeting with the 16 members of its proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. Beijing is presenting itself as the champion of free trade against the growing protectionism emanating from the US.

Oreshkin, who warned protectionism was the greatest threat to global growth, said he had not approached Lighthizer about a meeting and that “it’s more important to contact our Asian partners rather than the US.”

For the US part, Lighthizer held discussions on the sidelines of APEC with individual countries, in line with the Trump administration’s pursuit of preferential bilateral deals.

While the global economy continues to operate under the multilateral agreements that characterised the post-war international economic order, the APEC meeting was another indication that it is starting to fracture.

Political tensions in Albania destabilise the Balkans

Markus Salzmann

The conflict between government and opposition in Albania, which has been going on for months, has been temporarily resolved with the Socialist (PS) and Democratic (PD) parties agreeing to postpone parliamentary elections scheduled for 18 June and form a joint government.

As the opposition the PD are to receive the office of deputy head of government, as well as four important ministries and the presidency of the state electoral commission.

On May 13, tens of thousands of followers of the PD took to the streets in the capital city, Tirana, to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama (PS) and the formation of an all-party government. Lulzim Basha, chairman of the PD, declared that this would be the only way to a “fair and free parliamentary election.” Otherwise the opposition would boycott the elections, he threatened.

Alarmed about recent developments the American deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, Hoyt Brian Yee, traveled to Albania for all-party talks. He met first with Rama and parliamentary president Ilir Meta of the Socialist Movement for Integration (LIS), which had formed a coalition with the PS. Afterwards he met with Basha.

The European Union also sent emissaries to Tirana. An agreement was reached allegedly based on proposals made by David McAllister, a former conservative (CDU) premier in the state of Lower Saxony and current member of the European Parliament.

The crisis began in February, when the PD called for a boycott of the upcoming election, the resignation of Rama and the formation of a “cabinet of experts” to ensure a regular election. After Rama refused to resign, the party boycotted parliament and did not register for the election. On April 24, several thousand of its followers blocked numerous motorways.

PD leader Basha has accused the government of being dependent on criminals and drug traffickers, and “turning the entire country into a cannabis plantation.” According to the Austrian Standard, many people in parliament, in city halls, and in public institutions, were “formerly inmates in European prisons prosecuted for trafficking in drugs, women, weapons, for prostitution and murders.”

For his part Rama accused the PD of preventing a reform of the judiciary because of their close links to corrupt judges and prosecutors.

Rama had also been subject to heavy criticism from EU representatives because he used the nationalist card and threatened to form a “small union” with Kosovo, in the absence of any perspective of accession to the EU. This was “not his wish, but just a possible alternative if the EU closed its doors”.

The formation of a “Greater Albania” could once again set the entire region ablaze. Serbia, in particular, which has never recognized Kosovo’s independence, is vehemently opposed to any merger with Albania.

There are no fundamental differences between the policies of the PD and the PS. Both parties, which represent a small upper class elite and are up to their necks in corruption, nepotism and openly criminal activities, are widely despised. They are both committed to rapprochement with the EU and business friendly policies.

The PS is largely made up of Stalinists from the former party of Enver Hoxa, while the PD evolved from a right-wing movement that emerged in the early 1990s. Both parties have participated in government. Basha has formerly occupied ministerial posts and was formerly mayor of Tirana. In 2013 the Socialists won the election and replaced the Democrats.

The result of the rule of both parties is a social catastrophe, as is the case throughout the Balkans.

Following the collapse of the Stalinist bloc in the early 1990s mass emigration took hold. As of 2011 Albania had 2.9 million inhabitants, down from 3.3 million in 1990 and the number of those emigrating remains high. The World Bank ranked Albania at ninth place among countries with the highest emigration rate in relation to the population in 2015—before Barbados and behind Tonga.

The main motivation for the exodus is widespread poverty. Albania is one of the poorest countries in Europe. According to the Finance Ministry, GDP per capita amounted to about 3,400 euros in 2015. The average monthly wage is only 390 euros. The unemployment rate is over 35 percent and is even higher for young people. The majority of Albanians simply could not survive were it not for a flourishing black market economy.

The main concern of the US and the EU is not for the conditions affecting those poor and low-paid workers in the region. Rather, their main concern is growing instability in the Balkans.

Two decades after the US and Europe broke Yugoslavia apart and waged war, nothing has been resolved, the region is once again descending into political crisis and is dominated by nationalist elites. Warnings of the danger of new wars in the Balkans are mounting. Once again the Balkans resembles a social and political powder keg.

The Serbian government has threatened that ethnic Serbs in Kosovo will be defended by military means when necessary. In Macedonia, nationalists stormed the parliament and attacked representatives of the Albanian minority and Bosnia-Herzegovina is more divided than it was at the time of the 1995 Dayton Agreement.

Vulture capitalists fight over pickings from bankrupt Puerto Rico

Rafael Azul 

Federal US court proceedings began May 17 in San Juan on Puerto Rico’s $123 billion bankruptcy. New York District Court is handling the bankruptcy. As with the Detroit bankruptcy of 2013-2014, the island faces privatization and cutbacks that will exacerbate a mass wave of emigration and further sink its economy into depression.

The court hearing took place two weeks after Puerto Rico’s federal oversight board filed for Title III bankruptcy protection, on May 3, to tackle the mountain of debt and a public pension crisis.

The opening of the bankruptcy negotiations began with a dispute over which of two groups of creditors will have priority over sales tax revenue and other assets. According to the New York Times, the courtroom was packed with lawyers, signaling “intractable battles” ahead.

They may be fighting over who will be first in line to be paid, but they all agree that workers, pensioners and the poor will have to sacrifice their jobs and living standards. In fact Title III, a provision in the Puerto Rico relief law (Promesa) that the US Federal Legislature passed last year, was specifically designed to make possible an attack on public employee pensions.

Barred from the opening meeting, however, were the hundreds of thousands of Puerto Rican workers, retirees, and residents who have already suffered savage cuts in wages, health and educational benefits, pensions and government services; and are being told to brace for even more.

The lawyers, according to the Times “told Judge Swain about looming deadlines and said that certain fundamental disputes had to be resolved almost immediately or else nothing could happen.” Among the bondholders are so-called “vulture” speculative hedge funds, which, having acquired bonds at fire-sale prices, now are demanding a return of one hundred cents on the dollar.

Puerto Rico’s $123 billion debt is the result of over a decade of recession and mass emigration. Since 2007, the economy has shrunk 17 percent. It is expected to fall by another two percent this year. Its debts in default now exceed those of any municipal bankruptcy in US history. In addition to defaulting on tax-exempt bonds held by Wall Street financial institutions, Puerto Rico confronts $50 billion in unfunded pension obligations to its retired public employees. In all, the per capita debt burden on this island of 3.4 million inhabitants, amounts to $34,000 for every man, woman and child.

Puerto Rico is one of the most socially unequal US territories. Half the population is under the dismal poverty line, and the current official rate of unemployment is 11.5 percent. Average annual pension benefits are $14,000. One-third of workers are ineligible for Social Security benefits. The median household income of $19,350 compares very unfavorably with $53,889 for the US. These conditions are driving the migration of tens of thousands to Miami and other US cities. A record 400,000 Puerto Ricans have left since 2007, another 240,000 are expected to leave by 2025.

Given its status as a commonwealth, or associated state—a self-governing US colony with no representation in the US legislature—Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy is being handled under special federal legislation, known as the Promise Act.

The bankruptcy is at the same time a warning to US rust belt states that may be considering asking for bankruptcy protection from their creditors. Such states, particularly Illinois, are teetering on the edge of default for many of the same reasons as Puerto Rico; these include accelerating pension costs, crumbling infrastructure, deindustrialization and the migration of younger workers. They will also face a Puerto Rican-style “solution” of draconian attacks on jobs and living standards.

Under the terms of the Promise Act, the debt burden can only be resolved through savage austerity measures that involve the dismantling of public budgets and social services. As in Detroit, Greece and elsewhere, the intention of Wall Street banks and hedge funds is that the poor and working class make good on their bonds. Most importantly, Wall Street continues to insist that there are enough resources to pay off the bondholders in full, providing that the government of Governor Ricardo Roselló becomes more efficient at collecting taxes, that it sack thousands more public employees, including education and health workers, and that pensions be sharply reduced.

Retirees are among the most vulnerable. Three years ago, the Puerto Rican government changed the retirement system that guaranteed public sector workers a full pension after 30 years of employment to a system that forces workers to work up to 15 additional years for full benefits. Driving discussions in bankruptcy court over public pension cuts is that the system is scheduled to run out of money this July. It is anticipated that ten percent or more may by slashed from existing pensions.

Informant Claude Hermant implicates French state in Charlie Hebdo attacks

Anthony Torres

Claude Hermant, a police informant arrested in the case of the January 7, 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris, has implicated the French state in the preparation of the attack. Hermant, who allegedly sold weapons used by Amédy Coulibaly and the Kouachi brothers to commit the attacks, is reportedly charging that three gendarme military policemen and two customs officials, as well as organized crime circles, were involved.

The case shatters the official narrative, according to which terror attacks in France, Belgium, and Germany since 2015 have been the work of isolated Islamists.

Hermant’s lawyer, Maxime Moulin, does not dispute the fact that weapons that passed through the hands of his client, who was acting for the customs’ intelligence agency until 2013 and then worked for the gendarmerie, reached Coulibaly. The media and established political parties covered up this fact, together with Hermant’s arrest after the attacks due to his relations with Coulibaly. The interior minister in 2015, Bernard Cazeneuve, even invoked the states secrets privilege in regard to investigations of the relations between Hermant and the Islamists.

Moulin filed a suit with the state prosecutor’s office in Lille on May 2, accusing the interior minister of endangering his client’s life. He stated, “We are demanding the lifting of the states secrets privilege. Things are being hidden, this was the solution that we found to obtain the truth. … We want to have access to this information. We are officially asking that the Interior Ministry lift the states secrets privilege on all contact reports [between the gendarmerie and Claude Hermant]. We want to know what reports were handled, what information was not transmitted, what reports were ignored, and why.”

Moulin said that Hermant had acted purely in the interests of the customs service and of the gendarmerie: “We cannot accept when the gendarmerie ’s work is really borderline. When things work out, they are happy, but when things don’t, they hang you out to dry in the ruins. They can’t abandon a soldier in the field like this.”

According to the daily Libération, Moulin justified his client’s suit by citing “a Médiapart article of March 2017. Claude Hermant had warned the gendarmerie that a convoy with weapons was passing through the tollbooths on the Lille to Paris highway, but the gendarmerie only succeeded in intercepting half of the vehicles. The second convoy, which had been warned that the gendarmes had been alerted, managed to evade them. And those weapons were used by Coulibaly.”

The Voix du Nord daily published a few extracts of emails exchanged between Hermant and a gendarme in November 2014: “Hey Claude, we talked it over with our superiors. … We’re giving you a green light for the two cases you showed us (weapons—[the city of]Charleroi) ...”

These emails suggest that Hermant may have received official approval from some intelligence agency for his actions in the Coulibaly-Kouachi affair. The Voix du Nord encourages its readers to draw their own conclusions: “Suppose you ran across this type of message (of a dozen or so in total), that a gendarme allegedly sent to Claude Hermant on 20 November 2017 at 8:47 a.m., and that a close friend of the accused insists that ‘Claude Hermant has all his bases covered.’”

It is by now quite clear that far broader forces besides a few Islamist networks were involved in the processes that led up to the attacks. The government’s recourse to the states secrets privilege and the deafening silence of the major media has produced a false and one-sided narrative of the attacks, which incites anti-Islamic racism and whitewashes the role of the state and far right.

The state of emergency, imposed after the November 13, 2015 attacks in Paris, is based on this lie, which the capitalist media do not challenge because it is at the heart of official politics in France. The attacks served to justify former President François Hollande’s shift towards relations with far-right forces—with the state of emergency, creating a new ‘national guard’ police agency, the electronic spying law, and legitimizing neo-fascism by inviting National Front leader Marine Le Pen to the Elysée presidential palace.

The 2015 attacks were carried out by Islamist networks known and followed by French intelligence, who were using them as foot soldiers in the NATO war in Syria. The Kouachi brothers, Coulibaly, and the leader of the November 13 attack squad, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, were all known to the intelligence services for their ties to Al Qaeda or the Islamic State (IS) militia.

The Kouachi brothers were closely followed from 2010 to 2015 and considered extremely dangerous due to their direct contacts with leaders of Al Qaeda in the Arabia Peninsula. Chérif Kouachi and Amédy Coulibaly repeatedly visited Djamel Beghal, a member of Al Qaeda in Algeria, who was under house arrest in France.

Abaaoud, a leading IS member well known as the public face of its Facebook recruitment campaign, was allowed to freely travel across Europe to prepare the November 13 attacks.

Salah Abdeslam, one of the survivors of the attack squad, supposedly Europe’s most wanted man, was in fact located in December 2015 by a policeman in the city of Malines. His report was inexplicably lost by his superiors, and police only arrested him in March 2016, a few days before the March 22, 2016 attacks in Brussels.

As for the terrorists who planned those attacks, they were allowed to organize the attacks even after Turkish, Israeli and Russian intelligence had warned their European counterparts of their identity as well as their targets.

Commentary on these various attacks by the media and the established political parties was manipulated in order to terrorize the public and push the political atmosphere further and further to the right.

Hermant’s revelations emerged between the two rounds of the French presidential elections, a few days after the murder of a policeman by IS sympathizer Karim C. The latter had been in prison for attempted murder against policemen in 2001 and was known both to police and counterterrorism officials. According to press reports, he had remained in prison until shortly before the attack and, after leaving prison, he soon began threatening police again.

It is impossible to understand how the security and intelligence services decided to leave such a figure at large, unless it was by a conscious decision, assuming he would commit a crime that would prove politically useful.

The media and the political establishment reacted to the murder of the policeman, Xavier Jugelé, with law-and-order hysteria that cut across rising antiwar and anti-austerity sentiment among youth and workers after the April 7 US strikes in Syria. In this climate, Emmanuel Macron, the preferred candidate of the dominant factions of the ruling class, was falling in the polls as Jean-Luc Mélenchon rose. The attack thus served to shift the political and media atmosphere to the right, stabilizing Macron and the neo-fascist candidate Marine Le Pen in the polls.

The state of emergency is not aimed at the terrorists, but to suspend democratic rights and undertake unpopular policies through repression of opposition, as during the police attacks on last year’s protests against the labor law and the arbitrary searches and seizures in immigrant suburbs.

UK Conservative manifesto outlines stepped up austerity and militarism

Robert Stevens

The Guardian described the manifesto of the ruling Conservative Party as a “break with Thatcherism,” while the Financial Times declared that it “rejected Thatcherite free-market economics.”

The manifesto proclaims that Tory leader and Prime Minister Theresa May will oversee “the world’s Great Meritocracy.”

These are transparent lies. Despite its many references to the plight of “working people” and “working families” being hardest hit by the crisis, the manifesto is centred on its commitment to Britain exiting the European Union (EU) and becoming a “global nation that is competitive, outward-looking and open for business.”

This is a pledge to intensify austerity and attacks on the working class carried out over the last decade. None of the austerity measures planned by May’s predecessor, David Cameron and his Chancellor, George Osborne, are reversed, with £9 billion in brutal welfare cuts to come. This is on top of a freeze on working age welfare benefits, which is retained in the manifesto, which will cost the most deprived more than £7 billion over four years.

The manifesto states that the next “Conservative government will continue the difficult but necessary work of restoring our public finances.”

Unprecedented attacks are to be imposed on pensioners—including ending the “triple lock” on pensions. This meant the state pension rose in line with earnings or inflation based on whichever was higher, underpinned by a pledge from Cameron guaranteeing an annual pension increase of at least 2.5 percent. This latter condition is to be removed.

Up to £3 billion annually will be slashed from public spending, with an estimated 10 million people to lose their winter fuel allowance, which will now be means tested. Paid to help with additional heating costs during the winter, it is worth up to £300 to some households. According to research by the Resolution Foundation, just 2 million pensioners will continue to receive the payment.

Millions of people will be forced to pay for the bulk of their own social care in later life. A £72,000 cap on costs, set to be enacted in 2020, will be replaced by a system allowing each family to keep just £100,000 in assets, with the rest, including homes, having to be sold in order to pay for social care costs.

Only three local authorities in England have median house prices below £100,000. In many parts of the country property prices have rocketed, with houses worth £1 million pounds in London not unusual. Not only will a pensioner have to sacrifice tens, if not hundreds of thousands of their savings, but they will leave nothing to pass on to their children—many of whom will now never have a possibility of buying a home.

Pensioners constitute the main part of the Tories’ electoral base, leading to fears that the party will haemorrhage support in the run-up to June 8.

The youngest in society will also suffer further cuts in living standards, with the poorest being hit disproportionately as the Tories commit to scrapping free lunches for infants. In a move estimated to save around £650 million a year, families will lose out by £440 a year for each child affected. The Education Policy Institute found that 100,000 children losing the free lunch are from families living in “relative poverty,” and 667,000 from “ordinary working families.”

The claim that May is ditching Thatcherism is based on the constant referencing of the section of the manifesto stating, “We do not believe in untrammelled free markets. We reject the cult of selfish individualism. We abhor social division, injustice, unfairness and inequality.”

Such nonsense is regurgitated without reference to the Tories’ record in office or what the manifesto actually outlines. It also requires drawing a veil over the hymn of praise to the profit system, which insists, “Capitalism and free markets remain the best way to deliver prosperity and economic security, lifting millions of people out of poverty around the world.”

The harsh reality is that the world is more unequal than at any time in history, with a few billionaires owning more wealth than the majority of its population and billions of people barely able to survive. In Britain, tens of millions have been plunged into dire poverty by successive governments, including those led by Cameron in which May played a pivotal role.

While millions will be made to suffer, the super-rich and corporations will continue to have money shovelled into their gaping maw. The manifesto states, “Corporation Tax is due to fall to seventeen per cent by 2020—the lowest rate of any developed economy—and we will stick to that plan…”

Confederation of British Industry Director-General Carolyn Fairbairn supported the manifesto, stating, “With the world watching, now is the time to send a clear signal that the UK is open for business. Firms will be therefore heartened by proposed increased R&D spending, planned corporation tax reductions and a commitment to act on business rates.”

While slashing billions from benefits and from pensioners, the manifesto commits to almost unlimited military spending in preparation for war. It states, “As a global power, we have a responsibility to sustain our fine armed forces so that they can defend the realm, our overseas territories and our interests around the globe... We will play a leading role in NATO and maintain the ability to conduct strike operations, peacekeeping, security missions and the deployment of a joint expeditionary force. We will maintain the overall size of the armed forces, including an army that is capable of fielding a war-fighting division. We shall expand our reach around the world.”

The manifesto commits to the renewal of the £200 billion Trident nuclear missile system and boasts that Britain has the “biggest defence budget in Europe and the second largest in NATO. We will continue to meet the NATO commitment to spend at least 2 percent of GDP on defence and we will increase the defence budget by at least 0.5 percent above inflation in every year of the new parliament.”

Fully £178 billion in spending on new military equipment is outlined, with the document stating, “Two new aircraft carriers will project British military power for the next fifty years.”

To facilitate British imperialism’s war crimes, the manifesto confirms that UK troops will no longer be subjected to the European Court of Human Rights, and “persistent legal claims... which undermine the armed forces…”

The manifesto’s pledge to protect and even increase workers’ rights, post-Brexit, is the most contemptible of all its claims. What is being prepared is a massive onslaught against the working class, with a bonfire of every regulation that impedes the global competitiveness of big business. Following more than a year of strikes by workers at rail companies, who are opposing the introduction of driver-only operated trains and the loss of thousands of jobs, the manifesto pledges, “We will work with train companies and their employees to agree minimum service levels during periods of industrial dispute—and if we cannot find a voluntary agreement, we will legislate to make this mandatory."

The anti-immigrant measures of the government are to be stepped up, as a central means of dividing the working class. The manifesto states, “It is our “objective to reduce immigration to sustainable levels, by which we mean annual net migration in the tens of thousands, rather than the hundreds of thousands we have seen over the last two decades.” It pledges to “continue to bear down on immigration from outside the European Union.” “Leaving the European Union means, for the first time in decades, that we will be able to control immigration from the European Union too,” it declares.

Just a few years after the newspapers owned by pro-Brexit oligarch Rupert Murdoch were found to have committed criminality on an “industrial scale,” the manifesto scraps the second stage of the Leveson Inquiry into the media, which was to have looked into corporate malpractice at Murdoch’s titles. May can be assured of ongoing, favourable coverage by Murdoch et al. as a result.