New Zealand Labour government advances pro-union, anti-strike law

John Braddock

Under conditions of a rapidly developing global economic crisis, attacks on living standards and escalating class struggles, New Zealand’s Labour-led government has introduced into parliament new industrial legislation designed to boost the trade unions as the policemen of the working class.

So-called “Fair Pay Agreements” (FPAs) framework formed the cornerstone of Labour’s industrial policy during the 2017 election but is only now being brought forward. Labour was hampered during its first term due to opposition from then coalition partner, the right-wing populist NZ First. The bill finally passed its first reading on April 5 with Labour, the Greens and Maori Party in favour, and the opposition National and ACT parties against.

Nurses protesting outside parliament in June 2021 [WSWS Media]

The legislation will establish a tripartite system in which unions, employers and the state will decide what are “fair” minimum pay rates and conditions across an entire occupation or industry.

Labour claims that the FPA system will give power back to workers and improve pay and conditions by preventing employers from competing against each other by lowering wages. In reality, the legislation will establish a corporatist framework of employer-union-government wage setting while further curtailing the right to strike.

The law will entrench low pay across entire industries, enforced by draconian legislation and by the unions. These pro-capitalist organisations, which have worked for decades with business and governments to impose below-inflation deals, are being further empowered and integrated into the structures of the state.

At present, unions can only negotiate collective agreements covering their members at individual companies and, in some cases, across multiple employers. Under the new legislation, if a union persuades 10 percent or 1,000 members of a particular workforce (e.g., cleaners or fast food workers) to pursue a FPA, then the union can negotiate a nationwide FPA for that entire occupation. The reach of unions will be extended to potentially tens of thousands of workers who are not union members.

When workers are presented with a proposed FPA that suppresses their wages and conditions they will be banned from taking strike action against it: strikes will be illegal during FPA negotiations. This adds to draconian provisions in the Employment Relations Act, passed by the Helen Clark-led Labour-Alliance Party government in 2000 which already make strikes illegal except when collective agreements are being re-negotiated or for health and safety reasons.

Introducing the bill to parliament, Workplace Relations Minister Michael Wood said it would help “essential workers” such as supermarket workers, “who have done so much to get our country through Covid but have been left out in the cold by a ‘race to the bottom’ labour market.”

Wood, however, reassured the business elite by emphasising that “no strike action is allowed” while FPAs are being decided. He stressed that the measure would drive improved productivity through “collaboration, innovation, and investment.” Sectoral bargaining, he noted, is common in “many successful economies.” The central goal is to defend capitalism through mechanisms to lift the exploitation of the workers and expand profits.

The FPAs were designed by a working group led by former National Party Prime Minister Jim Bolger. As prime minister from 1990–97, Bolger deepened a sweeping assault on the working class, begun by his Labour predecessors, which sharply increased poverty and inequality.

While the opposition parties and organisations such as Business NZ view the FPAs as unnecessary and inflationary, Bolger, one of the more far-sighted representatives of the capitalist class, has voiced concerns about the historic decline of the unions, and therefore their reduced ability to control the working class.

Bolger told TVNZ’s Q+A last November that “obscene inequality” was pushing societies towards revolution. He declared that while National’s 1991 Employment Contracts Act (ECA) was essential to stop industrial action “debilitating the country,” union membership was now lower than is “healthy,” with unions “probably too small now to have the influence they should have.”

The ECA reduced legislative backing for the trade unions and resulted in a dramatic fall in multi-employer collective contracts and union membership. “Flexible” work practices were introduced, along with individual agreements, contracting, performance pay and the wholesale elimination of overtime and penalty rates. The onslaught was abetted by the union bureaucracy, then controlled by the Stalinist Socialist Unity Party, which suppressed widespread opposition and demands in the working class for a general strike.

The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions (CTU) actively promotes the FPA legislation. CTU President Richard Wagstaff has re-iterated that strikes, which are at an all-time low, will not be revived under the FPAs. “There’s no prospect, zero prospect of industrial action from this,” he declared. Employers, Wagstaff told the Dominion Post in 2018, “can plan to increase their productivity over the medium and long term.”

A key role is being played by pseudo-left organisations. The Unite Union, co-founded by former Socialist Action League leader Mike Treen and linked to the Socialist Aotearoa group, is promoting a CTU “Speak Up Sunday” event on May 1, to “drive home just how important FPAs are.” Unite is encouraging its members to make submissions to the parliamentary select committee and to distribute “a short video selfie to show your support.”

The unions, which are deeply discredited after decades of pro-company betrayals, are being brought forward to enforce the sweeping assault on living standards. This month the Reserve Bank (RBNZ) lifted the official cash rate by 50 basis points to 1.5 percent, the biggest hike since May 2000. The RBNZ warned that “inflation is above target and employment is above its maximum sustainable level.”

ANZ Bank economist Sharon Zollner described the “wall of inflation” as “completely unyielding,” and said the RBNZ cannot afford a “softly-softly approach.” Inflation is at a 30-year high at 6.9 percent and forecast to hit 7.5 percent by mid-year. Fixed mortgage rates are likely to top 6 percent in coming months. The New Zealand Herald declared the labour market has gone “from sizzling to red hot,” indicating nervousness in ruling circles over a looming wage push by health sector workers, teachers and others.

Policies pursued internationally by governments of all stripes, particularly since the 2008 financial crash, have seen the printing of trillions of dollars to bail out the rich. These developments have been exacerbated by the COVID pandemic and the US-NATO proxy war against Russia. The ruling class is determined to make the working class pay for the bailouts and escalating costs of war.

In response, an explosive growth of the class struggle is erupting internationally, involving a direct confrontation between radicalised workers against the state and corporatist unions. In New Zealand, 10,000 NZ allied health workers have voted for renewed strike action after a previous strike was called off by the Public Service Association when the Employment Court ruled it illegal.

In Australia, tens of thousands of nurses across New South Wales walked off the job for a second time this month over chronic understaffing and unsafe conditions, made worse by COVID. The striking nurses defied the NSW Industrial Relations Commission which banned the industrial action.

Macron re-elected French president against neo-fascist Marine Le Pen

Kumaran Ira & Alex Lantier

Last night, French President Emmanuel Macron was re-elected with an estimated 58.2 percent of the vote, with 41.8 percent of the vote going to neo-fascist candidate Marine Le Pen.

The race between France’s widely-despised “president of the rich” and its leading neo-fascist provoked disgust and disillusionment among broad layers of workers. Abstention was the highest recorded since the 1969 elections, when the then-massive Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF) called for a boycott. Nearly three million people cast blank or spoiled votes. Including those who did not vote, 16 million voters, or one-third of the electorate, did not vote for either candidate.

The election between the two widely despised candidates fueled demonstrations throughout the country Sunday, with riot police charging demonstrators and spraying tear gas in central Paris. Police killed two people in Paris, opening fire on their vehicle, claiming that it failed to stop at a checkpoint.

Despite Le Pen’s defeat, it was the largest vote in history for the French far right, which obtained eight percentage points more than in Le Pen’s last run-off against Macron in 2017. Le Pen carried outright the overseas territories of Guadeloupe (70 percent of the vote), Guyana (61 percent) and Martinique (61 percent). If Macron’s own legitimization of far-right politics and his violently anti-worker policies drive a similar rise in the far right vote in his second term, Le Pen would be poised to take power in 2027.

Le Pen conceded the election shortly after the voting projections were announced at 8:00 p.m. yesterday evening, declaring her vote to be “a striking victory.” She said, “Despite two weeks of unfair, brutal and violent methods, the ideas we represent are reaching new heights.”

Le Pen demagogically postured as the defender of masses of people whose living standards she predicted would collapse during Macron’s second term. “The French people made clear tonight their desire for a strong opposition to Emmanuel Macron,” she claimed and said that she would oppose “the disintegration of their purchasing power, attacks on individual liberties … and Emmanuel Macron’s increase in the retirement age, delinquency, anarchic immigration and a lax judicial system.” She pledged to “continue serving France and the French” in future elections.

Shortly after Le Pen spoke, rival far-right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour—a journalist who promotes the memory of the Nazi collaborationist Vichy regime and has been convicted of inciting racial and religious hatreds—called for the unity of the far right in upcoming legislative elections. The elections will take place on June 12 and 19 of this year.

Macron appeared somewhat later yesterday evening and gave a short, perfunctory victory speech to a crowd of a few thousand supporters, mainly high-ranking state officials and journalists, in front of the Eiffel Tower. He claimed that by voting for him, France had “chosen a humanist program that is ambitious for the independence of our country and of Europe.”

Having pledged to increase the retirement age three years to 65, introduce US-style university tuition fees and force welfare benefit recipients to work, he referred to his policies of war and austerity. Macron pledged to carry out the “liberation of our academic, cultural and entrepreneurial forces.” He said that “the war in Ukraine is there to remind us that we are living through tragic times” and asked his supporters to be “benevolent and respectful” towards far-right voters.

Nonetheless, after admitting that “our country is riven by so many doubts and so many divisions,” he cynically claimed he would re-invent himself to build a “new era” in his second term. “This new era will not be in the continuity of the term in office that is ending but the collective invention of a new method to create five better years in the service of our country and of our youth,” he said, pledging, “No one will be left behind.”

This pack of lies from Macron is an insult to the intelligence of the public. It is apparent that his draconian social cuts aim to massively increase inequality and that his call to be “benevolent and respectful” to the far right is a pledge to continue with the anti-Muslim agenda laid out by his “anti-separatist law” and mass closures of mosques. Faced with ever intensifying class tensions for which it has no progressive solutions, the French ruling class is moving towards dictatorial forms of rule, whether under Macron or Le Pen.

Tens of millions of workers and youth who suffered badly under his first term view Macron’s re-election as a disaster. He carried out violent police repression of “yellow vest” protests and rail strikes against austerity. On the pandemic, he placed profits before lives, championed a policy of “living with the virus” that led to 145,000 deaths in the country and 1.8 million in Europe, while boosting the wealth of French billionaires by over 40 percent. He aligned France on NATO’s stoking of a conflict with Russia in Ukraine that threatens to provoke world war in Europe.

As inflation stoked by massive cash handouts to the super-rich and NATO sanctions against Russia devastates workers’ living standards in France and internationally, the stage is being set for an explosive confrontation between the Macron government and the working class.

Indeed, the first statements of support for Macron came primarily from fellow European imperialist politicians who see his re-election as guaranteeing that France will continue to work closely with the European Union (EU) to militarize Europe and threaten Russia. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted her “congratulations” to Macron on his re-election, adding: “I am glad to be able to continue our excellent cooperation.”

Somewhat more frankly, EU Foreign Policy chief Josep Borrell told Spain’s El Confidencial that the French people’s support for mild criticisms of NATO’s war on Russia in Ukraine made by Le Pen and populist candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon had terrified NATO. “Half the population politically supports either leaving the alliance, like Jean-Luc Mélenchon, or the NATO military command, like Le Pen, which means the same thing. The French population has shown it is in a very worrying place in terms of its comprehension of the world.”

As NATO military and diplomatic officials watched the elections, El Confidencial wrote, there was “only bated breath and hidden tension. The French elections turned into a security issue.”

If Washington and the European NATO powers viewed the French elections as a military question, it is not because of the statements of Mélenchon or Le Pen. Both have made clear that they will adapt to the NATO war targeting Russia. Le Pen endorsed Macron’s policy on Russia in last Wednesday’s televised debate, and Mélenchon has signaled his willingness to serve under either Macron or Le Pen as prime minister, a position that would give him no influence over foreign policy.

Indeed, Mélenchon, who was the undeserving beneficiary of a massive left-wing protest vote of 22 percent of the electorate on the first round, briefly appeared on the BFM-TV news channel last night to again stress his availability to serve as Macron’s prime minister.

US Supreme Court upholds exclusion of Puerto Rico residents from supplemental income benefit

Barry Grey

On Thursday, the US Supreme Court upheld the exclusion of Puerto Rico’s 3.2 million residents from the federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI) safety net program, which provides a monthly cash lifeline to children and people over 65 who are blind or disabled and have very low income.

In this Oct. 18, 2021 photo, the Supreme Court is seen in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

All but one of the court’s nine justices supported the opinion authored by Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of three Trump appointees and part of the hard-right, five-justice majority. Two of the three Democratic-appointed justices—Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer—signed onto the ruling. The only dissent came from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whose parents were born in the Caribbean colony seized by the United States in the 1898 Spanish American War.

The ruling is a vicious assertion of the prerogatives of US imperialism in the service of Wall Street banks and hedge fund speculators who hold tens of billions in Puerto Rican government debt. It reflects the American ruling class’ contempt for the impoverished population, whose workers and youth rose up in mass protests three years ago that toppled the Democratic Party-aligned governor.

The Biden administration supported the opinion. Its Justice Department joined the appeal originally lodged by the Trump administration of lower court rulings overturning the exclusion of SSI benefits for residents of the island. Under a 1952 law passed following the brutal suppression of a nationalist revolt, Washington granted residents of the colonial territory citizenship, but without voting representation in Congress or the right to vote in presidential elections.

The 1972 law that established the SSI program limited eligibility to US citizens in the 50 states, the District of Columbia and the Northern Mariana Islands, while excluding citizens residing in Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands and Guam.

The case, United States v. Vaello Madero, was brought by Jose Luis Vaello-Madero, who was born in Puerto Rico but lived in New York from 1985 to 2013. In 2012, he suffered a stroke and was found eligible for SSI disability benefits, which were deposited directly into his checking account.

In 2013 he moved back to Puerto Rico and continued to receive the monthly payments. When the Social Security Administration became aware that Vaello-Madero was no longer residing in one of the 50 US states, it cut off his benefits and ordered him to pay back $28,081.

Vaello-Madero sued, arguing that the exclusions violated the US Constitution’s Fifth Amendment guarantee of equal treatment. In the spring of 2020, a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, based in Boston, unanimously ruled for Vaello-Madero, declaring the that 1972 law’s exclusion of US citizens who reside in territories violated the Fifth Amendment and did not pass muster as serving a “rational” purpose.

In his ruling, Kavanaugh argued that Congress had “substantial discretion” about how to structure federal tax and benefit programs for the territories. He noted that residents of Puerto Rico are exempt from the federal income tax, though they do pay other federal taxes such as Social Security, Medicare and unemployment taxes. He implied that denying SSI benefits to indigent, blind or disabled seniors on the island was a “fair” tradeoff for not paying income taxes.

Puerto Rico has its own separate aid program for the same categories of people, but its pitiful average monthly payment of $75 is far less than the already inadequate average SSI payment on the US mainland of $590.

Biden’s deputy solicitor general, Curtis Gannon, offered essentially the same argument as Kavanaugh in his oral argument before the court, saying, “It’s always appropriate for Congress to take account of the general balance of benefits and burdens associated with a particular federal program.”

The Biden administration, in a transparent attempt to provide political cover for itself, has called on Congress to amend the 1972 law so as to include Puerto Rico and the other territories. It knows full well, of course, that no such provision will be passed.

In her dissent, Sotomayor wrote: “In my view, there is no rational basis for Congress to treat needy citizens living anywhere in the United States so differently from others. To hold otherwise, as the Court does, is irrational and antithetical to the very nature of the SSI program and the equal protection of citizens guaranteed by the Constitution.”

She noted that the US Government Accountability Office estimates that over 300,000 Puerto Rico residents would have qualified for the SSI benefit—a staggering 10 percent of the island’s population. She also pointed out that those receiving SSI benefits pay few if any taxes at all.

Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, said the ruling was “a big deal both for what it holds and for what it opens the door to.”

“The core holding,” he noted, “is that Congress is allowed to withhold certain federal benefits from Americans who live in territories like Puerto Rico so long as it has any rational basis for doing so, and that no special justification is required. That makes it far easier for Congress, a body in which the territories are not represented, to treat residents of those territories differently with those who live in the states—not just for Supplemental Security Income, but for all federal benefit programs, like Social Security, Medicare and other entitlements funded at least in part by taxes paid by those living in those territories.”

The legacy of 124 years of colonial-style plundering of Puerto Rico by US imperialism is mass poverty, indebtedness, high unemployment and a shrinking and increasingly elderly population. According to US government figures, median household income on the island is $21,058, per capita income is $13,318, and the share of the population that lives in poverty is 43.4 percent.

Fifty-seven percent of children are in poverty and one third of adults report food insecurity.

In September of 2017, Puerto Rico was devastated by Hurricane Maria, which destroyed its already crumbling social infrastructure, including the electrical grid. Virtually the entire island was without electrical power for weeks on end, crops were destroyed, clean water and food were in short supply, untold hundreds of people who depended on oxygen tanks or dialysis died. Damage was estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Trump called his administration’s response to the catastrophe “amazing” and boasted that only 19 people had died—an obvious cover-up and lie. More realistic estimates put the death toll at more than 5,000.

The mayor of the capital, San Juan, called the impact of the storm, compounded by decades of debt payments to the banks and austerity policies, “something close to a genocide.”

One week after the hurricane struck, Trump took his first public notice of the disaster. He noted that “much of the island was destroyed,” but immediately added that the “billions of dollars… owed to Wall Street and the banks” had to be repaid.

And indeed, even as much of the territory’s infrastructure continued to rot in disrepair—with only a trickle of federal aid coming from Washington—the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico (FOMBPR) established in 2016 under Obama developed its plan to place the full burden of debt repayment to the banks on the working class.

The mass protests that brought down Governor Ricardo Roselló in 2019 filled the ruling class with alarm, above all that the social unrest would spread to the mainland. Teachers had already struck in opposition to both the politicians and the unions in the US, part of a global wave of working class strikes and protests. But lacking a revolutionary and internationalist perspective and leadership, the revolt succeeded only in replacing one stooge of Wall Street and the Puerto Rican bourgeoisie with another.

Now the stage is set for new struggles, with social anger intensified by the pandemic and the “let it rip” response of the ruling elite.

In January of this year, a federal judge imposed the Puerto Rican debt restructuring plan proposed by the Financial Oversight Board over protests led by teachers, government employees, students and retirees. The plan guts workers’ retirement plans, replacing defined benefit pensions with 401K plans. The banker’s dictatorship, in the form of the Financial Oversight Board, is to remain in control until four years have passed with the government budget in balance, i.e., indefinitely.

Sri Lankan big business demands a “bipartisan national government”

K. Ratnayake

The crisis of the Sri Lankan government has deepened as big business this week demanded immediate measures to end the country’s economic, social and political turmoil, including the formation of national unity government.

State sector workers demonstrate in Colombo on April 20, 2022. (Photo: WSWS Media)

The corporate and financial elite are fearful of the revolutionary implications of the mass protest movement that has convulsed the country as major sections of the working class show signs of taking up the demand for the resignation of President Gotabhaya Rajapakse and his government. The brutal police shooting of unarmed protesters in Rambukkana on Tuesday that killed a poor workingman has further enraged the masses.

On Wednesday, all big-business lobbies, including the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce and the Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Sri Lanka, wrote to the president requesting he immediately initiate legislative action to repeal the 20th Amendment to the Constitution, saying it “contributed to the present situation.”

The 20th amendment enacted in October 2020 reinstated all of the sweeping draconian powers of the executive presidency and, among other things, transformed the parliament into nothing more than a rubber stamp.

The big-business chambers expressed the fear “that the current political deadlock coupled with growing public unrest could potentially derail the actions being taken to resolve the serious economic crisis” of the country. Repealing the 20th amendment had to be combined with a “consensual approach.” 

The letter stated: “We recommend that a bi-partisan national government is established… to come out the current economic crisis” and “resolve the issues relating to fuel, electricity, gas and other critical elements of the supply chain.”

Sri Lanka’s major conglomerates Brandix, MAS, Hemas, Dialog, Dilmah, John Keels yesterday wrote separately to the president calling for “swift changes to [establish a] good governing system.”

The direct unprecedented intervention of big business is not because it has an iota of concern for the plight of working people. The corporate and financial elite amassed huge profits during the COVID-19 pandemic while insisting on a policy of herd immunity that allowed the virus to ravage the island.

Port workers marching in Colombo Fort on 20 April, 2022. (Photo: WSWS Media)

The ruling class fears that, unless the protests are brought rapidly to an end, a far broader political movement will erupt once talks currently underway with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout package conclude, revealing the extent of the austerity measures required.

In talks with Sri Lanka, the IMF has required “adequate assurances” that the country’s debts can be put on a sustainable path. This means deep cuts into government expenditure, increased taxes and the extensive restructuring of state-owned enterprises among other things.

Rajapakse knows such measures cannot be implemented peacefully. Both the president and his brother, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse, have blamed protesters for the police shooting on Tuesday in Rambukkana. Yesterday the president yesterday renewed his order for the military to maintain law and order in 25 of the country’s districts.

However, the ongoing mass protests against the Rajapakse regime have continued for more than two weeks, driven by rampant inflation, shortages of food, medicines and other essentials, such as fuel and electricity and are growing.

Workers have participated in the protests as individuals. However, they are now pressing for industrial action for wage hikes and other measures to alleviate the social catastrophe they are confronting.

Bank workers' demonstration on April 20, 2022. (Photo: WSWS Media)

To deflect the groundswell of opposition, the trade unions have been forced to call limited protests and strikes.

On Tuesday, tens of thousands of workers took part in protest demonstrations in Colombo and other major cities. They demanded an immediate wage increase, an end to shortages and a reduction of prices, and branded the IMF talks as a trap.

About 1,500 workers, including teachers, health, port, electricity, telecom and postal employees, demonstrated outside the Fort railway station. On the same day, teachers at all universities went on strike and thousands marched in Colombo opposing the government.

On Thursday, about 150 plantation workers at the Gartmore Estate held a demonstration and marched to nearby Maskeliya town. They chanted slogans against the police shooting in Rambukkana and the huge price hikes. The previous day, Maskeliya Alton Estate workers held a similar demonstration while yesterday Agarapatana workers took protest action.

On April 25, public school teachers will engage in one-day sick leave strike, opposing unbearable skyrocketing price of fuel and shortages. The same unions that organised Tuesday’s large protests have announced a one-day general strike to be held on April 28 that will involve up to one million workers.

Far from seeking to build the opposition movement against the government, the trade unions are seeking to contain the anger of workers. The unions that called the latest protests have betrayed every struggle that has erupted over the past year, enabling the government to impose the burden of the worsening economic crisis on workers and the poor.

Gartmore Estate workers march on April 20, 2022. (Photo: WSWS Media)

Having lost the confidence of big business, the ruling coalition is falling into further disarray. Yesterday, the newly-appointed media minister, Nalaka Godahewa, offered his resignation and called for an interim government. President Rajapakse refused to accept the resignation.

Thirteen of the ruling party’s parliamentarians met this week with the president and called for an interim government under a new prime minister. In a meeting of government MPs, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse, the president’s brother insisted that the present government would continue and try to find solutions to the economic crisis.

The opposition parties—the Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) and Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)—are also desperate to bring the mass protest movement under control. In a bid to tap into the popular opposition, SJB leader Sajith Premadasa submitted proposals on Thursday to the parliamentary speaker to abolish the executive presidency. However, his deputy, former army commander, Sarath Fonseka, told the media that abolishing executive presidency would solve nothing.

The JVP completed its three-day march to Colombo that involved thousands. JVP speakers addressed the crowd, demanding Rajapakse government go, but did not explain what the party proposed next. Over the past month, the JVP has been campaigning for an “interim government” and new elections. Any government involving the SJB and JVP would, like the current one, impose the IMF’s austerity agenda on working people.

UK National Health Service abandons social distancing and other COVID restrictions

Robert Stevens

There is scarcely a single COVID restriction left in Britain, as the Johnson government ruthlessly implements its “Living with COVID” policy.

On Tuesday, the National Health Service (NHS) was told by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to “return to pre-pandemic physical distancing in all areas”. This occurred less than two months after Johnson addressed parliament on his “strategy for living with COVID.” With that February 21 speech Johnson ended almost all remaining restrictions in non-NHS settings, including the ending on February 24 of the legal requirement to self-isolate after a positive test, routine contact tracing and self-isolation support payments.

This allowed the virus to spread unhindered for the next two months. The clearest indication of the government’s herd immunity agenda was the announcement this week that the deadly disease would now be allowed to spread through the NHS. Simply put, if there are no restrictions in the NHS there can be none anywhere else.

A patient is pushed on a trolley outside the Royal London Hospital in east London, January 12, 2021, during England's third national lockdown since the coronavirus outbreak began. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

The NHS was issued by the UKHSA with new “stepping down” rules applying to “all areas”, including emergency departments and other hospital settings, ambulances, patient transport services and GP surgeries.

In an April 19 letter to health service leaders, NHS England declared, “With the pressure from COVID-19 continuing, we are setting out a way forward on a number of areas where guidance has evolved throughout the pandemic; adapting the way that the NHS operates with COVID-19 in general circulation and with the virus likely to remain endemic for some time to come [emphasis added].”

The new rules will ensure that hundreds of thousands will get COVID, as patients in waiting rooms surgeries, emergency departments and even ambulance services in England are no longer required to socially distance. Patients with COVID symptoms will still be isolated from other patients, but NHS England now advises, “Virus patients can be released from isolation wards after a week, if they produce two negative lateral flow tests on days six and seven.” However, any inpatient exposed to the virus from other patients, or from family, but without symptoms, will not have to isolate at all.

NHS England also instructed a return “to pre-pandemic cleaning protocols outside of COVID-19 areas, with enhanced cleaning only required in areas where patients with suspected or known infection are being managed.”

This criminal set-up was announced on the same day as almost 18,000 people were in hospital with COVID. According to Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers representing hospital trusts, 70,000 NHS staff are currently off sick, a staggering 40 percent of them with COVID-19. While Hopson has opposed bringing back all restrictions, saying “Nobody is arguing we should go back to draconian lockdown restrictions,” he warned, “but this is not all or nothing.”

He continued, “There is concern across the NHS that the government doesn’t seem to want to talk about coronavirus anymore. But we think we need a proper grown-up national debate about what living with COVID actually means.” Hopson said the government was pretending that the virus “doesn’t exist anymore and that nobody needs to take any precautions” and this was one of the main reasons why the virus remained widespread in the population.

Since the end of all major public health measures outside the NHS on February 24, over 3 million more people have registered positive tests, taking total recorded infections to almost 22 million. This is under conditions in which there is no longer any universal free testing.

According to the Office for National Statistics, there were 15,861 deaths in Britain from COVID in the 14 weeks from January 1 to April 8. But the figures in the two weeks since have been even more brutal. In the week to April 14, the UK saw almost 2,000 deaths and well over 1,500 deaths have been recorded in just the last three days (Tuesday, 482; Wednesday, 508; Thursday, 646). It is likely that Friday’s figures will mean another 2,000 dead in a week.

Such figures spread out annually would mean 100,000 plus deaths a year. At least 172,000 people are already dead from COVID in Britain, according to the government’s own manipulated figure tallying those who die within 28 days of a positive test. The real figure is above 192,000, as defined by the Office for National Statistics counting instances of COVID being recorded as a cause on a death certificate, and will shortly hit 200,000.

The absence of any systematic testing means there can no longer be any accurate daily figure for the number of COVID infections. This accounts for the 19,482 new positive tests recorded by the UKHSA on Thursday, an absurdly low figure when compared to a surging death toll under conditions in which Omicron and its variants are not as deadly as previous variants, particularly in vaccinated populations.

Another clear indication of the state-sanctioned cover-up of the scale of COVID is that thousands of care home residents continue to die from the disease, despite some restrictions still being in place in these settings. In the 15 weeks from January to April 14 this year, 3,242 care home residents died in England from the disease (2,372 in homes, 826 in hospitals and 44 elsewhere). According to an April 18 article on the Leicestershire Live website, information not available on any national news source, there are “Covid outbreaks in a quarter of the 18,000 care homes across the UK.”

Recent figures on infections and deaths cover the two-week period of the Easter school holiday from April 4-18. At every other stage of the pandemic, children and educators returning to the classroom has sent COVID case numbers rocketing. Last term, on a single day—March 17—the Department for Education recorded over 200,000 pupils off school for reasons relating to COVID. Some 202,000 state school pupils in England were not in class, and nearly one in 10 teachers were off due to COVID.

Among Thursday’s fatalities were the tragic deaths of another three children; two boys aged 0-4 and a boy aged 15-19. Child deaths from COVID stand at 174.

On Wednesday Safe Education for All campaigner Lisa Diaz, a parent of two from Wigan, tweeted a photo of a 10-year-old child in hospital, explaining, “This is my friend @cocobelladoodle’s daughter. She is 10 years old. After protecting her little girl for 2 years, omicron has finally got her. She is now in hospital with PIMS [Paediatric Inflammatory Multisystem Syndrome], on an intravenous drip and faces multiple organ damage.”

The horrific impact of COVID on the human body only appears to worsen.

Twitter user @HRHMHowler, a critical care nurse, posted Sunday a tweet with over 11,000 shares and nearly 48,000 likes including the following harrowing observation: “Last night, we palliated a COVID patient in his 30s. All treatment has failed. We held his hand as we gave him morphine for the pain from the pieces of lung he was coughing up. No family. No friends. Just us. It’s real. Not talking about vaccination - talking about reality.” A subsequent tweet in the thread from the nurse read, “Our patient is dying. Not dead yet. He has no family or close friends. It’s our job to be there for him. For those who have tweeted love - thank you.”

None of this finds any reflection among Britain’s compliant media. The fact that over 500 people died from COVID in one day this week was hardly mentioned. It was afforded one sentence on the BBC website under the subhead, “Daily deaths remain low”. Many twitter users responded with anger that the BBC devoted an analysis to three deaths reported in the Chinese city of Shanghai, while passing over hundreds of deaths in Britain as not worthy of any coverage.

Defying imperialist pressure, China and Solomon Islands sign security pact

John Braddock

The Chinese government announced on Tuesday it has signed a framework agreement on security cooperation with the Solomon Islands. The Solomons government informed parliament that Beijing will send officials to the Pacific nation next month to formally sign the agreements.

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare (Photo: solomons.gov.sb)

Speaking from Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said the pact would involve China cooperating with Honiara on maintaining social order, protecting people’s safety, aid, combating natural disasters and helping safeguard national security.

Solomon Islands Foreign Affairs Minister Jeremiah Manele confirmed the signing to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) by text message.

Wang said the cooperation pact would be “public, transparent, open and inclusive,” and will not target any “third party.” It is “parallel to and complementary to the existing bilateral and multilateral security cooperation mechanisms in Solomon Islands,” he declared.

Australia, New Zealand and the US have strenuously opposed the pact, claiming it could open the door to a Chinese naval base in the South Pacific. Just days before the announcement Australia’s minister for the Pacific, Zed Seselja, travelled to the Solomons to meet with Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare in a last-ditch effort to dissuade him from going ahead.

Since the draft agreement was leaked online on March 25, fierce diplomatic pressure has been applied by Canberra and Wellington, including appeals to other Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) governments, to halt the deal. In a defiant speech to parliament, Sogavare denounced the regional powers, who he accused of treating the Pacific as their “backyard,” and warned about Australian media calls for a “regime change” operation against his government.

The deal is a major set-back for US-led interests across the Southwest Pacific, centred on resisting any influence by Beijing in the strategically significant region. While Pacific governments have increasingly turned to China for aid and financial support, the pact is the first security agreement that gives China a foothold in the Southwest Pacific.

An hysterical reaction immediately erupted in the midst of the Australian election campaign. Deputy prime minister and National Party leader Barnaby Joyce declared it “a very bad day for Australia. We don’t want our own little Cuba off our coast.” Opposition Labor Party foreign affairs spokesperson Penny Wong described it as the “worst Australian foreign policy blunder in the Pacific since the end of World War Two.”

Highlighting the alarm in Australia’s foreign policy establishment, the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday carried four comments excoriating successive governments. Political editor Peter Hartcher, who is highly connected in Washington, declared that the country’s leaders should “hang their heads in shame” for allowing China to steal a march in the Pacific “without firing a shot.”

New Zealand Labour Party Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern also denounced the pact, hypocritically declaring it will lead to an “increasing militarisation” of the Pacific. Ardern said while the Solomon Islands was free to make its own decisions, they were breaching an agreement within the 18-member PIF to “discuss defence matters” at the forum before making major decisions.

Ardern’s comment is a veiled reference to the Biketawa Declaration, signed in 2000, under which Australia and New Zealand bullied the PIF to overturn a 30-year policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of member countries. The declaration established a mechanism for diplomatic, economic and military intervention at the behest of the major powers in response to political crises.

The US State Department bluntly warned that the pact “leaves open the door for the deployment of PRC military forces to the Solomon Islands” and sets a “concerning precedent for the wider Pacific island region.” One diplomatic source told the ABC that the announcement was “clearly pushed through” by China and the Solomons ahead of an impending visit there by Kurt Campbell, the US National Security Council coordinator for the Indo-Pacific.

Campbell and top State Department official Daniel Kritenbrink are due to arrive in Honiara this week, before visiting Fiji and Papua New Guinea where the Solomons-China deal will be central to discussions. The high-level delegation will, according to Reuters, stop in Hawaii beforehand to “consult with senior military officials and regional partners at United States Indo-Pacific Command.”

Washington has already been directly interfering in the affairs of the Solomon Islands. Extensive riots and an attempted coup in Honiara last November were carried out by supporters of Daniel Suidani, the premier of Malaita province, who opposes the government’s links with China and maintains his own illegal “foreign policy” with ties to Taiwan. He is financed and politically supported by Washington.

After the riots, China donated police equipment and sent six police trainers to work with Solomon Islands officers. In February, the US announced it would open an embassy in Honiara, part of the Biden administration’s offensive to commit more diplomatic and security resources to the Indo-Pacific to counter China. The US embassy will doubtless provide a permanent base, not only for State Department operatives, but the CIA as well.

Recriminations are being voiced that Washington’s longstanding policy of outsourcing its Pacific policy-making to Canberra and Wellington has proved to be an abject failure. Writing in the Diplomat, prominent pro-US New Zealand academic Anne Marie Brady warned that it is now time “for the United States to shape its own policy on Solomon Islands, otherwise Campbell’s trip is a fool’s errand.”

Brady advised that Campbell should meet with opposition MPs, i.e., the anti-China supporters of Suidani. The US, she said, “must make sure it is on good terms with all political forces in the Solomons.” In the Sydney Morning Herald last month, Brady called for a “cull of sacred cows,” including an “over-emphasis on sovereignty,” in other words any, even notional, commitment to international law and the Solomons’ rights as an independent sovereign nation.

Australia and New Zealand have a track record of aggressively intervening in what they regard as “their backyard” in the Southwest Pacific. Both imperialist powers exploited an acute political crisis in the Solomons in 2003 to launch the neo-colonial Regional Assistance Mission (RAMSI).

Australian military and police were stationed in the country together with officials who effectively took control of the state apparatus. When RAMSI ended in 2017, it left behind an impoverished country mired in economic and social crisis. Around 50 Australian Federal Police officers are still working in the Solomons along with a group of New Zealand police.

Following this week’s announcement, Washington and Canberra are likely to do everything they can to sabotage the Solomons-China military agreement before it is finalised. Whatever the outcome, as the US-led build-up to war and manoeuvres to block China in the Pacific escalate, there will be ongoing efforts to destabilise and remove the Sogavare government.

White House announces another $800 million in military aid to Ukraine

Clara Weiss

The White House announced on Thursday that it will be sending an additional $800 million in military aid to Ukraine for its proxy war with Russia, which is now focused in the east of the country. The package includes heavy artillery, dozens of howitzers and 144,000 rounds of ammunition, as well as drones. President Joe Biden also announced another $500 million in economic aid. 

According to the New York Times, the military aid package “effectively will create five new Ukrainian artillery battalions, and includes more than 120 new drones built specifically for use by Ukraine’s forces.”

Ukrainian servicemen study a Sweden shoulder-launched weapon system Carl Gustaf M4 during a training session on the Kharkiv outskirts, Ukraine, Thursday, April 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Andrew Marienko)

In announcing the new package, Biden said it would send an “unmistakable message” to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “He will never succeed in dominating and occupying all of Ukraine.”

The US president, visibly gripped by war fever, said, “Sometimes we will speak softly and carry a large Javelin, because we're sending a lot of those.”

He boasted that the US had moved weapons into Ukraine at “record speed” over the past two months, and had provided “ten anti-armor systems for every one Russian tank that’s in Ukraine.” Biden threatened that the US had the capacity to keep up this level of military deliveries “for a long time.”

Biden also announced that the US has closed off its ports to Russian ships in a further escalation of the warfare by the NATO powers against Russia. 

In response, the Kremlin on Thursday imposed sanctions on 29 high-ranking US officials and CEOs, including Vice-President Kamala Harris and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, who are now barred from entering the country.

The latest announcement of massive military aid for Ukraine makes abundantly clear that the imperialist powers, with the US taking the lead, are doing everything they can to prolong the Ukraine war and escalate the conflict with Russia.

It came just one day after Russia demonstratively launched a test of the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, which can carry nuclear weapons. Putin, who launched the war in a desperate bid to force the imperialist powers to the negotiating table over his demands for security guarantees—a strategy that has clearly failed—said the test was a warning to those who “try to threaten our country.”

The latest package brings the total US commitment of military aid to Ukraine just since the outbreak of the war to $3.4 billion. The military assistance provided by NATO to Ukraine is unprecedented in scope. In a testimony before Congress last week, Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that in the months leading up to the war and afterward, the US and NATO sent 25,000 antiaircraft weapons and 60,000 anti-tank weapons to Ukraine. 

A list provided by the Pentagon indicates that Washington has supplied Ukraine with 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems; 5,500 Javelin anti-armor systems; 18 155mm howitzers and 40,000 155mm artillery rounds;16 Mi-17 helicopters; 50 million rounds of ammunition, 7,000 small arms and 75,000 sets of body armor and helmets, encrypted radios, armored trucks and more. Britain has supplied about $588 million of weapons, including anti-tank and anti-ship missiles and long-range artillery. 

The US is also training Ukrainian troops in neighboring NATO countries. 

On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that a “race to arm Ukraine” was under way, and that much of it was being organized in secret. The Times wrote:

“Unlike the early part of the war, when many countries seemed to compete to announce what they were providing Ukraine, the current race is being run largely in secret. Much of the coordination, including how to get matériel into Ukraine, is being handled through the United States European Command, or Eucom, based in Stuttgart, Germany, and through a blandly named International Donors Coordination Center set up with the British.”

Most countries, including France, are not advertising precisely what weapons and equipment they are delivering to Ukraine. Poland has refused to confirm the shipment of more than 100 Soviet-era T-72 and T-55 tanks to Ukraine. By contrast, the Czech Republic has boasted that it supplied Kiev with T-72 tanks and BMP-1 armored vehicles, and the Slovak government has supplied a Soviet-era S-300 antiaircraft missile system.

The US is now trying to buy up as much Soviet-era military equipment as possible to sell it to Ukraine. The Times quoted former US Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates as saying, “We don’t really have time to get a lot of heavy American armor into Ukraine, and there isn’t time to train the Ukrainian military. But there is a lot of former Soviet military equipment still in the arsenals of the East European states.” The US, Gates said, “ought to be ransacking the arsenals” of these countries for armor and antiaircraft systems,“ with a promise from the US to backfill over time with our equipment to our NATO allies.”

Speaking at a roundtable at Russia’s defense ministry about the “Crisis in Russian-American relations,” Sergey Koshelev, the ministry’s deputy head of the department on Northern America, said on Thursday that weapons deliveries by NATO on the territory of Ukraine were a “legitimate military target” for Russia. He acknowledged that the announcements of ever greater military aid by the US to Ukraine were provoking “growing anxiety” in the Kremlin. Washington, Koshelev said, clearly sought to bring about “maximum losses” for the Russian army. 

The Russian military has acknowledged “significant” losses in Ukraine, admitting, however, only to 1,351 dead as of March 25. The figure has not been updated since, and Pentagon and Ukrainian officials claim that the figures are much higher. Reports have also suggested that dozens of high-ranking military officials, including several generals, are among the dead. Funerals for fallen soldiers are taking place across the country every day. 

In an indication that the Russian state is trying to cover up the true toll of the war, the Russian Defense Ministry proposed on Wednesday that relatives of soldiers killed in Ukraine should have to apply to enlistment officers rather than civilian authorities for compensation payments, in order to “limit the circle of people” with information on Russian troops that were killed.  

Last week, Russia’s navy lost its flagship, the Moskva, which sank in the Black Sea. While the circumstances of the sinking of the ship are still disputed—with Ukraine claiming it caused it to sink with two missiles and the Kremlin insisting there was a fire onboard—the loss of the Moskva has been a major military humiliation to Russia. The relatives of many of the 500 sailors on board are still waiting to learn the fate of their loved ones.

In Ukraine, 12 million people have been displaced by the war—over one in four of the population. Seven million are internally displaced refugees, while 5 million have fled to other countries, mainly Poland.