Dozens dead and hundreds injured after fire and explosion at Bangladesh container depot

Wimal Perera

A massive fire and explosion at the BM Inland Container Depot in Bangladesh’s Chittagong district killed about 50 people on Saturday and injured hundreds of others, many seriously.

Those who lost their lives at the in port, which is located in the area of Sitakunda, include depot workers, policemen and at least five firefighters. The death toll is expected to rise. Two firefighters have been reported as missing.

Firefighters work to contain a fire that broke out at the BM Inland Container Depot, a Dutch-Bangladesh joint venture, in Chittagong, 216 kilometers (134 miles) southeast of capital, Dhaka, Bangladesh, early Sunday, June 5, 2022. (AP Photo)

An estimated 600 people were reportedly working at the container depot when the fire broke out at around 9 p.m., on Saturday. Hundreds of firefighters, police and volunteers quickly arrived on the scene but as they were attempting to extinguish the blaze, a massive explosion rocked the site, triggering blasts in scores of other containers.

Emergency workers and others were engulfed in flames by the initial explosion which hurled debris and people into the air, polluting the area with toxic fumes.

Over 450 people have been injured, with around 30 of them in a critical condition. Nearby hospitals are reportedly overwhelmed. Tofael Ahmed, a lorry driver, told the AFP news agency: “The explosion just threw me some 10 metres from where I was standing. My hands and legs are burnt.”  

A duty officer at the Chittagong Fire Service and Civil Defence control room told the Daily Star that 25 firefighting units had been rushed to the container terminal to douse the blaze at the massive facility, which is located about 240 kilometres south-east of Dhakka.

At this stage no detailed information has been released about what caused the initial fire. BM Inland Container Depot director Mujibur Rahman has provided no details, apart from contemptuously telling the media that the blaze could have started in a container. Bangladeshi fire and army officials have reported that large amounts of hydrogen peroxide and other dangerous chemicals were stored at the facility.

According to Akbar Hossain , the BBC’s Dhaka correspondent, Bangladeshis are comparing the explosion to the huge August 2020 ammonium nitrate blast in Beirut which killed over 200 people, injured 7,500 and damaged some 300,000 homes.

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and senior officials feigned concern whilst offering meagre compensation payments. A perfunctory statement by Hasina voiced her “deep shock and sorrow at the loss of lives,” offering sympathy for bereaved family members and declaring, according to the Dhaka Tribune, that she was praying for the “eternal salvation of the departed souls.”

Chattogram Divisional Commissioner Ashraf Uddin said relatives of the dead would be given $US560 (50,000 taka), while $224 (20,000 taka) would be provided to the families of the injured. This is a pittance for the victims, who were overwhelming poor.

BM Inland Container Depot director Rahman said the company would pay all treatment costs for injured survivors. “Those who were injured in the accident will be given the maximum compensation… and we will take responsibility for all the families of all the victims,” he stated.

Rahman’s promises, like those made by Hasina and her Chattogram divisional commissioner, are a desperate attempt to deflect mass anger over the disaster and the ongoing and criminal violations of basic safety by owners and managers across the country, with the sanction of government authorities.

The BM Inland Container Depot fire is not an isolated incident.

The have been a string of industrial disasters, which have shown how big business—with relevant safety officials turning a blind eye—violates rudimentary safety standards, sacrificing workers’ lives to maximise profits. Industrial fires caused by the unsafe storage of chemicals are commonplace in Bangladesh.

The most recent include:

* A July 2021 fire that killed at least 52 mostly teenage workers. It was caused by unsafe storage of highly flammable chemicals and plastics at a multi-storey food and beverage factory just outside Dhaka.

* A February 2019, chemical blaze and explosion, which claimed 81 lives in Dhaka.

* A 2010 fire at a house illegally storing chemicals in an over-crowed and poverty-stricken district of Dhakka, which killed more than 123 people.

The BM Inland Container Depot is a private Dutch–Bangladesh joint venture that has operated since 2011, with the capacity to store about 5,000 containers. Many of these are from the garment industry and likely contain various hazardous chemicals including hydrogen peroxide. The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association said that at least 1,000 containers of ready-made garments were incinerated in the disaster.

The garment industry is notorious for its super-exploitation of mainly women workers and its violation of rudimentary safety standards.

According to the Solidarity Center, a workers’ rights organisation, more than 150 fire and other safety episodes connected to the country’s garment industry occurred between 2012 and 2019, killing more than 1,300 workers and injuring over 3,800. While the industry gouges lucrative profits from Bangladeshi garment workers, they are only paid between $94 and $112 per month.

Bangladesh’s worst industrial disaster occurred in 2013 when the eight-floor Rana Plaza garment factory complex outside Dhaka collapsed, killing over 1,200 people. The building, housing five garment factories that employed thousands of workers, was typical of those serving the needs of global corporations, mainly retail giants, ruthlessly pursuing greater profits by maintaining slave labour conditions and violating basic safety needs.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bangladesh garment industry, with the blessing of the Hasina government, has continued full operations. The industry contributes over 80 percent of total export earnings, valued at more than $30 billion.

The New Age reported on June 1 that 14.7 million households had at least one person who lost their job as a result of the pandemic crisis. An estimated 2.1 million households, or six percent of the national total, had been directly hit by COVID infections.

The Hasina government says the Bangladeshi economy has begun to recover from the pandemic and has reached 7 percent GDP growth in the 2021–22 fiscal year compared with 6.94 percent the previous year.

According to statista.com, last year the garment industry earned $31.46 billion, up from $28 billion the previous year. This so-called growth means the further enrichment of the financial and corporate elite at the expense of working people, by subjecting them to super exploitation at poverty-level wages and violating their basic safety.

NATO opens Northern front in war against Russia

Andre Damon

On May 16, Sweden and Finland announced an end to decades of neutrality, proclaiming their intention to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its escalating conflict with Russia.

Less than three weeks later, Stockholm, Sweden’s capital, has been turned into a naval garrison with the arrival of a US amphibious assault battle group, consisting of the assault ship USS Kearsarge, the dock landing ship USS Gunston Hall, the guided-missile destroyer USS Gravely and the command ship USS Mount Whitney.

Ships participating in exercise BALTOPS22 prepare to depart Stockholm, June 5, 2022. (Credit: US Navy)

Standing on the deck of the Kearsarge, a warship so large it would be classified as a carrier in any Navy besides the United States’, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley declared his intention to make the Baltic Sea, in the words of the New York Times, a “NATO lake.”

Sweden had remained officially nonaligned since the Napoleonic wars in the early 1800s, having remained neutral in both the First and Second World Wars.

Now, in the span of just weeks, the country has been turned into a new front of the US war with Russia, its cities not only hosting a massive US-NATO military presence, but, just as ominously, targeted by Russian long-range weapons systems.

By pushing for the accession of Finland and Sweden as de facto members of NATO, the United States has opened up a second front in its war against Russia, turning the entire Baltic coast into a powder keg.

The arrival of the ships was part of the BALTOPS 22 exercise, involving, according to NATO, “Fourteen NATO allies, two NATO partner nations, over 45 ships, more than 75 aircraft, and approximately 7,000 personnel.” The UK sent HMS Defender, the destroyer that in June 2021 sailed into waters around the Crimean peninsula, triggering a standoff that led to the dropping of bombs by Russian forces in the ship’s path.

US officials made clear that the exercise was to be seen entirely within the framework of the current conflict with Russia.

“In past iterations of BALTOPS we’ve talked about meeting the challenges of tomorrow,” said Vice Adm. Gene Black, commander Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO (STRIKFORNATO) and the US Sixth Fleet. “Those challenges are upon us–in the here and now.”

Using the war in Ukraine as a pretext, the US has sought to double NATO’s land border with Russia through the inclusion of Finland.

The US has put into motion plans, years in the making, to turn the entire region into a front line in the war against Russia. This threatens a repetition, on an even grander scale, of the manner in which Ukraine, following the 2014 coup, was transformed into a US/NATO proxy, armed with billions of dollars in weapons. 

This turn of events has had horrifying consequences for the people of Ukraine, tens of thousands of whom have died and millions of whom have been displaced as a result of this year’s war.

With this development, the sweeping goals of the US/NATO war effort are becoming increasingly clear. They have gone far beyond the aims, first announced by Ukraine in 2021, of regaining Crimea through military means. The United States and NATO seek to seize full control of the Baltic and Black Seas, as part of the drive to dismantle Russia altogether.

In a widely cited article published by The Atlantic, Casey Michel, a fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank founded by nuclear war advocate Herman Kahn, approvingly quoted the 1991 proposal by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney to carry out “the dismantlement not only of the Soviet Union and the Russian empire but of Russia itself, so it could never again be a threat to the rest of the world.”

Michel concludes: “Rather than quash Russia’s imperial aspirations when they had the chance, Bush and his successors simply watched and hoped for the best. We no longer have that luxury. The West must complete the project that began in 1991. It must seek to fully decolonize Russia.”

By mooting the “dismantlement” of Russia, the US media is sending a message: The aim of the war is not just the overthrow of the present government, but the systematic destruction and carve-up of Russia and the hiving off of its strategic mineral and petrochemical resources.

Since signing a $40 billion weapons package for Ukraine on May 21, the United States has announced an additional $700 million in weapons, as well as the deployment of M109 self-propelled artillery, Harpoon anti-ship missiles, and medium-range missiles capable of striking targets 50 miles away.

Over the weekend, Russia carried out airstrikes on tanks in Kiev, which Moscow said were provided by NATO members. The airstrikes were launched by aircraft over the Caspian Sea, demonstrating Russia’s capability to strike targets hundreds of miles away.

Last week, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev strongly implied to al Jazeera that Russia would carry out strikes against NATO territory if the weapons being supplied by the US and NATO were targeted inside Russia.

“If … these weapons are used against Russian territory, then our armed forces will have no other choice but to strike decision-making centers,” Medvedev declared. “Of course, it needs to be understood that the final decision-making centers in this case, unfortunately, are not located on the territory of Kiev.” 

It is impossible to escape the conclusion that the United States would welcome an attack like the one described by Medvedev, which would allow it to remove all remaining restraints on the conduct of the war.

While the geostrategic and economic interests of US imperialism are a major factor in the conflict, the reckless character of the US-NATO policy cannot be understood solely through the lens of geopolitics.

The American ruling class needs a permanent state of war as part of an effort to divert internal social tensions outwards and to enforce a fictional “national unity.” It is now clear that the Biden administration’s ending of the “forever war” in Afghanistan was part of a redeployment and refocus on waging war against Russia and China. 

At the same time, the transformation of the “War on Terror” into “great power conflict” entails and requires an escalation of the assault on the working class. All available social resources not taken up by the bailout of the rich must be diverted to the instruments of war. The massive sums allocated by Congress must be paid for by the working class, particularly through attacks on social programs and other government expenditures. 

Over the weekend, both the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, house organs for the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively, published editorials demanding cuts to social entitlement programs. The Journal demanded that millions of people be purged from Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor. The Washington Post, for its part, called for a “modest” reduction in Social Security benefits.

But the austerity measures proposed by these newspapers is only the beginning. The American ruling class’s project of global conquest entails a massive restructuring of social relations aimed at making the working class bear the burden of the crisis of capitalism. At the same time, the intensification of the class struggle that is the corollary of expanding war reveals the social force that must be mobilized against war, the working class.

The struggles emerging by workers at workplaces throughout the country for wage increases commensurate with soaring prices must be armed with a program to end a war that is rapidly spiraling out of control and threatening human civilization with destruction.

Australia’s Labor government opposes inflation wage rises, despite soaring living costs

Mike Head

Last Friday, in a new submission to the Fair Work Commission, the country’s pro-business industrial tribunal, Australia’s Labor government opposed any “across-the-board” pay rise for workers in line with inflation, regardless of the sky-rocketing cost of living.

Anthony Albanese addressing the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry on May 5, 2022 (Photo: Twitter/AlboMP)

“This submission does not suggest that across-the-board, wages should automatically increase in line with inflation,” the government stated. “The key driver of real wage growth (excluding inflation) over the longer-term is labour productivity.”

In other words, any pay rises must be tied to continuing to ratchet up “labour productivity”—that is, driving up output per worker in order to further boost corporate profits.

The submission added: “The current economic circumstances are highly unusual and challenging, and the Government’s submission pertains specifically to the low-paid and in the current macroeconomic context.”

Labor’s fraudulent election slogan of a “better future” has quickly disappeared. It has been replaced by warnings from Treasurer Jim Chalmers of a “perfect storm” that means that government spending must be cut and workers must increase their productivity as the only basis to reverse years of real wage cuts.

In a cynical attempt to head off workers’ anger over soaring food, petrol and energy prices, the submission recommended that the tribunal ensure that “the real wages of Australia’s low-paid workers do not go backwards.”

That posturing, in line with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s pre-election rhetoric of protecting minimum wage workers, is a sham.

Even for the worst-paid workers, on the minimum wage of $20.33 an hour, the government refused to nominate a pay rise to match the official inflation rate of 5.1 percent over the past year, let alone the 6.6 percent rise in “non-discretionary” costs, such as food, fuel and housing.

That was despite the government admitting that inflation is “expected to increase further in the near-term due to persistent and compounding supply shocks,” with the spiraling costs expected to continue in 2023.

Soaring global energy prices, combined with profiteering by the oil and gas giants, are not only sending petrol, gas and electricity prices through the roof, but ripping through business production and transport costs, driving up inflation. 

World food and fuel prices have dramatically escalated due to supply disruptions caused by the refusal of capitalist governments to suppress the COVID-19 pandemic, immensely aggravated by the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

Across the 33 major economies in the OECD, runaway inflation of 9.2 percent in the year to April has been spearheaded by a 32.5 percent surge in energy costs and an 11.5 percent jump in food prices.

Claiming to have suddenly discovered these “dire” economic conditions immediately after the May 21 election, Albanese’s government is demanding “sacrifices” from workers, regardless of an ever-widening gap between soaring profits and falling real wages.

By placing the issue in the hands of the Fair Work Commission, the government is laying the foundations for yet another real pay cut for millions of workers, many of whom have been forced into insecure low-paid employment. The FWC is not a neutral “umpire.” It is a pay-cutting body established by the last Rudd-Gillard Labor government of 2007 to 2013.

The FWC’s first and foremost “minimum wages objective,” set by Labor’s Fair Work Act, is “the performance and competitiveness of the national economy, including productivity, business competitiveness and viability.” Its members are predominantly former business executives and ex-union bosses. 

The wage case panel includes former Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) president and past Labor cabinet minister Martin Ferguson. He was appointed by the previous Liberal-National Coalition government after being earlier rewarded for his union and Labor services via various corporate posts in the oil and tourism industries.

ACTU secretary Sally McManus rushed to back the Albanese government, reflecting the unions’ equal intent to try to prevent an eruption of wages struggles. She welcomed the government’s submission, claiming it was a “huge shift” from the Coalition government, even though it rejected cost of living pay rises for most workers and exposed the ACTU’s nominal call for a 5.5 percent wage rise for workers on industrial awards.

Behind all the pretence of concern for low-paid workers, the ACTU’s own submission to the FWC showed that the unions agree entirely with the Labor government that workers’ wages must be tied to profits and productivity. It argued that a pay increase was “sustainable” because of “robust” productivity and profit growth, and decreasing unit labour costs.

Four decades of suppression of workers’ struggles

This line-up by the Labor government and the unions is no aberration. It means a deepening of the four-decade lifting of corporate profits and staggering wealth accumulation by the corporate elite, at the expense of workers. According to last week’s latest Australian Financial Review Rich List, the wealthy are increasing their fortunes at a record rate. The richest 200 collectively gained more than $75 billion last year, taking their holdings to $555 billion, an 85-fold increase since 1984, the first full year of the Hawke Labor government.

This process was set in motion by the Hawke and Keating Labor governments, which worked in close collaboration with all the unions via their prices and incomes Accords of the 1980s and 1990s, to restructure the economy in the interests of big business.

(Credit: WSWS Media, Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics)

Last week’s gross national product (GDP) figures showed that the share of national income going to profits set a record at 31.1 percent in the March quarter. That is almost double the figure of around 18 percent in 1983. That was when Hawke and Keating convened a “summit” with the unions and employers in 1983 and signed their first Accord with the ACTU.

Over that period, workers have been forced to become increasingly “productive,” but the gap between wages and profits has only widened. The sharpest upward curve in productivity occurred during the 1990s, peaking at near 4 percent per year, in the wake of the Hawke-Keating-ACTU restructuring.

This exposes the lie, peddled by Labor and the unions, that higher productivity leads to higher real wages. Since the 1990s, real unit labour costs—how much it costs employers in wages for each unit of output, adjusted for inflation, have been slashed, with the index falling from around 115 to about 94.

This ratcheting up of the rate of exploitation of workers’ labour power has accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Real (non-farm) labour costs for employers have fallen by 5.3 percent since the pandemic began. That is because the ruling class has exploited the global public health disaster to further cut workers’ wages and conditions, assisted by the unions, which have suppressed opposition.

(Credit: WSWS Media, Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics)

The standard of living for workers, measured as real average compensation per employee, has fallen back to the level of 2011, representing more than a decade of stagnant or declining real wages.

This offensive is intensifying. According to the latest Business Indicator Survey, profits rose 10.2 percent in the March quarter, while total wages increased by just 1.8 percent. Leading the pack were the mining companies. In the past year alone, their profits have risen by 48 percent, while their wages bill rose by just 11.7 percent.

From December 2015 to March 2020, mining profits grew by 350 percent, while wages in that sector rose by only 22 percent, with that gap far wider than in the “investment boom” of September 2002 to December 2008, when profits rose by 290 percent and wages by 131 percent.

But the Albanese government has ruled out any “super-profits” tax on the mining conglomerates or any other action that would impinge on the profiteering by the gas exporters.

The growing enrichment of the wealthy at workers’ expense is a direct product of the suppression of workers’ struggles by Labor and the unions for the past 40 years. Enterprise bargaining and anti-strike laws drawn up in collaboration with the unions under Hawke and Keating and Rudd and Gillard have been used to block or betray strike after strike.

In the year to last December, only 71,000 employees took industrial action across just 130 disputes. Employers lost a mere 116,000 working days to strike action. That is an historic low, compared to the late 1980s and early 1990s when more than a million days were lost to strike action every year, and the 1970s, when the figure peaked at almost 6.3 million days in 1974.

(Credit: WSWS Media, Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics)

This underscores the transformation of Labor and the unions from organisations that once sought to extract concessions from the capitalist class—always in order to maintain the system of wage labour itself and head off working-class support for socialism—into political and industrial police forces enforcing the gutting of workers’ conditions to satisfy the profit demands of employers under conditions of globalised production.

As a result of workers’ bitter experiences with the unions, their membership has plummeted from around 50 percent of the workforce in 1984 to 14 percent, as of 2020, with the coverage even lower—5 percent—among young workers.

This year, pent-up strikes have begun to erupt, including among nurses, health and aged care workers, teachers, university staff and public sector employees, despite the efforts of the unions to keep a lid on workers in the lead-up to the May 21 election.

The return of “Concerted Action” in Germany

Ulrich Rippert & Peter Schwarz

During the budget debate in the Bundestag last Wednesday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Social Democratic Party, SPD) announced the convening of a “Concerted Action.” He said that he was inviting employers and trade unions to work closely with the government. This was an “unusual” measure but necessary in view of the high level of inflation.

Olaf Scholz in the general debate of the Bundestag on 1 June [Photo by DBT / Xander Heinl / photothek] [Photo by DBT / Xander Heinl / photothek]

“We need a targeted effort in a very exceptional situation. We want concerted action against price pressures,” Scholz said.

In truth, the chancellor’s proposal is a political conspiracy against the working class. In the face of rapid price increases, unsustainable conditions in hospitals and schools and mass layoffs in many industries, resistance is growing. The ruling class and its institutions are responding by moving closer together.

The Bundestag debate has once again shown that all parties—despite heated exchanges—agree on the fundamental issues. They are all pulling in the same direction on military rearmament, the herd immunity policy of deliberate mass infection and the debt brake. Now the trade unions and the employers associations are to be formally involved in these policies.

The “Concerted Action” has the task of making the working class pay the gigantic sums for military rearmament and the billion-dollar gifts to the super-rich through cuts in wages and social spending. Their textbook is titled “Let the workers pay!”

The depth of the chasm between the working class and the government was shown by a demonstration that took place in Cologne at the same time as the chancellor announced his “alliance with the social partners.” Several thousand workers from the university hospitals in North Rhine-Westphalia, who have been on strike for five weeks, demonstrated against intolerable working conditions. All the demonstrators the WSWS spoke to were outraged that the government was spending €100 billion on a military build-up, while hospitals, schools and other social institutions were being cut.

The employers and trade unions, on the other hand, welcomed the chancellor’s proposal. Employers’ Association President Rainer Dulger said, “We employers are aware of our responsibility. Employers associations and trade unions have always worked constructively on solutions in previous crises. We will do so again this time.”

The new head of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB), Yasmin Fahimi, said, “The aim of ‘concerted action’ must be to alleviate the current burdens on private households and the economy and to build a more resilient and sustainable economy.”

A look at the current actions of the trade unions shows what is meant by this.

Roman Zitzelsberger, district leader of IG Metall in Baden-Württemberg and a candidate for the head post of the largest single trade union in the DGB, declared a few days ago that the current and upcoming collective bargaining negotiations were not there to compensate for inflation. “Exorbitant inflation rates cannot be compensated by collective bargaining policy,” Zitzelsberger said. He added that the high inflation rates were the result of political decisions and therefore had to be corrected by “politics.”

Scholz praised the trade unions’ “very prudent wage policy so far.” He referred to the collective agreements in the chemicals sector, which with a one-time special payment for employees, had chosen an “interesting path.” According to Scholz, this path would help workers in times of impending loss of purchasing power, and at the same time such special payments, unlike generally high wage settlements, would not further fuel inflation.

In reality, the path of special payments leads straight to low-wage work and poverty in old age. This is because it keeps collectively agreed wages and pension entitlements derived from them low. This applies not only to future pensions but also to existing pensions, whose annual increase is based on collective wage agreements.

The history of “Concerted Action”

In the Bundestag, Scholz explained that cooperation between trade unions, employers and the state had already helped “to deal with a difficult challenge” in earlier times. Indeed, in times of crisis, the SPD, in particular, has always tried to integrate the trade unions and employers associations into a corporatist model in which they collaborate even more closely than is already the case within the framework of Germany’s legally regulated system of co-determination that provides for so-called “employee representation” (i.e., trade union functionaries) on company boards.

The term “Concerted Action” dates back to 1967. At that time, the postwar upturn was showing clear signs of crisis. In Germany, the turning point in the class struggle had already been heralded in 1963 with a metalworkers strike in Baden-Württemberg, to which the companies responded by locking out hundreds of thousands of workers. In the Ruhr, miners mobilised against deaths in the collieries.

The economically liberal Chancellor Ludwig Erhard (CDU, Christian Democratic Union) proved incapable of dictating an austerity programme (“Show moderation!”) to the working class. To keep the working class under control, the SPD was brought into government in 1966, forming a grand coalition with the CDU/CSU under Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger (CDU), a former Nazi Party member.

The grand coalition [from left: Kurt Georg Kiesinger (CDU), Willy Brandt (SPD), Karl Schiller (SPD)] introduced the Concerted Action in 1967.

In 1967, the grand coalition passed a “Law to Promote Stability and Growth in the Economy,” which bore the signature of the SPD. It obliged the federal and state governments to “observe the requirements of macroeconomic equilibrium in their economic and financial policy measures.” The law stated that the measures must be taken “in such a way that, within the framework of the market economy, they simultaneously contribute to the stability of prices, to a high level of employment and to external economic equilibrium with steady and appropriate economic growth.”

The law explicitly included trade unions and business associations. If one of the above-mentioned objectives was endangered, Paragraph 3 stated that “the federal government shall provide orientation data for a simultaneous coordinated behaviour (Concerted Action) of the regional authorities, trade unions and business associations to achieve the objectives.”

The law did not go so far as to completely abolish trade union autonomy in collective bargaining, as is the case with the corporatism of fascist states. But by obliging the unions to be guided by “macroeconomic” goals—rather than the interests of their members—it was a big step in that direction.

The unions went along willingly. From then on, they met regularly for rounds of talks with representatives of the government, employers associations and the Bundesbank (central bank) and committed themselves to a policy of wage restraint. The Social Democratic Minister of Economics Karl Schiller spoke of a “table of social reason.”

However, this went completely adrift. The wave of radical industrial actions that culminated in a four-week general strike in France in 1968 did not stop at the borders of Germany. The trade unions lost control of their members. In September 1969, spontaneous strikes developed in the steel industry, breaking the wage guidelines to which the IG Metall had committed itself for over 8 million workers.

In 1973 there was another wave of spontaneous strikes. Among others, 12,000 workers occupied the Ford plant in Cologne. Here, the IG Metall helped break the strike and sack the strike leaders.

Nevertheless, in order not to lose their influence completely, the unions had to abandon the policy of wage restraint. In 1977 they also formally ended their participation in the Concerted Action.

After German reunification in 1991, when hundreds of thousands of jobs were destroyed in East Germany within a very short time, former Economics Minister Karl Schiller and former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (both SPD), with the support of the trade unions, called for a “new all-German edition of the Concerted Action.”

The Neue Arbeiterpresse, predecessor of the WSWS in Germany, commented at the time that the original Concerted Action had “blocked the offensive of the working class through a series of concessions.” Now the task of Concerted Action would be “the opposite: to push through future mass layoffs, wage cuts and budget cuts against the working class.”

Today, it would have the task of forming a kind of “Joint High Command” of the German banks and corporations for their trade wars and wars for sales, markets, sources of raw materials and spheres of influence. The trade union bureaucrats would not only play the role of a wages police and “rationalisation experts”—intensifying exploitation in the factories and monitoring the industrial truce—rather, they are already offering themselves as the smarter and more ruthless managers and strategists for the class war at home and the economic war abroad (Neue Arbeiterpresse, February 21, 1992).

Chancellor Helmut Kohl (CDU) was not averse to the idea but decided against reviving the Concerted Action. He knew he could count on the support of the trade unions even without a formal alliance.

Concerted Action was revived in 1998, after the election victory of the SPD and the Greens, by the new federal government under Gerhard Schröder but under a new name. It was now called the “Alliance for Jobs, Training and Competitiveness.” Between December 1998 and March 2003, the Alliance met nine times for top-level talks. In addition to the chancellor, the chancellery minister and other relevant ministers, four chairpersons of the business and employers associations and five trade union chairpersons took part.

At these meetings, the concepts were elaborated that later found their way into Schröder’s “Agenda 2010.” In particular, the creation of a low-wage sector, the flexibilization of working hours, the reduction of non-wage labour costs (i.e., social benefits) and tax cuts were central themes. Before Agenda 2010 was announced, the alliance was then declared a failure, but the authors of the Agenda—Chancellery Ministers Bodo Hombach and Frank-Walter Steinmeier—had also been leaders in the Alliance.

The history of the Concerted Action makes it clear which tradition Chancellor Scholz is following. Today, the economic and political crisis is far deeper than in the 1960s or 2000s. Concerted Action today is directly linked to restricting the right to strike and dictatorial measures to force the working class to finance the costs of the billion-dollar programmes for the corporations and the rich and the biggest rearmament offensive since Hitler.

The trade unions have long since ceased to represent the interests of the workers, even minimally. They consider wage and social cuts necessary to improve German competitiveness on the world market. Works councils, full of union bureaucrats, act as company police and stifle any resistance from the workers.

The incorporation of the trade unions into government structures and company management is closely linked to globalisation. The worldwide integration of the economy and transnational production processes have deprived the trade unions of the national ground on which they could exert pressure for limited social reforms in the past. Support for rearmament and war to secure raw material supplies, sales markets and access to cheap labour is the logical extension of this nationalist policy.

UK: Johnson government leadership challengers claim confidence vote within reach

Robert Stevens & Chris Marsden

For over six months since the eruption last November of the “partygate” scandal, Conservative Party Prime Minister Boris Johnson has faced talk of an imminent leadership challenge.

Last week’s report by senior civil servant Sue Gray only gave him a slap on the wrist for the illegal drinks parties held in Whitehall, including in his Downing Street residence, during lockdown.

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson pauses during a coronavirus briefing in Downing Street, in London, Monday April 5, 2021. (Stefan Rousseau/Pool via AP)

With Johnson declaring it is now time to “move on”, talk of a leadership challenge continues. A Tory leader can be removed only if 15 percent (currently 54) of party MPs submit a letter declaring no confidence to the chairman of its backbench MPs, Sir Graham Brady. If Johnson then loses a confidence vote by 50 percent plus one of votes cast, 180 MPs, he must step down.

There is speculation that the 54 MPs target is now within reach and that a leadership vote could be announced as early as next week. Many of the same sources say Johnson would survive a vote anyway, even if damaged.

A substantial section of Tory MPs certainly want him out. Their main political concern is that he is not up to the task of imposing savage austerity, deepening the assault on democratic rights and waging war against Russia over Ukraine, all compounded by his having become an electoral liability. Up to 80 Tory MPs in marginal seats could lose them in any upcoming general election.

The partygate crisis stemmed from leaks from Johnson’s former chief adviser Dominic Cumming, who he sacked in November 2020.

But the problem Johnson’s opponents face is that none of those being put forward as replacements are in any better position. Chancellor Rishi Sunak, only weeks ago favourite to replace Johnson, appears to be a political busted flush due to the revelations of his vast wealth and his wife avoiding British taxes for years. He was also fined along with Johnson over partygate. Others such as the new favourite Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and longtime leading Brexiter Michael Gove are similarly problematic.

In this May 24, 2020 file photo, Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson's senior aid Dominic Cummings leaves 10 Downing Street, in London. (AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali, File)

This prompted Cummings to declare this week to the Unherd website, “The Tory party itself is quite rotten now and the sign of that is that they can’t think of anyone better than Boris, who’s clearly just completely shot.

“They are collectively saying, ‘if we get rid of him, we might get somebody worse’… And they actually could get somebody worse: Liz Truss would be even worse than Boris. She’s about as close to properly crackers as anybody I’ve met in parliament.”

Cummings added that Sunak had “blown himself up”, while “Whatever you might think of Michael Gove’s abilities, he is not a loved character.”

This is as good a guess as any as to the present state of play. With the ruling party in disarray, the population is being forced to endure the media’s insistence that all attention must be focused on the Byzantine inner workings of the Tory party, with just one individual, Brady, holding the key to everything.

The central function of this media feeding frenzy is to ensure that no independent working-class opposition to Johnson finds expression and the Tories collectively continue to dictate events. The Guardian, representative of what passes for liberal opinion in Britain, focuses its efforts on political mythmaking—seeking to convince its sceptical readers that if only Johnson were removed then the Tory Party would be miraculously transformed by its supposedly progressive “One Nation” wing.

On Tuesday the newspaper led with the headline, “PM’s sudden lurch to right fuels anger of Tory rebels,” commenting, “Boris Johnson’s lurch to the right after Partygate is fueling even more anger among rebel Tory MPs, with momentum now building for a leadership challenge next week.”

It listed “a number of right-wing and nationalistic policies” launched in recent weeks, including “the return of imperial measures, plans to override the Northern Ireland protocol, a hint about expanding grammar schools, a review of fracking and repeated promises to tear up more EU regulation.”

Johnson calculates that this is the red meat necessary to throw at the Tory membership base, but the Guardian points to the displeasure of right-wing warmonger Tobias Ellwood. The enlightened Ellwood didn’t think nostalgia for pints, gallons, feet and inches was the sort of “one-nation Conservative thinking that is required to appeal beyond our base.”

The Guardian also noted, “Another Conservative MP said he represented a seat in the ‘heart of middle England’ and about half of the core Conservative voters there had lost faith in the prime minister.”

This is political nonsense. Whatever disagreements exist between the old David Cameron-led pro-European Union wing of the party and the hardline Brexiteers, up to now represented by Johnson, the Tories are a hardened right-wing, “One Class” party of the British bourgeoisie. Every Tory MP represents a ruling elite which is enacting policies of brutal austerity against the working class, to be enforced by an evisceration of democratic rights.

Just in the six months of the partygate scandal, the government, backed by every Tory MP, has voted through a raft of reactionary legislation, with more in the pipeline including a Public Order Bill handing virtually limitless stop and search powers to the police.

This war against the working class at home is the necessary corollary of the Johnson government’s central role in NATO’s proxy war against Russia, for which the Guardian is the biggest cheerleader. On this central issue Ellwood, chair of the defence select committee and a former captain in the Royal Green Jackets, is indistinguishable from Truss when it comes to calls to step up military conflict with Russia.

Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood arrives at the Houses of Parliament in London, Friday March 24, 2017. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

The Guardian hailed him as the putative leader of the Tory progressives on the same day he published an op-ed piece in the Sun newspaper, “The West has to ensure Ukraine defeats Russia—every Nato member must up defence spending now.”

Ellwood warned, “To date we are only doing enough to ensure they don’t lose—but not enough to guarantee they can win. Putin may have misjudged Ukraine’s resolve to hold ground, but he was spot on in believing Nato would have no appetite to get directly involved.”

None of the leading warmongers in the Tory Party, or any of the opposition parties, have any differences with British imperialism stepping up provocations that could lead to all-out with Russia and China, threatening the future of humanity.

Millions of workers in the UK want to see Johnson gone. They hate him for having presided over a herd immunity policy that has led to 200,000 deaths from COVID-19 and millions more left to mourn and suffer from long-term health problems, and for his ruthless imposition of the austerity measures demanded by big business. But they want to see the entire Tory government swept from power, not his replacement by Truss or some other political criminal. Moreover, workers are confronted with the fact that the Labour Party under Sir Keir Starmer has no differences with the Tory agenda of herd immunity, austerity and war.

A movement is now beginning to develop that can achieve this goal. Despite every effort by Labour and the trade unions to try to suppress the class struggle, recent days have seen a vote for national strike action by tens of thousands of rail workers, an ongoing ballot for national action by 40,000 BT telecoms workers, multiple strikes by bus and refuse workers and wildcat action by oil rig workers calling for a “wages revolution”.

Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee: The end of the “New Elizabethan Age”

Thomas Scripps

Queen Elizabeth II succeeded the throne on February 6, 1952, and was coronated on June 2. Now 96 years old, she has been head of the British state and the Commonwealth for 70 years. She is the longest-reigning monarch in British history and the world’s longest-reigning living monarch.

The Queen (centre, with blue coat and hat) on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with other Royal Family members, on the first of four days of celebrations to mark the Platinum Jubilee. London, June 2, 2022, (Humphrey Nemar/Pool Photo via AP)

Her Platinum Jubilee is being marked by four days of state ceremony and celebration, followed around the world. The British state is pulling out all the stops in its still world-leading pomp and pageantry. A Trooping of the Colour with Royal Air Force flypast and lighting of beacons across the country and Commonwealth took place Thursday; a Service of Thanksgiving for the Queen’s Reign in St Paul’s Cathedral Friday. The Epsom Derby, a Platinum Party at the Palace music show, street and garden parties and a Platinum Jubilee Pageant are scheduled for the weekend.

Running through it all is a barely suppressed nervous tension. Given the queen’s age and failing health, the jubilee has inevitably been the occasion for an evaluation of the so-called “New Elizabethan Age” and what might come next. To understand the concern requires an acknowledgement of what her reign has meant to the British ruling class.

There was always something pompous about the claim of a “Second Elizabethan Age”, given the hardly comparable position of the monarchy in British life in the 20th versus the 16th century of her namesake. But Elizabeth Windsor has in some crucial respects lived up to the hype. The Platinum Jubilee, universally and fervently hailed across parliament and the media, is a celebration of her significant contribution to the history and indeed survival of British imperialism.

Elizabeth II came to power seven years after the Second World War and during the permanent eclipse of Britain by the United States. Her reign includes the prolonged decline of the UK’s industrial economy and, in its latter half, a staggering deterioration in the social position of the working class.

The geostrategic and social consequences of these processes were enormous. Britain lost the bulk of its imperial possessions in the 1950s and 60s, an unravelling of empire and consolidation of US imperialist hegemony symbolised by the Suez Crisis of 1956. Major strike waves in the 1970s and 80s rocked the governments of Heath, Wilson, Callaghan and Thatcher. With the development of globalisation and the defeat suffered by miners and other leading sections of the industrial working class at the hands of the trade union and Labour Party bureaucracy, the British economy was transformed from a centre of manufacturing to the international home of financial parasitism.

The British state responded to these challenges with customary brutality. During the first eight years of Elizabeth II’s reign, the UK carried out savage repression in Kenya against the Mau Mau Rebellion. Between 1967-1970, it supported the genocidal war of the Nigerian government against the breakaway Biafra region. Bloody military campaigns have been waged to maintain British control of the six counties in the north of Ireland and the Malvinas/Falklands Islands in the Pacific. Criminal wars have been launched in the Middle East and North Africa in support of a “special relationship” with the US. Every upsurge of the working class at home has been met with the necessary repressive laws and police crackdown.

Amid such roiling political turbulence, the queen’s great service to the ruling class was to preserve the role of the monarchy as a stabilising force. She has performed that task with singular conviction, discipline and ruthless self-abnegation.

To an extraordinary degree, her personality has been almost wholly subsumed by the institution of the British monarchy. She maintains an image of complete emotional and intellectual impassivity. After 70 years as ruler, no one knows what the queen thinks about anything. As far as anyone feels they have a sense of what she is like, they are probably referencing the politely critical but generally sympathetic artistic interpretations of writer Stephen Morgan and actresses Claire Foy and Olivia Coleman in the Netflix series, The Crown.

The queen’s diligence in avoiding scandal, an ill-advised word or false step, and care not to openly associate herself with the vicious class policy of the ruling elite has made her a tabula rasa on which can be written whatever beliefs are politically convenient at the time. When a prime minister is particularly unpopular, notably Thatcher and Blair, it is speculated that the queen, “like us”, finds them distasteful. The same was done when US President Donald Trump came to visit.

Her carefully cultivated public persona has allowed Elizabeth II to be deployed at times of heightened national crisis as an illusory but politically necessary embodiment of stability and permanence. This representative of class rule and hereditary privilege has been portrayed as a figure rising above the blood and filth of politics, reflecting the supposed immutable traditions and sensibilities of the “British people” against the passing “extremism” of the times. Abroad, she helped front the transition from the unsustainable gunboat diplomacy of empire to the royal visit diplomacy of the Commonwealth, begun by Macmillan’s 1960 “wind of change” speech in South Africa.

Remarkably for a fabulously wealthy hereditary monarch raised in a fascist-flirting family at the head of the British Empire, she has never caused or compounded a serious political crisis—aside from briefly following the death of Princess Diana in 1997—giving as much space as possible to the Labour and trade union bureaucracy to neutralise working-class opposition. The Platinum Jubilee is the ruling class’s debt of gratitude for a model monarch and her seven decades’ stoic work helping to manage the decline of British imperialism and its explosive social consequences.

Diana's coffin, draped in the royal standard with an ermine border, borne through the streets of London on its way to Westminster Abbey

But the stresses of the period have not passed without impact. The royal family came under increasing scrutiny from the 1980s. Its seedy underbelly of aristocratic cliques, cheats and liars was laid bare by the Princess Diana saga of the 1990s.

Today, the heir to the throne Prince Charles is considered such a liability that everything is being done to push him behind his son, Prince William. Prince Harry abandoned the monarchy with his wife Meghan Markle under a cloud. Prince Andrew has been stripped of his titles after paying his way out a trial examining his relationship with convicted sex trafficker to the billionaire class, Jeffrey Epstein.

In the last 10 years, YouGov polling shows a marked fall in support for the monarchy from 73 percent to 62 percent. The fall has been steepest among young people, aged 18-24; just 33 percent believe Britain should continue to have a monarchy, down from 54 percent a decade ago.

Much more is reflected in these figures than popular attitudes to an institution generally regarded as an anachronism. Britain, like every country, is in the grip of a terminal crisis of world capitalism bringing the global class struggle to boiling point. One need not buy in to a rosy view of the last 70 years, increasingly beset by social tensions, to say that it will be looked on by the ruling class as something of a belle epoque compared to what is now coming at them like a runaway train.

Under such conditions, all symbols of “national unity” and claims that we are “all in this together” are being torn to pieces. With the queen’s declared hope yesterday“ that the coming days will provide an opportunity to reflect on all that has been achieved during the last 70 years, as we look to the future with confidence and enthusiasm,” the lie has been stretched too far.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson steps out of No 10 Downing Street to attend the Trooping the Colour ceremony during the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations. 02/06/2022. (Credit: Picture by Andrew Parsons/No 10 Downing Street/Flickr)

Prime Minister Boris Johnson cheers “God save the Queen” with the blood of nearly 200,000 killed and 2 million debilitated by COVID on his hands. Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer tells a country still in the grip of the pandemic and suffering the worst cost-of-living crisis on record, with all measures of poverty skyrocketing, that it is its “patriotic duty” after the “extraordinary circumstances of the last few years” to “let its hair down”. Both men are spearheading Britain’s leading role in a NATO/US war against Russia, starving billions and threatening a world-ending military conflict. Neither’s despised party can muster the slightest popular support.

Elizabeth II has lived long enough to see the whole historical period associated with her reign come to an end. The queen ascended the throne at a time of capitalist stabilisation after a protracted economic breakdown, the rise of fascism, the widespread discrediting of the free market and two devastating world wars. She is nearing the end of her rule amid a renewed global economic catastrophe, the resurgence of the far right, the threat of a third world war and the total disenfranchisement of the mass of the population.

Her first prime minister was Winston Churchill, a significant political figure. Her last may well be Johnson, a vicious imbecile whose Churchillian pretensions offer only an unintentional measure of the decline and degradation of the ruling class.

The fate of the monarchy is bound up with this intractable capitalist crisis and the response it produces in the international working class. A global strike wave is building, with disputes affecting practically every sector in the UK economy and workers straining against the trade unions’ efforts to divide and betray.

Whatever faith the British ruling class might place in the queen’s power to “bring together” and remind everyone “that conciliation is always possible”, neither she, still less her successor, nor any government can stymie the immense social forces pushing aside the phantasm of a “New Elizabethan Age” and inaugurating a decade of socialist revolution.