UK Sunak government to ban strikes and protests

Robert Stevens

The replacement as prime minister of Liz Truss with Rishi Sunak was carried out this week at the insistence of the financial oligarchy, whose main demand is that the government step up their attacks on the working class.

Newly Appointed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak holds his first Cabinet Meeting the morning after assuming office. October 26, 2022, London, United Kingdom [Photo by Simon Walker/No 10 Downing Street / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Truss was thrown out because her September mini budget of £45 billion in tax cuts for the richest was paid for with borrowing, rather than the immediate imposition of additional austerity. While her axing revealed differences between factions of the ruling Conservative Party over how to finance further vast subventions to the super-rich, there are none when it comes to imposing the necessary dictatorial measures required to enforce this.

Boris Johnson’s 2019 election manifesto pledged to bring in Minimum Service Levels (MSLs) during transport strikes, which would make industrial action in the sector ineffective. Another policy aimed at neutering strikes, dating back to the 2015 Conservative election manifesto, was to legislate to allow agencies to supply temporary workers to cover workers taking industrial action.

The legislation on agency workers became law on July 21. At the same time legislation was passed to raise the level of maximum damages that courts can award against a trade union when strike action has been found “unlawful”. For the largest unions, the maximum is now £1 million.

These laws went through even though Johnson had announced his resignation on July 7, prompting the leadership election that brought Truss to power.

Truss announced she would seek to legislate on MSLs within 30 days of taking office. The task now falls to Sunak, with the law to be enacted in early 2023.

The scale of the government’s class war offensive is underscored by the Public Order Bill—one of the most draconian pieces of legislation in British history, effectively ending the right to protest and further clamping down on strikes.

The Bill has been used to revive sections of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 deemed so nakedly dictatorial they were voted down by the House of Lords. They include making it unlawful for a person to interfere with the use or operation of key national infrastructure, including airports, the road network, railways and newspaper printers. Effective industrial action in these sectors would be essentially illegalised.

Protests are deemed illegal if they include acts causing “serious disruption to two or more individuals, or to an organisation”. “Serious disruption” includes “noise”, meaning that any protest can be declared illegal.

Police are also granted massive new stop and search powers and the right to issue “Serious Disruption Prevention Orders” (SDPO). An SDPO can be imposed on people who have participated in at least two protests within a five-year period, whether or not they have been convicted of an offence. The person can be served a two-year order forbidding them from attending further protests.

Those handed an SDPO can be forced to wear an electronic tag to monitor their movements.

Jail sentences of up to 51 weeks are introduced for people who “lock on” to immovable objects or each other.

To impose this dictatorial assault, Sunak brought back as home secretary one of the most right-wing figures in the Tory party, Suella Braverman. This was just days after she was forced to stand down from the position for breaching the ministerial code.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman leaves the first Cabinet meeting under Prime Minister Liz Truss in 10 Downing Street. September 7, 2022, London. [Photo by Simon Dawson/No 10 Downing Street / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Two days before Truss resigned, Braverman slipped through a last-minute amendment to the Public Order Bill allowing the home secretary of the day to apply for injunctions against anyone they deem “likely” to carry out protests that could cause “serious disruption” to “key national infrastructure”, prevent access to “essential” goods or services, or have a “serious adverse effect on public safety”.

In the final House of Commons vote on the Public Order Bill, before it was sent to the House of Lords second chamber for scrutiny, the government won with a majority of 49. Labour voted against only on the basis that the current repressive apparatus of the state was adequate to clamp down on protests. But Labour MP Sarah Jones boasted, “The Labour Party, last April, called for greater injunction powers following the disruption by Just Stop Oil… We suggested injunctions because they are more likely to prevent further disruption to, say, an oil terminal than more offences to criminalise conduct after it has taken place, with all the added costs and logistics of removal. Injunctions are more straightforward for the police, they have more safeguards as they are granted by a court, and they are future-proof when protesters change tactics.”

With further protests held by environmental groups, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer warned of the repression he had lined up were Labour to take office. He told an LBC Radio phone-in show Monday that during his tenure (2008-2013) as director of public prosecutions, “we always had laws available” to prosecute people taking such action.

He added, “What we were pushing for in that was longer sentences for those who were gluing themselves to roads and motorways. We didn’t get that through, but that’s what I wanted.” Asked by host Nick Ferrari, “And that’s what you’d want in the future?”, Starmer replied, “Yes.”

The unions have done nothing to mobilise their millions of members against the legislation. The only response from the Trades Union Congress was a declaration from outgoing leader Frances O’Grady, “If ministers cross the road to pick a fight with us then we will meet them halfway… Read my lips: We will see you in court.”

Among the key section of workers the legislation is aimed at suppressing are tens of thousands of rail staff, who have taken national strike action throughout the last few months. The Minimum Service legislation sets the stage for mass firings, with the government stating that under it “specified workers who still take strike action will lose their protection from automatic unfair dismissal.”

Train drivers picket line at London's Euston station, October 1, 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

The main concern of ASLEF train drivers’ union leader Mick Whelan was that the Minimum Services Level legislation “will only lead to industrial strife lasting longer.” Whelan played down the dangers of the savage legislation and intentions of the Tory government, stating, “The government claims that similar legislation exists in other European countries, such as Germany, France, and Spain. Yes, it does, but what the government doesn’t know—or doesn’t choose to say—is that it is not enforced. Because they know it doesn’t work.”

This is false. Not only is such legislation used by these governments and others; even more draconian legislation has been used as the class struggle sharpens throughout Europe on a regular basis.

This year alone, striking Spanish airline workers and metal workers have been subjected to Minimum Service orders. This summer Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government and Ryanair imposed a minimum service requirement preventing many workers from legally stopping work. In the case of the metal workers’ strike in Cantabria, 150 workers were banned from striking by the imposition of a 100 percent minimum service requirement in 12 companies.

This month the Macron government in France requisitioned striking refinery workers to force them back to work in order to break a powerful action hitting the arteries of the economy.

This offensive has accelerated over the last decade as the ruling class in Europe enforced brutal austerity to make workers pay for the 2008 global financial meltdown.

In December 2010, Spain’s PSOE government forced 2,200 air traffic controllers back to work at gunpoint to smash a wildcat strike. Armed soldiers stood over them with the threat of immediate arrest should they stop work.

In January 2013, the New Democracy-led Greek coalition government, which included the social democratic PASOK and the Democratic Left, placed striking metro workers under martial law, forcing them back to work under pain of imprisonment. The following month, the coalition invoked emergency powers in the form of a “civil mobilisation,” formally conscripting striking ferry workers into military service and ordering them to return to work.

Erdoğan orders Turkish Medical Association head detained

Ulaş Ateşçi

The police detention of Prof. Dr. Şebnem Korur Fincancı, president of the Turkish Medical Association (TTB), from her home in Istanbul yesterday is a assault on basic democratic rights. The World Socialist Web Site protests her arbitrary detention and demands her release.

In this Feb. 4, 2022 file photo, Sebnem Korur Fincanci, the head of the Turkish Medical Association, speaks during a protest in Ankara, Turkey. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici, File)

Fincancı’s detention provoked protests in many cities, including Istanbul, Izmir, Diyarbakır and Adana yesterday. The TTB’s Central Council issued a formal protest, stating: “The detention decision, which follows statements by government circles interfering in the judiciary, constitutes the final stage of the pressure that these circles have been increasing against the TTB and all labor and professional organizations for a long time.”

It asserted that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government aims to get the TTB under its control: “As a matter of fact, the government has admitted that it will use this agenda created in the public opinion for an amendment in the Law on Professional Organizations.”

Last week, Fincancı, a forensic medicine specialist and the elected leader of the TTB, whose membership includes over 100,000 doctors, told Medya Haber of the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) in its ongoing operation against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) forces in Iraqi Kurdistan. On October 18, the pro-PKK Fırat News Agency (ANF) published footage of two PKK militants allegedly exposed to chemical weapons by the Turkish army.

In an interview with Medya Haber, Fincancı stated that she had watched the footage, adding: “Obviously, one of the toxic-poisonous chemical gases that directly affects the nervous system have been used. Although its use is forbidden, we see that it is used in conflicts.”

The Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office took immediate action on the instructions of the Erdoğan government to investigate Fincancı. In a statement, it said that the investigation was opened “on charges of ... making propaganda for a terrorist organization and ... insulting the Turkish Nation, the State of the Republic of Turkey, the institutions and organs of the State due to her statements to the so-called media organ of the PKK/YPG armed terrorist organization.” It also demanded that Fincancı be dismissed as TTB president.

Speaking to bianet on the same day, Fincancı criticized Medya Haber, stating: “I criticize the way my statements were presented; it was irresponsible reporting. … I stated that these involuntary movements could occur with the effect of a chemical getting hold of the nervous system and that an effective investigation should be carried out in relation to this if there were allegations that a chemical had been used.”

Fincancı continued: “I stated that if there was death, it was necessary to make a medical investigation according to the Minnesota Protocol and that it is compulsory that the investigation should be carried out by independent institutions since this is considered as a war crime in the scope of the Geneva Convention. However, the presentation of the news was indicating that I had proven this incident, so it was not reflected very correctly.”

“Opening an investigation to the one who is saying ‘an investigation should be made’ gives the impression of concealing a crime,” she said. However, Fincancı has been targeted by the government and bourgeois media, despite the absence of any criminal offense, and was detained yesterday after her house was raided, even though she had previously declared her readiness to testify.

The TTB have organized numerous nationwide strikes for better wages and conditions this year. Moreover, Fincancı and the TTB have also been in the government’s crosshairs due to its opposition to the government’s concealment and manipulation of pandemic data.

Until recently, the TTB opposed Erdoğan’s “herd immunity” policies that put profit before human life. Fincancı also drew attention to this in the interview, saying: “We were also criminalized as a professional organization during the pandemic process when we said, ‘your data and the data we compiled from the field do not coincide.’ Human rights defenders are constantly criminalized. So it is not surprising that an investigation was opened ...”

On October 18, the Kurdish nationalist Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) brought the alleged use of chemical weapons before parliament and demanded an investigation. But the Defense Ministry rapidly denied the allegations. “There are no chemical weapons in the inventory of the Turkish Armed Forces,” Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on Friday. “We respect the borders and sovereign rights of all our neighbors, especially Iraq and Syria,” Akar claimed in the same speech.

In reality, both the Syrian and Iraqi governments are demanding that Turkey withdraw its armed forces from their territory.

On the same day, Erdoğan said his government will pursue Fincancı, declaring, “My friends immediately filed lawsuits [against her] and we will definitely not let this go. We will go after her by opening both compensation and severe criminal cases. Our Armed Forces have never had any negligence such as using chemical weapons.”

Remarkably, Erdoğan also claimed these allegations were “slanders of communists,” stating: “This is not the first time they are making these slanders. They are impudent, they are immoral. This is the mud they always throw at our army. They think that if they throw mud, it will leave a trace. This [slandering] is the most important motto of communism and communists. Since these are their remnants, they will always throw such slanders. And we will hold them to account for it within the law, whatever it takes.”

On Sunday, Devlet Bahçeli, the head of the MHP, the fascistic ally of the Erdoğan government, called Fincanci a “terrorist and a criminal.” He said, “Anyone who clings to the slanders of the separatist terrorist organization PKK and accuses honorable Turkish soldiers is a terrorist, dishonorable, traitor and criminal.” On Tuesday, Bahçeli also called to close the TTB and strip Fincanci of Turkish citizenship.

TTB was also targeted by Erdoğan at the beginning of 2018. Eleven members of the TTB’s central council were detained for issuing a statement opposing the war, titled “War is a Matter of Public Health,” after Ankara’s invasion in northern Syria against the US-backed, Kurdish-nationalist People’s Protection Units (YPG) around Afrin. Prior to these detentions, Erdoğan had declared them “traitors” and “terrorist lovers.”

In Iraq, where allegations of the use of chemical weapons have been raised, the Turkish army has been conducting military operations code-named “Claw” against the PKK since 2019. After the 'Claw Lock” operation began this April, the Iraqi central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government blamed Turkey for a bombardment in July that killed many civilians. Ankara denied the allegation, however, implicitly blaming the attack on the PKK.

The detention of the TTB’s president comes as the government steps up attacks on democratic rights amid growing social discontent with the cost of living. Amid ongoing military operations in Iraq and Syria and growing tensions with Greece in the eastern Mediterranean, the Turkish government is promoting militarism to suppress and divert class tensions.

Moreover, a so-called censorship bill openly targeting all kinds of political and social opposition was recently passed into law. It asserts that “publicly disseminating untrue information on social media about the country’s internal and external security, public order and public health in order to create fear and panic among the public in a way that is conducive to disrupting public peace will be punishable by one to three years in prison.”

The day before Fincancı's detention, nine Kurdish journalists working for the Mesopotamia Agency (MA) and JINNEWS were detained. The Ankara Security Directorate shared footage of the journalists being taken into custody in handcuffs, claiming that the journalists were operating under the “press committee of the PKK/KCK terrorist organization” and that they were “reporting on content that incites hatred and hostility among the public.” Last June, 16 journalists were arrested in another antidemocratic police operation against the Kurdish press. They are still being held in prison without charge.

Sri Lankan president declares “harder times are inevitable”

Saman Gunadasa

In an address to the nation on October 19, Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe declared that his government will implement the International Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity program to the very last letter.

Ranil Wickremesinghe [Photo: United National Party Facebook]

“If we withdraw from this program,” he said, “we will not receive assistance from the IMF.” Moreover, without IMF certification, he added, the government would not be able to get further help from institutions like the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and various countries.

“If that happens, the country will be back to the era of queues,” he warned, pointing out to the acute scarcities of essential food, medicines, fuel and gas during the past months. In the same breath, the president insisted that “harder times are inevitable.”

Echoing the president in an interview on October 22, Central Bank Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe declared that, as far as he could see, the IMF was “the only way out” to achieve economic recovery.

Wickremesinghe’s speech and Weerasinghe’s remarks came amid an uproar from big business lobbies over the government’s new tax increases announced in early October.

The government agreed to the IMF goal of lifting state revenue collection to between 14.5 to 15 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2026, through massive tax increases. In 2022, revenue is estimated to be only around 9 percent of GDP.

Wickremesinghe was seeking to console big business by referring to the massive tax concessions of up to 50 percent given by the previous government. Sri Lankan corporations have reaped unprecedented record profits during the past two years.

The government has proposed the corporate tax rate to be increased to 30 percent, which is still lower than some South Asian corporate tax rates. Most big business investors are enjoying decades of tax holidays and concessions.

However, those hit hardest by the new taxes will not be big business but workers, professionals, self-employed people, small and micro-businesses. The government has brought down the monthly taxable threshold from 300,000 ($US820) to 100,000 rupees. Some workers are drawing monthly salaries and allowances of 100,000 rupees.

Wickremesinghe’s claim to have eased burdens on working people that led to months of mass strikes and protests since April is a lie. The government has increased the supply of some goods in a limited way, but the doubling and trebling prices of all essentials has made the cost unbearable for ordinary people.

New tax burdens come as workers and the poor have been battered by hyper-inflation. According to the government’s figures, the annualized inflation rate rose to 70 percent in September nationally, while food inflation increased to more than 80 percent. The food inflation rate has ballooned to 102 percent from 2020 which means the real value of wages has declined by around 50 percent.

Sri Lanka announced a temporary default on foreign loans in April, due to an acute lack of foreign exchange. The IMF requires the country to negotiate with creditors to restructure the defaulted loans to assure repayment. To fulfill this requirement, the government has to implement the IMF austerity program and squeeze workers and the poor to repay the sharks of international finance capital.

Apart from direct price increases and tax hikes, the government has to privatize or commercialise state-owned corporations, slash hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs and further reduce welfare subsidies.

Sri Lanka’s economic turmoil is the sharpest expression of the worsening global economic crisis exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the “let it rip” policy of the governments around the world, and the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine.

The World Bank report on Sri Lanka issued on October 12 noted: “The current crisis has doubled the poverty rate from 13.1 to 25.6 percent ($3.65 per capita, 2017) between 2021 and 2022, increasing the number of poor people by 2.7 million.”

The poverty rate in urban areas has tripled from 5 to 15 percent in the same period. “Half the population in estate areas is now living below the poverty line. Across districts, Mullaithivu continues to be the poorest (57 percent poverty in 2022), followed by Kilinochchi and Nuwara Eliya,” the report states.

Young family from Deeside Estate in Maskeliya, Nuwara Eliya District, Sri Lanka, 12 September 2022. [Photo: WSWS]

However, a recent survey by Peradeniya University’s economics statistics department put the number below the poverty line at 9.6 million, or 45 percent of the population.

According to the World Bank, GDP growth rate will be negative 9.2 percent for this year and the decline will continue into next year. Industry and service sectors are predicted to decline by 11 percent and 8 percent destroying half a million jobs.

Moreover, there is no economic recovery as Wickremesinghe and the Central Bank chief claimed. The growing recessionary conditions internationally will only worsen with the US Federal Reserve and other central banks raising interest rates.

The IMF programme is supported by all the opposition parties in the country. Iran Wickremaratne, a leading MP of the main opposition Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB), said that the “targets set by IMF must be reasonable and achievable.”

A Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) leader told a TV programme on Hiru last week that implementing the IMF program is inevitable after the country declared bankruptcy. He added that people will have to undergo hardships for several years, saying the JVP was prepared to form a government through a general election to carry out this agenda.

The trade unions also accept the IMF program. On Saturday, Pradeep Basnayake, national organiser of the Sri Lanka Government Officers’ Trade Union Association that claims 500,000 members, told the Morning news: “If the government cannot increase the salaries of its employees, it should provide them with an interim allowance until the economy recovers.”

This is the position of all trade unions. They agree with the capitalist class that the working class must bear the burden and simply appeal to the government for limited concessions. The trade unions have been instrumental in derailing, dividing and suppressing the mass popular opposition that has erupted. All these unions are controlled or backed by the political parties—government and opposition—that support the IMF program.

US expands military presence near Russian border

Andre Damon

This month, the US Army’s 101st Airborne Division deployed to Europe for the first time since the Second World War as part of a major military buildup of NATO’s front line along the borders of Ukraine and Russia.

NATO members are sending “more ships, planes and troops to NATO’s eastern flank, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south,” NATO said in a statement earlier this month.

CBS titled its profile of the deployment, “The U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne is practicing for war with Russia just miles from Ukraine’s border.”

Brigadier General John Lubas, noting that nearly 5,000 troops from the 101st Airborne had joined the more than 100,000 soldiers deployed in Europe, told CBS, “This is not a training deployment, this is a combat deployment for us. We understand we need to be ready to fight tonight.”

A graphic created by NATO showing the military alliance's "eastern flank." [Photo: NATO]

CBS’s “embedded” reporter concluded, “If the fighting escalates or there’s any attack on NATO, they’re fully prepared to cross the border into Ukraine.”

The last time the unit was deployed to Europe was in the storming of D-Day during the Second World War. “The 101st hasn’t been back to Europe since the end of World War II,” 2nd Lt. Patrick Tabor said in a statement. “Now we’re back aligned underneath the 1st Infantry Division. It’s a very unique opportunity.”

The 101st Airborne is being deployed in Romania as part of the NATO battle group set up in May.

Speaking Wednesday to Romanian Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg described the extent of NATO’s buildup in the region: “You host one of NATO’s new battlegroups in the Black Sea region. We are reinforcing NATO’s presence from the Black to the Baltic Sea. Fighter jets from Canada help to keep your skies safe. And thousands of French, Dutch, Belgian and US troops are in Romania to deter aggression.”

Replying to what he called Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “dangerous nuclear rhetoric,” Stoltenberg said, “NATO will not be intimidated or deterred from supporting Ukraine’s right to self-defense.”

Following the outbreak of the Ukraine war, NATO reinforced its existing four battle groups in Eastern Europe and pledged to form four additional battle groups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.

“This has brought the total number of multinational battlegroups to eight, effectively doubled the number of troops on the ground and extended NATO’s forward presence along the Alliance’s eastern flank—from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south,” NATO said in a statement last week.

This expansion is proceeding further, with NATO allies pledging at the June summit in Madrid to “enhance the multinational battlegroups from battalions up to brigade size.”

In a provocative article entitled, “American Troops Prepared to Engage in War With Russia,” Newsweek reported, “A U.S. aircraft carrier is prepared to lead an international charge should Russia escalate attacks against Ukraine and its allies.”

Newsweek noted, “The USS George H.W. Bush … is in the Adriatic Sea leading Neptune Strike 2022—a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) deployment that tests deterrence and defense in the Euro-Atlantic area.”

“The Neptune series is a tangible demonstration of the power and capability of the NATO Alliance in all domain operations,” Vice Admiral Thomas Ishee, commander of the US Sixth Fleet and Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO, said in announcing the exercise.

“Neptune Strike 2022 is a prime example of NATO’s ability to integrate high-end maritime warfare capabilities of an allied carrier strike group, ensuring our collective ability to deter and defend.”

The exercise includes over 80 aircraft, 14 ships and approximately 6,000 personnel.

On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden met with leaders of the Defense Department, pledging to expand the size and funding of the US military.

“We made clear in the National Security Strategy that modernizing and strengthening our military is a core source of our national strength and is a priority for me and my administration,” Biden said.

“And as we made clear in the National Security Strategy, this is a decisive decade, not because of any one of us—because the world is changing.”

On Wednesday, Russia staged a series of nuclear tests, demonstrating “Russia’s strategic offensive forces’ readiness to conduct a massive nuclear strike in response to an enemy nuclear strike,” in the words of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

Shoigu said the nuclear test, the first since the start of the war in Ukraine, was designed to simulate a “massive nuclear strike.”

Russia launched an intercontinental ballistic missile, fired a missile from a nuclear submarine and carried out tests with two Tu-95 long-range strategic nuclear bombers.

Russia’s drills took place at the same time as NATO’s “steadfast noon” nuclear tests, in which US B-52s simulated dropping nuclear bombs in Europe. The drills are ongoing and will continue trough October 30.

Also Wednesday, the US launched a rocket from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, conducting nearly a dozen hypersonic weapon experiments in their rush to build new hypersonic missiles that could be used to deliver nuclear warheads.

Under these supercharged conditions, in which both the United States and NATO are carrying out nuclear weapons tests on a daily basis, the danger exists that a miscalculation or provocation could dramatically escalate the conflict.

“Reconstruction of Ukraine” Conference: The dispute over the spoils has begun

Peter Schwarz

War promises profits. This is also true for the Ukrainian war. Before an end to the fighting is in sight, the dispute over the division of the spoils has already begun. Therein lies the significance of the so-called “Expert Conference on the Reconstruction of Ukraine,” which took place in Berlin on Tuesday under the patronage of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Ursula von der Leyen and Olaf Scholz welcome Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal at the Ukraine Reconstruction Conference [Photo by Bundesregierung/Hartmann]

Huge sums are at stake. At the beginning of July, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal put the financial requirements for reconstruction at $750 billion, while the World Bank and the EU Commission cited the sum of $349 billion in September. These figures, which refer only to the first three months of the war, are now considered outdated. And they do not include the billions with which the US and Europe are supporting the Ukrainian military.

A fierce dispute is raging over how such large sums are to be raised and who will benefit from them. One thing is certain, however. The Ukrainian population will not see any of it. Whatever ends up flowing will end up in the bank accounts of Ukrainian oligarchs and Western corporations. The latter not only expect good business from the “reconstruction” but also a dominant influence over the Ukrainian economy. German corporations, in particular, are waiting impatiently to profit from the consequences of the war and to play the leading role in Ukraine in the future.

The day before the reconstruction conference, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal opened the 5th German-Ukrainian Business Forum. The Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations (Ostausschuss der deutschen Wirtschaft), which organized the forum in collaboration with other business associations and the Ukrainian government, was pleased: “The large turnout at the conference showed the broad interest of German business in getting involved in reconstruction. It was the first such conference in Germany since the start of the war, and at the same time the most high-profile event of its kind to date.”

Working groups of German companies and business associations had written a dossier for the forum, “Rebuild Ukraine,” which encourages the Ukrainian government to “strategically use allocated funds and policy decisions in a way that creates incentives for the private sector to invest and create wealth.” It describes numerous investment opportunities and breaks them down into construction, logistics and infrastructure, digitalization, energy, health and agribusiness.

Ukrainian Trade Minister Yulia Svyrydenko promised the assembled business representatives to reduce the role of the state through privatization. German Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) enticed them with the prospect: “Ukraine is a premium trading partner for raw materials, energy and as a supplier. It is therefore worth any commitment to bring Ukraine closer to the EU’s internal market.”

The following day, the conference addressed the task of raising the huge sums needed to integrate Ukraine into the EU internal market as a raw materials supplier and subcontractor.

“Even though one should always be careful with historical comparisons, what is at stake here is nothing less than creating a new Marshall Plan for the 21st century,” Scholz and von der Leyen wrote in a joint guest article for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Under the Marshall Plan, the United States had helped Western European capitalism get back on its feet after World War II.

“Reconstruction will be a big, big task,” Scholz added. “And we will have to invest a great deal to make it work well. Ukraine can’t do it alone. Nor can the European Union do it alone. Only the whole global community can do that.”

Von der Leyen also stressed that no country or union could handle reconstruction alone. Strong partners such as the United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, Australia and other countries were needed, as well as institutions such as the World Bank. Every euro, every dollar, every pound, every yen was an investment in Ukraine, he said.

However, in Scholz’s “global community” there are highly divergent views about the division of labour when it comes to “reconstruction.” Washington, Brussels, Berlin and other European capitals are bitterly arguing over who pays, who decides and who benefits.

Washington’s position is that since it bears the brunt of military support, Europe must therefore shoulder the lion’s share of reconstruction. Germany’s attempt to establish itself as the leading economic power in Ukraine is viewed with suspicion in the United States and in other European states. Washington is therefore not prepared to leave the management of Ukraine’s “reconstruction” to Brussels or Berlin.

Conflicts also exist over whether Ukraine should be supported with grants or with repayable loans. The US and Germany are in favour of grants, while most other European countries are in favour of loans.

The conference in Berlin was not supposed to make any decisions but to scope out the terrain. Scholz and von der Leyen had invited high-level economic experts, government policymakers, members of think tanks and representatives of international institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, to make “expert recommendations on how to proceed.”

The German Marshall Fund (GMF) think tank produced a detailed study on the reconstruction of Ukraine. It advocates giving the leadership not to the EU but to the G7, the association of the seven leading Western industrialized countries, so as not to deepen the conflict with the United States.

“Because security and reconstruction are mutually dependent, they must be joint tasks of the West,” Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, the head of the GMF study, writes in the Tagesspiegel. “Under no circumstances should the United States take over military aid and leave reconstruction to the Europeans and other donors. Experience shows that mutual criticism would begin on day one.”

The study goes on to suggest that an “American with global standing” be appointed as supreme coordinator. This is because only the US was “capable of bringing together the necessary global coalition and building consensus among Ukraine’s partners.”

Kleine-Brockhoff had already played a key role in provoking the Ukraine conflict in 2013-14 as director of the German Marshall Fund and as German President Joachim Gauck’s chief of planning staff, about which the WSWS has reported.

The struggle for future economic control over Ukraine is just one aspect showing that this war is not about defending “democracy” but about imperialist interests. After a “reconstruction” as envisioned by Berlin, Brussels and Washington, Ukraine would not be “free” but a semi-colony of Western powers—a source of cheap raw materials and even cheaper labour; ruled by an authoritarian oligarchic regime that pays homage to Nazi collaborators, censors the press and has banned a dozen political parties since the war began.

Yet control of Ukraine is only a secondary goal for NATO. Its main interest is Russia, its vast landmass and immense raw materials. To inflict a military defeat on Russia and bring the country under their control, the US and its European allies are escalating the war ever further, even at the risk of a nuclear catastrophe.

Sunak unveils UK government of austerity and war

Robert Stevens

New Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s speech on entering Downing Street made clear that this near billionaire will act on the dictates of the financial oligarchy he himself epitomises.

 “I am standing here as your new Prime Minister,” he intoned. “Right now our country is facing a profound economic crisis. The aftermath of Covid still lingers. Putin’s war in Ukraine has destabilised energy markets and supply chains the world over.”

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaking as he arrives in Downing Street. October 25, 2022, London, United Kingdom. [Photo by Lauren Hurley/No 10 Downing Street/Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

The prime minister he deposed, Liz Truss, had made “some mistakes… I will place economic stability and confidence at the heart of this government’s agenda. This will mean difficult decisions to come.”

Sunak offered as his credentials his rolling out, as a former chancellor, the multi-hundred billion bailout of the corporations at the outset of the pandemic.

The “difficult decisions” he cites is code for imposing the most savage austerity yet on the working class, as demanded by the markets who tore down Truss for not being ready to impose such an offensive immediately. The financial elite insisted that Jeremy Hunt be urgently brought in to replace Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor to tear up the unfunded tax giveaway budget for big business and replace it with “eye-wateringly” brutal austerity.

Sunak has now carried out a major clear-out of 11 of Truss’s ministers, but ensured that Hunt was kept as chancellor. In less than a week, on October 31, Hunt will present—as demanded by the global financial aristocracy—an emergency fiscal statement focused on escalating austerity against the working class.

There will no increase in public spending, while billions more will be diverted to fund the war machine. Sunak announced as a priority “Supporting our armed forces” to back “a terrible war that must be seen successfully to its conclusions”.

On this basis he retained Ben Wallace as defence minister. Last week Wallace, even as Truss was being wiped out, travelled to Washington to assure the Biden administration of Britain’s full backing of the US led NATO war against Russia in Ukraine. Biden congratulated Sunak Tuesday tweeting, “I look forward to enhancing our cooperation on issues critical to global security and prosperity, including continuing our strong support for Ukraine.”

As Sunak entered Downing Street, the British Army were deploying nearly 3,500 troops and up to 800 vehicles to Europe for their largest combat exercise on the continent for over a decade. The troops were part of Exercise Cerberus 22, a large-scale command post exercise, taking place in Germany. In a threat to Russia, a British Army Statement said, “the exercise, previously held in the UK on Salisbury Plain Training Area,” was taking place in “its new central European location to test its ability move personnel and equipment on a large scale and to operate in an expeditionary setting rather than being close to home.”

Colonel Owain Luke, Chief of Staff, Headquarters 3rd United Kingdom Division (3 (UK) Div), who are running the exercise, declared, “In addition to British brigades on the exercise… we are also joined by the 3rd Brigade Combat Team from the American 1st Cavalry Division. This exercise is also about building our interoperability with US Forces as well as aligning with NATO procedures and working under Headquarters Allied Rapid Reaction Corps.”

While Sunak has not yet committed, as Truss did, to increasing military spending to 3 percent of GDP by the end of the decade (£157 billion in extra funding) he will be told in no uncertain terms by Washington to do so.

Among the few others who retained their positions from the Truss government is Foreign Secretary James Cleverly. Cleverly only entered parliament in 2015 but has positioned himself as a leading anti-China hawk. In line with US imperialism’s confrontation of China, and Britain’s increasingly provocative manoeuvres, Cleverly said in the summer, “we do need to look at China’s influence, not just on the world stage but here in the UK”.

Dominic Raab, who served under Boris Johnson, returns as deputy prime minister and justice secretary. In the summer, before being sidelined by Truss, Raab introduced in parliament his Bill of Rights that is set to replace and eviscerate key provisions of the Human Rights Act.

Suella Braverman, a vicious right-winger, resigned from Truss’s government last week after being in breach of the ministerial code and launched an attack on her for not being firmly committed to anti-migrant measures. Sunak reappointed her as home secretary. She is charged with extricating Britain from the European Convention on Human Right (ECHR), after lawyers for asylum seekers used it to halt a deportation flight to Rwanda sanctioned under the Nationality and Borders Act. She wrote in Parliament’s House magazine in July, “Leaving the ECHR is the only solution which solves the problem” claiming it would “entirely consistent with international law.”

The financial markets were immediately buoyed by Sunak appointments and pledges, with the pound hitting its highest level since before the Truss/Kwarteng mini-budget. The cost of government borrowing fell back to the level it was before the budget.

This is just the calm before the storm in which Sunak’s agenda will be shipwrecked. He has an appointment for a head-on conflict with the working class. Sunak must go on the offensive under conditions in which decades of attacks have forced workers to mount the fightback seen in this summer’s strike wave. As millions of workers fear even switching on the heating due to enormous annual bills that are set to soar above £4,300 next April, the country is being run by a prime minister who is expected to spend £14,000 just to heat a swimming pool at one of his four mansions.

Despite the trade union bureaucracy doing all they can to dampen down the movement, struggles so far have included rail, postal, bus, port, refuse workers and barristers. Strikes involving up to 2 million public sector workers are in the offing in the next weeks and months. This week 70,000 university lecturers, librarians and admin staff at 150 universities voted to strike to demand better pay and working conditions, and to defend their pension rights.

Sunak is faced with a modern-day version of the 12 tasks that even Hercules would balk at. The Financial Times warned in an editorial ahead of the cabinet being selected of “Rishi Sunak’s uphill struggle to restore British stability”, as the “Former chancellor was least bad option to be the next Conservative premier”.

It added, “The party has also changed leader for a second time midterm through a deeply undemocratic process of its own devising… If Sunak cannot quickly restore stability, an election will be unavoidable.

Moreover, “He inherits a deeply fractured party facing decisions on issues such as spending and immigration that will inflame the fault-lines. Sunak is under pressure from the rightwing to scrap post-Brexit trading rules with Northern Ireland, poisoning relations with the EU.”

The sordid changeover of yet another unelected Tory prime minister was only possible due to the role of Labour and trade union bureaucracy, which has kept the government afloat during the last seven years of ever deepening crisis for British capitalism.

Labour’s role as bitter enemy of the working class was demonstrated by the tweet party leader Sir Keir Starmer issued Tuesday. He has called for a general election, which Labour, backed by sections of the ruling class see as vital for the rescue of British capitalism. But his first move as another bitter enemy of the working class entered Downing Street was to declare, “Congratulations, Rishi Sunak, on becoming Prime Minister and making history as the first British Asian PM.”

PSOE-Podemos, unions oversee largest growth of inequality in Spain since 2008 crash

Santiago Guillen

Labor Minister Yolanda Diaz Perez of Spain with U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty J. Walsh in the background. [Photo by U.S. Department of Labor / CC BY 2.0]

Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government is overseeing the largest fall in living standards since the 2008 global economic crisis, and the savage EU austerity imposed by successive PSOE and right-wing Popular Party governments at the behest of the banks.

Since the pandemic hit in March 2020, inequality has surged due to massive bank bailouts and the NATO war in Ukraine against Russia. According to the National Institute of Statistics (INE), the Spanish population at risk of poverty or social exclusion increased in 2021 to 27.8 percent. In 2018 it was 21.5 percent, which means that more than 1 million people fell into poverty over the last two years.

The latest report from the FOESSA foundation, linked to the Catholic charity Caritas, points in the same direction. Six million people in Spain are in a state of severe social exclusion, an increase of 50 percent over 2018; less than half of households are safe from suffering some type of social exclusion.

According to the NGO Save the Children, one in three Spanish children lives in poverty, suffers from severe material deprivation or lives in households with low employment intensity—i.e., whose working age members did less than 20 percent of their total work potential in the year prior to the survey. Spain is the third European country with the highest rate of risk of poverty and child exclusion, only surpassed by Romania and Bulgaria.

At the same time, the ongoing capitalist breakdown has been seized upon by the capitalist oligarchy occupying the heights of society to plunder unprecedented wealth. As Marx wrote, the accumulation of wealth at one pole requires the accumulation of poverty, misery and degradation at the other.

The annual report of the European Network for the Fight against Poverty and Social Exclusion, indicates that the income of the richest 10 percent of society grew by 11.8 percent more than that of the poorest 10 percent in 2021, 1.3 percentage points more than in 2020. This increase is the largest in the 13 years since this study has been carried out.

All these data mark a catastrophic situation for working families. The worst, however, is yet to come, as inflation skyrockets well above wage increases. Only 400,000 workers out of a workforce of 20 million have salary revision clauses pegged to inflation. The trade unions are the chief guarantors of this policy, actively working with employers to enforce wage agreements well below inflation, which in September was 9 percent. De facto, this implies widespread real wage declines.

For example, in the metal sector, the average salary increase will be only 2.29 percent for almost 940,000 workers. In the chemical sector it will be only 2 percent this year, after rising only 1 percent in 2021 (with an inflation of 6.5 percent). Construction wages will rise 4 percent, while for civil servants it will be only 3.5 percent. In banking, the union bureaucracies signed ridiculous increases of 2.5 percent in 2021, 1 percent in 2022 and 1.25 percent in 2023.

For 75 percent of workers with a collective agreement, raises will not reach 4 percent, and it will be even worse for the 65 percent of Spanish workers who are not subject to any agreement.

The union leaders defend their role as the domestic police force to enforce wage increases below inflation to allow the financial oligarchy to increase its profits and wage NATO’s war in Ukraine. Javier Pacheco, general secretary of the Podemos-linked Workers Commissions (CC.OO) of Catalonia recently declared: “I don’t think we are in a position to agree on collective agreements with wage increases at today’s inflation levels.”

For more and more working class families, it will be impossible to make ends meet. Although inflation stands at 9 percent, many basic products have seen their prices rise much higher. A study by the Organization of Consumers and Users pointed out that in one year, the average price of food has risen by 15.2 percent—pasta has risen 59.9 percent, olive oil 52.6 percent, wheat flour by 49.7 percent and eggs by 45.9 percent.

To the rise of food is added that of housing. According to real estate portal Fotocasa, rents in Spain have risen 41 percent between 2015 and 2021. But even more serious may be the rise in mortgages for those who have bought a home. The increases in interest rates that the European Central Bank is enforcing is increasing mortgage payments. The number of variable mortgages revalued annually has increased by 35 percent in September, which means about €180 more monthly cost for an average loan.

The situation was summed up by economist Elisabet Ruiz-Dotras, a professor at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) who told the daily El Pais: “We are at the beginning of something serious ... prices have risen a lot, and we notice it in the supermarket or electricity bills. If we add the rise in mortgage payments, there is little room left for families.”

That is also the opinion of many charity organisations dedicated to social assistance. The Red Cross expects to have to serve 400,000 more people this year, and Cáritas will spend 10 percent more money to serve the same people than in 2021, although they are aware that they will have many more requests.

The social catastrophe is yet another devastating exposure of the anti-working class policies and imperialist militarism of the pseudo-left Podemos party.

The PSOE-Podemos government claims it is addressing the situation in the 2023 budget, presented as Spain’s highest social expenditure in history. Podemos leader and Labor Minister Yolanda Díaz said: “They are General State Budgets that speak to working people, to those who have been worst hit.”

However, as the WSWS has noted, this is false. The increase in social spending is well below the level of inflation. The main budgetary increase is in defence spending, which will reach almost €27 billion, 2.17 percent of GDP, according to the pacifist Delàs Center for Peace Studies. It will even exceed NATO’s request to its members to reach 2 percent of GDP spent on defence. This is a clear support for NATO’s militaristic policy and its war against Russia in Ukraine.

Another important item of expenditure will be the €31 billion provided for the payment of interest on the public debt and which will end up in the hands of banks and large international investment funds. Compared to these figures, only €2.7 million will be spent on the Minimum Vital Income, the money aimed at preventing the risk of poverty and social exclusion, or the €3.4 million for the care of dependent people.

The working class must take stock and draw fundamental political conclusions. Three years in power, the PSOE-Podemos government’s promises have proven to be a fraud. Podemos is presiding over a social crisis on a scale not seen since the hunger years after the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Meanwhile profits are soaring: in 2021, companies obtained a record net profit of €57 billion.