Industrial court endorses sacking of Australian miners after union betrayal

Oscar Grenfell 

The full bench of the Fair Work Commission (FWC), the federal government’s industrial tribunal, last week endorsed the sacking of 83 workers at Anglo-American’s German Creek mine near Middlemount in Central Queensland. The dismissals took place in November, amid strike action targeting the mining giant’s move to cut wages and conditions via a new Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA).

The ruling is the latest in a series of interventions by the FWC into industrial disputes that underscore its role as an apparatus of the corporate elite. It is the second time that the commission has backed Anglo-American’s job cuts at German Creek—the full bench rejected a trade union appeal against the initial decision last November.

In recent decisions, the FWC also backed AGL’s moves to slash the wages of 570 workers at the Loy Yang power plant in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, by up to 65 percent. In December, it endorsed 1,600 job cuts by Essential Energy. In other cases, the commission has banned industrial action by energy and other workers.

The plight of the sacked miners, who have been left jobless amid a marked slowdown in the mining sector, is a direct result of the activities of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU). Far from in any way challenging FWC and its repressive powers, the union acts as its policeman in suppressing strike action.

The union did everything it could to isolate workers at the mine after they went on strike on August 19. Despite widespread support for the German Creek miners, the CFMEU blocked any strike action by workers at other mines. Having worn the striking workers down over more than four months, the union ended the industrial action at the beginning of January, without the workers securing any of their demands.

The FWC’s re-affirmed decision establishes a precedent for the victimisation of any workers who take industrial or political action against the corporate onslaught on jobs, wages and conditions.

The commission made clear that the “protections” for workers contained in Fair Work Australia laws, introduced by the previous Labor government with the backing of the CFMEU and every other union, are a sham. Under the legislation, it is supposedly illegal for employers to sack workers for taking legally-protected industrial action.

The full bench stated: “Employees who engage in protected industrial action are ‘protected’ in that their action is not unlawful under the [Fair Work] act and that they are immune from certain civil and criminal liability for engaging in the action.”

But this did not mean, the FWC declared, that an “employer of employees who take protected industrial action is not able to respond to protected industrial action, or to circumstances created by such action, in a manner that addresses its legitimate business interests, provided it meets its obligations under the act.”

In other words, while certain provisions in the legislation may prevent workers from being jailed, or subjected to massive fines, for taking industrial action during an EBA bargaining period, there is nothing to stop employers from sacking striking workers if it furthers their “business interests.”

The company claimed that during the strike it tested new efficiency measures, which caused the retrenchments. The union argued that the German Creek mine was being operated by the same number of employees, but with contractors replacing the striking workers.

The decision was hailed by industry groups and business figures, and prominently reported in the financial press. Tara Diamond of the Australian Mines and Metals Association declared that “reducing the mine’s labour costs was a commercial opportunity identified by the company as a result of the circumstances it was put in by its striking workforce.”

The FWC ruling appears to be at odds with a decision by a single Federal Court judge at the beginning of this month to grant interim orders temporarily reinstating two of the sacked miners. The judge declared that the retrenchments were not “bona fide” because they were taken in retaliation for the strike action.

The CFMEU had hailed the Federal Court decision, and used it to bludgeon workers into accepting the end of the strike, without any concessions from the company. Union officials touted future court action as the way forward, with CFMEU district vice president Glenn Powers stating: “Let me tell you this is far from over. We’ve got all sorts of things going on in the courts.”

Powers’ comments were in line with the union’s attempts to keep workers shackled within the framework of Fair Work’s draconian industrial laws.

The sacking of the German Creek miners is part of a sweeping restructure of the mining sector, being assisted by the CFMEU and other unions. At German Creek, Anglo-American is stepping up its use of casual and contract labour as part of a global overhaul of its operations. In 2015, the corporation announced it would sack 85,000 workers around the world and sell-off 60 percent of its mining assets, amid a slump in commodity prices.

The use of contract labor is already widespread in the industry. Contract workers are grossly underpaid and have few rights. Labour hire company, Delta SBD, for instance has reportedly slashed contract wages by 40 percent over the past two years.

Other operators are also carrying out substantial restructures. BHP Billiton is seeking to enforce a three-year wage freeze and sweeping cuts to conditions at its Queensland mines at Peak Downs, Saraji and Goonyella.

The CFMEU has already enforced the destruction of thousands of jobs across the sector. An estimated 4,600 coal jobs have been cut in the Mackay region of Queensland since 2012. Another 5,500 miners have been sacked in neighbouring New South Wales since 2014. Last June, the National Australia Bank predicted that 50,000 more jobs would be axed in the mining and resources sector during the ensuing two years.

Video game industry strike in US now second-longest in screen actors’ history

Kevin Martinez

Voice actors in the video game industry have now been on strike since October 21 against selected companies, including Activision, Electronic Arts, Disney, and Warner Brothers. The 99-day strike, called by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), is now the second longest in SAG history.

The walkout is over pay, residuals and work conditions. It has now surpassed the three-month strike in 1980 when actors and management were involved in a battle over contract terms for pay TV and videocassettes. That bitter strike occurred just a year before President Ronald Reagan (the former president of SAG who aided the anticommunist witch-hunt in the union in 1947-52) fired 13,000 striking air traffic controllers, initiating a decade of government-backed union busting and wage cutting by US corporations.

The longest walkout by SAG and AFTRA was the 183-day strike in 2000 against the advertising industry over commercial work compensation for basic cable and Internet. The current strike is the first in the history of the video gaming industry, the first actors’ strike in 17 years and the first since SAG and AFTRA merged in 2012.

Despite the intransigence of the giant media conglomerates, the union is isolating the struggle and has limited it to toothless appeals to management. SAG-AFTRA only ordered its members to stop working at 11 companies, two of which have since gone out of business since last year. The last time the union held a picket against one of the companies, Insomniac Games, was last November. A strike rally and token picket will be held on February 2.

The main issue in contention is residuals. The union wants the companies to either pay an upfront bonus or backend residuals for successful video games. Management has refused to budge on this question.

The union has asked for “full-scale payment” for every 500,000 video game units sold, with a maximum of four secondary payments if a game sells two million copies and every two million more. In addition, the union wants the industry to reduce the recording time for “vocally stressful” sessions to two hours, instead of four, to prevent an actor from hurting their voice.

The union is also asking for greater safety regulations for stunt work, as well as greater transparency. One of the demands is that workers be informed of the title and subject of the project they are working on, which is standard practice within the entertainment industry.

The companies reportedly offered a nine percent wage hike and additional compensation of $950 per game based on the number of voice acting sessions an actor performed for each game. Management knows fully well that such meager concessions will not impact the massive amount of profits they will make.

The unions have limited their strike to only video games that have gone into production after February 17, 2015. The union has blocked any common struggle with workers throughout the entertainment industry who face similar conditions at work and are struggling to keep a roof over their heads as well.

In a letter to SAG-AFTRA members, Gabrielle Carteris, president of the union, implored workers to “send management the message that resolving the strike will benefit everyone.” Workers are encouraged to attend the February 2 rally, the latest in a line of such protest, while the unions continue to promote the Democratic Party whose anti-working class policies paved the way for the Trump administration, the most right-wing government in US history.

In a related development, the Directors Guild of America (DGA) approved a new contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) that would increase wages by a mere 2.5 percent the first year and three percent in the second and third years of the agreement. These increases, which have been hailed by the union as an economic advancement for its members, do not begin to keep up with inflation and the soaring cost of rent and other living expenses.

The current master contract between SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP will expire on June 30, 2017, and the Writers Guild of America’s contract will expire on May 1. The SAG-AFTRA national board approved its negotiating package with AMPTP on January 21. This new package will ensure that workers’ demands are limited at the very start of negotiations.

Hamon presents pro-war, law-and-order program in French elections

Anthony Torres 

Benoît Hamon, after having beaten former Prime Minister Manuel Valls into second place in the Socialist Party (PS) presidential primary, is placed to become the PS’s candidate, according to polls.

Hamon’s rise since the beginning of the primary campaign reflects broad discontent with the current PS government, as well as media coverage for Hamon’s call for a universal minimum income paid by the state to everyone. Valls, though his poll ratings benefited as prime minister from media promotion of his law-and-order policies as interior and then prime minister, was suddenly overtaken by a relatively minor candidate. According to a BVA-Salesforce poll, Hamon is set to beat Valls with 52 percent of the vote in the second round.

Nonetheless, any attempt to register opposition to the PS’s agenda of war, austerity and police state measures through a vote for Hamon is doomed to failure. Despite media promotion of Hamon as “left” due to his promise to set up a universal income, Hamon defends a foreign policy of war and a law-and-order policy oriented to the security forces.

It represents in the final analysis an attempt to continue the policies of PS President François Hollande. In fact, in the first primary debate, Hamon said that Hollande’s government left “a feeling that things were partially done, as if we left many subjects in mid-stream.”

As the installation of Donald Trump in the White House underlines the rising danger of large-scale war between the major powers, Hamon calls for an offensive of French imperialism. In foreign policy, he is aligned with the CIA and the sections of American and European imperialism that are the most hostile against Russia, and who want to continue the war in Syria.

Hamon has attacked the cease-fire organized by Russia and Turkey from the standpoint of defending the influence of Washington and the major European powers, who provoked the war by arming Islamist “rebels” against the Syrian regime. “I do not want a cease-fire accord in Syria that would come about, as is the case now, without the United Nations, without the European Union, without the Americans and without the Arab societies,” he declared.

To justify a French policy of continuing to finance the “rebel”-held areas in Syria while opposing financial aid to the Syrian people, Hamon said: “Spending money on zones controlled by Bashar al Assad, I do not see very well why this should be a priority of the European Union, when there is in Syria a wide range of other potential partners, like the quasi-autonomous and self-ruled cities. We, on our part, do not have to limit ourselves to simply rebuilding what was methodically destroyed by the Russians and Assad’s regime.”

As a representative of French imperialism, Hamon calls for using military means to reinforce the influence of France in its former colonial empire and sphere of influence, as in the wars in Libya and Mali. Asked if he would have intervened in Africa as did President Nicolas Sarkozy and Hollande, he said: “If a sovereign state asked you to intervene militarily to prevent the rise of a jihadist ‘state’ just across the Mediterranean? Of course I would have intervened.”

Hamon is resolutely pro-war. He is the candidate that demands the greatest increase in the military budget, to 3 percent of GDP, more than the 2 percent demanded by NATO: “If we want to conserve a level of investment that does not sacrifice our conventional forces to maintaining our nuclear capacity and deterrent, we will have to increase the defence budget. This means … that we will have to say, including to the Europeans … that investments made by France, so by French taxpayers, should be excluded from the calculation of budget deficits.”

Even if Hamon succeeded in convincing the EU not to count the military budget when calculating whether France had violated EU limits on budget deficits, spending billions of euros on the army would require slashing social spending to extract the cost of the military buildup from the workers.

Hamon, who has said there must “without a doubt be more” policemen in France, is calling for a massive increase in police force levels to make it possible to send troops—currently deployed inside France under Operation Watchman and the state of emergency—to fight in foreign wars. “It’s no longer possible to continue with the [current] Operation Watchman, which mobilizes professional soldiers who objectively would be more useful on the ground, and in training, than on guard duty in front of our buildings. So we need to strengthen the gendarmerie reserves, the armed forces reserve, to complement Operation Watchman, which should keep fewer professional soldiers busy.”

The call to boost the security forces, taken up by the Hollande administration, shows that Hamon is fundamentally on the same reactionary line. The criticisms he has made of the state of emergency imposed by the PS are purely tactical, insofar as they aim to make the police deployment more efficient and make it easier to fight foreign wars.

The media are not stressing Hamon’s support for Hollande’s wars and police-state policies. They are presenting Hamon as the PS’s left wing, citing his proposal to set up a universal income paying everyone somewhere between €600 and €800 per month.

Asked by Libération, “Does this mean that we have to abandon any hope in [economic] growth?” he replied: “Growth will not come back. And if it does return, it will not reduce either poverty or social inequality. And it does not mean anything about the level of health and education, which can develop independently of growth levels. GDP can no longer be an objective when it is obtained via a consumerist and productivist development model.”

Hamon’s proposition combines demoralization and charlatanry. He has nothing to propose to the workers besides accepting deindustrialization, mass unemployment and the pauperization of the population, reduced to an €800 salary on which it is impossible to live decently. While Hamon claims that it is possible to defend health and education while accepting the destruction of industry and the productive forces, this is false.

Moreover, such a measure would require an expenditure of hundreds of billions of euros that Hamon’s backers inside the bourgeoisie would not tolerate—a state of affairs that doubtless is not lost on Hamon. His proposal is simply made to give himself a bit of empty “left” cover, and, according to polls, two-thirds of the French population says they are hostile to his universal income scheme.

White House to issue executive order on “safe zones” in Syria, ban on Muslim immigrants and refugees

Niles Niemuth

US President Donald Trump declared in an extended interview with ABC News broadcast Wednesday that he will sign an executive order directing authorities to implement US-controlled “safe zones” in Syria. The order would also block the entry of refugees and immigrants from a number of majority-Muslim countries, including Syria.

During the presidential campaign, Trump called for a complete ban on Muslim immigration into the US. He played up fears over the admittance of a few thousand Syrian refugees displaced by the years-long civil war in that country fueled by the Obama administration.

In the interview with David Muir, during which the president adopted the tone of a mafia boss, Trump expounded on his planned immigration restrictions. “It's going to be very hard to come in. Right now, it's very easy to come in. It’s gonna be very, very hard.” Trump also declared that he plans to “absolutely do safe zones in Syria for the people.”

Coinciding with Trump’s interview, a draft of the draconian and unconstitutional executive order, billed as a measure for “protecting the nation from terrorist attacks by foreign nationals,” was leaked to the media.

The order would suspend immigration to the US from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Sudan and Somalia for 30 days and suspend the admittance of individuals under the US Refugee Admissions Program for 120 days. The admission of refugees from Syria into the US will be suspended indefinitely.

Several caveats would allow for the entry of refugees from Syria and the other countries on a case-by-case basis as well as allow the processing and admittance of religious minorities, i.e., non-Muslims.

Other restrictive measures spelled out in the document include the full implementation of a biometric entry-exit tracking system and new restrictions on the granting of non-immigrant travelers’ visas.

In line with Trump’s remarks, the draft order outlines a process for the establishment of “safe zones,” justified by the indefinite suspension of the admission of immigrants and refugees from Syria into the US: “Pursuant to the cessation of refugee processing for Syrian nationals, the Secretary of State, in conjunction with the Secretary of Defense, is directed within 90 days of the date of this order to produce a plan to provide safe areas in Syria and in the surrounding region in which Syrian nationals displaced from their homeland can await firm settlement, such as repatriation or potential third-country resettlement.”

Moscow, which has intervened in the Syrian civil war to prop up President Bashar al-Assad, responded to Trump’s announcement of his plan to implement “safe zones” by denying that it had any input on the decision and warned of potential consequences.

“Our American partners did not consult with Russia [regarding the ‘safe zones’]. It is their sovereign decision,” Dimitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, told reporters on Thursday. “It’s important to make sure that this does not further aggravate the situation with refugees. Evidently, all the possible consequences should be taken into account,” he warned.

Former President Barack Obama had resisted the imposition of safe zones in Syria, a policy fiercely advocated by Democratic advisers and war hawks such as former Secretary of State and Trump rival Hillary Clinton. The protection of such areas with a no-fly zone could spark a clash between US and Russian jet fighters, leading to all-out war between the nuclear-armed powers.

However, DEBKAfile, a website with ties to Israeli military intelligence, reported that an agreement has been worked out between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to carve up Syria into three separate spheres of influence divided between the US, Russia and Turkey. The deal reportedly requires all Iranian military forces as well as associated forces belonging to Shiite militias and Hezbollah to leave the country.

The plan outlined by DEBKAfile would involve the US taking military control over the area of the country east of the Euphrates River, as well as a portion of the south bordering the Golan Heights and northern Jordan. Approximately 7,500 US Special Forces currently based in Jordan would reportedly deploy to southeast Syria.

The rest of the country would be divided between Russia and Turkey, with Moscow controlling all territory west of the Euphrates except for a narrow stretch in northern Syria administered by Ankara.

While the alleged plan has not been confirmed by the Trump administration, it does line up with previous proposals made by Trump’s national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, to deploy large numbers of US troops to Syria under the pretense of defeating ISIS and other Islamist militia groups.

In a 2015 interview with Der Spiegel, Flynn, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, outlined his vision for an expanded US intervention in Syria and a Balkanization of the Middle East, carving the region into spheres of influence and military control.

“We can learn some lessons from the Balkans. Strategically, I envision a breakup of the Middle East crisis area into sectors in the way we did back then, with certain nations taking responsibility for these sectors,” Flynn stated. “The United States could take one sector, Russia as well and the Europeans another one. The Arabs must be involved in that sort of military operation, as well, and must be part of every sector.”

Breakdown in Mexico-US relations as Trump threatens trade war

Eric London

On Wednesday, Donald Trump announced the construction of a wall along the southern border of the United States, provoking a diplomatic crisis without precedent in the modern history of US-Mexico relations. When Trump repeated his ultimatum that Mexico pay for the cost of construction, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto cancelled a visit to the White House that had been planned for January 31.

Following Peña Nieto’s announcement yesterday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer announced that the US government would fund the wall by imposing a 20 percent tax on Mexican imports. The New York Times wrote that “decades of friendly relations between the nations--on matters involving trade, security and migration—seemed to be unraveling.”

Though the White House later said a final decision to impose the import tax had not yet been made, the possibility of such a measure threatens to launch a trade war with profound implications for both countries. The move comes as the US threatens to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which has formed the basis of close US-Mexican trade ties since its enactment in 1994.

The US is Mexico’s largest trading partner, with 80 percent of Mexican exports going to the United States. Mexico is the third largest US trading partner, behind China and Canada. Under NAFTA, American corporations have relied on the use of cheap Mexican labor for manufacturing. Within minutes of Spicer’s announcement of a possible import tax, the Mexican press ran the news with banner online headlines.

Spicer’s announcement is the latest in a series of provocative moves by the US government aimed at deliberately escalating tensions between the two countries. The Trump administration is treating Mexico like a semi-colonial subject and threatening to impose humiliating and unacceptable conditions as the price for continued trade relations.

Speaking yesterday at a gathering of Republicans in Philadelphia, Trump called for the “immediate construction of the border wall” and said the US will “generate revenue from Mexico that will pay for the wall if we decide to go that route.” He said he will not meet with Peña Nieto “unless Mexico is going to treat the United States fairly.” He reiterated his pledge to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which he called “a total disaster.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced yesterday that they were prepared to move forward on constructing the wall.

Meanwhile, Trump is rolling out dictatorial immigration measures that place many of the millions of Mexican citizens living in the US in serious danger. Trump has laid the framework for a dragnet deportation offensive, issuing executive orders adding 5,000 border patrol agents, tripling the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, enlisting local police in efforts to round up and arrest immigrants and mandating the incarceration of hundreds of thousands who are waiting for a court date.

This program amounts to the establishment of a concentration camp system for immigrant incarceration. Trump defended these fascistic proposals by proclaiming that “the hour of justice for the American worker has arrived.”

The offensive against Mexico and the immigrant population in the United States is a forewarning that Trump’s “America First” program involves an aggressive push to expand US imperialism’s domination of Latin America, at the expense of China, whose economic footprint in the region has been growing in recent years.

John Kelly, Trump’s new secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is a Marine Corps general who formerly headed the US military’s Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), responsible for overseeing US military action in Central America, South America and the Caribbean. Kelly has previously said that “homeland defense does not begin at the ‘one yard line’ of our Southwest border, but instead extends forward, throughout the hemisphere, to keep threats far from our nation’s shores.”

During his confirmation hearing earlier in January, Kelly said he supports the construction of a wall, but that a “physical barrier will not do the job.” He told the Senate: “I believe the defense of the southwest border starts 1,500 miles south,” and that border defense cannot “be attempted as an endless series of ‘goal-line stands’ on the one-foot line at the official ports of entry or along the thousands of miles of border between this country and Mexico.” Thirty-seven of 48 Democrats voted to confirm Kelly last week. He sailed through the Senate with an 88-11 vote.

Peña Nieto’s decision to abandon the negotiations came after weeks in which the Mexican president obsequiously appealed to Trump, despite the latter’s claim that Mexicans are “rapists” and “criminals.” Earlier this month, Peña Nieto appointed Luis Videgaray as his foreign minister in an unpopular move that was widely seen as a friendly gesture to Trump. Videgaray was responsible for orchestrating Trump’s visit to Mexico during the US general election and the backlash forced him to resign as finance minister in September.

Peña Nieto came under irresistible pressure to cancel the meeting as his government faces widespread popular hostility due to both his appeals to the hated Trump and the rising cost of living. Protests have continued across Mexico throughout January after the government announced at the end of 2016 a 20 percent gasoline price hike as part of its efforts to privatize the state-owned oil company, Pemex. Peña Nieto’s poll ratings are the lowest of any Mexican president in the modern era—he is likely the second most hated politician in Mexico, behind Trump.

There is considerable nervousness within the Mexican ruling class about the implications of a trade war with the US and the prospects of growing social opposition within Mexico, which Trump is using as leverage in his efforts to renegotiate NAFTA. The Mexican peso fell 1.1 percent against the dollar yesterday and is down 14 percent since Trump’s election. Ford, GM and Fiat Chrysler have all announced they are pulling back investments in Mexico in anticipation of massive corporate giveaways by the Trump administration in the US. Consumer prices have already been rising with the cost of gasoline, and if the Mexican government takes retaliatory measures on imports from the US, prices would likely rise further.

The policy of hyper-American nationalism will also prove disastrous for the working class in the United States. Jared Bernstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities told Bloomberg that “Mexico doesn’t pay for the wall, American consumers who shop at places that import, like Walmart and Target, pay for the wall, making it a regressive tax supporting a dumb, wasteful idea.” Trump’s provocative maneuvers against Mexico are aimed at paving the way for the super-exploitation of the country by American corporations, which will enrich themselves at the expense of workers in both countries.

Workers in Mexico and the US are tied organically through the process of production and through family connections and the large presence of Mexican workers throughout the United States. Trump’s attempts to whip up a toxic anti-immigrant climate are aimed not only against Mexican workers, but at paving the way for further attacks on the wages, living standards and social programs of workers of all races and nationalities in the US. This can only be opposed by uniting Mexican and American workers on the basis of a common socialist and internationalist program.

Trump’s meeting with the UK’s Theresa May and the US/European conflict

Chris Marsden

UK Prime Minister Theresa May expected today’s meeting with US President Donald Trump to be a political coup. It was to prove that Britain had a powerful ally in pursuing its exit from the European Union and could obtain a US trade deal to compensate for the possible loss of access to Europe’s Single Market. Trump’s support could even strengthen May’s hand in negotiations with Germany and France.

It is a measure of the rapid deterioration in economic and political relations between the US and the rest of the world that May’s visit has instead prompted bitter recriminations from leading voices representing British imperialism.

May arrives in Washington on the eve of triggering Article 50 and initiating a two-year negotiated exit from the EU. The British ruling class is deeply divided over Brexit, with the dominant sections that supported a Remain vote in last year’s referendum fearful of losing access to the European market. In an attempt to straddle this divide, May pledged that she would explain to Trump that she did not see Brexit as “a decision about breaking up the EU.”

No one believes that such promises have any significance. Commenting on Trump’s inaugural speech pledging a policy of “America First” protectionism, Martin Wolf warned in the Financial Times that the United States’ break with free trade and support for punitive tariffs means that “Its victims, particularly China, are also likely to retaliate... Mr Xi’s China cannot replace the US: that would take cooperation with Europeans and other Asian powers. The more likely outcome is collapse into a trade policy free-for-all.”

Fellow columnist Philip Stephens declared of Trump, “On every measure—free trade, climate change, NATO, Russia, Iran—his views collide with Britain’s national interests,” including his support for “a great unravelling of the European project.”

Perhaps the most extraordinary response came from the Guardian ’s Marti Kettle, who wrote, alluding to the policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany, “If May thinks that waving a piece of paper signed by Trump offering a US trade deal will be viewed as a triumph, she is wrong. It could make her not the new Margaret Thatcher but the new Neville Chamberlain.”

Trump’s ascendency is now widely understood within British and European ruling circles as marking the definitive end of the United States’ post-war role as the anchor of European integration and guarantor, through NATO, of Europe’s imperialist interests. Trump has described the EU as an economic rival to the US, a German instrument, and predicted that other countries would follow the UK’s example in leaving.

This has left the European capitalist governments scrambling to formulate a political, economic and military response.

In Germany, Social Democratic Party leader Sigmar Gabriel, who is positioning himself as a future foreign minister, declared, “Now is the time to strengthen Europe... If Trump starts a trade war with Asia and South America, it will open opportunities for us.”

In France, the centre-right candidate for this spring’s presidential election, François Fillon, travelled to Berlin Monday to deliver a speech to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation on how to defend Europe’s place “between Donald Trump’s United States, Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China.” He urged deeper integration of the EU, including a European defence community with a joint budget for foreign military deployments and, most controversially, for Russia to be accepted as “a major partner” of Europe. His rival, former Social Democrat, now independent, Emmanuel Macron, gave the same message on the EU in the Financial Times, only shorn of any suggestion of a rapprochement with Moscow.

Trump’s threats against China, Mexico and Europe have been generally treated by bourgeois commentators as an inexplicable break from the policies pursued by his predecessors. This not only fails to explain how he has risen to the leadership of the United States, but also why similar far-right movements have emerged throughout Europe. In France, the National Front of Marine Le Pen is in the leading position in the presidential election, and Geert Wilders of the Dutch Party for Freedom is leading in the polls ahead of the March general election in the Netherlands.

The resort to extreme nationalism, intimidation and violence flows inexorably from the declining global position of US imperialism, under conditions of a general breakdown of world capitalism signalled by the 2008 crash. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has sought to counteract its economic decline through an assertion of military might. However, a quarter-century later, the wars waged by Washington have proved disastrous while its economic position has continued to deteriorate, as expressed above all in the rise of China as a rival power.

This has left the US unable and unwilling to any longer place itself at the centre of a network of economic and political mechanisms, including the EU, that are seen as imposing restraints on Washington’s drive for unchallenged global hegemony. The assertion of US military supremacy in the Middle East and North Africa has metastasized into threats of war against both Moscow and Beijing, along with a growing hostility to Germany as America’s major European rival. Increasingly, the US is pursuing a policy of divide and rule throughout the continent.

The destabilisation of world politics through the efforts of Washington to buttress its position as the world’s dominant power drives the European powers into conflict with the US. This is the road of trade war and military conflict.

May’s pilgrimage to Trump can do nothing to resolve these deep and escalating conflicts. They are rooted in the irreconcilable contradictions of the world capitalist system—between a globally integrated and interdependent economy and the division of the world into antagonistic national states; and between the socialized character of global production and its subordination, through the private ownership of the means of production, to the accumulation of private profit by the ruling capitalist class.

These same contradictions are also driving the working class into struggle. Everywhere, the destruction of jobs, wages and essential services accompanies trade war and military aggression. Only the working class in Europe, the US and throughout the world, united in a revolutionary struggle against capitalism, can bring an end to austerity, political reaction and war.

Opposition parties feign support for New Zealand mine disaster families

Tom Peters

A protest organised by family members of the 29 men who died in the 2010 Pike River Coal mine catastrophe has gained widespread public support throughout New Zealand. Since November, the families have picketed the access road to the mine to oppose the plan by Solid Energy, a government-owned company, to permanently seal the mine entrance.

The families are demanding that the government re-enter the drift tunnel to try to recover bodies and gather evidence on what caused the underground explosion. No one has been held accountable for the tragedy after the government regulators dropped charges of health and safety breaches against Pike River Coal CEO Peter Whittall. This sordid deal was justified on the pretext that there was no physical evidence, even though a 2012 Royal Commission found that the disaster was entirely preventable.

Sonya Rockhouse, who lost her son Ben in the explosion, told the WSWS the company had “put profit before safety,” adding: “The whole thing, everything we’ve been through, has all been about money.”

Jo Ufer, whose son Josh died, wrote in a Fairfax Media column on January 13: “Pike River Coal’s owners have taken tens of millions of dollars in insurance money and the New Zealand government has spent its time trying to brush the whole thing under the carpet.”

Following the outpouring of public support for the families’ stand, the Labour Party, the Greens and the right-wing nationalist New Zealand First have criticised the National Party government’s refusal to consider re-entering the mine.

The opposition parties’ statements are a cynical attempt to divert attention from their own role in creating the deregulated, pro-business environment that led to the disaster six years ago.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters declared in December that he would not form a coalition government with the National Party or the Labour Party unless they promised to reenter the mine. Labour leader Andrew Little responded on January 15, telling the New Zealand Herald , “the difference between me and Winston Peters is I wasn’t sitting in a Cabinet in the 1990s that undermined our health and safety regulations in mine regulations, specifically.” During the 1990s Peters was a member of the National Party government.

A notice posted on the Labour Party’s Facebook page on January 18 declared that its leader Little “supported the Pike River families from Day 1—and still does.”

In fact, the 1999–2008 Labour Party government, which was backed by the Greens, continued to dismantle the Labour Department’s specialist mines inspectorate and allowed mine owners to self-regulate. In November 2012, Labour MP Damien O’Connor admitted he was warned in the 1990s by a mining expert that deregulation “would result in a massive mine disaster.” He said he felt “guilty” that he had not pushed to improve safety.

Asked whether the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) had advised Labour to change the law, O’Connor avoided answering directly. Instead, he blamed “coal miners themselves” for not “demanding of their own union that things should change.” In reality, the union bureaucracy collaborated with mining companies to suppress workers’ safety concerns.

From 2000 to 2011, Little was national secretary of EPMU, which had 71 members at Pike River Coal (out of 180 staff plus contractors).

Fairfax Media reported on January 18 that the Labour Party leader dismissed “claims that as head of the miners’ union at the time of the explosion he could have done more to ensure health and safety at the mine.” Little said: “Our union and its members led a walk-out on health and safety grounds just weeks before the fatal explosion. .. I absolutely stand by our track record on improving health and safety both at Pike River and in mining generally.”

The walk-out, the only industrial action ever taken at the mine, was initiated by a group of miners. One miner, Brent Forrester, called a union representative and said workers were concerned about the lack of emergency equipment. The official agreed that the workers should walk off the job. That advice was the full extent of the EPMU’s involvement.

The EPMU knew about other safety breaches, including the lack of an adequate emergency exit in the mine and problems with methane gas accumulation. Yet it never organised a strike and did not publicly criticise Pike River Coal. The walk-out was only revealed more than two weeks after the explosion by Forrester, in an interview with TVNZ on December 5, 2010. (see video)

Following the disaster, Little defended the company’s safety record. He told the New Zealand Herald on November 21, 2010, that the company had an “active health and safety committee” and that there was “nothing unusual about Pike River or this mine that we’ve been particularly concerned about.” (see video) He repeated his comments to Radio NZ the following day, saying the company had taken “great care” with safety.

These statements were false. The EPMU was well aware of the dangerous conditions at the mine but chose to take no action to halt Pike River’s operations.

Sonya Rockhouse told the WSWS that the families had been made many empty promises in the past. She would “wait and see” what the opposition parties did. Prior to the 2011 election, then-Prime Minister John Key also promised to recover the bodies, only to renege afterward. Rockhouse noted that Labour and the Greens had made no promise to re-enter the mine if they form the next government, but have instead called for an independent review.

None of the parties has made any commitment to reinstate charges against former Pike River directors and CEO Whittall. Rockhouse and Anna Osborne, who lost her husband in the mine, are seeking a judicial review of the decision to drop the charges.

Rockhouse believed that Solid Energy wanted to seal the mine before the election. She said: “They need to be very careful because we are gaining momentum every single day. We’re not going away.”

Rockhouse criticised the EPMU, now called E Tu, for not supporting the Pike River families’ picket. Osborne also told the WSWS the union had been “conspicuous by its absence.”

E Tu has members at Solid Energy but has made no attempt to organise an industrial campaign against the company’s plan to seal the mine. The company’s staff members have continued to cross the families’ picket line to visit the site. The union has accepted hundreds of job cuts at Solid Energy, devastating the West Coast region, as part of the government’s plan to privatise the company.

New legislation gives private sector further access to higher education in Britain

Alice Summers & Thomas Scripps

The Conservative government’s Higher Education and Research Bill is reaching its final stages in the House of Lords. The Bill, introduced in the House of Commons by Conservative government Education Minister Justine Greening last May—and set to pass into law within the next few months—represents a massive attack on university education.

According to the Department of Education, the Bill’s purpose is to drive up standards, increase choice for students and protect academic freedom.

The reality is the opposite.

The “choice” referred to is in fact a euphemism for the introduction of measures designed to lower the requirements that educational institutions must satisfy in order to attain university status. The aim is to further open up the higher education “market” to “alternative providers”—that is, private institutions. This is touted by the government as the means of increasing competition between universities and thereby improving student choice and educational standards.

Far from driving up the quality of university tuition, this proposal will hasten the privatisation of education via a competitive “educational market,” changing the relationship between universities and students into that of supplier and consumer. Institutions will come to focus on their business interests, rather than on research and educational excellence.

Two newly outlined central bodies, the “Office for Students” and “UK Research and Innovate” (UKRI), have been established with the purpose of allowing the government to directly intervene in Higher Education for their own political purposes.

Opposition among education staff to the measures is substantial. In a YouGov poll of lecturers and professors at universities nationwide, 81 percent of those surveyed believed the government’s plans to give private providers easier access to degree-awarding powers will have a negative impact.

A report from the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), a higher education think tank, raised concerns over how alternative providers—given easier access to university status under government proposals—will be able to use their institutions for profit.

According to Robin Middlehurst, an author of the HEPI report, “Better protection of the public purse is overdue, especially given the growth in the number of for-profit providers... Experience in the USA and Australia shows overly generous rules for alternative providers are a magnet for questionable business practices. The end results can include stranded students, a bill for taxpayers and regulatory intervention.”

Indeed, as the US example shows, competition between for-profit institutions does nothing to improve educational standards for students. According to a study by the US Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, competition between universities merely encourages the institutions to spend more on aesthetic measures to attract students, and comparatively less on instruction, lowering educational standards.

In 2009, for example, for-profit colleges in the US spent 22.7 percent of their revenue on marketing, advertising, recruiting, and admissions staffing; 19.4 percent of revenue went to the institution’s owner as profit; and a mere 17.2 percent of all revenue was spent on instruction.

The government’s bill is forecast to triple the number of private and alternative providers in the UK who receive public funding over the next 10 years, according to the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. They will increase from the 110 who are currently eligible for government student support, to 311.

Connected with this attack on public provision of higher education is the proposed introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). This will rank universities by “quality,” with the highest-ranking institutions being permitted to raise their tuition fees in line with inflation from the academic year 2017-2018. Many universities have already begun imposing the increase—from £9,000 to £9,250—from the beginning of this academic year.

Divorcing the link between university teaching and research, under the TEF the “quality” of a university will be established through a student satisfaction survey, the National Student Survey (NSS), student retention statistics, and graduate earnings data—rather than through the quality of research output and teaching standards.

Many academics have strongly criticised these measures, arguing that the proposed metrics do not measure educational quality at all, and that TEF will only further increase social inequality by pushing poorer students out of many universities. The inevitable outcome will be a consolidation of an already solidly tiered higher education system, with the best universities accessible only to the rich and the poorest left to attend underfunded institutions,—which, on account of their poorer status—will not attract new funds and end up as “sink schools.”

The Labour Party, National Union of Students (NUS) and University and College Union (UCU) have put up only token opposition to the Bill.

Neither have the unions organised any serious any resistance. Since the enforcing of mass austerity began in the UK following the global financial crash of 2008, the higher education unions have collaborated in unprecedented cuts and the accelerated privatisation in the sector. The UCU and other academic unions—despite professing opposition to attacks on further and higher education—have a record of capitulation to cuts and job losses spanning more than a decade.

Commenting on the government’s plans, Sean Wallis, a National Executive member of the University and College Union (UCU) condemned the TEF, stating, “These measures are nothing to do with education quality. Indeed, the easiest way to make students ‘satisfied’ is to promise them a first class degree! Using graduate earnings as a ‘proxy for quality’ punishes universities for offering places to poorer students, who are less likely to get well-paid graduate jobs than well-connected, wealthier students....This is an absurd, socially regressive attack on young people—as well as on the universities.”

Concealed by such comments is the fact that the UCU offered no serious resistance to the Bill. Aside from organising a token demonstration last November—at which UCU General Secretary Sally Hunt called on Theresa May to “show some humanity”—both the UCU and National Union of Students (NUS) called only for a boycott of the NSS.

Faced with a massive programme of privatisation and the further erosion of equal access to higher education, the extent of the opposition of the UCU and NUS was a call on their members to decline to fill out a survey!

As the Bill made its passage through parliament, the NUS and Labour Party took part in “constructive engagement” with it, according to Labour Students. The Labour group said the NUS were “suggesting amendments and, rightfully and at the insistence of Labour MPs” decided “to give evidence to the Bill Committee.” Labour tabled a number of amendments to the Bill, centering on establishing a “students’ bill of rights,” with Labour Students commenting, “In a fast-changing Higher Education sector, students now more than ever need better protections, more information and fairness, as these amendments proposed.” None of this challenges in any way the fundamental nature of the attacks the Bill proposes.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats allied in the House of Lords and passed an amendment during its committee hearing stage. The amendment merely stated that universities “must provide an extensive range of high-quality academic subjects delivered by excellent teaching,” as well as make “a contribution to society…” Wilf Stevenson, Labour’s shadow higher education minister, played down the objectives of the latest bill, claiming that the main problem was that it “fails to understand the purposes of higher education.” On this basis he declared, “The Bill before us does not define a university and we think it would be improved if it does so.”

Due to the discrediting of the NUS, UCU and their ilk, supposedly more radical, “left” organisations like the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC), backed by various pseudo-left outfits, have become increasingly prominent.

Students must draw the lessons of previous betrayals in assessing the claims of such groups to be an alternative to attacks on education. In 2011, one year after the NCAFC’s founding, the World Socialist Web Site made the following assessment: “A self-described “network of student and education worker activists” with close ties to the Unison and RMT trade unions. The middle class “left” groups that lead the NCAFC insist the only way forward for students is to persuade the National Union of Students and the trade unions to fight tuition increases.”

Events since then, including the government’s ability to prepare further attacks through its latest bill, with virtually no opposition from these organisations, vindicates this analysis.

Average household debt in UK reaches more than £13,000

Thomas Scripps

Total unsecured debt in the UK reached an all-time high of £349 billion in the three months to the end of September 2016, according to research by the Trades Union Congress (TUC).

Unsecured debt includes credit card debt, payday loans and student loans, but not mortgages. Based on figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the findings suggest an average household debt of £12,887 - that is a 27.4 percent share of average household income.

Even excluding student loans, which have grown rapidly over the past few years, the total for unsecured debt stands at £192 billion, according to the Bank of England - the highest point since December 2008. This figure has been climbing at a yearly rate of 10 percent for the past six months. Last November, Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, warned that credit card lending was at a record level and that unsecured debt was rising at its fastest rate in 11 years.

Figures produced earlier in January in the Family Finances report of UK multinational insurance company, Aviva, revealed that household debt has soared by two-fifths in just six months. Average debt now stands at £13,520--a surge of £4,000 from £9,520 last summer. This is the highest level recorded by the quarterly published survey for two and-a-half years.

This rapid increase falls into a broader pattern of growing indebtedness among the population. As the World Socialist Web Site reported last year, UK household debt (including mortgages), which ballooned in the late 1990s and 2000s and then plateaued following the 2008 crisis, has been increasing again over the past six years. In November 2016, total debt reached a record high of £1.5 trillion; an average of £30,000 per household or 113 percent of average income.

These figures sharply reflect both the social catastrophe experienced by millions of workers in the UK and the depth of the economic crisis in which the British and world economy remains mired.

Since the financial crash of 2008, families in the UK have suffered a sharp decline in wages, comparable only to Greece, and tens of billions of pounds in cuts to public spending and welfare. The ongoing restructuring of the labour market towards precarious, low-paid employment has contributed to and exacerbated this decline.

As a result, increasing numbers of people are being forced to take on greater and greater debts in an attempt to avert a collapse in their standard of living. Debt counselors report that many debtors are now using credit cards to pay for essential living costs, rather than luxury items.

The response to the debt crisis from the Bank of England reveals the criminal deception at the heart of those running the financial system. Andy Haldane, the Bank’s chief economist said, "Interest rates are still very low, and are expected to remain so for the foreseeable future, so there are fewer concerns on debt servicing than there were in the past... There are reasons not to be too alarmed about it ticking up, but it is absolutely something we will watch carefully.”

Interest rates remain at very low levels due to the continued policy of quantitative easing (QE)--the pumping of vast sums of money into the economy to stimulate investment and consumer spending by lowering the cost of borrowing. The fact that the real economy remains stagnant, however, is proof of the ultimately reactionary character of QE. Far from boosting “economic recovery,” QE in the UK, as everywhere else, has only provided additional funds for the parasitic and outright criminal speculation that sparked the financial crisis in the first place.

Moreover, if interest rates are increased in the future, then widespread indebtedness will throw millions into an even more perilous situation.

The extremely fragile state of personal finances means that millions of people face a catastrophic future. Joanna Elson, chief executive at the Money Advice Trust commented, “If the economy does indeed suffer in 2017, this borrowing could become more difficult to repay--and some households risk finding themselves exposed to sudden changes in financial circumstances."

This year is expected to be a turbulent one for the British economy, as the impact of last June’s referendum vote to leave the European Union (EU) continues to play out. Last year the Financial Times explained, “The sharp fall in sterling since the vote to leave the EU [European Union] is expected to push up inflation, bringing a renewed squeeze on real wages in the absence of meaningful pay increases.”

Many young people from low-income backgrounds are particularly vulnerable to indebtedness. Between 2015 and 2016, those aged 18-25 went from comprising 10 percent of all over-indebted lower-income working households, to 20 percent.

This owes a great deal to the combined skyrocketing costs of housing and plummeting conditions of employment faced by younger people. Writing on the subject in the Financial Times a year ago, economics correspondent Chris Giles explained, “a generational divide is emerging with younger people finding they generally have to borrow more and on extended terms to afford to house themselves like their parents.”

According to the Council for Mortgage Lenders, mortgages taken out in 2015 were worth £175,500, up from £126,000 10 years earlier.

Students must consign themselves to a lifetime of debt and insecure living for the “privilege” of receiving higher education.

As the disparity between total unsecured debt and unsecured debt--excluding student loans—shows, the financial burden incurred for attending university is now immense. Graduates are expected to leave university with an average debt of £44,000. This is before the planned rise in tuition fees for a large number of universities. Consequently, the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that an astonishing 70 percent of graduates will never fully repay their loans, instead making payments for 30 years until the loan is written off.

The intersection of the housing and student debt crises will have grave consequences. Sebastian Burnside, an economist at Natwest, explained, “Affordability checks done by mortgage lenders look at the borrower’s free income, after deducting loan repayments.”

TUC research produced last year revealed that a decade-long austerity programme aimed at slashing wages had pushed millions to rely on credit to cover essential costs.

Speaking earlier this month, TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady commented, “Employment may have risen, but wages are still worth less today than nine years ago. The government is relying on debt-fueled consumer spending to support the economy, with investment and trade in the doldrums since the financial crisis.”

O’Grady’s comments deliberately conceal the role played by the unions in facilitating a disastrous situation in which millions are drowning in debt. In their efforts to create a “competitive” economy, successive governments have relied on the services of the trade union bureaucracy in sabotaging strikes and implementing cuts to pay and working conditions.

Overall, the pile up of debt among the population--particularly among graduates and young people, is a damning indictment of capitalism. Working people, with little to no prospect of an improvement in their living standards in the next period, are nonetheless forced to take out loans against an uncertain future, in an effort to provide for themselves and their families today.

Sigmar Gabriel resigns as Social Democratic Party leader and chancellor candidate

Ulrich Rippert 

The announcement by Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Sigmar Gabriel on Wednesday, that he will not take part in the next Bundestag election as the party’s chancellor candidate and would also step down from his post as SPD chairman, has triggered feverish political debate and speculation in German political circles.

For months, the SPD chairman and minister of economic affairs had left his decision open, but in recent weeks it was regarded as certain that he would lead the SPD into this year’s autumn election as the party candidate for the chancellorship. That is why there was widespread surprise when he announced his resignation to the SPD parliamentary group and instead proposed former EU parliamentary president Martin Schulz as the SPD’s candidate to challenge the sitting chancellor, Angela Merkel. Gabriel also suggested that Schulz should lead the party.

In special programmes the media reported on this “major resignation” and speculated about possible personal reasons such as more time for the family or political frustration due to bad poll results.

However, on closer inspection, it is clear that the move is more of a political regrouping than a resignation and is directly related to the assumption of the American presidency by Donald Trump and his “America First” nationalism. The SPD is reorganising in order to take up the role of reshaping Europe in the interests of German imperialism.

Yesterday, the WSWS wrote: “The coming to power of Donald Trump has led to fierce reactions in Berlin.” Gabriel’s decision is bound up with such reactions. Already in November, he had asked Schulz to switch from the European Union (EU) to federal policy. Schulz has been systematically built up and celebrated by the media as a “great European”—a man who strengthened the powers of the EU parliament and stood up for European unification.

In fact, Schulz’s strength consisted largely in working closely with the conservative EU commissioner, Jean-Claude Juncker. The EU Parliament, under his leadership, was able to debate endlessly and controversially, but in the background, Schulz and Juncker, whose social-democratic and conservative factions hold 54 percent of the votes combined, prepared all decisions in detail and agreed upon majorities.

Merkel has also paid tribute to Schulz describing him as her favourite social democrat. To what extent Schulz as candidate for chancellor would favour a continuation of the current “Grand Coalition”—SPD and conservative parties (Union)—remains to be seen and depends not least on the election result.

Last autumn, Gabriel proposed Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) as new federal president and successor to Joachim Gauck. Merkel agreed, and it is certain that Steinmeier will move into Bellevue Castle on February 12.

Now, Gabriel has proposed himself as successor to Steinmeier as foreign minister. Gabriel remains vice-chancellor and moves from the Economics Ministry to the Foreign Office. If the SPD remains in the government after the election with an SPD chancellor or vice-chancellor and a social democratic federal president, Gabriel could lead the campaign to expand Germany’s supremacy in Europe.

Immediately prior to the announcement of his plans, Gabriel had given extensive interviews to a number of papers. Following the latest threats made by Trump, Gabriel demanded more European self-assurance. One such interview appeared yesterday under the heading “Now is the time to strengthen Europe” in the business paper Handelsblatt .

Handelsblatt reports that the vice-chancellor wants a “radical change of course” in the EU. In the face of the “turnabout in the United States and Brexit”, Gabriel is seeking to re-launch the EU: “We need not more Europe, but rather a different Europe.” If not all states wanted to advance at the same pace, then it was time to consider a “two-speed Europe.”

A two-speed Europe “would also greatly reduce tensions within Europe and strengthen core Europe tremendously,” Handelsblatt summarises Gabriel’s point of view, which was responding to the growing criticism of Europe by Great Britain and other countries. “The EU, which is working on detailed questions”, has reached its limits. Europe should not “continue the agonising process of constantly seeking the lowest common denominator”, but must permit alternatives. For Gabriel, this includes a closely interlinked foreign and security policy as well as a common economic and financial policy.

On Monday, the French presidential candidate of the Republicans, François Fillon, spoke in Berlin in favour of a revival of the EU and proposed a closer alliance with Russia. Gabriel sees Germany as a key player in the reorganisation of the Western world. However, he reported doubts about the suitability of the chancellor for this task. The Union (the SPD’s federal coalition partner, the CDU and CSU) was not prepared for the major challenges that faced Germany and Europe.

One day before, the co-editor of Handelsblatt , Gabor Steingart, wrote: “The hour for foreign policy reorientation has struck.”

Gabriel agrees. Germany and Europe should not be intimidated by Trump’s “highly nationalist tones”, but must “ruthlessly” define and defend its own interests, he told the Bild newspaper last weekend. Germany is “a strong country” and Europe “a strong continent that has to hold together”. If the United States “starts a trade war with China and all of Asia, then we are a fair partner,” he added. Germany and Europe would need a new strategy towards China and Asia. There are new opportunities, even if China is not an easy partner.

It would not be the first time the SPD has taken over control in order to realise the interests of German imperialism in times of major upheaval. In 1969, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), which had hitherto been on the right of the political spectrum, formed a coalition with the SPD, and made Willy Brandt chancellor after Brandt’s own orientation to the East had met with strong opposition from the conservative CDU and CSU. In the midst of the biggest post-war international economic crisis, Brandt’s “Ostpolitik” promised to open up new energy sources and markets for German exports.

And then again, in 1998, the government of Gerhard Schröder (SPD) replaced CDU Chancellor Helmut Kohl after 16 years in office, thereby paving the way for the first post-war military operations of the Bundeswehr and the passing of the notorious anti-social Hartz laws.