High Court ruling exposes Tory contracts with pandemic profiteers

Rory Woods

The UK High Court has ruled that Health Minister Matt Hancock “acted unlawfully by failing to comply with the Transparency Policy” in granting Covid-19 contracts.

The ruling followed a judicial review against the Tory government’s failure to publish its contracts with private companies involved in the response to the pandemic. The review was headed by legal charity the Good Law Project (GLP), alongside three MPs from Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and Green Party.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock speaking at a government Covid-19 press conference inside No10 Downing Street (credit: picture by Andrew Parsons/No 10 Downing Street--Flickr)

Operating under the principle of “never let a good crisis go to waste,” the British ruling class, like their counterparts across the globe, ensured that vast profits were made by a small number of UK companies during the first wave of Covid-19. This is the modern-day equivalent of war profiteering.

The Conservative government is not only using the pandemic to continue privatizing the National Health Service (NHS) but to enrich a select group of corporations and shareholders. Many winners of lucrative contracts, who received them without any “competitive tendering” or scrutiny, are Tory party cronies. The government used emergency powers under the Coronavirus Act 2020, introduced with the support of the Labour Party, to bypass normal contract tendering process and set up a “VIP channel”—later renamed the “high-priority lane”.

More than £17 billion worth of contracts for the supply of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), test and trace, procurement and consultation have been dished out in this way during the pandemic. This amount equals one eighth of the entire National Health Service (NHS) annual budget and excludes the money spent on outsourcing treatment and care services to private hospitals. By not publishing the details of the contracts awarded, Hancock was trying to conceal the corrupt practices of his government from the wider public.

In handing down the judgement, Judge Chamberlain stated, “The Secretary of State spent vast quantities of public money on pandemic-related procurements during 2020. The public were entitled to see who this money was going to, what it was being spent on and how the relevant contracts were awarded.”

The ruling stated that there was “now no dispute that, in a substantial number of cases, the Secretary of State breached his legal obligation to publish Contract Award Notices [CAN] within 30 days of the award of contracts.”

While the documents relating to the contracts have been posted online, the GLP points out that vast amounts of detail that would allow the public to assess whether the contractors delivered what they promised have been blacked out and redacted. One £98.7 million PPE contract has the quantity, unit price, measurements and even the colour of gowns redacted.

As part of the judicial review, the Good Law Project commissioned research into the government’s handling of contracts, undertaken by procurement consultancy Tussell. Their findings are shocking. By the beginning of October 2020, the secretary of state for health and social care had spent some £15 billion on PPE. However, the value of contracts made public by then was only £2.68 billion. Their research found that the average time for publication of CANs was 47 days for Covid-19 related contracts, despite the legal obligation to publish within 30 days of awarding any contracts for public goods or services worth more than £120,000.

Some of the types of personal protective equipment (PPE) used in National Health Service hospitals (credit: WSWS media)

The government was also in breach of its own transparency policy, which requires the publication of details of all public contracts worth more than £10,000.

In November last year, the World Socialist Web Site noted that “A report by the National Audit Office (NAO) into 8,600 contracts signed during the pandemic found that government officials awarded contracts worth £17.3 billion to private sector firms. Of this £10.5 billion (58 percent) was awarded directly without any tendering of contracts. £12.3 billion was paid out by government for the supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) and £2.9 billion in Testing and Tracing contracts.”

The Good Law Projects submissions to the judicial review provide a further damning picture of government criminality and corruption.

Many contracts were awarded to companies that did not have any prior experience in providing medical services, testing and tracing or PPE. As well as avoiding any competitive tendering, the government avoided scrutiny by not advertising that the contracts were on offer.

Some of the types of personal protective equipment (PPE) used in National Health Service hospitals (credit: WSWS media)

In April 2020, the government awarded a contract to Ayanda Capital Limited for the supply of face masks. The value of the contract was £252 million. Some £160 million worth of masks purchased were unusable in the NHS. This contract was won via the VIP lane by a company created by a crony of the minister for the international trade.

Clandeboye Agencies Limited, a company which previously supplied only confectionery products, was awarded a £108 million contract for the supply of gowns to the NHS.

Crisp Websites Limited (trading as PestFix—a pest control company) managed to secure six contracts worth £345 million, benefitting from the VIP lane, despite the company having never before supplied medical PPE. Serious concerns have been raised about the quality of the products it supplied and the financial standing of the company. It was reported that Pestfix had total assets worth just £18,000 prior to winning contracts.

The contracts awarded to those companies are subject to another legal challenge by the Good Law Project.

In May, outsourcing company Serco was handed £108 million to run non-complex contact tracing for three months. Another private firm, Sitel, got a separate contract from the government. It was reported that the renewal value of Serco’s contact tracing contract was £410 million.

The company’s pathetic performance was such that they managed to reach less than 60 percent of contacts by the end of October. Yet Serco was expected to make £165 million profit out of the contract. The company will this year resume dividend payouts after a seven-year interval with a £17 million distribution.

Another beneficiary of the government’s largesse to their friends in the private sector was Alex Bourne. Bourne previously ran a pub, The Cock Inn in Thurlow, situated close to Hancock’s former constituency home in Suffolk and visited frequently by the health secretary. He had no expertise in the manufacture and supply of medical equipment but won at least £30 million worth of contracts to provide vials and plastic funnels for test samples. His company, Hinpack, is currently under investigation by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency as it is alleged he did not have “adequate facilities from a health and hygiene perspective.”

Hancock was unrepentant after the High Court ruling, claiming without an ounce of shame that it was “in the national interest that we did what we did.” He was supposedly trying to “save lives.” Speaking to the Sky News, he said: “If I had my time again, absolutely I do exactly the same thing even if it led to this conversation.” Despite the well-publicised cases of nurses going to work in April wearing bin liners as PPE, Hancock insisted that “there wasn’t a national shortage [of PPE] at any point… “because of the work” his team did.

A National Health Service nurse wearing, in November 2020, a repurposed bin liner that was supplied as PPE (credit Twitter @drTeaLady)

These are obscene lies. The pandemic profiteering took place amid and contributed to a catastrophic loss of life. More than 4.1 million people have contracted Covid-19 in the UK and at least 135,000 have died. Among the dead are 883 health and social care workers in England and Wales alone.

The government’s clear-eyed enthusiasm for shoveling public money into the pockets of their friends was in sharp contrast to their disregard for the actual provision of life-saving equipment.

Surveys carried out by the Royal College of Nursing, Unison and British Medical Association among their members have revealed widespread shortages of PPE, leading to tens of thousands of infections. Severe starving of funds for the NHS and social care over the last decade had already created a massive shortage of PPE even before the pandemic hit. Between 2013 and 2016, the national stockpile of PPE was slashed by 40 percent as a part of £20 billion in cuts in NHS “efficiency savings.”

Even though the government was fully aware of the PPE shortage, it refused to join a joint procurement scheme with the European Union in March. On March 19, it downgraded the classification of Covid-19 to a non-High Consequence Infectious Disease (HCID)—reducing the level of what constitutes safe PPE required for staff in treating the disease.

Former French president Nicholas Sarkozy sentenced to one year in prison

Anthony Torres

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced yesterday to three years in prison, with two years suspended, for corruption and influence peddling in the so-called “wiretapping” affair.

The revelation of criminal actions by the highest representative of the French state is a further blow to the legitimacy of the entire political regime. Sarkozy had sought to bribe a magistrate to suppress the fallout from the Bettencourt affair, named after the billionaire Bettencourt family with a fascist past. The affair exposed the family’s financing of large portions of the French political establishment, and implicated the entire state apparatus.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrives at the courtroom Monday, March 1, 2021 in Paris. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

The imposition of a prison sentence on a former President is unprecedented under the Fifth Republic. The judges concluded that Sarkozy’s actions had undermined the legitimacy of the ruling class and its regime. The National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) had requested a four-year sentence, with parole after two years, against the former head of state, and declared that the presidential image had been “damaged” with “devastating effect” by the case.

Along with Sarkozy, his lawyer Thierry Herzog and former high-ranking magistrate Gilbert Azibert were also sentenced to three years, with two years suspended. Herzog was banned from practicing law for five years. However, the judges stated that his sentence could be reduced if he agrees to wear an electronic bracelet. Sarkozy has ten days to appeal, and his lawyers have already announced that he will do so.

Christine Mée, the lead judge in the case, explained in her statement that the “corruption pact” between Sarkozy and Herzog, made over a secret phone line under a different name, required “a firm legal response.” She said: “The acts are particularly serious, having been committed by a former president of the Republic. He used his status and his political and diplomatic relations to reward a magistrate who served his personal interests.”

Mée continued: “This case has seriously undermined public confidence by suggesting that proceedings before the Court of Cassation [the highest criminal and civil court in France] do not always involve a conflict before independent magistrates, but may be subject to hidden arrangements designed to satisfy interests.”

Yesterday, Sarkozy gave an interview to Le Figaro to proclaim his innocence. “I have received many statements of support from French and foreign observers,” he said, adding that he would appeal, if necessary, to the European Court of Human Rights. “It would be painful for me to have to have my own country condemned, but I am ready to do so, because it would be the price of democracy.” He is to speak at 8pm tonight on the TF1 public broadcaster.

The so-called “wiretapping” affair dates from 2014. At the time, the PNF was investigating claims of Libyan financing of Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign. Sarkozy had been accused of “receiving Libyan funds,” “illegal campaign financing” and “criminal association.”

Investigators discovered an unofficial, secret line between two mobile phones in the name of Paul Bismuth, on which Nicolas Sarkozy and Herzog were exchanging information. The issue in this case was whether Nicolas Sarkozy tried, through Herzog, to help Gilbert Azibert get a job in exchange for information about Sarkozy in the Bettencourt affair.

The Bettencourt affair erupted in 2010, after Mediapart published revelations about Sarkozy. The testimony of an accountant suggested that billionaire Liliane Bettencourt, who died in 2017, had illegally financed his 2007 election campaign.

The accountant, Claire T., explained that she had withdrawn 50,000 euros a week from Bettencourt’s accounts. “Part of it was used to pay doctors, hairdressers, small staff, etc.,” she said. “And another part was for politicians ... Dédé [Liliane’s late husband, André Bettencourt] used to distribute it widely. Everyone came to get in on it. Some got up to 100,000 or even 200,000 euros.” She also quoted Patrice de Maistre, Bettencourt’s financial adviser, who told her that 150,000 euros would be needed to finance Sarkozy’s campaign.

These allegations directly implicated Sarkozy’s labour minister, Eric Woerth, who was treasurer of his election campaign, but Sarkozy himself has since been cleared in the affair.

Sarkozy faces numerous other scandals, against the backdrop of bitter conflicts in the ruling elite over who is to run in the 2022 presidential elections. Sarkozy briefly ran in 2017. He is now due to appear in court as early as March 17 in the Bygmalion affair, on suspicions of illegal financing.

Others indicted in these cases include Woerth, former Secretary General of the Elysée Claude Guéant, and former minister Brice Hortefeux. The PNF also confirmed on January 15 that it had opened an investigation of “influence peddling” and “laundering” against Sarkozy in connection with his consultancy activities in Russia.

The corruption exposed by these affairs can only be fought against, in the final analysis, through the independent struggle of the working class against the capitalist state. Behind the various cases and the multiple charges are unmistakable political crimes that are the doings of not only one man, but an entire social order. The policies pursued in Europe over three decades since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 have criminalised the European capitalist class.

Liliane Bettencourt’s father, Eugène Schueller, founded L’Oréal and financed the fascist group La Cagoule in the second half of the 1930s. La Cagoule spread terror through its violent attacks on Jews and communists. Since then, however, the family has played a large role in French politics, funding the major parties and their leaders. For the financial aristocracy, this is a small price to pay for the immense fortunes it has been able to accrue, at the cost of ever more brutal austerity aimed at the working class.

Now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, this policy is being pursued through European bank and corporate bailout plans worth more than two trillion euros. The funneling of vast sums of public money to the super-rich is financed through a policy of “herd immunity,” in which workers are forced to continue to work in unsafe conditions, to finance the profits of the corporations. This policy, which is opposed by doctors and medical professionals, has led to more than 800,000 deaths in Europe.

At the same time, French imperialism advances its geopolitical interests through dirty neo-colonial wars, particularly in Africa, such as the 2011 intervention in Libya. The French pseudo-left New Anticapitalist Party and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France backed the war and applauded the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi’s government by Islamist militias backed by Sarkozy.

Criminality and gangsterism underpin the policies of the financial aristocracy in France and internationally.

On 6 January, Trump attempted an unprecedented fascist coup d’état to overturn the outcome of the US elections. In France, the situation is not fundamentally different, even if the trade union apparatuses and the pseudo-left attempt to cover up the bankruptcy of the ruling class by hailing their “social dialogue” with the government and employers. While no capitalist leader has yet openly attempted a coup d’état, there is increasingly open criminality by all the leaders of the French Republic in the 21st century.

Jacques Chirac was the first president to be convicted for corruption in 2011, in the affair of the fictitious jobs at the Paris town hall. His successor has now been sentenced to prison. Under the Socialist Party presidency of Francois Hollande, the state conducted targeted killings of French citizens by the intelligence services.

Faced with explosions of workers’ anger against the policy of austerity and war, including in the “yellow vest” protests of 2018, Macron hailed collaborationist dictator Philippe Pétain. He has pursued a policy of “herd immunity” in all but name. The coronavirus has killed more than 85,000 people, most of whom could have been saved through a scientific policy. Only a politically independent and international mobilisation of the working class will put an end to this murderous policy and the capitalist system that underlies it.

Spanish media promote Morenoite CRT amid mass youth protests

Alejandro López

Amid mass youth protests over the jailing of Stalinist rapper Pablo Hasél by the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government, Spain’s Morenoite party, the Workers’ Revolutionary Current (CRT), has suddenly received unprecedented coverage in capitalist media. The CRT runs the Spanish section of the Izquierda Diario web site, which it shares with Argentina’s Socialist Workers Party (PTS) and France’s New Anti-capitalist Party, a close ally of Podemos.

Last week, Catalan regional public broadcaster TV3 interviewed Pablo Castilla, a 21-year old member of the CRT’s youth wing. Castilla appeared on its Planta Baixa (Ground Floor) programme covering social and political news, with debates and reporters on the street.

Demonstrators march during a protest condemning the arrest of rap singer Pablo Hasél in Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, Feb. 27, 2021. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

This launched an avalanche of promotion of the CRT by major international media last week. Castilla was interviewed along with CRT member Sergi Gonzalez by Reuters, and then by the BBC and a leading weekly magazine of the American bourgeoisie, Time. On local Barcelona channel Teve.cat, Pere Ametller, another CRT youth member, along with Castilla, are now regular participants in debates sponsored by OpinaYouth programme.

This focus on the CRT is the response of the media conglomerates to an explosion of social anger and opposition among workers and youth to the entire political set-up, including Podemos. At its founding in 2014 it promised “radical democracy” and social reforms, but today Podemos is associated with mass death and police state repression. It has ruthlessly implemented the herd immunity policy of letting the virus spread while keeping workers at work to keep making profits for the banks, leading to over 100,000 deaths and 2.5 million infections in Spain alone.

As anger mounts against its homicidal pandemic policy—together with mass unemployment, lack of access to health care, and poverty—Podemos has failed in all its efforts to silence opposition. It monitors social media and the Internet using the “Digital Security Law,” sends police to crush strikes, and has banned protests and threatened to deploy the military. Now it is overseeing brutal police repression of youth protests in the past two weeks against Hasél’s incarceration.

The CRT is putting forward youth who clearly aim to address anger among youth that has grown amid two major economic crises, NATO wars across the Middle East and North Africa, continual austerity, and now the COVID-19 pandemic. Castilla told Time that Hasél’s arrest “is a brutal attack against freedom of speech ... The protests are being brutally repressed by the allegedly progressive national government and the Catalan government.”

Gonzalez, 19, who has a temporary job as a warehouseman, told Reuters: “The Hasél case has been the spark that has set the fire ablaze,” adding that the protests have combated “depression, anger and apathy” in the population caused by the recession and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Youth and workers coming into politics cannot escape, however, a settling of accounts with the petty bourgeois treachery that is epitomized by Podemos, but is also shared by an entire layer of pseudo-left groups. The CRT’s Izquierda Diario web site garners millions of hits each month by with activist slogans that thinly mask its support for the pro-capitalist and “herd immunity” policies advanced by Podemos. It is more or less obvious that the media are promoting the CRT in the hope that they can build it up as a tendency that will advance policies similar to but less discredited than those of Podemos.

This media promotion of the CRT is, in short, a political trap for mounting working class opposition to Podemos and similar pseudo-left parties across Europe amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It seeks to block rising working class opposition across Europe from evolving into a direct struggle against capitalism and for state power on a socialist, internationalist program.

In his interviews, Castilla did not denounce the “herd immunity” policy of Podemos. Instead, he defended the CRT’s line, which is fully acceptable to Podemos, opposing lock-downs and other basic public health measures needed to contain the pandemic as unacceptable infringements on freedom.

Asked what he was protesting beyond Hasél’s incarceration, Castella said: “I’m out on the streets because I have no future, jobs are precarious, 40 percent unemployment, the planet is being destroyed by big corporations, they have criminalised us [the youth] brutally during the pandemic, they have closed down our universities.”

Castilla was working in the “herd immunity” perspective spelled out in CRT’s January statement. It denounced social distancing, declaring that the PSOE-Podemos government was “limiting our liberties and movements at their will. … Once again, they are forcing us into a life of home to work and work to our homes.” Instead of calling for workers to shelter at home on full pay, and for aid to artists and small businesses, the CRT advocated reopening schools and universities, while admitting the safety of teachers and students “cannot be guaranteed.”

While tacitly supporting the financial aristocracy’s policy on the pandemic, the CRT also advances a pro-capitalist perspective on the political crisis in Spain. It calls for a broad regroupment of all forces that can agree to a call to abolish Spain’s constitutional monarchy and build a Republic. That is, it is a barely concealed appeal to the middle-class periphery of Podemos, and to Podemos itself.

The CRT, Castilla said, is building a common platform with other student organisations to “organise assemblies in each university and school to fight the monarchy and all this repression.” The weekend before, Castilla had intervened in a protest to call for turning “all this anger into organization. That is why we want to promote a great anti-monarchical student movement."

This demand, acceptable to broad layers of Podemos and of pro-austerity Catalan nationalist parties like the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), has no progressive, let alone socialist content. It is a politically ambiguous, pro-capitalist, nationalist demand aimed towards channeling discontent into changing the forms of the Spanish capitalist state, not its overthrow. A capitalist republic would not change the social problems facing workers and youth, which are rooted not in the Spanish constitutional monarchy, but in world capitalism and the European Union.

Podemos routinely flirts with calls for a referendum on the monarchy—the better to manipulate widespread disgust among workers with the corruption and nepotism of the monarchy.

Moreover, calls to dispense with the Spanish monarchy do not originate only within the pseudo-left. Fascistic coup plotters within the army have also intimated that they could support the King’s ouster if he does not back them against the elected government. The main ideologue behind last November’s coup letter to King Felipe VI, José Manuel Adán Carmona, later wrote that if the King opposed their plans, “what is the role of the king? And others will ask, what’s his purpose?”

Castilla’s interviews also highlighted a critical aspect of the CRT’s perspective: it has no intention of building a movement in the working class. Instead, it seeks to serve as political advisers to Podemos and, in Catalonia, to the separatist Candidatures of Popular Unity (CUP), which is currently in talks to form a pro-austerity, police-state regional government. While advancing itself as a critic of some of their policies, the CRT wants to keep Podemos or the CUP from discrediting themselves so much that workers seek a Trotskyist alternative.

During the interview, Castilla warned: “I think many young people can look to the CUP as a reference to seek a political alternative and right now the investiture is being debated in [the Catalan] Parliament. I do not believe that all the youth who are taking to the streets and are being repressed by the police, would understand that the CUP gave support” to a regional Catalan government.

In Catalonia, the CUP went on to support two pro-austerity, separatist-led governments and supported two austerity budgets in 2016 and 2017. It is one of the chief promoters of building a new capitalist state in Catalonia, within the capitalist European Union, thereby dividing the working class along national lines. It also played a leading role in promoting the NATO intervention in Syria, on the pretext of helping Kurdish nationalist militias working with US Special Forces.

This simply underscores that the CRT seeks above all to build itself as a new, slightly modified version of Podemos itself. In one video of Castilla’s intervention at a demonstration, he declares, “we have to organise ourselves in schools, universities, neighbourhoods …. Because we want a new 15-M, and this time they will not trick us like Podemos.”

In fact, both Podemos and the CUP emerged from the 15-M movement. This movement, begun on May 15, 2011, was inspired by the revolutionary struggles in Egypt in 2011, and specifically by the occupation of Tahrir Square in Cairo that set off a mass general strike movement of the Egyptian working class. Hundreds of thousands of youth mobilised in cities across Spain in May 2011 against the PSOE-led government’s savage austerity measures following the 2008 global economic crisis.

Without a political programme or leadership, these spontaneous gatherings, mainly mobilizing urban middle-class youth, though they enjoyed broad support among workers, ended in empty discussions dominated by groups like CRT and Pabloite Anticapitalistas. They did not challenge the PSOE, the Stalinist-led United Left or the trade union bureaucracy, the main vehicles for imposing austerity. Instead, they argued that “no leadership” and “no political parties” should emerge in the protests.

They based this rejection of an orientation to the working class on the populist, anti-Marxist theories of the late Ernesto Laclau and of Chantal Mouffe. In her 2018 formulation of the “left populist” strategy, Mouffe wrote: “What is urgently needed is a left populist strategy aimed at the construction of a ‘people,’ combining the variety of democratic resistances against post-democracy in order to establish a more democratic hegemonic formation. … I contend that it does not require a ‘revolutionary’ break with the liberal democratic regime.”

On this perspective Anticapitalistas, the Spanish affiliates of the French NPA, used its influence in the 15-M and wide spread media coverage to prepare the founding of Podemos three years later, in 2014. Through it, many figures of the 15-M were integrated into the state machine. Albert Garzón, the 15-M movement’s spokesperson in Malaga, is now Podemos’ Minister of Consumer Affairs. Ada Colau, former head of the PAH anti-eviction platform, is Mayor of Barcelona. Yolanda Díaz, now Labour Minister, has presided over the official back-to-work drive amid the pandemic. Many more names could be added to this list.

Key political lessons must be drawn. Building a genuinely left-wing, socialist opposition to Podemos and “herd immunity” policies on the global pandemic and to austerity requires building a movement in the European and international working class. That entails a conscious and determined break with the petty-bourgeois class orientation and anti-Marxist traditions represented by Podemos.

The lessons of the European workers’ struggles against fascism in the 20th century are critical. Wide layers of the working population associate the toppling of the Spanish monarchy in 1931 and the establishment of the 1931-1939 Second Republic with an era of progress. However, a democratic regime could not be established by a bourgeois revolution. General Francisco Franco launched a fascist coup in 1936. The Second Republic proved impotent against the Francoites, who ruled over Spain from 1939 to 1978.

History vindicated Leon Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution, which states that the struggle to establish democratic rights requires a struggle led by the working class for socialism. The rise of far-right parties and the adoption of a fascistic “herd immunity” policy has exposed anti-Trotskyist parties like Podemos. As the WSWS noted when Podemos first entered into government in 2019:

“The fascist resurgence has exposed the bankruptcy of the pseudo-left. Its defense of capitalism and rejection of any policy that impinges the prerogatives of bourgeois property and wealth precludes any appeal to the working class. The role being played by Podemos essentially duplicates the treacherous role played by Stalinists and social democrats in the Spain of the 1930s. Their alliance with a section of the Spanish bourgeoisie in what was called a Popular Front ruled out revolutionary policies in the fight against General Franco and his fascist allies. The result was the crushing of the socialist revolution and Franco’s victory.”

Strikes in Istanbul expose CHP, Turkish unions and pseudo-left parties

Hasan Yıldırım

Recent strikes in Istanbul in the municipalities controlled by Turkey’s opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) have strikingly exposed the CHP and the reactionary role played by the nominally “opposition” trade unions and pseudo-left groups that support it.

The Genel-İş union affiliated to the DİSK federation brazenly betrayed the Maltepe municipality workers strike. As the strike exposed the CHP’s anti-worker orientation and threatened to spread to broader sections of workers angered over the ruling elite’s homicidal response to the pandemic, Genel-İş rapidly moved to shut it down. Union leaders signed a sellout deal with employers behind the backs of the workers and against their will.

The banner reads: “There is a strike in this workplace.” [Credit: @KGrevde on Twitter]

While workers were still voting on the deal, the union announced on social media that the lowest wage, including bonuses, was set at 4,700 TL (US$640) and that the strike was over. Fully 525 workers voted to continue the strike, only 42 workers voted to end it. Despite this overwhelming (over 90 percent) support for continuing the strike, DİSK officials signed the agreement.

On February 23, more than 1,500 workers had gone on strike in the municipality of Maltepe after months without a contract, demanding compensation for losses in wages and social rights over many years.

From the beginning of the strike, the CHP municipal administration lied about workers’ demands and provoked the district’s residents against the workers. While Maltepe Mayor Ali Kılıç has claimed he had offered 47 percent raises, workers replied that this percentage only involved about 30 workers. The real offer was only an eight percent raise.

Striking municipal worker Ahmet Bozkurt showed his payroll to the Gazete Duvar, stating, “My salary is 3,100 Turkish lira [US$420], including food and travel payment. I am paying 1,300 liras for house rent. It reaches 2,000 liras with bills. We also want to live humanely. I also struggle to raise my children well and to ensure that they receive a good education.”

Bozkurt also stressed the impact of the pandemic. He said that during the pandemic, at least 1,000 workers in Maltepe were infected with coronavirus, and one died.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to attacks on the living and social conditions of the working class. Millions of workers faced imposed “unpaid leaves” at half the minimum wage, that is, at hunger wages. The rapid increase in prices of basic necessities, especially food, added to the decline in income and the growth of unemployment.

Garbage was not collected in Maltepe due to the strike, and piles of rubbish emerged in the district. The Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (İBB) administration led by CHP Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu worked to break the Maltepe municipality workers strike and started to collect garbage in the city—pitting İBB workers against their class brothers and sisters in Maltepe.

As workers denounced and opposed these strikebreaking efforts, the İBB claimed that it had respected the right to strike but had to collect garbage for public health reasons. Moreover, CHP officials joined these strikebreaking operations and mobilized a petty-bourgeois mob of 100 people to physically attack the strikers, who were trying to prevent garbage collection. This was a serious warning for workers that bourgeois opposition parties will not hesitate to resort to fascistic methods against workers.

The union treachery in Maltepe comes shortly after a sellout in Istanbul’s Kadıköy district, where the İBB again tried to break the strike by collecting garbage. On February 16, nearly 2,300 workers of the CHP-run Kadıköy municipality struck after contract talks broke down. Kadıköy Mayor Şerdil Dara Odabaşı claimed that a 38 percent raise was offered, while workers said that they were actually offered a seven percent raise.

The Kadıköy strike was also betrayed by the same DİSK-affiliated Genel-İş union, which has close ties with the CHP. It worked to isolate the strike and then secretly signed a sellout with CHP officials.

The union is desperately maneuvering to avoid being overrun by explosive anger among the workers. It has decided to strike in three other municipalities in Istanbul in March, setting different dates for each: in Kartal Municipality on March 4 and in Beşiktaş Municipality on March 15. However, they suddenly reached an agreement in Ataşehir, before workers were to strike on March 2.

The same union has repeatedly blocked strikes by suddenly signing sellouts, as in the CHP-affiliated Istanbul municipality of Şişli, where it signed a paltry three to four percent raise.

These experiences underscore the critical necessity of the workers themselves building their own rank-and-file committees to take direct control over their struggles. This would allow them to coordinate and unite their strikes and appeal to other sections of the working class and to Istanbul residents for support. Otherwise, the unions clearly plan to repeat the Kadıköy and Maltepe betrayals.

The unions have prevented the unification of all these strikes and strangled them by presenting workers with a fait accompli before other municipalities went on strike. DİSK thus worked to prevent a unified movement of the working class, not only against the CHP but also the entire political establishment and the capitalist system they defend. DİSK and the CHP are so close that in almost every general election, a DİSK chairman becomes a CHP deputy.

The CHP’s reaction to these strikes shows that if it comes to power, it will be no less hostile to workers struggles than the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). It exposes the illusions peddled by petty-bourgeois pseudo-left parties about the CHP. Throughout the strike, members and sympathizers of the CHP and pseudo-left parties waged a smear campaign against the workers on social media, accusing “unskilled” workers of demanding exorbitant wages, being AKP puppets, and harming the “struggle for democracy.”

They repeatedly asked why there were strikes only in CHP municipalities, insinuating that the strikes aided the AKP.

These strikes also exposed the reactionary role played the middle class pseudo-left groups around the CHP-led bourgeois opposition, vindicating the exposure by the World Socialist Web Site. Many pseudo-left parties, such as the Left Party (formerly the Freedom and Solidarity Party, ÖDP), the Labor Party (EMEP) and the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP) backed CHP mayoral candidates, including Ekrem İmamoğlu in the 2019 local elections.

Left Party leader Alper Taş ran as a CHP candidate for the Beyoğlu district of İstanbul, with the support of the far-right Good Party. During the Maltepe strike, the Left Party claimed its support from workers, but its representatives paid a friendly visit to CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in his office.

While the AKP government and the media it controls tried to use the strikes as a propaganda tool against the CHP, they also feared that these strikes would escape the unions’ control and trigger a broader explosion of the class struggle.

As strikes against herd immunity and austerity policies increased in January, the AKP responded to the Boğaziçi University student protests with violent police state repression. This reflected its fear of coming mass struggles and the possibility that these could develop into an international struggle against the capitalist system. In fact, the AKP and the CHP agree that strikes must be ended before they get out of control.

Hundreds of thousands still suffering two weeks after winter storm hit southern US

Trévon Austin

More than two weeks after sub-freezing temperatures from winter storms devastated the southern US, hundreds of thousands are still without water and many face a long road to recovery.

Residents of Jackson, Mississippi remain under a boil water advisory, and many do not have running water at all. The city has set up multiple sites for distribution of non-potable water just for people to be able to flush their toilets. Some residents reported having to melt snow for the same purpose.

In a press release, city officials reported a total of 80 water mains broke or were damaged over the course of the crisis last month. Officials stated that significant progress was made in repairing Jackson’s water supply, but there was no timeline for when a full restoration of services will be complete. Initially, the water system was projected to be fully operational last week.

People wait in line to fill propane tanks Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2021, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

On top of having to boil water, residents are also being asked to limit their water usage. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves dispatched the National Guard with tanker trucks of non-potable water on Wednesday.

The cold snap that hit last month exposed the dilapidated state of Jackson’s water and sewage system. A city official told CBS that there was no way of knowing how many people were without water, because the system was too old. Jackson has no way of tracking water outages besides residents reporting them. In a press conference, Mayor Chokwe Lumumba lamented that the city has a $2 billion infrastructure problem but an annual budget of only $300 million.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality reported over 207,000 Texans were still without water as of Tuesday morning. The majority of those without water live in impoverished rural areas. Many of the communities do not have the resources to fix their water systems and were not approved for federal aid by the Biden administration, which allotted disaster relief for less than half of Texas’ counties.

Texas residents are still struggling to get enough food and water, as millions of workers lost working hours in the days after the initial freeze. Some missed an entire week or more of work, a loss of more than a quarter of their monthly income. For workers already on a knife’s edge, living paycheck to paycheck, the storm proved a complete disaster.

Many are being forced to choose between buying groceries or paying for their rent. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner reported about 10,000 people visited a single distribution center Sunday for food kits and bottles of water. The Houston Food Bank, which serves communities in 18 counties across Southeast Texas, was forced to enter “disaster mode” because they did not have enough volunteers to meet the surge in demand for food assistance after the storm.

Houston officials lifted a boil water advisory more than a week ago, but thousands still do not have running water because of damaged pipes. Houston’s infrastructure was not designed for extreme cold weather and the volume of burst pipes overwhelmed the city’s plumbers. The shortage is so severe that Republican Governor Greg Abbott has asked for plumbers in other states to assist with repair efforts.

All signs point to the winter storm eclipsing Hurricane Harvey, which hit the state four years ago, as Texas’ worst recent natural disaster, in both financial and human costs. State officials still have not issued an official death tally but reports from multiple cities indicate that it is at least in the hundreds, and likely to grow. For comparison, more than 75 people died in Texas during Hurricane Harvey, including about 50 in the Houston area.

The Houston Chronicle counted at least 51 deaths that authorities attributed to, or suspected were caused by, the storm and cold, and another five believed to be linked. The newspaper named each victim and the cause of death, including hypothermia, carbon monoxide poisoning, and household fires.

On Tuesday, the Dallas County medical examiner’s office said it is investigating whether 17 deaths are linked to the winter storm. The agency said it could take two to three months until the causes of death are determined.

Travis County spokesman Hector Nieto told the Austin American-Statesman that the medical examiner’s office is now processing more than 80 deaths reported in the Austin area since February 13.

A common thread links those who succumbed to the storm: they were among society’s most vulnerable. Most of the reported deaths were elderly and a significant number were homeless. In Houston alone, six children died. An 11-year-old boy in Conroe, Texas died in his bed of suspected hypothermia after his family’s trailer home was left without power for two days and temperatures fell below freezing.

However, it must be stated that the weather and the damage wrought was not an uncontrollable “act of God,” as many politicians have asserted. Rather, the intense human suffering is a direct consequence of the rotten American capitalist system.

Scientists have warned about disruptions in the polar jet stream, spawned by rapid climate change, that could lead to extreme winter storms far into the southern US and northern Mexico. Additionally, the American ruling class possesses the resources required to implement measures to mitigate the impact of inclement weather.

The Texas government has tirelessly worked to cover up the decades-long deregulation conspiracy its politicians have carried out on behalf of energy corporations.

Governor Abbott has shielded the power companies, which reaped tens of billions from the disaster, and devoted his time to pointing fingers and demanding resignations from the leadership of the state’s electric grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, and the Public Utility Commission.

President Joe Biden meanwhile traveled to Houston last week to absolve the criminals in the Texas government of all accountability, instead promising to work with them “for the long haul.” Biden has only given a pittance to the tens of millions impacted, while trillions are made available to inflate the stock market.

After Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of New Orleans and a significant portion of the Gulf Coast in 2005, the World Socialist Web Site wrote:

“Hurricane Katrina has laid bare the awful truths of contemporary America—a country torn by the most intense class divisions, ruled by a corrupt plutocracy that possesses no sense either of social reality or public responsibility, in which millions of its citizens are deemed expendable and cannot depend on any social safety net or public assistance if disaster, in whatever form, strikes.”

The disaster which is still unfolding from Texas to Mississippi is the most recent affirmation of this analysis.

Chinese regime further suppresses internet freedom of speech

Zhang Yang

On January 8, the Cyberspace Administration of China published a new Draft Revision to its “Measures on the Administration of Internet Information Services” and further suppressed freedom of speech on the internet by prohibiting individual news bloggers from commenting and reporting on political developments.

The original document, “Measures on the Administration of Internet Information Services,” was published on September 25, 2020. The original measures were made to “regulate Internet information services activity and to promote the healthy and orderly development of Internet information services”. Significantly, in the new draft revision, the phrase “preserving national security and public interests” was added.

Chinese flag (Wikimedia Commons)

There are a number of other notable additions in the new draft, including:

* The state will take measures to monitor and address illegal and criminal activities using domestic or foreign internet resources that would “harm the security or order of the nation's cyberspace or infringe on citizens' lawful rights and interests.”

* All organizations and individuals are required to provide personal identification information when they arrange or use internet services, including for internet access, internet information services, domain name registration and resolution.

* Mobile phone SIM cards and network adaptors must not be resold by any organization or individual. These cards are to be connected with their buyer’s personal ID, and most websites and applications require a valid phone number during registration. Thus, prohibiting the resale of these cards allows the state to track an individual’s online and offline activities.

* The state, “in accordance with the law”, can take technological and other measures to block information published outside of China that are “prohibited by laws and regulations”.

* Individuals and organizations are not allowed to help others acquire and spread information that is blocked by the state.

These additional clauses explicitly justify the state’s internet surveillance and censorship and threaten any individuals who attempt to circumvent these restrictions with legal penalties. Anyone in violation of the measures could face detention of up to 15 days and fines up to 100,000 RMB ($14,285).

Previously, the state denied the existence of the so-called Great Firewall, which blocks access to a number of foreign websites, including Google-based services, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. Access to the World Socialist Web Site is also blocked in China. However, in recent years, the regime has begun to acknowledge the Great Firewall and the draft revision is an attempt to legalize its existence. Reports of people being arrested for trying to circumvent the Great Firewall had already begun to emerge last year.

Another regulation was published on January 22 to further restrict press freedom. This new regulation, entitled “Regulations on bloggers providing information service”, was be implemented on February 22. This regulation requires all bloggers who publish or write about the news to apply for a licence from the Cyberspace Administration.

Days before the new regulation was to be implemented, many news bloggers have received a notice, which advised them not to write or publish any commentaries on political, economic, military and diplomatic developments if they do not have a licence. It warned that publication without a licence could constitute a violation of relevant laws and regulations, and might bring “inconvenience” when publishing their materials in the future.

The Cyberspace Administration held a meeting a week after the new regulation was published, emphasizing that it would strengthen it further to address “prominent issues that have disrupted the rules of communication over the internet” among bloggers (especially those run by individuals, not corporate media), “trending” pages on social media, push ads, and short-video platforms.

At the meeting, the Cyberspace Administration justified its anti-democratic measures aimed at strangling free expression on the ground it was necessary to provide internet users with a “correct orientation in political issues and public opinions” that would “inspire a fighting spirit”. It warned of tougher punishments for those gathering or reporting on the news “not in accordance with the new regulation”—that is, writing about and commenting on political developments without a licence.

One blogger who specializes in political commentary and has over 400,000 followers on Weibo social media confirmed that he had received the notice. “According to the current regulation, blogs run by individuals are not allowed to comment on political, economic and social issues. I have received a notice a few days ago, too. I have been following news on political events since I was eight and am only good at writing about [politics]. Now I really don’t know what I can post here.”

This new regulation was questioned and criticized widely, not just by bloggers. For instance, an ordinary Weibo user with only a hundred followers commented, “What crimes have news-reporting bloggers committed?”

The new measures are an attack on the democratic rights of the working class. Even though the bloggers affected span a wide range on the political spectrum, ultimately, the censorship is aimed at suppressing left-wing organizations and political opposition particularly from the working class.

Almost every year, new regulations have been implemented by the Chinese regime to impose tougher restrictions on information and communication over the internet. This is also not restricted to China in particular, but is an expression of the growth of authoritarianism and police state measures around the world.

China claimed last year to have eradicated absolute poverty in rural areas, but the social gulf between rich and poor has widened drastically over the past three decades. The new censorship measures are a response to rising social tensions produced by an economic slowdown that worsened amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Millions and millions of workers are confronted with declining wages, increasing work hours, and growing risks of unemployment. At the same time, the super-rich in China experienced a staggering increase in their wealth in 2020, which surpassed the increases of the past few years.

The ruling regime in China is terrified that the working class and the impoverished in rural areas could be radicalized by “unlicensed” political commentary that does not parrot the party line, shaking the seemingly strong, but actually weak, state apparatus that defends the interests of the super-rich by authoritarian means.

Australian government under siege as sexual assault allegations escalate

Mike Head

Ever-widening allegations of rape involving government ministers or staff members are being used to destabilise the already faction-wracked Liberal-National Coalition government.

Very quickly, over the past two weeks, these accusations have been brought forward to throw a question mark over the future of Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his government, with corporate media outlets describing the resulting political crisis as an “existential” one for the government.

Australia Prime Minister Scott Morrison (AP/Kiyoshi Ota)

Morrison, who has been in office for just two-and-a-half years, could become the latest of the five previous prime ministers who have lost office since 2007, pointing to the underlying instability of the political establishment.

By the start of last week, former Liberal Party ministerial staff member Brittany Higgins had been joined by three other women in making allegations against an unnamed former male colleague; three of sexual assault and one of sexual harassment.

By the end of the week, the accusations had been extended to an alleged 1988 rape committed by an unnamed government cabinet minister against an anonymous woman who reportedly committed suicide last year.

Today, after days of media speculation and pressure, Attorney-General and Workplace Relations Minister Christian Porter named himself as the accused minister. Porter declared his innocence of the allegations and refused to resign or stand aside, but said he would, with Morrison’s support, take a period of leave to improve his mental health. That is unlikely to end the campaign against the government.

If Porter were to quit the government or parliament, the government would lose its parliamentary majority, possibly triggering its fall. Last week, it lost its working majority on the floor of the House of Representatives when Craig Kelly, a vehement Donald Trump supporter, resigned from the Liberal Party.

Morrison had unsuccessfully tried to bury the initial accusations by Higgins by announcing several investigations, including into “workplace culture” inside parliament house. One of the inquiries, being conducted by his own department chief, is deciding whether Morrison misled parliament in stating that he was not aware of the Higgins case until it was reported in the media.

Liberal Party Senator Sarah Henderson also referred to the Australian Federal Police a complaint she said she had received about a historic sexual allegation relating to a Labor Party shadow minister.

When assessing such sex scandals it is always essential to bear in mind that they have historically been utilised to execute political shifts.

At the same time, basic legal and democratic principles, including the presumption of innocence and due process, have been ditched in a squalid media frenzy, without an ounce of political principle involved, let alone clear political differences.

Many unanswered questions exist about the allegations and the forces arranging their release to the media. Untested accusations that have been known and circulating in political circles for some time are being published, creating a virtual trial by media.

Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull asserts that he and his wife Lucy were sent the allegations in 2019. Labor Party foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong and Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, among others, received them last week through anonymous letters sent to their offices.

There is a large measure of political diversion involved in this affair, which is occurring amid a mounting social and political crisis, intensified by the global COVID-19 pandemic.

For days on end, the corporate media has been dominated by belated accusations of sexual assaults against young women, not the fact that on March 31 the government will throw more than a million workers into potential unemployment by ending its JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme, and cast another 1.6 million unemployed workers into dire poverty by scrapping the “Coronavirus Supplement” on JobSeeker dole payments.

At the same time, the corporate elite is escalating its pressure on the government and the opposition Labor Party, which controls most state and territory governments, to end all pandemic restrictions and accelerate the cutting of the wages and conditions of the working class.

The government’s industrial relations bill, produced after months of closed-door talks with the employers and trade unions, has fallen far short of what big business has demanded to smash up workers’ conditions. And its COVID-19 vaccine program is becoming a debacle, with just 25,000 jabs in the first week—less than half the target. The government is failing to match its pledges to inoculate the population by October, and thus undermining its efforts to present vaccines as a “silver bullet” to fully reopen the economy for the sake of corporate profit.

There is acute awareness in the ruling class that the discontent in the working class over the destruction of jobs and conditions, and rising social inequality, could erupt, as seen in the more than three-month fight by 350 Coles warehouse workers in Sydney against the company’s lockout and its plans to close their facility at the cost of their jobs.

The rape allegations have become one means by which Morrison and Labor leader Anthony Albanese, whose own position is precarious, are each being put on notice to more aggressively implement the corporate agenda or face removal.

Today’s Australian Financial Review editorial demanded that the minister “stand up and reveal himself” to put an end to the “paralysis in Canberra.” Notably also, Murdoch media outlets, which have previously supported Morrison, have been in the forefront of the campaign, alongside the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Turnbull, who was ousted in August 2018, allowing Morrison to seize the prime minister’s post, has been particularly prominent. Yesterday, he demanded that the cabinet minister, identified today as Porter, “out” himself, and that Morrison stand him aside. He went further, insinuating that the alleged rape victim might not have committed suicide, and therefore could have been murdered.

Whatever the motives of all the individuals involved in these allegations, Turnbull’s high-profile intervention points to bitter conflicts engulfing the Coalition and the entire political establishment. Turnbull represents elements of the financial elite that exploit identity politics to present themselves as “socially progressive,” as against the more Trump-style right-wing populism of Morrison.

Trump personally welcomed Morrison’s installation as prime minister in 2018, and Morrison identified himself with Trump politically, to the point of refusing to condemn Trump’s incitement of the fascist coup bid in Washington on January 6. Now there may be moves to replace Morrison with someone better able to work with the Biden administration as it intensifies the US confrontation with China, Australian capitalism’s biggest export market.

Certainly, the hand of Washington was seen in Turnbull’s removal, as it was in the 2010 backroom Labor Party coup that ousted Kevin Rudd. Both Turnbull and Rudd were fully committed to the US military alliance but had expressed concerns about the prospect of a war against China.

These tensions further demonstrate the underlying weakness and vulnerability of the Australian ruling class as the pandemic-accelerated global economic crisis worsens and the US-China conflict deepens.

As it has throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the Labor Party is continuing to prop up the Coalition government, offering it “constructive” support on every major front—from the formation of a bipartisan national cabinet to the October budget, which handed the corporations and the wealthy massive tax cuts, the cutting of JobSeeker unemployment payments back to $44 a day and the escalating demonisation of China.

Albanese’s response to the rape allegations has been to warn the government that unless Morrison stood down the accused minister, there would be “very much a dark cloud over the parliament and over the cabinet.”

Whatever the immediate outcome of the crisis, its function, and the aim of all of the official parties, is to refashion the parliamentary set-up, so as to implement the austerity agenda and war plans of the ruling elite, and to suppress the mass discontent that is building up within the working class.