Still no justice for UK victims of infected blood scandal after decades

Barry Mason & Robert Stevens

Over three years after the Conservative government’s announcement that an Infected Blood Inquiry would be held, the families and loved ones of the thousands of people who died are no nearer seeing justice.

Bottles of Factor VIII (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The inquiry was announced by then Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May in July 2017, with opening hearings held in Westminster in late September 2018. The inquiry began to take evidence from those infected and affected at the end of April 2019. A series of current and former government ministers have been called to give evidence over the last weeks.

The contaminated blood scandal saw the deaths of thousands of people in Britain and internationally after they were given blood infected with diseases in the 1970s and 1980s. Major drug companies made enormous profits through the sale of blood products, including infected blood.

According to a 2015 parliamentary report, around 7,500 people were affected in the UK. Most other sources agree that far more, up to 30,000 people, including many with bleeding disorders were given contaminated blood products. Among others who have suffered are people who received blood transfusions or received blood after childbirth.

The suffering was on a vast scale, with the needless deaths of so many described as a “horrific human tragedy.” Some of those who died did so as the result of multiple organ failure.

Even today, decades later, people continue to die due to infected blood at a rate of one every four days according to estimates.

Haemophiliacs represented the majority of those affected by infected blood products in the 1970s and 80s. Among the deadly diseases they contracted were Hepatitis C and/or HIV. According to the Haemophilia Society nearly 5,000 people were infected with around 3,000 dying.

Among those who died were many from Treloar’s College, a disabled children’s boarding school in Hampshire, England. Dozens of the children died after the school’s on-site health centre gave them infected blood products such as plasma to treat their haemophilia. The inquiry heard in June that of all 89 former haemophiliac students who attended the school in the 1970s, only 16 of them are still alive. All were infected with hepatitis B and C, and 64 contracted HIV.

Haemophiliacs were given Factor 8 products to control their bleeding. The UK began to import Factor 8 products from the US because it was unable to produce enough and because it was cheaper. Unlike in the UK, the US authorities would pay people to give blood. Many drug addicts and those with compromised health would donate for the money. The process of producing Factor 8 involves pooling many donations which vastly increased the risk of it being infected with hepatitis C and then HIV as that infection took off in the US.

Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government opened the door to mass infection and deaths in order to save money. Everyone who lived through the 1980s remembers the governments public information film campaign which included the warning: “AIDS: Don't Die of Ignorance”. In 1987, every household in Britain received a leaflet warning about AIDS, “Anyone can get it, gay or straight, male or female. Already 30,000 people are infected.”

Yet while this was taking place, people were being injected with infected blood containing HIV.

Decades have since passed with no single individual or corporate entity anywhere brought to account for these crimes.

Two previous inquiries were whitewashes. The first inquiry into the contaminated blood scandal was led by Lord Archer of Sandwell, under the Labour government of Gordon Brown. Set up in 2007, it reported in 2009. Archer’s was a non-statutory inquiry with no powers to force government ministers or civil servants who declined invitations to give evidence. Archer concluded that commercial interests had been given a higher priority than patient safety. While criticising the government’s slow response, the inquiry apportioned no blame.

The Scottish National Party-led government announced an inquiry in 2008 that only finally reported in 2015. The Penrose Inquiry, called under the 2005 Inquires Act, did not even take evidence from anyone at Westminster and concluded that the Scottish authorities at the time did their best. Costing over £12 million, it made just one recommendation, that blood tests should be offered to anyone in Scotland who had a blood transfusion before 1991 and who has not already been tested for hepatitis C! It too apportioned no blame.

Those seeking to establish the truth through researching documents from the 1970s and 1980s hit a brick wall. David Watters, general secretary of the Haemophiliac Society from 1981 to 1993, said all files relating to the HIV crisis, including correspondence with the Department of Health, had been destroyed. Even former Labour Health Secretary David Owen (1974-76) was unable to get hold of ministerial papers relating to the contaminated blood event. They had been “cleaned up” to prevent the matter going to court, he was told.

The Infected Blood Inquiry is being led by former High Court judge Sir Brian Langstaff. Its remit is to “examine the circumstances in which men, women and children treated by National Health Services in the United Kingdom were given infected blood and infected blood products, in particular since 1970.”

Previous calls by campaigners for an inquiry with the powers to summon witnesses and access documents were rebuffed by Conservative and Labour governments. However, following the launching of a civil litigation case in 2017 by Jason Evan s, —whose father died as a result of infected blood products and who runs the Factor 8 campaign—May was forced to call for an inquiry with such powers.

After his inquiry testimony last week, Tory Lord Kenneth Clarke was denounced for displaying “contempt” for his reluctance to answer questions during his three session appearance. Clarke was a leading figure in Thatcher’s government (1979-1991) and in that of her successor John Major (1991-1997), in which he served as home secretary and chancellor. He was a health minister from 1982 to 1985 and was health secretary from 1988 to 1990.

While a health minister, Clarke issued a press release issued in September 1983 asserting, “there is no conclusive proof that Aids is transmitted by blood products”. At the inquiry he stood by the statement as being correct at the time. Yet in May 1983, the director of the Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre in England and Wales had notified the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) of the death from AIDS of a haemophiliac who had been given Factor 8 imported from the US.

A vital document unearthed by Evans was a letter to a constituent, dated May 4, 1983, from Hugh Rossi, a Department of Health and Social Security minister. It read, “It is an extremely worrying situation, particularly as I read in the weekend press that the disease [AIDS] is now being transmitted by blood plasma which has been imported from the United States.”

In his July 27 testimony, Clarke let rip his irritation at the line of questioning by inquiry lead counsel Jenni Richards QC, complaining, “Why do we have to go through such meticulous detail through who said what when, when did he change his mind?”, dismissing the inquisition as “pretty pointless”.

Inquiry chair Langstaff chastised Clarke for his response but it didn’t stop him from minimising his role in the scandal. Clarke declared, “I was not directly responsible for any of this. I only play such a prominent part in evidence because I am… slightly better known than any of the others and the nearest to a B list celebrity you’ve got.”

Victims and their family members had in some cases travelled long distances to hear Clarke give his account and then had to go on a waiting list to get into the inquiry. Sam Stein QC, representing some victims, made an application for permission to address Clarke on his behaviour over the three days of questioning. Langstaff turned down the request.

Commenting after Clarke had finished his evidence, Evans said, 'We've all waited a long time to hear Clarke give evidence but what we will all remember from this week is not answers or the truth, it will be the total disrespect shown to all those infected, affected and the inquiry's own legal team.”

On July 29, Clarke was asked by the inquiry whether the victims should be compensated. He responded, “You can't just pay out compensation in all those cases where there's no fault on the part of the doctors there's no fault on the part of the health authority… that’s still the approach today… I think any other approach would be quite, quite impossible you would destroy the health service.”

Clarke was able to display such contempt safe in the knowledge he would not pay any political price, let alone face prosecution.

The Infected Blood Inquiry was set up under the 2005 Inquiries Act legislated by Tony Blair’s Labour government. The Act serves to protect the guilty as it stipulates, “An inquiry panel is not to rule on, and has no power to determine, any person’s civil or criminal liability.”

In his announcement David Lidington, Cabinet Minister in May’s government, wrung his hands declaring, “It is very important that the inquiry can identify why and how this tragedy occurred and provide answers for all the victims who have suffered so terribly and can identify lessons to be learned so that a tragedy of this scale can never happen again.”

The inquiry is not set to complete until next year or even 2023.

The Infected Blood Inquiry stands alongside other 2005 Act inquiries—including the already widely discredited four-year and ongoing inquiry into the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire. After 32 years, and multiple inquiries, inquests and panels, the 97 people who died and the hundreds injured in the Hillsborough disaster received no justice with all those responsible getting away with it.

All that is required of such inquiries is that they conclude by making a few recommendations and roll out stock phrases about how everyone has learned lessons. All those affected by the infected blood scandal must demand the immediate arrest and prosecution of all those in government and corporate circles who perpetrated and then covered up for terrible crimes.

New Zealand government’s proposed “hate speech” law attacks free speech

John Braddock & Tom Peters

Against a backdrop of rising social tensions, widening inequality and emerging resistance by the working class to austerity, New Zealand’s Labour Party-Greens government is preparing new “hate speech” laws that will severely limit free speech and muzzle political dissent.

The Justice Ministry last month released a discussion document, “Proposals against incitement and discrimination,” for a six-week public “consultation” period before legislation is finalised and taken to parliament. The document, which invites responses to six vaguely worded proposals, reveals no precise text of the foreshadowed law, although planning is doubtless well advanced.

The Socialist Equality Group (NZ) unequivocally condemns the government’s attack on freedom of speech and warns that, whatever its declared intentions, the law will inevitably be used against the working class, and target left-wing and socialist organisations and individuals as the emerging rebellion against the assault on living standards and basic rights intensifies.

PM Ardern visiting Muslim community at Phillipstown Community Centre, 16 March 2019 (Source: Wikipedia - Kirk Hargreaves)

Labour intends to alter two sections of the Human Rights Act 1993, which currently outlaws communications that are intended “to excite hostility or ill-will against, or bring into contempt or ridicule” any group on grounds of their colour, race, or ethnic or national origins. The proposed changes expand the list of “protected” groups to include those based on gender, religion, sexuality, marital status, age, employment status and political opinion.

The changes will apply to Section 61 of the Act, which contains civil provisions against inciting hostility on the basis of race or ethnicity, and Section 131 which make such activities a criminal offence. Under the reworked Section 61 any person who “encourages others” to treat members of a protected group worse or differently than others would be breaking the law and could trigger a complaint to the Human Rights Commission.

Section 131 will become a new offence within the Crimes Act, where it will have substantially increased penalties. The maximum fine is lifted from $7,000 to $50,000, and the maximum term of imprisonment raised from three months to three years.

The new section will specify that anyone who “intentionally incites, stirs up, maintains or normalises hatred” against a protected group breaks the law if they do so by being “threatening, abusive or insulting, including by inciting violence,” regardless of whether this is done verbally, in writing or online.

The terms used are vague and open to interpretation. What counts as “normalising hatred” or “abusive language” will be determined by the state.

Under the Bill of Rights Act 1990, everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to “seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.” However, several long-standing legal provisions already restrict what people can say or publish. The Summary Offenses Act 1981 makes it illegal to use racist slurs. The Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 regulates “extreme” tweets or Facebook messages while film classification rules target “harmful” material and content that “breaches society’s standards.”

The legislation is being promoted by the media and the government on the basis of middle class identity politics: the notion that the fundamental divisions in society are those of race, gender, religion and sexuality, and that a stronger state is required to protect “diverse” groups. A typical op-ed by Donna Miles-Mojab on the Stuff website, for example, declared that the new law would “make our great country a more inclusive, safe and tolerant place for all.” She dismissed concerns about the impact on free speech, saying “I trust [the courts] to get the balance right.”

In fact, the government’s discussion document pays scant attention to the basic democratic right of freedom of speech, and has nothing to say about how it should be protected. In two brief paragraphs, the Justice Ministry baldly asserts that legal limits on free speech are “justified in a free and democratic society.” The law preventing “incitement” will, it declares, prohibit the expression of “attitudes” that are “incompatible with human rights and Aotearoa New Zealand’s democratic values.”

The changes will purportedly clamp down on “intolerance, prejudice, and hatred” and defend “our values of inclusiveness and diversity.” In fact, New Zealand society is sharply riven on class lines, with deepening inequality, child poverty, an uncontrolled housing crisis and crumbling health system. The contention that the new law will “foster greater social cohesion” and “encourage unity and continue to strengthen our society” is as absurd as it is dangerous.

Justice Minister Kris Faafoi has, unsurprisingly, been evasive about how the law might operate. Asked by Newshub reporter Tova O’Brien whether younger people “hating” older “Boomers” for the high cost of housing was “hate speech,” Faafoi replied that “potentially” such statements could trigger prosecutions. Prominent rugby player Israel Folau could also, he admitted, face prosecution if he was in NZ for his repeated anti-gay statements. Faafoi said that ultimately police would decide what prosecutions to take.

The law has been justified as a response to the March 2019 terror attack in Christchurch, in which 51 people were massacred in two mosques by the fascist Brenton Tarrant. Last year’s Royal Commission of Inquiry into the attack recommended stronger penalties for “hate speech” and to include religion as a protected category, in order to foster “social cohesion” and “prevent… the development of harmful radicalising ideologies and downstream violent extremism.”

Wellington vigil in solidarity with Muslim community following fascist terror attack on Christchurch mosques in March 2019 (WSWS Media)

Nobody should believe that the law will be used solely, or even primarily, against the extreme right. After initially denying it, Prime Minister Ardern admitted that “political opinion” could be declared a protected category. Section 21 of the Act currently lists “political opinion” among the prohibited grounds for “discrimination.” On this basis, the new law would make it unlawful to “insult” or “incite” hatred towards a group or party because of their political program or views.

This is being put forward in the context of rising, and completely justified, anger among workers towards the government’s austerity measures, including a three-year public sector pay freeze. During the June 9 strike by 30,000 nurses and healthcare workers, Health Minister Andrew Little was shouted down and booed off the stage while trying to justify the government’s actions to workers outside parliament. It is entirely conceivable that, in the future, such protesters could be accused of “hate speech.”

There are already clear indications that the government is preparing to target left-wing opponents. A report commissioned by the Department of Internal Affairs, published last month by the UK-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue, claimed that in addition to 170 far-right social media accounts, there were 25 “left-wing extremist” “accounts or websites” in New Zealand. It declared that the latter unidentified groups or individuals were “more politicised than any other group” and “most likely to be active on standalone forums and to use action-oriented or aggressive language [emphasis added].”

The report said these groups were “often influenced by communist and anarchist ideologies, reject the principles of social democracy” and “rely on extra-parliamentary struggle against capitalism and refuse to compromise with political actors who advocate maintaining the status quo.” The report must be taken as a serious warning that the government is laying the basis for the criminalisation of “aggressive” anti-capitalist and anti-establishment speech.

The hate speech proposal is only the latest in a series of measures that have exploited the Christchurch attack to boost the powers of the state and intelligence agencies, while advancing demands by governments internationally for censorship of the internet.

Since the attack, the political establishment and media have largely suppressed discussion about the political roots of the atrocity. New Zealand’s chief censor promptly banned possession of Tarrant’s manifesto, which expressed admiration for US President Donald Trump and contained racist, anti-immigrant and anti-socialist exhortations.

The Royal Commission identified “weaknesses” in the current Act and called for the criminal provision to outlaw “extreme speech” and to specifically include electronic communications.

The commission’s report meanwhile whitewashed the police and intelligence agencies in Australia and New Zealand, which overlooked the danger of fascist violence and ignored specific warnings about Tarrant. The inquiry, moreover, covered up the record of Labour and its then-governing coalition partner, the right-wing populist NZ First, which was responsible for stoking Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment.

Ardern has collaborated internationally with right-wing French President Emmanuel Macron, other world leaders and technology company executives to promote the so-called “ Christchurch Call to Action ,” intended to develop mechanisms to censor online content deemed to be inciting terrorism or “violent extremism.” The government has also doubled funding to the Office of the Censor and introduced legislation to expand its power to immediately take down online content, including social media posts.

The “hate speech” law is another step in this ever-expanding process. There is, however, widespread public opposition. A straw poll released by Newshub gained 5,345 responses in 24 hours, with an overwhelming 84 percent against the law and just 12 percent in support. Reasons cited include a lack of transparency, excessive overreach and the inherent right to freedom of speech.

The right-wing parties are seeking to exploit the opposition by falsely posturing as defenders of free speech and democratic rights. ACT Party leader David Seymour, for example, said: “Hate speech is subjective and politicised. Faafoi knows Police will end up facing pressure to prosecute people with unpopular views.” The previous National-ACT government, while overseeing a major increase in social inequality, vastly expanded the powers of the state surveillance agencies to spy on the population and joined the global witch-hunt against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The Labour-Green government’s widening assault on basic democratic rights is enabled, above all, by the trade unions and pseudo-left groups. None of the unions has uttered a word about the policy. The pseudo-left groups—Socialist Aotearoa, International Socialist Organisation (ISO), and Organise Aotearoa—are equally complicit, all of them assiduous promoters of the very identity politics nostrums being advanced to justify the new law.

COVID-19 cases in United States hit new six-month record

Patrick Martin

New coronavirus infection totals hit a new six-month high in the United States on Friday, with more than 130,000 cases reported, according to the Worldometer site, which compiles a running total worldwide.

The rise in the United States was greater than for the next three countries combined—India, Indonesia and Brazil—although their combined population is six times that of the US, and far more of the American population have been vaccinated.

Such a comparison underscores the criminal role of the American ruling class and both its political parties, the Democrats as much as the Republicans, in sabotaging the only effective public health response to a pandemic of such lethality as COVID-19: a full-scale lockdown, with mass testing and contact tracing, combined with mass vaccination, until the virus is exterminated.

While the Biden administration claims to be fighting the pandemic, it is spreading the illusion that the pandemic is virtually over, and that vaccines by themselves will be sufficient, while all public health measures can be relaxed.

Most dangerously, the administration is demanding that all public schools be reopened, beginning this month, with full in-person instruction. Given that there is no vaccine for children under 12 and that the Delta variant, which now dominates, is highly transmissible, this is a recipe for mass infection and death.

Already, children’s hospitals across the Southern US, the current epicenter of the pandemic, are reportedly filled to capacity. Infections have been reported among children who cannot yet walk and deaths of children barely old enough to go to school.

Only half the US population is fully vaccinated, leaving tens of millions of adults extremely vulnerable to the pandemic, as well as nearly all children. The great danger is that this huge pool of vulnerable people provides ample raw material for the virus to develop new variants, one of which may prove to be more resistant to the vaccines.

All 50 states were classified as having either high or substantial community transmission, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But instead of emergency measures to break the chain of transmission, state and municipal governments, Democrat and Republican alike, are approving mass summertime assemblies of people, largely unmasked and frequently unvaccinated, which will inevitably fuel the contagion.

Fans gather and cheer on day one of the Lollapalooza music festival at Grant Park in Chicago, July 29, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Shafkat Anowar File]

At the Lollapalooza festival last week in Chicago, more than 385,000 people were packed for a four-day event of music headliners. While Mayor Lori Lightfoot responded about the financial boon to her city with, “I feel very good about what we’ve done,” Dr. Tina Tan, a professor of medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, warned that the festival was “a recipe for disaster” expected to ignite another wave of infections throughout the city.

Summerfest, an annual music festival staged in downtown Milwaukee since 1968, will hold packed events in September and will not require masks, proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test for admission. But already, at least 500 people who joined in the mass celebration of the Milwaukee Bucks championship in the National Basketball Association last month have contracted COVID-19, according to health officials.

Milwaukee Health Commissioner Kirsten Johnson said during a press briefing, “We encourage anyone who has attended a large gathering, such as the watch party in the Deer District, get tested for COVID-19 due to the increased risk of transmission.” This would mean well over 100,000 people. COVID cases in Milwaukee have risen 155 percent in one week.

On Friday, Sioux Falls, South Dakota began hosting the 81st iteration of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which had spawned a massive superspreader event in the Dakotas and the Northwest last year when more than 450,000 people attended, leading to a chain of events that infected a quarter million people across the country. This year, more than 700,000 are expected to descend on South Dakota, more than the entire adult population of the state.

South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem has been one of the foremost opponents of any public health response to the pandemic and is preparing a campaign for the Republican presidential nomination as an advocate of “freedom,” presumably the freedom to spread disease and death. Her real interest is the freedom to make money, as the Sturgis event is expected to generate more than $800 million in sales for state businesses.

Equally criminal is the conduct of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has ordered local school districts not to require students to wear masks, threatening to cut off their state funding if they do so. This decree was issued even as the Delta variant is running wild throughout the state, and major hospitals have begun suspending elective surgeries extending their COVID units into conference rooms, auditoriums and cafeterias.

Dr. Marc Napp, chief medical officer for Memorial Healthcare System in Hollywood, Florida, told the Associated Press, “We are seeing a surge like we’ve not seen before in terms of the patients coming in. It’s the sheer number coming in at the same time. There are only so many beds, so many doctors, only so many nurses.” The number of hospitalized patients in the US has increased four-fold to nearly 45,000 in the span of a month.

Many of the state’s larger school districts have filed suit against DeSantis seeking a court order to overturn the ban on mask mandates.

In a heart-rending case, parents of disabled children have filed suit against the governor, charging that his ban violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, because it forces the children to return to school unmasked, when this is a huge risk to their health. “Parents are put into an impossible situation of having to choose between the health and life of their child and returning the school,” the lawsuit states.

Many of these children, because of their disability, require hands-on instruction and cannot learn in a virtual setting. Also because of their disability, they are more vulnerable to getting infected and to the worst consequences of COVID-19.

Germany’s show of force in the Indo-Pacific

Johannes Stern

The frigate Bayern (Bavaria), one of Germany’s largest warships, has been on its way to the Indo-Pacific since Monday.

German frigate Bayern

With a total journey of more than 30,000 nautical miles, the operation is one of the most comprehensive by the German navy since the end of the Second World War. The Bayern travelled through the North Sea and English Channel before traversing the northeast Atlantic, passing through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea. From there, it will continue through the Suez Canal and Red Sea, through the Indian Ocean and into the western Pacific, which is scheduled to be reached in the autumn.

The most politically and militarily explosive part of the trip is the return leg. This is when the frigate will pass through the South China Sea and the Straits of Malacca. The latter, owing to its economic and geostrategic significance, is referred to as the “aorta of the Indo-Pacific region.”

The South China Sea is at the heart of the US military buildup against China. Under President Biden, Washington has intensified its provocative operations to secure “freedom of navigation” for shipping in the waters claimed by China in the South China Sea and is preparing to install offensive missiles along the coasts of several densely populated islands in the region, including Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines.

Germany’s intervention into the Indo-Pacific not only heightens the danger of war in the region, it also initiates a new stage in the return of German militarism.

In her speech on the occasion of the Bayern’s departure from the town of Wilhelmshaven, Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer declared explicitly that the purpose of the mission was to enforce the geostrategic and economic interests of German imperialism in the region. “As a major trader and exporter in the region, we have a strong interest in the securing of free trade routes,” she proclaimed.

Although Kramp-Karrenbauer asserted that Germany’s engagement in the Indo-Pacific is “not against something or anyone,” her speech was a direct attack on China. “The message is clear, we are raising the flag for our interests and values,” she said. This is “important,” because “it is a reality for our partners in the Indo-Pacific that the seas are restricted and sea lanes are no longer secure.” Experience shows that “territorial claims are being made based on the law of the strongest.”

The Defence Minister threatened Beijing directly, commenting, “We will cooperate with China where we can and push back where we must. Because we will firmly resist anyone who tries to ignore international law and impose their own new rules of the game on us and our partners.” Although the headwinds are “stiffening, we know how to set our sails against it. We will not allow ourselves to be diverted from our course.”

Kramp-Karrenbauer openly stated what this “course” consists of. With the mission, “the soldiers are implementing practically and visibly what the German government laid out in its Indo-Pacific doctrine,” she said.

The strategy paper published by the Foreign Ministry in September 2020 declared the Indo-Pacific to be the “key to shaping the international order in the 21st century.” It also clearly formulated Germany’s claim to play a leadership role in the region. “The Himalayas and the Straits of Malacca may appear a long way off. But our prosperity and geopolitical influence in the decades to come will depend in particular upon how we cooperate with the states of the Indo-Pacific.” As a “globally active trading nation” Germany cannot “content itself with the role of a spectator.”

Kramp-Karrenbauer’s great power speech culminated with the declaration, “From Wilhelmshaven through the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, to the South China Sea and the Pacific, the IPD [Indo-Pacific Deployment] is an example of how Germany is taking responsibility.” The “more fundamental significance of the mission” goes “beyond the coming seven months.” It stands for “Germany’s active engagement for the rules-based order and the increased strategic significance of the sea.”

Berlin’s mad grand plan to confront the nuclear-armed China in the South China Sea and reassert itself as a naval and world power stands in the militaristic traditions of German imperialism.

On July 27, 1900, Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II held his notorious “Hun Speech” in Bremerhaven. On the occasion of the departure of the German East Asia Corp., which was mobilised to brutally suppress the Boxer Rebellion in China, he declared that the German military had emerged in the course of “thirty years of faithful peaceful labour.”

Germany’s head of state accused China of “overturning the law of nations” and of having “mocked the sacredness of the envoy, the duties of hospitality in a way unheard of in world history…” Wilhelm II then made his notorious threat, “Just as a thousand years ago the Huns under their King Attila made a name for themselves, one that even today makes them seem mighty in history and legend, may the name German be affirmed by you in such a way in China that no Chinese will ever again dare to look cross-eyed at a German.”

The aggression was the prelude to the First World War. The intervention against the Boxer Rebellion, initially launched as a joint operation, intensified the conflicts between the imperialist powers, culminating in August 1914 in what was at the time the greatest mass slaughter in world history. The German Empire had launched a massive rearming programme in the preceding years, including the so-called “flotilla laws” focusing specifically on the navy.

The ruling class is working towards this end once again. The federal government’s current munitions report includes the purchasing of several warships. These include the building of four multi-purpose ships of the 180 class, an option to purchase a further two, the bringing into service of a frigate of the Baden-Württemberg 125 class, five class 130 corvettes, and two class 212 Common Design submarines.

The cost of this rearmament is gigantic. For the purchase of the four multi-purpose ships alone, €5.27 billion has been set aside. This makes it the navy’s largest project since the massive naval armament drive during the Second World War. And this is only the beginning. In March 2019, Kramp-Karrenbauer and German chancellor Angela Merkel spoke out in favour of a plan to build Germany’s own aircraft carrier.

As early as 2014, the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) analysed the objective forces underlying the return of German militarism and warned of its implications in a resolution. Just a few months after former Foreign Minister and current German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier told the Munich Security Conference that Germany is “too large and economically strong to comment on world politics from the sidelines,” we wrote:

“History is returning with a vengeance. Almost 70 years after the crimes of the Nazis and its defeat in World War II, the German ruling class is once again adopting the imperialist great power politics of the Kaiser’s Empire and Hitler… The propaganda of the post-war era—that Germany had learnt from the terrible crimes of the Nazis, had “arrived at the West,” had embraced a peaceful foreign policy, and had developed into a stable democracy—is exposed as lies. German imperialism is once again showing its real colours as it emerged historically, with all of its aggressiveness at home and abroad.”

Seven years later, it is clear how correct this assessment was. Despite its unspeakable crimes in two world wars, the German ruling elite sees no limits in the 21st century on the pursuit of its imperialist interests. After having sacrificed tens of thousands of people on the altar of profit during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is now preparing together with its imperialist allies for major military conflicts.

Porn Workers as Labor Force

Thomas Kilkauer & Meg Young

Today, Sylvester “Stallion’s” net value is about $400 million. But that was not always the case. In 1970, the appropriately named “Stallion” appeared in an American “soft-core pornography romance film” (Wikipedia) called The Party at Kitty and Stud’s. Stallone worked two days and was paid $200.

Since the days of Oliver Reed’s “X-rated masterpiece” (BBC) which “is still being censored”, the money for adult workers has improved and working conditions as well. This is the non-sex-side of the pornography industry. Overall, the industry is valued at about $100bn globally.

Despite many moral misgivings, it operates, after all, like a normal business. There is marketing which tells people that films like The Party at Kitty and Stud’s do exists; there is finance who compensates actors, pays bills, collects profits, etc.; there is operations management that gets props, costumes, toys, cameras, etc. onto the set; and there is HRM who manages workers, i.e. adult actors.

Like all other workers, adult workers too, share the common goals that many workers share. These are found in quests for self-determination, autonomy, dignity, respect, reasonable working time, good working conditions and fair compensation. Yet unlike most workers, adult workers face a competing discourse of exploitation versus liberating sex work. Yet ever since Karl Marx, we know that all work in capitalism is exploitative.

Yet on-set, sex for adult workers is rather different. Under the capitalism-pornography link, sexuality becomes pornographic when it is produced for a profit. In short, when there is no camera, you are not an adult performer. Still, the most famous definition of pornography comes from US Supreme Court Judge Potter Stewart who, in 1964 in his Jacobellis v. Ohio judgment, said,

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But, I know it when I see it.

Yet, a more appropriate definition of sex work might be: when a person willingly takes part in consensual sex and the individual’s human rights are not violated and, when it is performed in front of a camera, we talk about the pornographic industry. This is also the moment where the United Nations’ Palermo Protocols comes into play. It says that pornography is considered illegal when it shows child pornography, bestiality, incest, and the relatively new category of revenge porn.

Beyond that, adult workers also differ from many other workers in another respect. Most who work in pornography are independent contractors and not employees of a business organization, company and corporation. As a consequence, adult workers are exposed to all the evil trimmings of flexible despotism. Hence, adult workers have been sharing many similarities to today’s gig-workers long before the deceptive term Gig-Economy came into being. Yet, they do not share this with other workers: their work can be viewed on YouPorn and Porn Hub.

Quite similar to all other workers, the work of adult workers starts with recruitment and selection. Like many other industries, the adult industry is a buyer’s market. It is very rare that a production is stopped or even delayed because of a shortage of willing workers – both female and male.

Like many other workers, adult workers work for money. When 176 adult actresses were asked about that, 50% replied that they do it for the money, with a distant second being because of sex. Many of these adult workers can be roughly classed into five categories:

Category I: high status call girls;

Category II: in-house prostitutes;

Category III: streetwalkers;

Category IV: commuter housewives; and

Category V: drugs-for-sex streetwalkers

Common to all five categories of adult workers is the fact that these workers generally experience low prestige. This is mostly because their work is somewhat questionable, if not morally tainted. Worse, adult workers share a low physical status with the likes of pest control workers; a low social status with correctional officers; and a low moral status with used car salespeople and real estate agents.

Adult workers have in common with other workers is that they too, find jobs through word-of-mouth, through agency websites like staffing.com and craigslist.org but also through more specific online sites like www.sexyjobs.com and www.adultstaffing.com.

Just like in the entertainment industry as a whole, online platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, etc. play a significant role in the casting process. Once the recruitment (gets enough applicants) and selection (selecting the right person) process is done, the onboarding process also assures that the necessary paperwork is completed.

This includes the 2257-form officially ensuring that adult workers performing on the set are verified to be above the legal age of eighteen. Like other workers, a heath check is also performed just that in the case of adult workers, what is needed is the latest STI-free blood test.

Sadly and like most other workers, adult workers are also exposed to performance management. Commonly, this serves three functions for business organizations: a) performance management is presented as a necessity for the business; b) it is to increase the output of employees; and c) it remains one of management’s preferred tools to control and oppress workers – not only in the adult industry. Even before performing, many adult workers believe that this industry is an easy way to make some serious money while only needing to work for a short time on a flexible schedule.

Yet there are two diverging perspective on working in the adult industry. One position is stated by feminist studies’ author Mireille Miller-Young (A Taste for Brown Sugar – Black Women in Pornography). She makes two arguments: firstly, she argues that adult workers go into pornography specifically because of the creative aspects; secondly, they do so because they find working in pornography empowering.

Supporting this view, adult performer and sex educator Nina Hartley says, “I am sexual the way that Mozart was musical; life of public sexuality has, from my very first time on stage, been as natural to me as breathing.” While the adult performer and entrepreneur, Alix Lovell notes,

I have always been a free spirit and I believe in sexual empowerment. We all need sex; it’s like food and water. I like sex and now I happen to be getting paid for something I do anyway, but now I do it in a safer way.

The counter argument is that virtually all culture is produced within a capitalist system. This is based on the exploitation of workers. Like everywhere in capitalism, the adult worker (many are females) is exploited and hardly ever becomes rich. It is mostly the male producers of pornography who become rich.

The latter almost never appears in front of the camera. Aligned to this is the argument of the world’s leading anti-pornography campaigner and feminist Gail Dines. Dines reasons that pornography is harsh and degrading. It is a body-punishing spectacle. She says,

The more porn images filter into mainstream culture, the more girls and women are stripped of full human status and reduced to sex objects. This has a terrible effect on girls’ sexual identity because it robs them of their own sexual desire.

Yet, the production of adult themes does not slow down. Instead, the advent of the Internet has actually turbo-charged the global pornography industry. Inside the industry, like most other workers, adult workers’ performance are measured against their knowledge, skills and attitudes (KSAs).  ]

Unlike most white-collar workers, adult workers hardly ever experience a formal and often rather rigid performance appraisal systems. Unlike other white-collar workers, there is no going to the home office for adult workers. Furthermore, adult workers are typically paid by the hour or on a day rate. Moreover, it is rather common that adult workers are paid based on a flat rate. Often, they are paid per scene or per photo shoot.

Like in other industries, key to employability is punctuality and basic preparation for the job. Both are helpful for long-term success. In other words, turning up for work two or three hours late might not get you fired straight away. But word spreads quickly in the adult industry.

Much more important than this is an adult worker’s online social media fan base – a crucial metric for potential sales and high wages. Top level adult workers command a strong fan base. As a consequence, top actors can demand much higher pay rates.

This enhances the career development of adult workers showing off solid performances, as well as future potentials. Increasingly, these careers are no longer structured pathways invented by HRM. Instead, career development is pushed onto workers themselves. In the gig economy as well as for adult workers, this means they are seen as self-directed mini-managers forced to take responsibility for their own careers. This is no longer what the so-called traditionalists had experienced. As a rough guide, there are five groups:

Traditionalists:  born before 1946

Baby boomers:   born between 1946 and 1964

Generation X: born between 1965 and 1976

Generation Y: born between 1977 and 1997

Generation Z born after 1997

Whatever the group, the so-called damaged goods theory applies to all of them. The damaged goods theory proposes that adult workers show significantly higher rates of childhood sexual abuse, psychological problems and drug use compared to other workers. Yet, in his book HRM in the Pornography Industry, David Kopp argues that many findings do not support the damaged goods theory.

Having said that, adult work remains a much more precarious work to get into than many other forms of work. This is one reason why the overwhelming number of women come in and out of adult work within a few months to a few years. By comparison, for male adult workers, the average career in the adult industry is about five years. One reason for such a short duration – no career! – is the social stigma attached to this work.

A second reason might be the fact that this is really dangerous work. For one, there are sexually transmitted infection (STI). Preventative measures are generally pushed onto adult workers in an industry that is defined by fake and real contract work. These leaves employers with the minor responsibility of having to do only two things: (a) take reasonable care and (b) prevent an unsafe work environment for their employees.

Adult worker Aurora Snow explains,

at adult film sets, employees are required to be nude, i.e. full physical contact among coworkers that, at times, may call for choking, slapping, hitting, maybe hair pulling, and certain bodily acts. It can be messy, demeaning or empowering. Adult work is rather difficult to navigate.

Beyond that, AIDS has not vanished either. To combat STIs and AIDS, the adult industry operates with a standard protocol involving voluntary testing. This is done every fourteen days. Results are entered into the Performer Availability Screening Services or PASS-Certificate. The PASS database is run by the Free Speech Coalition – a trades association that recently featured Senator Amy Klobuchar. In any case, before filming, adult producers, directors and, at times, HR departments check the PASS database.

Once a safe working environment is established, adult workers tend to get paid based on a flat rate per scene or photo shoot. About five years ago, the rates were men-women scene: $900 to $1,000; all-women: $700 to $1,200; male performers: $500 to $1,000; and threesomes and orgies: $200 per adult worker. The average rates for the crew and staff behind the camera range from $500 for a make-up artist to $3,000 for a director.

This, of course can increase wages significantly depending on an actor’s online profile. The Instagram follower base of someone like Sunny Leone can reach up to 50 million; Mia Khalifa can muster 25 million followers; and Alexis Texas 6 million. A high online visibility increases individual income.

Lower down the level, adult workers have been creating their own websites, make movies at home, rent out their homes, etc. for extra income. Collectively, adult workers have also gone to organize themselves in a trade union as the documentary Nude Girls Unite! shows. One of the most advanced places has been California.

Important for adult workers in California for example, is the California Labor Federation, as well as the Adult Performance Artist Guild. The latter has the goal “to earn employee rights, set performer responsibilities, negotiate fair practices and fair wages, fight occupational discrimination and help performers provide themselves with a better future.”

Health crisis is a class question UK studies confirm

Richard Tyler & Thomas Scripps

Last month, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published an analysis of ethnic differences in life expectancy between 2011 and 2014. It found that “males and females in the White and Mixed ethnic groups had lower life expectancy than all other ethnic groups, while the Black African group had a statistically higher life expectancy than most groups.”

The ONS report: Ethnic differences in life expectancy and mortality from selected causes in England and Wales: 2011 to 2014

Mixed ethnicity men had a life expectancy of 79.3, White of 79.7, Black Caribbean of 80.7, Bangladeshi of 81.8 Indian of 82.3, Black Africans of 83.8 and Asian Other of 84.5. The figures for women were Mixed (83.1), White (83.1), Black Caribbean (84.6), Indian (85.4), Asian Other (86.9), Bangladeshi (87.3) and Black African (88.9).

The ONS study was the first to link extensive census data (over 50 million records) with death registrations and GP patient records covering England and Wales. Its authors note that their overall life expectancy estimates are likely “slightly overestimated” and that “the exact results should therefore be treated with caution”, but states, “the overall patterns are consistent with the findings of other published studies”.

These statistics demonstrate the bankruptcy of an approach to society which substitutes racial categories for class analysis. If racial inequality, with Whites at the top, is the dominant social problem, then what is one to make of the higher life expectancies of Blacks and Asians?

On a racial analysis, the problem of the population’s health is entirely confused and distorted. According to a recent summary by the Kings Fund healthcare thinktank, the Chinese and Black African groups have lower rates of disability than the White group, but Black Caribbean, Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani have higher. Health related quality of life scores at older ages are lower among most ethnic minority groups compared to Whites, but not Black Caribbean, Black African and Mixed. The poorest overall health is reported by the White Gypsy and Irish Traveler group.

Many different social and cultural factors contribute to these differences. The ONS authors of the life expectancy study write that it is “likely that Asian and Black ethnic groups engage less in harmful health-related behaviours, such as being less likely than the White ethnic group to smoke or drink alcohol.” They also note, “Potential reasons for the higher life expectancy found in the Black African and Asian Other ethnic groups include that they contain a higher proportion of more recent migrants than other ethnic groups. Previous research shows that people who migrate tend to be healthier than others.”

These are important factors. But they are of an entirely secondary order of magnitude. The health crisis they set out to address is overwhelmingly a class question. Social class is the overwhelmingly dominant influence, across all ethnicities, of social class and inequality, but this is entirely obscured in a discussion on health based on racial categories.

Smoking is not a risk factor universally common to “white people”, but hits the poorest sections of the working class hardest. While only 7.6 percent of the population in the wealthiest communities smoke, the rate is three times as high in the poorest communities, at 22 percent. Around 11,000 smoking-related cancers are diagnosed in the poorest 20 percent of the population each year, compared to around 6,000 in the richest 20 percent.

The racialisation of social statistics is so far advanced that it is largely impossible to make similar points for ethnic minority groups. The last prominent piece of research on intra-ethnic inequality was produced by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 2011, which revealed higher household income inequality rates for Chinese, Indian, African, Pakistani and Caribbean households than White British.

The centrality of class was confirmed with brutal clarity by another health report published last month, in The Lancet medical journal, on the impact of cuts to local government funding on life expectancy in England. The report explains, “Funding reductions were greater in more deprived areas and these areas had the worst changes in life expectancy.”

Each £100 reduction in per capita funding between 2013 and 2017 was associated with an average decrease in life expectancy at birth of 1.3 months. The cuts were associated with almost 10,000 additional deaths in those aged below 75 in England. Adverse trends in life expectancy had “disproportionately affected the most deprived areas, reversing improvements” over the decade prior to 2011.

These findings echo those of the Institute of Health Equity in its February 2020 report, “Health Equity in England: The Marmot Review 10 Years On”. It found that, since 2011, life expectancy in England has stalled for the first time at least since the turn of the last century, an outcome produced by the fall or stagnation of life expectancy in the working class under the blows of austerity.

The report explains, “between the least and most deprived deciles was 9.5 years for males and 7.7 years for females... In 2010-12, the corresponding differences were smaller—9.1 and 6.8 years, respectively.”

For years of good health, the class divide is far worse. The Kings Fund wrote this April, “The rich–poor gap in healthy life expectancy is even greater—almost two decades—than the gap in life expectancy. Those living in the most deprived areas spend nearly a third of their lives in poor health, compared with only about a sixth for those in the least deprived areas.”

COVID-19 has vastly intensified these inequalities. The Kings Fund writes, “There have been two turning points in trends in life expectancy in England in the past decade. From 2011 increases in life expectancy slowed after decades of steady improvement, prompting much debate about the causes. Then in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic was a more significant turning point, causing a sharp fall in life expectancy the magnitude of which has not been seen since World War II.”

Life expectancy for males fell to 78.7 years and for women to 82.7 years, the level of a decade ago. Those who died from Covid each lost about a decade of life on average.

Multiple studies have proved the close link between deprivation and COVID-19 mortality rates, which largely underlies the disproportionate impact on generally poorer ethnic minorities. A July report by the Health Foundation shows that the connection between social class and the chance of death from COVID-19 is even stronger among the working-age population, under 65 years old.

Among this group, COVID-19 mortality rates were found to be nearly four times higher in the most deprived areas in England when compared to the least deprived areas. Those in the fifth most deprived decile were still more than twice as likely to die than those in the first, the wealthiest.

Mortality rates in this demographic were higher in the second wave of the virus than in the first and were higher in urban areas, as the “back to work” policy of the Johnson government, backed by the Labour Party and the trade unions, forcing millions of people back onto public transport and into unsafe workplaces, took its effect.

The effects of the pandemic in compounding the health crisis confronting the working class will be long-lasting.

COVID-19 has not even begun to be brought under control on a global scale. Long-term health consequences of COVID infections already affect millions in the UK. National Health Service waiting lists are at record levels. Local councils, whose budget cuts the Lancet study identified as a driver of stalling life expectancy, have been left more financially vulnerable by the pandemic. A vicious social counter-revolution is being prepared to recoup the costs of multi-billion corporate handouts.