Poverty Strategy Commission report finds millions “surviving not living” in Britain

Steve James

A report into poverty in Britain, one of the world’s richest countries, has concluded that millions of low-income families are “surviving not living”, while a growing proportion of the population is in “deep poverty.”

Overall, between 21 and 24 percent of the population has been in poverty between 2000/1 and 2019/20, nearly 14 million people on the eve of the pandemic. Of those, an increasing percentage—some 31 percent, up from 22 percent—are in deep poverty, with an income of less than half the poverty line.

The release of the figures follows a survey of frontline poverty and social service workers helping 200,000 children between them, who report 120,000 are living in destitution, “life-changing and life-limiting deep poverty.” Nearly 60 percent live in households which cannot afford adequate nutrition or electricity and gas and 63 percent are without basic furniture.

A New Framework for Tackling Poverty report by the Poverty Strategy Commission [Photo: screenshot: povertystrategycommission.org.uk]

According to “A New Framework for Tackling Poverty”, from the recently founded Poverty Strategy Commission (PSC), small recent improvements are being reversed. In 2001, 18 percent of pension-age adults were in poverty. This figure dropped to 9 percent in 2014 but has now climbed back to 12 percent. The number of single parents in poverty fell between 2001 and 2013 from 61 to 47 percent, but by 2019 had increased again to 52 percent.

The rate of persistent poverty, measured as being in poverty now, and over two of the last three years, has increased from 10 percent in 2014/15 to 13 percent in 2018/19.

Even these figures understate the crisis. If housing costs are factored in, the overall poverty rate increases by 4 percentage points. The growing numbers of private renters who are in poverty spend, on average, 47 percent of their income on housing. For those living in poverty in inner London, this rises to an astronomical 71 percent of income.

If assets and debts are included, poverty rates go up by another 3.2 points. The report notes that “the median family in poverty has no liquid assets at all, while the median family outside of poverty has liquid assets of around £4,500”, meaning those in poverty have no reserves with which to deal with the unexpected.

Among children with families, childcare costs increase the poverty rate by 0.4 percentage points. Households in poverty spend 16 percent of their income on childcare. The report notes that these exorbitant costs prevent parents from working.

Low pay and lack of support for the disabled are the major driving factors of this ongoing social disaster. Half of all people in poverty are disabled themselves or live with someone who is disabled. Nearly two-thirds are in a household where someone works, and over a fifth where all adults work full time—incredibly, 9 percent of full-time working households are in deep poverty.

Taken together, the PSC concludes, the “resource gap” faced by the 6 million families in poverty amounts to an average of £6,000 per family per year. In other words, it would take £36 billion to bring them all a hair’s breadth above the poverty line.

The PSC’s assessment is all the more striking for its authors. The Commission is one of the offshoots of the pro-Brexit, right-wing libertarian Legatum Institute, created in 2007 by the partners of Dubai-based investment firm, Legatum. The firm was founded by New Zealand billionaire Christopher Chandler, who made his fortune buying up and trading assets of the former Soviet Union after its dissolution in 1991. By 2002, Chandler and his brother were the fourth largest investors in Russian gas giant Gazprom.

Chair of the PSC is Phillipa Stroud, Baroness Stroud, ennobled in 2015. She co-founded the Centre for Social Justice with former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and was an adviser to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in the 2015 Conservative-Liberal Democrats austerity coalition, helping create and implement the punitive Universal Credit welfare system.

Needless to say, the PSC hastens to reassure of the £36 billion shortfall, “This £36 billion is not a spending ask of government or business. Increases in resources can come via a range of routes including reduced costs, increased working hours, improved health, greater family stability, higher productivity, and reduced debt.”

Still less does the report suggest any encroachment on the wealth of the super-rich. Rather, the PSC is warning the financial aristocracy and its minions in the major political parties that, left unchecked and in conditions of the re-emergence of class struggle, the immiseration of much of the working population threatens social upheaval.

Its particular concern is the undermining of the fundamental capitalist free market myth that work is fairly rewarded. This is being shredded by the continuous rise of in-work poverty, and now in-work deep poverty. The authors write in response that “Those working as much as expected by the new social contract, should not be in poverty.”

Of course, there is no “social contract”; there is the profit-driven market competition of the capitalist class, which as iron law impoverishes millions of human beings not “working as much as expected”. To maintain this status quo, the commission proposes a series of fractional increases to income aimed at taking the edge off widespread destitution, without coming close to addressing the enormous social problem of poverty.

Among these are a five percent increasing in the earnings of the working poor, with a median average increase of £650, to increase gross earnings by £2.2 billion and take half a million out of poverty. A separate five percent increase in benefits would, on average, provide a miserly £544 increase annually for families and lift 725,000 people out of poverty at a cost to the state of a mere £3 billion. Similar changes are mooted with regard to debts, housing and childcare costs, skills and “family structure”.

These are substantially aimed at increasing the supply of exploitable labour. The PSC writes that “As well as reducing poverty, many of these would simultaneously improve economic growth and benefit the Exchequer.” Top of the list is “individuals taking on more hours of paid work,” suggested after 15 years in which the number of hours worked in the UK has already increased by 11.3 percent—almost 50 percent more than the OECD average.

The question is never raised about how even the pitiful improvement suggested by the PSC would be funded. It is a mark of the collapse of social reformism in Britain—home of the supposed “cradle to grave” welfare state—that its report, advised by figures from across the major Parliamentary parties, at no time refers to social inequality. Nor does it contrast the staggering financial assets of the wealthy with those of the millions of working people “surviving not living”.

A recent report of the Equality Trust, backed by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and basing itself on the government’s own figures, noted that the poorest fifth of the population earned a mere 8 percent of total disposable income, while the top fifth earned 36 percent.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies reports that the richest tenth alone take home 15 percent of earnings, and the richest 0.1 percent, just 50,000 people, take 6 percent, or £37 billion—almost exactly the amount needed to lift all 14 million people out of poverty.

Disparities in household wealth were even starker. In 2020, according to government figures, the poorest 50 percent of the population held 9 percent of wealth, while the top 10 percent owned 43 percent. The Equality Trust noted, “By 2023, the richest 50 families in the UK held more wealth than half of the UK population, comprising 33.5 million people. If the wealth of the super-rich continues to grow at the rate it has been, by 2035, the wealth of the richest 200 families will be larger than the whole UK GDP.”

The social roots of the Moroccan earthquake disaster

Alex Lantier

A woman tries to recover some of her possessions from her home which was damaged by an earthquake in the village of Tafeghaghte, near Marrakech, Morocco, Monday, Sept. 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy)

On Friday evening, September 8, at 11:11 p.m. local time, a devastating earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale struck southern Morocco, near Marrakech. The death toll has already surpassed 2,800 people, many in small, isolated towns in the High Atlas mountains where the quake was centered. At least 3,000 are wounded, many critically, and time is rapidly running out for many more still trapped under collapsed buildings.

While 18 died in Marrakech, a global center of tourism with a population of nearly 1 million, most died in mountain villages whose old, vulnerable mud-brick houses were shattered by the quake. In one village, Tafeghaghte, 90 of 200 inhabitants are confirmed dead, with dozens more missing and feared to be dead or trapped in the rubble.

The few press reports emerging from these villages show that the Moroccan government is mostly leaving quake victims to fend for themselves. Private citizens in Agadir, Marrakech or other areas less badly hit by the quake are having to buy food, water and other critical supplies and transport them to the villages in their personal cars.

“There’s no sign of the authorities for the moment. We’re so isolated here. Without benefactors, we would starve,” one inhabitant of a village hit by the quake, Mustapha El-Machmoum, told AFP. “We asked the authorities for tents yesterday, but nothing arrived. We’re sleeping on the ground in the cold. Adults can cope with this, but not the children.”

Like the Turkish-Syrian earthquake that claimed many tens of thousands of lives last February, the Moroccan earthquake catastrophe is not only a natural disaster. The knowledge and technology exists to greatly limit the impact of such events. Their disastrous consequences are entirely bound up with existing economic interests and social conditions. Under capitalism, policy is dominated by the pursuit of corporate profits and personal wealth by the ruling elites, who are contemptuous of the lives of the masses of people.

The effectiveness of modern, earthquake-resistant housing and the necessity of building it are well known to scientists. The 2021 Fukushima earthquake in Japan, one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries, reached over 7 on the Richter scale. Yet, thanks to the considerable investments in earthquake-resistant housing in Japan, only three people died and 16 were seriously injured.

In 2021, the International Journal of Disaster Risk Science found that 1.5 billion people live in earthquake-prone areas worldwide. A Forbes list of the 10 most quake-prone cities—Kathmandu, Istanbul, Delhi, Quito, Manila, Islamabad, San Salvador, Mexico City, Izmir and Jakarta—is largely made up of vast cities of millions of people. A 1999 Nature article warned, however, that earthquake-resistant housing is a “low priority,” adding: “The absence of earthquake-resistant construction in future cities would be indefensible.”

The capitalist class, in control of every national government, rejected the necessary spending on safer housing as an intolerable drain on its profits. Instead, since 1990, trillions of dollars have gone to bank bailouts and the US-NATO wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mali and Ukraine. Today, the world’s eight wealthiest individuals own the same amount as half the world’s population. But in countless earthquake-prone areas, masses of people live in housing that can condemn them to death in case of a major quake.

Morocco sits along the fault between the African and Eurasian tectonic plates and has seen major earthquakes, including in 1960 at Agadir and in 2004 at Al Hoceima. Yet not only are Moroccans left in unsafe mud-brick housing, but no preparations were made for substantial disaster response.

Moroccan King Mohammed VI, a longstanding ally of US and French imperialism, was vacationing in his €80 million mansion next to the Eiffel Tower in Paris when the quake hit. He has made no statement since his return to Morocco, only releasing a brief clip, without sound, of him talking to security and health officials. No other officials have yet been able to issue statements, Moroccan journalist Omar Brouksy said, as there is “a rule, unwritten but unswervingly obeyed, [that] states that no official can speak or make a public trip before the sovereign.”

In terms of cold indifference to the plight of the earthquake victims, the Moroccan king was surpassed only by that of France, a former colonial power in Morocco. France’s Moroccan diaspora numbers over 1.5 million people, and Marrakech is a highly popular vacation destination in France. Yet, after the Moroccan monarchy indicated that it preferred to invite Spanish, British, Qatari or UAE rescue teams rather than French ones, President Emmanuel Macron’s government announced a donation of just €5 million to rescue and aid organizations in Morocco.

This means that Macron is donating to Morocco the cost of just one of the 30 Caesar heavy artillery systems he has sent to Ukraine for the NATO war on Russia.

The indifference of capitalist governments to essential social needs of the working population, which they view with fear and hostility, inevitably recalls the last great Moroccan earthquake thought to have surpassed the current Marrakech quake. In November 1755, twin earthquakes devastated the Portuguese city of Lisbon and the Moroccan city of Meknès.

In the passage in Candide that he devoted to the Lisbon earthquake, Enlightenment author Voltaire lampooned the defenders of the absolute monarchies that then ruled over Europe. The devastation from the Lisbon quake tore apart their complacent claims that “Everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.” Three decades after Voltaire published his work, the absolute monarchy by divine right was swept away by the French Revolution.

Over two centuries later, the Moroccan earthquake exposes the bankruptcy of the capitalist order, which is no less corrupt and outlived than the French absolute monarchy was in Voltaire’s day.

In Libya, authorities of the Libyan National Army (LNA) reported yesterday that 2,000 were killed and over 5,000 missing after a dam broke and flood waters swept away much of the city of Derna. The LNA controls the eastern half of Libya, which has been divided between rival militias fighting a bloody civil war ever since the 2011 NATO war against Libya.

In Turkey, countless thousands of victims of the February quake still live in tents, while the Turkish government oversees the building of more non-earthquake-resistant housing into which workers are again to be forced—and in which thousands would again die in the next quake. Is there any doubt that, if the matter is left in the hands of stooges of the banks like Mohammed VI or Macron, they will also prepare the next preventable earthquake catastrophe?

Around the world, the working class is faced with the reality that a tiny, irresponsible ruling elite squanders vast social resources essential to the well-being and even the survival of the population. Impervious to demands for change, it is obsessed with its pursuit of militarism and its own obscene wealth. This is true both in former colonial countries like Morocco or in imperialist “democracies” like France, where riot police this spring brutally repressed mass protests against Macron’s overwhelmingly unpopular pension cuts.

Reservoirs of SARS-CoV-2 and their potential role in Long COVID

Bill Shaw

A review article in Nature Immunology summarizes what is currently known about the persistence of SARS-CoV-2 virus in the body after COVID-19. Theorized as a possible cause of Long COVID, the ongoing presence of the virus could trigger immune responses that account for most or all the sequelae of COVID-19. For the virus to persist, a “reservoir”—that is, a particular tissue that is host to either viral genetic material or ongoing viral replication—must exist.

Some of the most prevalent symptoms of Long COVID

The authors noted that viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 persist in the body after infection and cause chronic illnesses as a direct result. The genetic material of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is RNA, and in particular it is single-stranded RNA or “ssRNA” for short. Several other ssRNA viruses—including Zika virus, Ebola virus, enteroviruses, and the measles virus—are known to persist in tissues for months to years after initial infection. 

The persistence of these other ssRNA viruses often results in chronic disorders including heart, eye, neurological, and musculoskeletal syndromes. Therefore it is a reasonable hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 exhibits similar behavior that is responsible for at least a significant proportion of cases of Long COVID. It should also be noted that reservoirs of these viruses have been associated with viral mutations while the virus replicates for long periods of time in the body as well as ongoing transmission of the virus—often silent given that individuals are often months past acute infection.

The purpose of the review article was to assess what science currently has discovered about reservoirs of SARS-CoV-2 and their association with Long COVID. Also, the authors reviewed the possible biological mechanisms by which viral reservoirs might result in the broad array of sequelae seen in Long COVID patients.

The answer is that dozens of tissues are documented reservoirs of SARS-CoV-2 for periods up to 676 days (nearly two years). Viral RNA and associated proteins have been found in brain, nerve, gastrointestinal tract, lymph node, lung and breast tissue, among others. Viral RNA and proteins, including the spike protein, have been found circulating in blood plasma for over a year post-infection.

The reason why so many tissues serve as reservoir of the virus is still a subject for future study. One leading hypothesis is that most human tissues are dense with Angiotensin Converting Enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors, and ACE2 receptors are the primary way the SARS-CoV-2 virus binds cells in order to enter them. Notably, ACE2 receptors are particularly abundant in the tissues of the gastrointestinal tract, brain, lung, heart and blood vessels.

The research also demonstrates that individuals with viral reservoirs test negative for the virus by testing of nasopharyngeal (nose and throat) or blood specimens, or in some studies, both. This fact is important, to demonstrate that ongoing primary infection is not confounding the findings, and that these tissues are in fact serving as viral reservoirs post-infection.

The evidence that viral reservoirs are associated with Long COVID is less strong, but nevertheless highly suggestive. As the virus persists in various tissues, viral proteins—including the spike protein—“leak” out into circulating blood plasma. Studies of Long COVID patients have demonstrated persistence of the S1 protein in up to 64 percent of Long COVID patients vs. only 35 percent of control patients who recovered. The results for spike protein are more dramatic, persisting in 60 percent of Long COVID patients vs. zero control patients in one study.

The evidence for both viral reservoirs and their association with Long COVID also comes from studies looking at T cells, a type of white blood cell involved in fighting infection. T cells that are specific to a virus rapidly multiply when that virus is present in the body and then drop off in numbers after the infection. Thus, the persistent elevation in numbers of SARS-CoV-2 specific T cells is evidence that the virus is still present in significant quantity in the body.

First, individuals with the presence of viral RNA and proteins in tissues have been found to also have high numbers of SARS-CoV-2 T cells. These results confirm that SARS-CoV-2 is not an exception to the rule: when the virus is present, so are virus-specific T cells.

Second, the persistent elevation of SARS-CoV-2 specific T cells has been found in Long COVID patients. One study found that these levels were 6 to 105 times higher in Long COVID patients than in controls. Another study showed that the SARS-CoV-2 T cells had markers that indicated recent T cell activation and/or exhaustion, consistent with active immune response to the presence of virus.

The review also looked at the hypothesized mechanisms by which viral reservoirs result in the broad constellation of phenomena seen in Long COVID patients. The prolonged presence of the virus may directly damage tissues and/or induce prolonged inflammatory responses that damage tissues progressively over time. Also, it is known that viral proteins disrupt the body’s feedback loops that regulate metabolism, gene expression and immune responses. Another hypothesis posits that the virus directly induces clot formation that causes damaging inflammatory responses. 

Specific mechanisms called out by the authors for special consideration include effects on the the vagus nerve, induction of autoimmune responses, and the neurological system.

Infection with SARS-CoV-2 has been associated with disruption of the microbiome, or the set of all bacteria living in the body and most especially the gastrointestinal tract. The kinds of disruptions seen are known from prior research to be associated with the development of certain conditions, including those seen in Long COVID. In particular, it could be an important factor in life-threatening after-effects of COVID-19 seen in children, called Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome of Children or MIS-C.

The vagus nerve has tens of thousands of branches that supply nervous energy to all the major organs in the trunk of the body. Activation of this nerve is associated with numerous non-specific symptoms, and most of these symptoms have been described in Long COVID patients. They include fatigue, difficulty concentrating, anxiety, depression, and muscle and joint pain. Either direct infection of the nerve—which has been found post-infection—or activation of its branches by immune responses in the tissues they stimulate, could explain the common occurrence of these non-specific symptoms in Long COVID.

With respect to autoimmunity, research has found that the antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 infection often includes induction of antibodies that attack the patient’s own tissues. Similar types of autoimmunity have been seen in Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) infection. Some work has hypothesized that SARS-CoV-2 infection reactivates latent EBV in the body. Whether the autoimmunity is thus directly induced or indirectly through EBV reactivation or both is not known.

Direct infection of the central nervous system (CNS) and ongoing inflammatory responses to the virus in CNS tissues might explain the increased risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease in COVID-19 sufferers. One study found increased deposition of protein amyloid-beta (A beta) in brain tissues obtained from hospitalized patients severely ill from COVID-19. A beta has been found in plaques in Alzheimer’s patients and seems to have an antimicrobial role generally against viruses and bacteria.

The review article concludes with an extensive list of 16 “major areas of opportunity” for future research into SARS-CoV-2 reservoirs and their impact on Long COVID. Despite the promising and important research conducted to date, the scientific community still has far to go to clarify our understanding of Long COVID and develop effective treatments for it.

The article thus highlights the stark impact of the ruling class’s criminal indifference to the pandemic and its long-term consequences. Reservoirs of the SARS-CoV-2 virus are associated with extraordinary long-term morbidity and mortality that could have been avoided with a policy of eradication of the virus. Reservoirs also cannot be ruled out as sources of ongoing transmission and development of new variants of the virus, both of which prolong the pandemic and its effects.

Australia’s Labor government and its phony Voice referendum in deepening crisis

Oscar Grenfell

After it scraped into office in the May, 2022 election, Labor immediately proclaimed that it would hold a referendum on enshrining the Voice, an indigenous advisory body to the government, in the Constitution.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at Garma Festival, July 2022. [Photo: Facebook/AlboMP/]

The measure, which headlined Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s election night speech, was intended to put a progressive veneer on a government that was committed from the outset to escalating Australia’s involvement in the US-led preparations for war with China, and implementing sweeping cuts to workers’ living and social conditions demanded by big business.

Now, with the referendum looming on October 14, the Voice is compounding and intersecting with a broader crisis of the Albanese government.

Polling is inherently limited. Under conditions of a huge disconnect between the political and media establishment and the vast mass of the population, it has frequently been off the mark over recent years.

But however accurate the precise voting breakdowns released by the various polling agencies, the trajectory appears to be clear enough. The Voice is not only failing to boost the fortunes of the government, support for the initiative is flagging to the extent that a defeat of the referendum appears to be highly likely.

Last week the Guardian produced a graphical representation of some 45 polls on the Voice dating back to September 2022. Viewable here, the graph resembles the sinking of a ship. There are some outliers, but most of the polls indicate that the highest support from voting age respondents received by the Voice was around 65 percent. Most polls indicating such numbers, however, were early in the year.

All of the polls listed since July 24 indicate that less than half the voting age population is planning to vote “yes.”

Resolve polling, reported by the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday, showed that just 43 percent of respondents were intending to vote “yes.” The Herald noted that “Voters have swung against the Voice for the fifth month in a row and are backing the No case in every state except Tasmania…”

Significantly, that was the first Resolve polling showing a lead to the “no” vote in both Victoria and New South Wales. They are the most populous states, and Victoria had been one of the few states where the “yes” vote had been ahead. To be successful, the referendum must be voted in favor by a majority of the voting population, as well as a majority of the states.

Resolve founder Jim Reed told the Herald that “If anything, the [yes] campaign is having the opposite effect because the No vote is still growing.” Reed added, “The comments we collect from respondents are becoming more exasperated and frustrated in their tone as the campaign wears on. Many people seem impatient for this to be over, especially those who see it as a diversion or divisive.”

The polling shows an intersection between the flagging fortunes of the Voice and the standing of the Labor government. Albanese’s net approval rating is minus 7 percent, a fall of 2 percent over the past two months. It compares with a positive approval rating of 35 points in January.

The rating of Liberal-National Coalition leader Peter Dutton has improved marginally, but his approval is also in negative territory. This indicates that while opposition to the Voice is increasing, it is not automatically translating into support for the Coalition, which is leading the official “no” campaign in the referendum.

The impression is increasingly one of a degree of panic and disarray in the Labor government. This morning, the Australian cited two anonymous federal Labor MPs who both predicted that the referendum would be defeated with 60 percent voting against and 40 percent in favour.

One Labor MP allegedly commented: “It’s hard not to be pretty pessimistic about the outcome. It would take something pretty close to a miracle to save it.” Another described the shambles of the referendum as “a bit of a reality check for us.”

Notably, some of the MPs reportedly tied the crisis of the Voice to the growing cost-of-living crisis. That was also indicated by the Resolve data and other polling, showing that the worst inflation in decades, coupled with stagnant or declining real wages, remains the chief concern of most working people.

The Labor government, while pushing the Voice, has rejected any assistance for working people facing the consequences of the crisis. Its two budgets since assuming office have featured major cuts to spending on health and other social necessities and the most contemptuous increases to welfare payments. At the same time, they have handed tens of billions to the military, as Labor prepares Australia to play a frontline role in a catastrophic war with China. The government has rejected calls to scrap Stage Three tax cuts, which overwhelmingly benefit the ultra-wealthy and the corporate elite.

The shift in the polling, from majority “yes” support to “no” support refutes claims that the referendum is failing because of racist attitudes among ordinary people, as does the centrality of cost-of-living crisis. Instead, the outcome reflects widespread and correct skepticism that the Voice will improve anything for workers, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal alike.

There is a substantial experience with indigenous advisory committees, land rights councils and the like. They have done nothing to address the appalling social conditions facing most Aboriginal people while feathering the nests of a narrow indigenous elite tied to the political and corporate establishment.

Proponents of the Voice are becoming increasingly desperate. Last Wednesday, one of the architects of the policy, academic Marcia Langton, ludicrously described the establishment of the advisory body as “our last hope of surviving as the First Peoples with any of our laws, cultures and languages intact.” She said a failure of the Voice would be “a mandate to cause us even further harm.”

But the very Labor government overseeing the “yes” campaign has done nothing to improve the lot of ordinary indigenous people. Instead, it implements an austerity agenda that is hitting workers, Aboriginal and non-Aborignal alike.

Langton’s remarks underscored the duplicity of the official “yes” campaign. While vaguely suggesting that the Voice would improve the lot of oppressed Aboriginal people, she assured those assembled: “This proposition is the barest measure imaginable…”

In fact, leading figures in the “yes” campaign are pushing the far-right talking points associated with cutbacks to welfare and other social rights of indigenous and other poor people. Noel Pearson, a prominent representative of the indigenous elite, told the Murdoch-owned Australian that the Voice would “lock that whole paradigm together, rights and ­responsibilities…”

The need for individuals to “take responsibility” has for decades been a dog whistle used to blame impoverished Aborigines and others for their dire social conditions. Driving home that point, Pearson stated: “You think my mob like it when I talk about responsibility? They love it when I talk about rights and how they’ve been victimised; they don’t like it when I say take responsibility for your children—nobody’s going to save you until you get your family together.”

Regarding its reactionary social content, there is nothing that differentiates Pearson’s statement from open attacks on Aboriginal people by those leading the “no” campaign. That underscores the fact that both camps represent rival factions of the political establishment, committed to the capitalist profit system and the strengthening of the Australian state apparatus for the joint purposes of war abroad and an intensifying onslaught on the social conditions of the working class.

The “Yes23” group, part of the official “yes” campaign, has this week announced a series of purportedly “grassroots” events. The aim, more or less openly stated, is to distance the “yes” campaign from parliament and the government. That is a tacit acknowledgement that a broader groundswell of opposition to the entire political establishment is driving the hostility to the Voice.

The issue that “Yes23” has is that there is nothing “grassroots” about the Voice. It is a top-down creation aimed at putting a progressive gloss on a reactionary government, dividing the working class, integrating an indigenous elite into the corridors of power, and revamping the image of the Australian state.

UK set to station US nuclear bombs on British soil, 15 years after their removal

Robert Stevens

The UK is again on the verge of stationing US nuclear weapons on its soil, at the strategic east coast air force base, RAF (Royal Air Force) Lakenheath.

In March, the US Congress received a 2024 budgetary request for $50 million (£39.5 million) from the USAF (US Air Force) for a “surety dormitory” at RAF Lakenheath. As a number of reports attest, the term “surety” is used in US military parlance to refer to nuclear weapons. That the plans have been fast-tracked was noted in the Telegraph, which stated, “Last year’s [Congress] budget referred to a Nato project to build ‘secure sites and facilities’ to store ‘special weapons’ in a number of Western countries, including Britain, but made no reference to the base itself.”

The new documents confirm that Lakenheath is set for a multi-million dollar expansion, stating that a 144-bunk dormitory is required. Given “the influx of airmen due to the arrival of the potential Surety mission and the bed down of the two F-35 squadrons there is a significant deficiency in the amount of unaccompanied housing available for E4s and below at Royal Air Force Lakenheath”.

An F15 Eagle at RAF Lakenheath in July 2009 [Photo by Tim Felce / CC BY-SA 2.0]

RAF Lakenheath is in all essentials a US military base and has been for decades. Although owned by Britain’s Ministry of Defence, it is run by the US Air Force, with million of pounds provided for its operation each year by the UK government.

Its facilities were first made available for American aircraft and weapons in 1948, and it became one of three locations in the UK at which US nuclear bombs were stored. Up until 2008 at least 110 US nuclear bombs were located at Lakenheath, and their removal—explained on the basis that the threat of nuclear war had subsided—meant that Britain since that date was not officially storing US nuclear weapons on its soil for the first time since 1954.

RAF Lakenheath, as with RAF Greenham Common before it, was the location of longstanding protests demanding the removal of nuclear weopons. After a continual protest over almost a decade at Greenham Common from 1982—and in the midst of the collapse and dissolution of the Stalinist states in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union—the US removed its Pershing cruise missiles from the base between 1989 and 1991.

Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), who was the first to disclose information showing that the US was withdrawing its nuclear weapons from Lakenheath, wrote in a comment last November, “The US Air Force used to store nuclear gravity bombs at Lakenheath, which in the 1990s was equipped with 33 underground storage vaults. By the early 2000s, there were a total of 110 B61 gravity bombs in the vaults for delivery by F-15E aircraft of the 48th Fighter Wing.”

He added, “After nuclear weapons were withdrawn nearly two decades ago, the empty [33] storage vaults were kept in caretaker status. The F-15Es fighter-bombers retained their nuclear capability but at a lower operational level. In recent years there have been rumors about nuclear exercises at the base.”

RAF Lakenheath, wrote Kristensen, is preparing to become the first US Air Force base in Europe equipped with nuclear-capable F-35A Lightning combat aircraft. “The first of the fifth-generation fighter-bombers arrived in December 2021. A total of 24 F-35As will form the 495th Fighter Squadron of the 48th Fighter Wing at the base.”

The Telegraph reported, “The stealth jets are designed to carry out tactical nuclear bombing and are capable of conducting air-to-air missions and intelligence gathering.”

F-35 dropping inert B61-12 nuclear bomb, first trial [Photo: Los Alamos National Laboratory]

Kristensen played down the possibility of the US deploying “additional US nuclear bombs to Europe,” though noted, “FAS estimates there currently are roughly 100 nuclear bombs deployed at six air bases in five European countries [Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey].” He suggested the “upgrade at RAF Lakenheath could potentially be intended to increase the flexibility of the existing nuclear deployment within Europe.”

Plans to restore US nuclear weapons to Britain’s east coast are an escalation in the US-NATO war drive against Russia and confirm the UK’s status as a leading participant. In the last five years, successive Conservative governments have also accelerated plans to boost Britain’s own nuclear weapons arsenal.

In 2021, as part of his integrated defence review, and a £24 billion pound budget increase for the military, then Prime Minister Boris Johnson authorised lifting the cap on the number of stockpiled Trident nuclear warheads by more than 40 percent—the first increase in decades.

While the UK does not possess the thousands of warheads held by the United States and Russia—the review increased numbers from 180 to 260—these are weapons with enormous destructive power. A Guardian report noted that each warhead the “UK holds is estimated to have an explosive power of 100 kilotons. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of the second world war was about 15 kilotons.”

The British ruling elite is concealing plans for nuclear Armageddon from the population. A House of Commons Library research briefing from May this year says of the nuclear warhead number increase, “The Government has provided no timeframe for doing so and no longer publishes transparency information, so the precise figure for the stockpile is unclear.”

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova responded to the plans for US nuclear arms to be stationed at Lakenheath by calling them an “escalation”. She added, “In the context of the transition of the United States and Nato to an openly confrontational course of inflicting a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia, this practice and its development force us to take compensating countermeasures designed to reliably protect the security interests of our country and its allies.”

This is only the latest of many statements by the Putin regime warning the British government of the consequences of its reckless actions—some of which have led to military stand-offs.

A Royal Navy battleship, HMS Defender, played a critical role in NATO’s provocations against Moscow leading up to its invasion of Ukraine.

In June 2021, a Russian patrol ship fired a warning shot at Defender in the Black Sea, in Russian-claimed waters off the coast of Crimea where Moscow has a critical naval base.

In September 2022, an incident occurred that came close to triggering NATO’s Article 5 requiring member countries to come to the aid of any other member state under attack, after Russia nearly shot down a British spy plane near Ukraine.

In May this year, Britain shipped Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine, the longest-range weapons yet received by Kiev, confirming the UK’s role as provocateur-in-chief in the NATO war against Russia.

These and many other actions constitute an undeclared war between Britain and Russia, which proceeds without the slightest regard for the views of the population, but with complete agreement within Parliament. As the World Socialist Web Site wrote this May, “With Britain being dragged to the precipice of war with Russia, there has been no popular discussion of the consequences thanks above all to the unanimity between the Tories and the Labour Party. Sir Keir Starmer leads one half of a single, joint party of war sitting across both sides of the House of Commons.”

Those consequences could be catastrophic. In August 2022, Russian General Andrey Gurulyov, a deputy in Russia’s parliament (Duma), said of a nuclear attack on Britain, “Let’s make it super-simple. Two ships, 50 launches of Zircon [hypersonic cruise] missiles—and there is not a single power station left in the UK. Fifty more Zircons and the entire port infrastructure is gone. One more—and we forget about the British Isles.”

Turkey, Russia agree separate grain deal as Black Sea corridor talks stall

Barış Demir

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said on Wednesday that Russia and Turkey had reached an agreement on the supply of 1 million tons of grain. “All agreements in principle have been reached. We expect that in the near future we will enter into working contacts with all parties to work out all the technical aspects of the scheme for such deliveries,” he announced.

Russian Black Sea fleet ships are anchored in one of the bays of Sevastopol, Crimea, March 31, 2014. [AP Photo/AP Photo, File]

The announcement came shortly after the failure of talks on the safe transport of Ukrainian grain from the Black Sea through the Turkish Straits amid Washington demands more bloodbaths in Ukraine.

Since the NATO war against Russia in Ukraine erupted in February 2022, parts of the Black Sea were mined by both Russian and Ukrainian forces. The northern parts of the sea are controlled by the Russian navy.

An agreement was reached last year to provide a safe route for Ukrainian grain. The deal between Moscow and Kiev had been brokered by the United Nations and Turkey to ensure grain shipments from Ukraine through the Black Sea to the global market.

Shortly after an attack on the Kerch Bridge in July, however, the Kremlin announced its withdrawal from the deal, on the grounds that the commitments to Russia had not been met. The Kremlin stated that Russia would consider rejoining the deal if these commitments were fulfilled, and financial sanctions on the Russian Agricultural Bank were lifted.

Russia and Ukraine are among the world’s largest agricultural producers, mainly supplying countries in Africa and Asia. Russia places special emphasis on grain exports to these countries as part of its influence in Africa and as a means of breaking its US-led isolation.

Russia announced that it had achieved the largest grain exports in the last seven years after withdrawing from the agreement in July. The Russian Agriculture Ministry said that most of the 7.7 million tons of grain exported in August went to African countries. The grain corridor agreement was one of the main items on the agenda of the Second Summit of the Russia-Africa Economic and Humanitarian Forum at the end of July, and African countries had expressed their intention to mediate on the issue.

Turkey is already the main mediator in talks on the resumption of the Black Sea grain corridor. On September 4, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan held talks in Sochi, with grain shipments being the main topic of discussion.

After the talks, Putin said that Russia was ready to extend the agreement, but that the NATO powers had not kept their commitments: “The deal was approaching expiration, but not a single obligation to Russia was fulfilled. We were asked to extend our participation in it with the promise of immediate compliance with all previous commitments. We extended it, but nothing happened.”

He linked the issue of the corridor to Ukraine’s growing naval attacks in the Black Sea: “We have always agreed that these corridors intended for food exports should not be used for military purposes. … Just as attempts are being made to attack TurkStream and Blue Stream through which gas is supplied to the Republic of Turkey from Russia. Our ships are guarding these streams, these pipeline systems, and they are constantly being attacked, including with the help of drones sent from Ukrainian Black Sea ports.”

During a joint press conference, Erdoğan said: “We have expressed the points raised by our Russian friends on different occasions. We believe that the initiative should be continued by correcting the shortcomings. I sincerely shared our views on this issue with my dear friend in our bilateral meeting.”

He added: “Russia has two special requests. One is to connect the Russian Agricultural Bank to the SWIFT system. Currently, Russian banks are excluded from the SWIFT system due to sanctions. This country exports 120 or 130 million tons of grain annually … Ukraine, of course, needs to soften its approach in order to take joint steps with Russia.”

Erdoğan’s remarks prompted a swift condemnation from the Kiev regime. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said: “Let’s be realistic after all and stop discussing nonexistent options, much less encouraging Russia to commit further crimes.”

Turkey is a critical member of NATO, but since the outbreak of the war it has sought to mediate between the NATO imperialist powers and the Putin regime. It has also abetted the main NATO powers in aggressively pursuing the war with Russia.

While condemning Russia’s invasion and recognizing Crimea as part of Ukrainian territory, Ankara has armed Ukraine with Bayraktar drones. It also ultimately decided not to veto Finland and Sweden joining the NATO military alliance.

Shortly before the NATO war summit in Vilnius, Lithuania on July 11–12, Erdoğan declared that Ukraine “deserves” NATO membership and allowed the return to Ukraine of the Azov commanders who were supposed to remain in Turkey under an agreement with Russia.

However, Turkey has not joined US-led NATO powers’ sanctions against Moscow and has significantly increased its trade with Russia.

Fearing potentially devastating consequences for the Turkish ruling class of an escalation of the NATO war against Russia, with which it has strong trade and military ties, Ankara also faces an ongoing cost-of-living crisis at home and growing working class opposition. The Erdoğan government believes that improved trade with Russia and potential financial aid from Moscow will help contain this domestic crisis.

After the meeting in Sochi, Erdoğan pointed out the growing trade with Russia and the use of Turkish lira and Russian rubles instead of US dollars and euros, stating: “Our bilateral trade volume reached approximately $69 billion last year. We are taking firm steps towards our target of $100 billion. I believe that the fact that our central bank governors are meeting here today and that they will also meet each other is also important in terms of having domestic currencies enter into the bilateral relations between us.”

Following the meeting, it was reported that Ankara and Moscow were close to finalizing negotiations on the construction of a natural gas distribution centre in Turkey. In addition, Russia submitted a proposal for the construction of a second nuclear power plant in the northern city of Sinop. Russia is currently building Turkey’s first nuclear power plant in the southern city of Mersin. According to the reports, the first unit of the plant will be commissioned in 2024.

On the 50th anniversary of the Chilean coup: Lessons of a revolution betrayed

Tomas Castanheira

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the infamous CIA-backed military coup in Chile led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, which established one of the most brutal regimes of the second half of the 20th century.

 In the early morning hours of September 11, 1973, the three branches of the Chilean armed forces and the military police issued a radio announcement that they had taken control of the country and demanded the resignation of elected President Salvador Allende of the Unidad Popular (Popular Unity) coalition government.

Chilean troops burning leftist literature on 9/11/1973 [Photo: CIA/Freedom of Information Act]

The Army and Air Force laid siege to the La Moneda presidential palace, bombarding it with fighter jets and tanks. Cornered and refusing the coup leaders’ demand that he resign, Allende died at La Moneda, according to investigations from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

On the same day, the military rounded up tens of thousands of workers and youth, herding them into concentration camps where they were interrogated, tortured and in many cases murdered. The famous musician Victor Jara described the terror he experienced with thousands of others during his last days in the Estadio Chile, where he was sadistically tortured and murdered on September 16:

How much humanity exposed to hunger, cold, panic, pain, moral pressure, terror, insanity?

Six of us were lost as if into starry space.

One dead, another beaten as I never could have believed a human being could be beaten.

The other four wanted to end their terror: one jumped into nothingness,

another beating his head against a wall, but all with the fixed look of death.

What horror the face of Fascism creates!

A vast operation orchestrated by the CIA and US military intelligence was launched to smash all workers and peasant organizations, and to hunt down, detain, torture and kill their leaders and militant rank-and-file workers, who were abandoned by the Allende government, without weapons, training or political leadership to resist.

The Pinochet regime, in the following months and years, sold off nearly two-thirds of Chile’s key copper industry nationalized under Allende and his predecessor, privatized sections of banking, the telephone company, metalworks and other companies placed under state control by Allende, returned factories and land taken by workers to private owners, privatized water, pensions, healthcare, education, transportation, utilities, and other sectors. Taxes and regulations were cut to the bone to turn the country into a playground for the emerging transnational corporations and the local oligarchy. The regime followed the instructions of the “free market” economist Milton Friedman and the so-called “Chicago boys”, Friedman-trained acolytes from the University of Chicago who were sent to Chile to oversee the wave of privatizations and brutal attacks on the conditions of the working class.

The fascist terror in Chile lasted for two long decades. Thousands of political opponents were killed or “disappeared” by the Pinochet regime, and around 30,000 tortured, according to official figures. The coup in Chile also had profound consequences for the whole Latin America. 

The Chilean military's rise to power followed a series of coups sponsored by US imperialism, including in Brazil in 1964, Bolivia in 1971 and Uruguay earlier in 1973. The Brazilian military regime, recognized by the Nixon administration as an instrument for US operations, worked systematically to prepare the Chilean military to overthrow Allende. 

After the coup in Chile, this counter-revolutionary network coordinated by the CIA in South America was consolidated under what was dubbed Operation Condor. It systematically spread repression, torture and political assassinations across the region and facilitated new coups, most notably the rise of the fascist military regime in Argentina in 1976.

Fifty years after Chile’s horrific September 11, its political relevance is becoming ever more urgent. The specter of dictatorship and military intervention in the politics of Latin America, after a brief cycle of civilian regimes over the last 30 years, haunts the entire region once again.

Prompted by the explosive accumulation of social antagonisms, expressed by the working class in the growing number of struggles, the friends of Pinochet, who were never displaced from power in any of these countries, are once again showing their faces. In Brazil, the Armed Forces endorsed the challenge to the country’s electoral system by the former president Jair Bolsonaro, which culminated in the fascist coup attempt of last January 8 in Brasilia that called for a military dictatorship.

In Chile itself, where millions of workers and youth mobilized against social inequality in repeated national strikes in 2019 and 2020, the ruling class is now systematically promoting the most rabid defenders of the Pinochet dictatorship. These elements are currently led by José Antonio Kast, whose fascistic Republican Party won the most votes in last May’s election of a council to draft a new constitution.

US imperialism served as the principal patron of the Latin American dictatorships. It remains a central player in the region. Under conditions in which the US ruling class is hurtling toward a new world war, it is openly fighting to secure its geo-strategic hegemony in 'its own backyard,” cultivating relations with the region’s military commands, independently of its elected governments.

In their tributes to the anniversary of the 1973 coup in Chile, the bourgeois nationalist representatives of the “Pink Tide,” such as Chilean President Gabriel Boric, as well as the petty bourgeois pseudo-left, are issuing appeals for new “national pacts” and for the restoration of a popular facade for the region’s bankrupt capitalist regimes. This political path can lead only to a repetition of Pinochet-style coups on an even more horrific scale.

The new generation of workers and youth who are entering the path of revolutionary struggle against capitalism must urgently assimilate the lessons of the Chilean coup that the pseudo-left is working to conceal. 

The violence utilized by the Chilean fascist junta demonstrated the ruthlessness with which the ruling class is prepared to employ to defend its power.

The Chilean revolution betrayed

But what took place in 1973 in Chile was not only a bloody US-backed military coup that overthrew an elected government. 

There was a powerful proletarian revolutionary upsurge under way in Chile, whose defeat under the jackboots of the military was by no means inevitable. The coming to power of a fascist-military junta was the product of the failure of the working class to seize political power when it was able to, as a result of the criminal betrayals of its Stalinist and Social Democratic leaderships, with the indispensable aid of the Pabloite renegades from Trotskyism. 

Allende’s UP coalition, formed by the Socialists and Stalinists together with “left” Christian Democrats and Radicals, was elected in 1970 amid a massive upsurge of working class and peasant struggles. Answering the historical conditions of misery and oppression by imperialism and a protracted inflationary crisis, those struggles took radicalized forms such as factory occupations and land expropriations.

As it took office, the UP sought at all costs to discipline the insurrectionary movement of the workers and peasants and subordinate it to the bourgeois state. Calling it the “Chilean road to socialism,” Allende insisted that, based upon its century of “parliamentary democracy”, Chile was an exception to the laws of history established by Marx and Engels and given flesh and blood in the course of the 1917 Revolution in Russia. In Chile, he claimed, the revolutionary process would follow a unique course, growing within the structures of the old state. He insisted that the Armed Forces and the military police in Chile were the “people in uniform” and a “granite foundation of the revolutionary process”, “just as much” as the “workers and their unions”.

While the UP worked to appease the working class by carrying out limited nationalizations and social reforms, the Chilean bourgeoisie and the imperialists gained time to prepare the overthrow of the government and the crushing of the working class. The road to September 11, 1973 was paved with the ceaseless attacks on the working class and several military incursions and direct coup attempts.

In October1972, the ruling class, working in direct collaboration with the Nixon administration and the CIA, attempted to strangle the country economically by promoting a massive employers’ lockout. Workers responded by establishing numerous coordinadores, cordones industriales and other local networks of rank-and-file industrial, neighborhood and self-defense organs to maintain production and distribution of essential goods and oppose fascist provocateurs. Demands to place the whole of the economy and political power directly in workers’ hands became widespread.

In face of the independent development of the workers’ movement, the UP government acted to disarm the working class and secure bourgeois rule in Chile. Allende brought the military into his cabinet, which was also joined by the trade union leaders of the CUT dominated by the Stalinists and Socialists. The government enforced an Arms Control Act to take arms away from workers and peasants, freed fascist agitators, and returned numerous occupied factories to their previous owners.

In June 1973, a rebel wing of the Army made a failed coup attempt by sending a column of tanks against the presidential palace, an episode which became known as the Tanquetazo. The UP’s response was to deepen its concessions, naming Pinochet commander-in-chief of the Army and bringing him into Allende’s cabinet.

Only the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) fought consistently to expose the role played by Allende’s government and his apologists in disarming the working class in the face of the clear danger of a military coup organized by US imperialism.

Drawing the lessons in the days immediately after the coup, the ICFI declared in a statement issued on September 18, 1973:

“Defend your democratic rights not through Popular Fronts and parliament, but through the overthrow of the capitalist state and the establishment of workers’ power. Place no confidence in Stalinism, social democracy, centrism, revisionism or the liberal bourgeoisie, but build a revolutionary party of the Fourth International whose program will be the revolution in permanence.”

While it was the Stalinists and Social Democrats who directly led the Chilean workers to defeat, the Pabloite revisionists played a crucial role in enabling these crisis-ridden bureaucratic leaderships to maintain their domination over the working masses. 

The Chilean Partido Obrero Revolucionario (Workers Revolutionary Party - POR) was among the organizations that betrayed Trotskyism, joining the American Socialist Workers Party in breaking with the ICFI and reuniting with the Pabloites. Praising the middle class forces “liberated by the Cuban Revolution” as “the ones who will unleash the revolution in each country” of Latin America, the POR immediately dissolved itself and joined the Castroites and Maoists to form the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Left Movement-MIR) in 1965.

The MIR played a fundamental role in the disruption of the Chilean revolution, standing in the way of the building of a genuine revolutionary party in the working class. As the conflict between the Chilean working class and the UP’s popular front developed, many workers breaking from Social Democracy and Stalinism came to the MIR, only to be reoriented to “putting pressure” on the government to realize their demands.