Right-wing coalition government deal reached in Ireland

Dermot Quinn & Steve James

The Irish Dáil (Parliament) will meet Thursday, January 23 when Micheál Martin, leader of Fianna Fáil, will likely be nominated as Taoiseach (Prime Minister) with Fine Gael leader Simon Harris as Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister).

Martin’s nomination was supposed to be confirmed Wednesday but the Dáil sitting descended into farce when opposition TDs (members of parliament), led by Sinn Fein, successfully disrupted Martin’s nomination because of a dispute over speaking rights. Members of the Regional Independent Group (RIG) which is supporting the government, have also formed a “technical group” allowing speaking rights normally reserved for members of the opposition. At the time of writing, no agreement has been reached and the Dail adjourned until Thursday morning.

Simon Harris (left) and Micheál Martin in the Dáil Éireann Chamber on January 22, 2025 [Photo by Houses of the Oireachtas/Flickr / CC BY 2.0]

Assuming a resolution is found, the new administration taking office will be a coalition of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the two main bourgeois parties in Ireland, along with nine right-wing Regional Independent Group (RIG) members.

Under the agreement worked out between the two parties Martin will hold the post of Taoiseach till 2027, which will then rotate to Harris, the current outgoing Taoiseach. The RIG, handed regional concessions for their support, will have two junior ministers sitting at cabinet (referred to as super-junior) and three junior ministers acting as ministers of state.

The general election last November resulted in the votes of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael combined falling short of an overall majority, with both parties receiving 42 percent of first preference votes, securing 86 seats, between them. Sinn Féin received 19 percent of the vote winning 39 seats, a drop of 5.5 percent nationally compared to the 2020 election. The Green Party, who were part of the outgoing coalition, plummeted, keeping just one of its 11 seats.

The fact that the two longstanding rivals of Irish politics have once again been forced into government together testifies to the growing resentment by working people of the ongoing crises in homelessness, health care, education and social provisions. A graphic released by broadcaster RTÉ after the election showed the combined vote of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael over the past 17 years down 33 percent—from 68.9 percent in 2007, to 40.5 percent in 2024.

The Irish Labour Party and its ideological protégé the Social Democrats increased their share of the vote, winning 11 seats each. Both parties rushed to holding talks on government formation, putting forward their credentials as safe bets to govern on behalf of capitalism in Ireland. In the end, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, doubtless with an eye across the Atlantic, considered the right-wing independents would serve better as the government’s third leg.

In line with this, the ruling parties have agreed a programme for government devoted to expanding corporate and private wealth at the expense of the Irish working class, while securing Irelan’s place as the preferred investment hub for US tech and pharmaceutical corporations.

The programme “Securing Ireland’s Future” warns, “the positive, global economic environment, which has benefited Ireland for many years, is no longer guaranteed.” In response, the new government proposes a sharp shift to the right and pledges to defend “economic resilience” through a “whole of Government Action Plan for Competitiveness and Productivity” for “reform” and “reducing the cost and regulatory burden on business, investing in infrastructure, digital regulation and reform, energy reform, international trade and research and development, and innovation.”

In other words, the new coalition is pledging to increase levels of exploitation and rip up what business regulation there is while pouring resources into “key economic sectors”, namely semiconductors, pharma, medtech, ICT, finance and agribusiness. Particular attention is drawn to AI and data centres.

In public finance, the programme pledges to run budget surpluses while reducing public debt and maintaining a “tax system that supports innovation”. The government seeks a corporatist deal with the trade unions for “a new public sector pay deal, linked to a reform agenda”, i.e. increased productivity.

New measures are proposed to force welfare claimants into work. The government proposes a new employment strategy “focused on intensive engagement and supports to help those most distant from the labour market”.

There are promises on housing, but the headline 300,000 new homes is aimed primarily at the private sector and will amount to massive handouts to housing developers, with only limited subsidies for first time buyers. New social housing will be restricted to a minimal 12,000 units annually.

Some investment will be directed towards infrastructure, particularly transport, in recognition of its necessity for retaining transnational corporation investment.

Five thousand more police and 20 more judges are to be recruited.

The previous coalition government was criticised by Israel during the election for its intervention in the International Court of Justice case against the genocide in Gaza. The new programme is a full capitulation to Tel Aviv. It pledges to give “effect to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) ‘Working Definition of Antisemitism’” which maliciously equates criticisms of Israel government policy with anti-Jewish hate.

The government intends to continue with the Occupied Territories Bill that had annoyed Israel and US investors, but subsequent statements made by Taoiseach Martin made clear that the government was looking to “rework” every section of the legislation, clearly with a mind to entirely neutralising or further delaying its already minimal impact.

The coalition will also “unequivocally support Ukraine, affirming that Russia cannot win this war and supporting Ukrainian resistance” and upholding sanctions against Russia. Ireland is not a NATO member and retains a pretence of “neutrality” while being politically supportive of NATO operations. This includes allowing Shannon airport to be used as stopover for military transport flights.

The previous government allocated €1.35 billion to military spending, a €100 million increase on the previous year. It said at the time, “This level of investment is critical in the current geopolitical situation.”

The new programme notes that it will “Progress the Naval Service Vessel Renewal and Replacement Programme, replacing secondary armament across the fleet and enhancing our subsea capabilities, and we will continue to develop our maritime support infrastructure, investing to future proof Haulbowline Naval Base, and establishing an additional East Coast Base for the Naval Service.”

The forces to which the government is turning for support include some of the most discredited figures in Irish politics.

The most prominent and wealthiest independent is Michael Lowry. Although not included in the government he was a prominent part of the negotiations and is widely seen as leader of the RIG. A former minister in Fine Gael, Lowry, who represents Tipperary, was recently named Ireland’s richest politician with an estimated worth of €6.4 million. He has been the subject of a succession of political and financial scandals since 1996, and the focus of two government inquiries.

The McCracken Tribunal into political corruption found that the supermarket owner Ben Dunne paid for huge extensions to Lowry’s home while he was a government minister. The Moriarty Tribunal found that Lowry pocketed hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling in exchange for favourable treatment in granting mobile phone licences.

The RIG also includes Galway TD Noel Grealish, who in 2019 described African asylum seekers as “economic migrants who sponge off the system” at a public meeting in Galway. He was speaking to a crowd over speculation that a direct provision centre may be located close to the town. Later the same year Grealish claimed Nigerian migrants were repatriating €3.5 billion to Nigeria and that some of this was the proceeds of crime. He claim was debunked; a mere €17 million was sent back to Nigeria.

Part of the orientation to the RIG was the appointment of Verona Murphy as Ceann Comhairle (speaker) of the Dáil. Murphy, another former Fine Gael member, former haulage company owner and until recently head of the Irish Road Haulage Association, once claimed that migrant children as young as three or four years of age were a danger because of ISIS brainwashing. Murphy has also been accused of workplace bullying.

In Ireland as throughout the globe, bourgeois politicians openly flaunt the concept that the rule of the oligarchs and their hangers on is the natural way of things. A report published last week by the charity Oxfam showed that Ireland itself now has 11 billionaires, who saw their wealth grow by a third in 2024 to €50 billion. The top oligarchs saw their wealth grow by €35.6 million every single day in 2024.

German military setting up a new homeland security division

Johannes Stern

An ad for the German military

Germany’s ruling class is systematically pushing ahead with its military buildup and war preparations in the federal election campaign. On 11 January, the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) announced the establishment of a new homeland security division. According to an army spokesman, it will consist of reservists and active-duty soldiers. It is to be placed under unified command and will become operational on 1 April 2025.

The formation of the new division is aimed at a massive expansion of the armed forces. Currently, the army consists of three divisions, each with around 20,000 soldiers. The fourth major unit is now being added for homeland security. It will initially comprise 6,000 soldiers but will gradually be increased to at least a high five-digit number.

The division will combine the existing homeland security regiments and companies. In 2021, Home Guard Regiment 1 was set up in Bavaria, followed by Home Guard Regiment 2 in North Rhine-Westphalia in 2022, Home Guard Regiment 3 in Lower Saxony in 2023 and Home Guard Regiment 4 with companies from Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Schleswig-Holstein, and Home Guard Regiment 5 in Hesse in 2024. Preparations are currently under way to set up further regiments, including Home Guard Regiment 6 in Berlin.

The creation of the new division is part of the structural reform of the Bundeswehr that Defence Minister Boris Pistorius (Social Democrat, SPD) launched last April. After two devastating defeats in the 20th century, it aims to re-equip Germany with a war army appropriately structured and led under the slogan “Bundeswehr of the Future.”

“The armed forces new target structure” is “significantly less top-heavy than the status quo and is clearly geared towards operational planning and command in an emergency,” according to the reforms adopted a year ago. The aim is “to establish a war-ready command structure and to create the conditions for consistently strengthening the troops.”

On the reorganisation and restructuring of the homeland security forces, the military states:

The homeland security forces will be transferred to the army sector, according to the principle of “organize as you fight,” after they have been fully established, because in an emergency they will be deployed in country. The homeland security forces will follow the task of coordinating the recruitment and training of reservists.

This is unequivocal. In line with the goals set by Pistorius and the entire ruling class to make Germany “war-ready” (kriegstüchtig) again, all military and civilian organisational areas will be directly aligned with the maxim “organize as you fight” and will grow massively. As early as April 2021, the then-federal coalition of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and SPD introduced so-called “voluntary military service in homeland security.” The Ministry of Defence is currently working on the reintroduction of compulsory military service.

In a full-scale war against Russia, which the NATO powers are actively preparing and provoking through their constant escalation of the war in Ukraine, the homeland security division would play a central role. According to a report by the Bundeswehrverband (German Armed Forces Association), in the event of war, the domestic security forces are to “protect ports, railway facilities and goods transshipment points, as well as pipelines, roads for troop deployment, bridges, transport hubs and digital infrastructure.” They are “thus also to secure Germany’s role as a NATO base of operations and hub.”

The secret “Operation Plan Germany” (OPLAN DEU), which is more than 1,000 pages long and has been developed and continuously updated by the Bundeswehr’s Territorial Command since March 2023, underlines how concretely these plans are being worked on. The OPLAN is a blueprint for the total mobilisation of society for war. In an overview brochure published by the Bundeswehr, the following is stated about the plan’s objectives:

It brings together the central military components of national and alliance defence in Germany with the necessary civilian support services in an operationally executable plan. It thus provides for the planning so that in the event of a crisis or conflict, after a political decision has been made, targeted action can be taken. It defines procedures, processes and responsibilities for protecting and defending Germany together with other state and civil actors... and for ensuring the deployment of allied forces across and through Germany to NATO’s eastern flank. The aim is to be able to act quickly across all departmental and national borders.

Last year, homeland security forces were involved in NATO’s Steadfast Defender manoeuvres for the first time in this context. With around 90,000 troops, more than 50 warships, including aircraft carriers and destroyers, 80 combat aircraft, helicopters and drones, as well as over 1,000 armoured vehicles, it was NATO’s largest military manoeuvre since the end of the Cold War. The exercise took place in Scandinavia and the Baltic states, went as far as Poland, Romania and Germany, and simulated a military buildup against Russia. The WSWS wrote in an article:

This is not just a training exercise, but the escalation of NATO’s war with Russia in Ukraine into a world war that encompasses the whole of Europe. Leading NATO officers do not mince their words. In Brussels, the chairman of the NATO Military Committee, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, called for a “reshaping of NATO’s warfare.” “It cannot be taken for granted that we live in peace,” Bauer said. In the event of war, he added, “the whole of society will be involved, whether we like it or not.”

Since then, the militarisation of society demanded by the ruling class has been pushed forward ever more aggressively. In a keynote speech on 12 December, the new NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said, “It is time to switch to a war mentality. And to get our arms production and defence spending into high gear.” It was clear that “much more” than two percent of GDP had to be spent on defence, which meant “less spending on other priorities” such as “pensions, health and social security systems.”

In Germany’s federal election campaign, parties and politicians are outdoing each other with their demands for ever higher military spending. For example, the Green Party’s chancellor candidate Robert Habeck has spoken in favour of increasing the regular military budget to 3.5 percent of GDP, which would correspond to a tripling, or increase to €150 billion. The chancellor candidate of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Alice Weidel, spoke recently in favour of an increase to 5 percent of GDP. That would amount to well over 40 percent of the current federal budget.

In a recent interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Defence Minister Pistorius made it clear that these war-mongering plans are shared by the SPD. “Two percent will not be enough,” he said. “Whether the mere quota lies at two-and-a-half, three-and-a-half or five percent—as Donald Trump demands—is not the only decisive factor.” It was just as important “that we have sufficient capabilities to meet NATO requirements.”

Germany “will have to bear a large share of this, and that will cost many billions of euros extra each year,” Pistorius continued. “In case of doubt, we will have to talk about three percent rather than two percent. We need to rethink external security.” He added that he was speaking about “next generation security.”

More appropriate would be “next generation world war.” Even if Pistorius claims that the additional billions cannot be paid “from the current budget, at least in the first few years,” it is clear that nothing will be left of workers’ democratic and social rights when it comes to the plans for rearmament.

In this respect, too, the establishment of the homeland security division is a warning. According to the Bundeswehr Association, the “homeland security forces” can be deployed “in peacetime [...] to provide assistance in the event of serious accidents, terrorist attacks or pandemics.” This means nothing less than the unconstitutional deployment of the Bundeswehr domestically, including to suppress strikes and revolutionary struggles by the working class.

Trump begins signing executive orders attacking immigrants and democratic rights

Eric London & Andrea Lobo

President Donald Trump displays executive order after signing it at an indoor Presidential Inauguration parade event in Washington, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. [AP Photo/Matt Rourke]

Donald Trump’s second term began with his signing the first in a series of unprecedented executive orders aimed at restricting immigration and democratic rights. Trump signed an initial set of orders in front of a crowd of supporters chanting “USA! USA! USA!” at an arena in Washington D.C. and returned to the White House where he signed further orders. Included among those signed are a ban on birthright citizenship.

Trump presented himself as a “peacemaker” during his inaugural address, but the policies he announced amount to a declaration of war against the world’s population. He denounced immigration as an “invasion” and said his executive orders were aimed at bringing about a “revolution” that will halt all immigration at the southern border, require mass detention for immigrants without criminal records and deploy the US military domestically in some form.

The president lacks the power to issue executive orders that contravene constitutional provisions like the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship, but that did not stop Trump. Many of the orders will be challenged in court, but the far-right-dominated Supreme Court will have the final say on their “legality.”

“I will declare a national emergency at our southern border,” Trump said during his inaugural speech earlier in the day, adding that “all illegal entry will immediately be halted. And we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.” The claim that there are “millions of criminal aliens” is a bald-faced lie—those without documentation have committed no criminal offense and it has been shown that immigrant workers commit substantially less crime than US citizens.

Trump also said he would designate “cartels as foreign terrorist organizations,” a measure that paves the way for potential military action in Mexico and Central America and which gives federal authorities the power to criminally prosecute individuals for “material support for terrorism” if they, for example, pay extortion fees to gangs against their will. When asked last night during an impromptu oval office press gaggle whether this designation meant Trump might launch military operations in Mexico, Trump said, “it might. Stranger things have happened.”

Trump also said during his inaugural speech that he would be “invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798,” the same provision of law invoked by John Adams, as well as by presidents Wilson and Roosevelt to detain immigrants and many US citizens during the First and Second World Wars. The law gives the president the ability to detain and deport individuals without due process. Trump also indicated his operations would target major population centers, stating the administration will “use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks bringing devastating crime to US soil, including our cities and inner cities.”

As he signed the first of the orders, Trump told the crowd at Capitol One Arena that they were aimed at stopping “millions” of immigrants “pouring into our country from jails, prisons, mental institutions and insane asylums. It stops as of 1 o’clock this afternoon.” He told his supporters that they would be “happy reading the newspapers in the coming days” as they learn about the contents of the executive orders directed against immigrants.

As he signed the orders, the New York Times reported that Trump had ordered the firing of a number of officials in the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), the agency which oversees the immigration court system. Trump’s new Acting EOIR head, Sirce Owens, is a far-right-wing judge at the Board of Immigration Appeals and former Immigrations and Customs Enforcement attorney. This move indicates Trump and his aides are preparing to speed up removal proceedings by enforcing significant restrictions on due process.

Trump also pledged to reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy launched in 2019 during his first term; however, it will have a vastly changed character since migrants will not be waiting for their immigration cases to be considered. Under Biden, asylum seekers were already being compelled to wait in Mexico for months for asylum hearings through the CBP One mobile app, but now such requests have been suspended indefinitely.

As yesterday’s events transpired in Washington, scenes of immense suffering took place at the border crossing between El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez. Thousands of migrants waiting along the border began crying in near freezing temperatures as their CBP One afternoon appointments were immediately canceled. Nearby, lines of anti-riot police temporarily shut down the port of entry as a threat against any protests among the gathered migrants. An estimated 270,000 migrants were waiting to get an appointment through the app when it was shut down.

To an even greater extent than during his first term, Trump will rely on the collaboration of the Mexican government now led by pseudo-leftist President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has verbally denounced the return of the “Remain in Mexico” policy while remaining open to receiving deportees and those rejected at the border. Sheinbaum said Monday that she hopes to convince Trump to maintain access to CBP One applicants in southern Mexico, where they will become an extremely vulnerable source of cheap labor, especially after facing systematic extortion by gangs and security forces.

The orders will impact the lives of millions of people and will generate immense opposition in the population.

Key documents “missing” from 1975 Canberra Coup

Mike Head

This year will mark the 50th anniversary of the November 11, 1975 dismissal of the Australian Labor government of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam by Governor-General John Kerr, the official representative of the British monarchy.

Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam speaking after the dissolution of parliament in November 1975. [Photo: National Museum of Australia]

Kerr used the royal “reserve powers” embedded in the 1901 Australian Constitution to remove an elected government at a time of acute global geo-strategic and political crisis, tearing aside the façade of parliamentary democracy.

The political lessons of the Canberra Coup and what it revealed about the real anti-democratic calculations and machinations in ruling circles are more important than ever today as the capitalist class turns increasingly to authoritarian and fascistic forms of rule, spearheaded by the Trump White House.

2025 opened with the January 2 publication of extracts[1] from an article by academic and Whitlam biographer, Professor Jenny Hocking, drawing attention to three seemingly crucial sets of documents about the Canberra Coup that have apparently inexplicably disappeared.[2]

These murky disappearances add to the already-existing evidence of high-level involvement by the political establishments and intelligence apparatuses in the US, UK and Australia in the orchestrated removal of a government under conditions of explosive international and domestic turmoil.

One of the reportedly missing documents is a file kept on Whitlam by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the country’s political surveillance agency, which works closely with its American and British counterparts. Another set is the Government House Guest Books for the months leading up to the dismissal, which could reveal the visitors who personally advised or conspired with Kerr inside his official Canberra residence. The third is an archive of correspondence between Kerr and his now known prominent supporters, notably Lord Louis Mountbatten, who was a pivotal member of the British royal family, a former head of the UK armed forces and a man who had intimate connections with the US intelligence apparatus, as did Kerr himself.

Hocking was informed that the ASIO file on Whitlam was purportedly “culled” by the National Archives of Australia (NAA) “only weeks” before her formal request for access to them. She was also told that the Government House Guest Books for 1974–75 were nowhere to be found, while the archive correspondence between Kerr and his supporters was “accidentally” incinerated.

February 15, 1974 edition of The Bulletin

The global context

To understand the significance of the culling, disappearance or incineration of these documents, all in violation of legal archival protocols, it is necessary to first place the events of 1975 in their historical context.

The Whitlam government’s removal was not simply an Australian experience. It was part of the response in the ruling class internationally to the global upsurge of the working class and potentially revolutionary struggles that erupted with May–June 1968 general strike in France. That upheaval was followed by:

• A near-general strike in Australia in May 1969 over the jailing of a trade union leader
• The “Hot Autumn” of workers’ strikes in Italy in 1969
• The 1970 election and 1973 CIA-backed overthrow of the social democratic Allende government in Chile
• A wave of struggles in Britain, culminating in the bringing down of the Heath Conservative government in 1974
• The downfall of the Nixon administration in the US in 1974 and the final defeat of the American military in Vietnam in April 1975
• The ousting of dictatorships in Portugal, Greece and Spain in the period 1974–76.

Whitlam’s government was removed because it had failed to contain the powerful movement of the working class that had brought the Labor Party to office in 1972, after 23 years of conservative party government. There were related concerns in Washington over Labor’s inability to stem the popular opposition to the US military alliance, triggered by the atrocities of the Vietnam War, and the presence of the key US satellite spy base at Pine Gap in central Australia.

Whitlam, like the Labor Party as a whole, was firmly committed to the US military and strategic alliance, no less than his Labor prime ministerial successors, Hawke, Keating, Rudd, Gillard and Albanese. Whitlam was not an opponent of the Vietnam War, let alone of Washington. But popular opposition to the war, and to the conscription of 20-year-olds to fight it, had grown rapidly since the late 1960s as the massive scale of the US bombings and killings in Vietnam became more widely known. In order to prevent that movement, which erupted largely outside the control of the Labor Party, from challenging the parliamentary order itself, Labor promised to end conscription and withdraw Australian troops from Vietnam, subject to consultation with the White House.

Whitlam and Nixon in the White House, July 1973. [Photo: © Richard Nixon Library and Museum ]

These policies were, in fact, in line with those of the Nixon administration, which sought unsuccessfully to hand the war over to its South Vietnamese puppet regime before the ultimate defeat in 1975. In the Nixon Library in 2012, Vietnam War-era records revealed that by the time Whitlam was granted an audience with Nixon, in Washington in late July 1973, the Australian prime minister had done everything he could to prove that he could be relied upon to back US imperialism, including by backing away from advocating a grouping of non-aligned nations in Asia and a supposed zone of peace in the Indian Ocean.

The tapes showed that Whitlam had also assuaged American concerns that a Labor government would rescind the agreements over Pine Gap and other US installations in Australia. But anxiety continued in Washington about the Whitlam government’s capacity to contain the discontent. Just a month before the Watergate affair forced Nixon from office in August 1974, the US president ordered a secret study of American relations with Australia, exploring options for relocating US intelligence facilities elsewhere.

Whitlam had led the Labor Party to electoral victory in 1972 on a program of limited social and economic reforms, such as a medical insurance scheme and abolition of university fees. However, the formation of a Labor government triggered pent-up working-class demands for higher wages and better conditions. In response, Whitlam called a 1973 constitutional referendum to hand the federal government the power to control wages (“prices and incomes”), only to suffer a resounding defeat. The following year, 1974, saw the greatest levels of strikes since 1919, resulting in the largest wage rises in Australian history.

In the midst of this turmoil, and facing a disastrous defeat in Vietnam, the Nixon administration dispatched Marshall Green as the US ambassador to Australia. Green had a record with US-backed coups, including while he was the US ambassador to Indonesia during the CIA-backed military coup of 1965–66 that massacred up to one million workers and peasants and brought General Suharto to power. Under Green’s command, State Department and CIA officials at the US Embassy in Jakarta provided the Indonesian armed forces with “shooting lists” bearing the names of thousands of local, regional and national leaders of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). (See: “Fifty years since the Indonesian coup”).

There is no doubt that Green, the White House and the CIA had a hand in the destabilisation of the Whitlam government that preceded its dismissal. That included businessmen with various intelligence connections embroiling the government in a scandal involving overseas loans. This “loans affair” provided the pretext for the Liberal Party opposition to block the government’s 1975 budget in the Senate, potentially depriving it of funds. That in turn became the justification for Kerr to sack Whitlam, with the support and encouragement of the British royal establishment.

Lord Mountbatten’s authorised biography later recorded him writing to Kerr days after Whitlam’s dismissal to congratulate Kerr on his “courageous and correct action.” During the same period, Mountbatten was heavily involved in parallel operations in Britain, including a potential military dictatorship, for similar reasons, to overturn Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s 1974–76 Labour government. That eventually led to Wilson’s sudden unexplained resignation in 1976. In 2006, it was revealed that Mountbatten, a relative and mentor to both Queen Elizabeth and her son (now King) Charles had been engaged with other senior military figures in the CIA and MI5-backed plots against Wilson.

The Palace letters

The latest revelations of missing 1975-related documents further point to anti-democratic machinations at the highest levels. In 2020, after a four-year legal battle—all the way to the High Court, Australia’s supreme court—Professor Hocking finally secured the release of correspondence between Kerr and the Queen’s Palace showing how closely Kerr conspired with the monarch and her senior advisers in the British ruling establishment in executing Whitlam’s removal.

John Kerr [Photo: Australian Government]

Between 15 August 1974 and 5 December 1977, Kerr exchanged an extraordinary total of 212 letters with the Queen through her official private secretary, Sir Martin Charteris, a former high-ranking military officer. Kerr, in the manner of an intelligence officer—which he had once been—supplied the palace with detailed briefings, complete with newspaper clippings, on the political crisis wracking the Labor government, including the “loans affair.”

In this correspondence Charteris gave the green light for the dismissal, and assured Kerr of the Queen’s support if Whitlam tried to head off his sacking by asking her to dismiss the governor-general instead. Nervous of the response in the working class, however, Charteris advised Kerr to time his coup carefully and to claim that he acted as a last resort and without the palace’s knowledge. Kerr, in turn, reassured Charteris that Whitlam would seek to prevent a general strike.

A mass political movement of workers, students, youth and professional people had erupted against the Liberals’ blocking of supply, but the entire Labor Party and trade union leadership, notably the Labor “lefts” and Stalinists of the Communist Party of Australia, worked to stifle it.

Throughout his letters, Kerr referred to the threat posed by the working class, while reporting that Whitlam was doing his best to prevent a revolt. On October 17, for example, he informed Charteris: “The prime minister [Whitlam] appealed to the trade union movement not to stage a general strike.”

When it was finally carried out, the dismissal sparked days of mass strikes and huge protests. Once again, Whitlam and the union bureaucrats, under the leadership of then Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) president Bob Hawke, blocked demands for a general strike, paving the way for the anti-democratically installed Liberal-Country Party government to call and win an election in December 1975.

Whitlam’s “culled” ASIO file

In her latest article, Hocking reported that 20 years ago she stumbled across a reference, in an unrelated document, to Whitlam’s ASIO file, which clearly would be “a critically important historical record.”

However, four months later, the National Archives, the official repository of all such government records, informed her that, “having maintained this security file for nearly 40 years, it had been destroyed in a routine culling, just weeks before I requested it.”

The NAA told Hocking that, according to ASIO’s records, the destroyed file “contained material of a vetting nature only”—as if such intelligence agency “vetting” of a prime minister was perfectly acceptable! Hocking’s request for access to the ASIO documents referred to in this response went unanswered. Despite NAA legislation and protocols requiring such records to be collected and preserved for history, the NAA had issued an authorisation for ASIO to destroy Whitlam’s security file within weeks of Hocking’s request to view it. 

This is doubly significant because ASIO played an active role in the coup. Most prominently, a negative ASIO “dossier” on then Deputy Prime Minister Jim Cairns was sensationally leaked to a right-wing media magazine, the Bulletin in June 1974. That fed the destabilisation operation against the government, which ultimately involved Whitlam sacking Cairns in July 1975 an unsuccessful bid to save his own post.

The lost Government House guest books

In her article, Hocking reported that in 2010, she first requested access to the Government House guest books held by the NAA, which provide the official details of visits and visitors to governors-general. The catalogue listed 29 files, enumerated consecutively, constituting visitor books from May 1953 to February 1996, but there was a gap, covering two consecutive file numbers, from July 1974 until December 1982.

In June 2023, the NAA submitted an application to Government House requesting the delivery of the guest books for 1974–75. Government House replied that “it does not hold any guest books, visitor books, guest registers or visitor registers from 1975 as defined by the Archives Act 1983.” Government House is required under that Act to place the guest books as “Commonwealth records” in the NAA archives.

There has been longstanding speculation that security and defence officials, including the Chief Defence Scientist Dr John Farrands—supposedly the recognised authority on Pine Gap and the other US bases in Australia—had briefed Kerr about military and intelligence concerns that Whitlam planned to divulge information about CIA agents working at Pine Gap. Vice-regal Notices show that Farrands met Kerr on 28 October 1975.

Much more collaboration is likely to have taken place. Kerr regarded himself as the military commander-in-chief, as specified in the 1901 Constitution. He had direct relations with military commanders and is known to have also had consultations with at least two High Court judges before removing the government.

The burnt archive of Kerr’s prominent supporters

In 1978, soon after Kerr left office, a cache of letters “of outstanding value” to Kerr was supposedly accidentally reduced to ashes inside the Government House. Kerr’s official secretary, David Smith, wrote to Kerr expressing his dismay at having carelessly left this box of significant letters unattended in the photocopying room. According to Smith, a cleaner then inadvertently threw the entire contents into an incinerator.

Kerr had apparently sought these congratulatory letters for use in his forthcoming autobiography Matters for Judgement. Among his correspondents was Mountbatten, along with a former Governor-General and distant royal relation, Viscount De L’Isle, and other prominent figures supporting Kerr’s removal of the government.

From the letters finally released in 2020 following the High Court’s ruling in Hocking’s case, we know that the future King Charles was one of those hailing Kerr’s action. Charles’s letter to Kerr, written in similar terms to Mountbatten’s, stated: “What you did […] was right and the courageous thing to do.”

Conclusion

Together with the bloody CIA-backed military coup in Chile in September 1973, the Labor government’s dismissal was one of the first moves in what became an international counter-offensive against the working class, fronted by figures such as Reagan in the US and Thatcher in Britain. The role of Whitlam and the union leaders, like their counterparts internationally, in suppressing the opposition of workers and youth encouraged the capitalist class worldwide to go on the attack.

A tank in support of Augusto Pinochet approaches the government palace during the 1973 coup. [Photo by @goodvibes11111 / CC BY-SA 4.0]

Today, the economic and political situation is even more unstable and explosive. As this year’s World Socialist Web Site New Year statement explained, the unprecedented oligarchic and fascistic character of the Trump administration, marks a violent realignment of the state to correspond with the nature of capitalist society itself, and not just in the United States. The world’s richest individuals and corporations control resources on an unfathomable scale, producing immense class tensions.

Oxfam says world ruled by “aristocratic oligarchy,” as billionaire wealth surges by $2 trillion

Andre Damon

Guests, including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk, arrive before the 60th Presidential Inauguration in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, Pool)

The wealth of the world’s billionaires increased by more than $2 trillion in 2024, according to the anti-poverty charity Oxfam’s annual report Monday. Oxfam warned that global society is increasingly dominated by an “aristocratic oligarchy.”

The charity reported that the wealth of the world’s billionaires grew from $13 trillion to $15 trillion in 2024, a rate that is three times faster than in 2023.

The wealth of each of the richest 10 individuals grew by almost US$100 million a day in 2024, on average.

The number of billionaires grew by 204 to 2,769. Collectively, their wealth grew by about $5.7 billion each day, and there were on average four new billionaires created per week.

In its report, Oxfam predicted that the world would have five trillionaires by the end of the decade, compared with its estimate last year that there would only be one.

“The capture of our global economy by a privileged few has reached heights once considered unimaginable,” said Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar. “The failure to stop billionaires is now spawning soon-to-be trillionaires. Not only has the rate of billionaire wealth accumulation accelerated—by three times—but so too has their power,” he said.

The world’s richest individuals are Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, with a net worth of $449 billion; Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, with a net worth of $245 billion; and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, with a net worth of $217 billion.

The inauguration of Donald Trump prominently featured the attendance of five of the world’s 10 wealthiest people, including Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, France’s Bernard Arnault and Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

“What you’re seeing at the moment is a billionaire president taking oaths today, backed by the richest man,” Behar said, referring to Trump and Musk. “So this is pretty much the jewel in the crown of the global oligarchies.

“It’s not about one specific individual,” he added. “It’s the economic system that we have created where the billionaires are now pretty much able to shape economic policies, social policies, which eventually gives them more and more profit.”

The massive enrichment of the financial elite comes amid a spiraling cost-of-living crisis for the vast majority of humanity. While the richest 1 percent of society owns almost 45 percent of all wealth, 44 percent of humanity is living below the World Bank’s poverty line of $6.85 per day.

The Oxfam report also points to the increasingly entrenched character of what it calls an “aristocratic oligarchy.” The report states, “The idea that extreme wealth is a reward for extreme talent is pervasive and strongly reinforced in our media and popular culture. But this perception is not rooted in reality.”

It continued: “In 2023—for the first time—more new billionaires got rich through inheritance than through entrepreneurship. All of the world’s billionaires younger than 30 inherited their wealth.”

The report includes statistics making clear that the wealth of these financial oligarchs is indeed “unfathomable.” It noted, “Even if you saved US$1,000 daily since the first humans, 315,000 years ago, you still would not have as much money as one of the richest ten billionaires.”

It added, “If any of the richest 10 billionaires lost 99 percent of their wealth, they’d still be a billionaire.”

The report related the growth of social inequality to the increasing monopolization of industry. “As monopolies tighten their stranglehold on industries, billionaires are seeing their wealth skyrocket to unprecedented levels. Monopoly power is escalating extreme wealth and inequality worldwide. Monopolistic corporations can control markets, set the rules and terms of exchange with other companies and workers, and set higher prices without losing business.”

As an example, the report noted the staggering figure that “Amazon [owned by world’s second-richest man, Bezos] accounts for 70 percent or more of online purchases in Germany, France, the UK and Spain.”

In a speech upon leaving office over the weekend, US President Joe Biden warned of an “oligarchy taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence.”

The Oxfam report makes clear, however, that this oligarchy is not merely “taking shape,” it has vastly grown its wealth and power under the Biden administration. Biden took office at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the central domestic focus of his administration was bailing out Wall Street and driving workers back to workplaces that were hotbeds of infection, with the aim of reducing costs for major corporations. As a result of its policies, workers’ share of national income fell to the lowest level in decades.

This financial oligarchy uses its control of both political parties to expand its wealth and power at the expense of the working class, whose exploitation forms the basis of their wealth. The incoming Trump administration is a government, as the World Socialist Web Site has explained, “of, by and for the oligarchy.”

Oxfam’s report was published ahead of the annual gathering of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. While the report presents powerful and undeniable data about the growth of inequality, it argues that the increasing grip of the financial oligarchy can be broken by “ensuring corporations and the super-rich pay their fair share of taxes.” It does not explain how this is to be accomplished under conditions in which the financial oligarchy controls all of the levers of power.

New Zealand government moves to scrap regulations that constrain corporate profit

Tom Peters

New Zealand’s National Party-led coalition government is preparing to introduce a new Regulatory Standards Bill (RSB) which will entrench a set of far-right principles designed to prevent government regulations from negatively impacting private property rights, “productivity” and profit-making.

The bill is being drafted by the libertarian ACT Party, which received 8.6 percent of the votes in the 2023 election but is playing a leading role in implementing the government’s agenda of tax cuts for the rich, savage slashing of public services and attacks on workers’ rights. ACT’s Workplace Relations Minister Brooke Van Velden recently introduced new anti-strike laws and announced a reduction in the minimum wage.

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon (left) and Minister for Regulation David Seymour [Photo: NZ Governor-General]

The government last year created a new Ministry for Regulation, with ACT leader David Seymour in charge, to review regulations and, in Seymour’s words, “to look for red tape to cut.” The RSB will provide the framework for the ministry’s work.

In a speech to the Wellington Chamber of Commerce on November 19, Seymour complained that in 2015 “the cost for businesses to comply with tax and regulatory requirements [was estimated at] $5 billion, or around 1.3 percent of GDP.” He promised to return New Zealand to the de-regulatory environment of the 1990s, when corporate taxes were slashed and social welfare, public education and other services were systematically attacked and state-owned corporations were privatised.

ACT has been calling for something like the RSB for nearly two decades, supported by the New Zealand Initiative (formerly the Business Roundtable), the country’s main lobby group for big business.

An official discussion document on the RSB lists several principles that will be used to evaluate new and existing regulations. The most important one states: “Legislation should not unduly diminish a person's liberty, personal security, freedom of choice or action, or rights to own, use, and dispose of property, except as is necessary to provide for, or protect, any such liberty, freedom, or right of another person.”

As several academics and environmental groups have pointed out, this excludes any consideration of the good of the environment, society, and collective rights and duties. For example, it may be argued that deforestation and pollution by corporations do not directly diminish individual liberty, despite contributing to climate change and the destruction of ecosystems.

Similarly, laws and regulations to limit the availability of junk food, alcohol or tobacco might be considered contrary to “liberty,” “freedom of choice” and property rights, even if such measures would reduce rates of obesity, diabetes and cancer.

The discussion document states that legislation should not “take or impair” a person’s property without “good justification” and the owner receiving “fair compensation for the taking or impairment.” Such compensation must be “provided to the extent practicable, by or on behalf of the persons who obtain the benefit of the taking or impairment.”

In a submission on the law, public policy professor Jonathan Boston noted that under this principle someone whose business is “impaired” by environmental regulations could be entitled to “fair compensation,” paid by the “beneficiaries” of such regulations, i.e. the public/taxpayers.

“In effect, the principle of ‘polluter pays’ would be replaced with the principle of ‘non-polluters pay’,” Boston wrote. He likened it to compensating slave owners for their loss of “property,” instead of compensating slaves for what they have endured.

Employers might also argue that costs related to workplace health and safety laws are inconsistent with the RSB, unless they get “fair compensation” provided on behalf of the people who benefit, i.e. workers.

The RSB would impose sweeping limitations on taxation and levies. Speaking to researcher Melanie Nolan on her Coherent podcast, Boston said: “Potentially, depending on how you interpret some of these provisions, it would be difficult for the government to justify many of the current taxes that it has, and fees and levies that it imposes.”

According to the discussion document: “Legislation should impose, or authorise the imposition of, a levy to fund an objective or a function only if the amount of the levy is reasonable in relation to … the benefits that the class of payers are likely to derive, or the risks attributable to the class, in connection with the objective or function.”

In other words, businesses cannot be levied for anything unless it is demonstrated that businesses themselves are likely to benefit. This could call into question, for example, the levies currently paid by businesses to the state-owned Accident Compensation Corporation, which provides limited support to people injured in the workplace and elsewhere. Employers could argue that they derive no benefit from assisting people who are unable to work and can no longer be exploited for profit.

The RSB will create a streamlined process for corporations to challenge virtually any piece of legislation. A Regulatory Standards Board will “assess complaints about existing regulation that is inconsistent with the principles” and issue recommendations. If the Board finds that there is inconsistency, “the governing Minister must respond to justify deviation from principles.”

The RSB is part of an intensifying social counter-revolution. In New Zealand, as in the US and throughout the world, the government is tearing up social rights and protections that were won by the working class in struggles during the past century, and placing unprecedented power in the hands of billionaires and their representatives.

The corporate media has published only a handful of reports on the RSB and is downplaying its far-reaching implications. By contrast, the media provides non-stop coverage to the ACT Party’s Treaty Principles Bill, which is aimed at fueling racism towards Māori and diverting attention from attacks on the working class. That bill is not likely to become law, since it is opposed by the rest of the government.

The opposition Labour Party has criticised the RSB, with MP Duncan Webb calling it a “power grab” by Seymour. In a December 20 statement Webb said the focus on property rights would “limit [the] government’s right to make rules in the interests of all New Zealanders” and address climate change, safety and inequality.

All of this is utterly hypocritical. The wholesale destruction of regulations in favour of the so-called “free market” began in the 1980s under the then Labour Party government of prime minister David Lange and continued under subsequent National and Labour governments. The dismantling of building regulations led to hundreds of thousands of substandard and leaky buildings and contributed to disasters such as the 2011 CTV building collapse, while laws that allowed mining companies to self-regulate led directly to the 2010 Pike River mine disaster.

The 2017-2023 Labour government did not rule “in the interests of all New Zealanders.” It engineered an historic transfer of wealth to the rich and, after making empty promises to reduce inequality, oversaw an increase in homelessness and child poverty. In 2022 it bowed to big business demands for the removal of all restrictions on the spread of COVID-19, leading to tens of thousands of hospitalisations and more than 4,500 deaths. All of this was enabled by the trade union bureaucracy, which suppressed opposition from workers.

Coalition negotiations in Austria: Right-wing government to implement drastic austerity measures

Markus Salzmann

The far-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) and the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP), currently negotiating a coalition government in the Alpine state, are planning massive attacks on the working class and on migrants.

Demonstration against FPÖ government participation, at the Vienna Ballhausplatz on January 9, 2025 [Photo by C.Stadler/Bwag / CC BY-SA 4.0]

After coalition negotiations between the ÖVP, Social Democrats (SPÖ) and right-wing Neos failed, Federal President Alexander van der Bellen last week commissioned FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl to form a government. The ÖVP, which during the election campaign had still been calling Kickl a “right-wing extremist” and a “security risk for Austria,” and had ruled out any possibility of government participation under him, has since declared its willingness to serve the fascist as a means of securing a majority.

Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg is currently heading the government on an interim basis in place of Karl Nehammer, who resigned as chancellor. The ÖVP politician had taken over the chancellery for a few weeks in October 2021 after Sebastian Kurz resigned due to corruption allegations.

Immediately after the start of negotiations, both parties began to put together an extensive austerity budget. Containing drastic cuts, the budget deficit is to be reduced to below 3 percent, as required by the EU. Currently, depending on the estimate, it is up to 3.7 percent. The dispute over how and over what period the savings will be implemented had led to the failure of the coalition negotiations between the ÖVP, SPÖ and Neos.

According to the information available so far, the planned savings this year alone amount to over €6.4 billion. Within the next seven years, the government wants to save at least €18 billion.

Details of the cuts are not expected until the end of the week, but it is already clear that the cost of the new budget will fall entirely on the backs of the working class. Both parties categorically ruled out any increase in business taxes, such as corporation tax.

More than €3 billion are to be saved by cutting grants and subsidies, with the rest to come from “reforms” and unspecified “further measures.” It is certain that the cuts will affect public services. Under the catchphrase “reducing bureaucracy,” massive job cuts are to be made in public administration, but also in hospitals and other social institutions.

It has also been decided that all measures to limit climate change will be stopped. Even though most of these are hardly more than symbolic, such as the climate bonus, a yearly payment made to all Austrian residents to encourage sustainable practices, this represents a complete renunciation of any kind of climate protection measures.

Even before negotiations began, both parties had declared their intention to cut social benefits. The FPÖ’s demand for a general reduction in social benefits for immigrants also has broad support in the ÖVP. The proposals here range from halving benefits for immigrants to completely linking benefits to Austrian citizenship.

Under the pretext of combating social benefit fraud, both parties introduced a “Social Benefit Fraud Task Force” in the state of Styria. The ÖVP-led federal Interior Ministry has regularly praised the task force, so it is expected it will now also be introduced at national level. The real job of the task force is to harass social assistance recipients and cut the benefits to which they are entitled.

The budget cuts will also be directed against all workers. It is certain that educational leave (paid further training), will finally be abolished, as long demanded by business associations. At the same time, current daily and weekly working hours are to be extended.

There are no concrete plans yet to cut pensions and health services, but both parties have spoken in favour of extensive cuts in these areas in the past.

Another focus of the negotiations will be the attack on refugees and migrants.

The FPÖ has aggressively campaigned on the fascist and inhumane demand for “remigration.” This is now to be implemented. In December, Kickl had already called for “priority action” to immediately withdraw protection status from refugees from Syria and deport them. Further asylum applications from Syrian refugees will no longer be accepted. The same applies to refugees from Afghanistan.

In the “fight against illegal migration,” both parties are calling for border closures. Border crossings, such as those to the Balkan states, are to be secured with fortified fences.

The future government may also target people with a migrant background who have been living in Austria for a long time. A ban on women wearing headscarves in public service, as already set out in the government programme of the FPÖ and ÖVP in the state of Styria, could now also be introduced at federal level. Obtaining Austrian citizenship would be reserved exclusively for “assimilated” persons. The Vienna ÖVP leader Karl Mahrer has demanded that applicants be checked by the state security service for their level of integration and that their internet activities be monitored.

The FPÖ and ÖVP also agree on significantly expanding the powers of the police and secret services and using them against any kind of opposition.

The FPÖ wants to set up a central registration office for “left-wing” teachers. Those recorded could then be threatened with “consequences if necessary.”

Further programmes to “combat extremism” are also to be established. These will be, as could hardly be expected otherwise, directed against “left-wing” tendencies. In this context, both parties have called for tightening up the law on voluntary associations and free assembly in order to ban demonstrations and disliked organisations. The reintroduction of conditional mandatory pre-trial detention is already under discussion, which would allow people to be held in pre-trial custody even where there is insufficient suspicion or evidence.

Kickl’s announcement that the coalition negotiations would also deal with the national public broadcaster ORF (Austrian Broadcasting Corporation) can only be understood as a threat to curtail freedom of the press in parallel to the cuts.

Meanwhile, right-wing extremists or openly fascist groups have nothing to fear under an FPÖ government. On the contrary, they could rise directly to high office.

Kickl and the FPÖ maintain close ties to the ethno-nationalist Identitarian Movement, members of which were present at the FPÖ’s election party for the September parliamentary elections. Some of them had their pictures taken making the white power sign alongside Herbert Kickl. He has already publicly stated that the Identitarian Movement was an “interesting project worth supporting.”

The ÖVP supports the inclusion of these circles. In an interview, the Wiener Standard asked ÖVP chairman Stocker, “So, you do not rule out the possibility that Identitarians could soon be working in state institutions or ministerial offices?” To which Stocker replied, “I will not control the Freedom Party’s personnel lists. I am not the FPÖ’s nanny either.”

While the establishment parties are helping the far-right extremists to power in order to implement their aggressive domestic and foreign policies, a possible government under the leadership of the FPÖ faces resistance from the population. In Vienna alone, at least 30,000 people gathered in front of the chancellery on January 9. The demonstrators carried banners with messages such as “We don’t want a right-wing extremist Austria” and “Never again [fascism] is now.” There were protests in other cities such as Innsbruck, Salzburg and Graz.