Venezuelan refugees face desperate conditions in Colombia

Julian James

The US government is engaged in an ongoing effort to suffocate Venezuela’s economy and isolate its government, and the effects on millions of average citizens from that country have been devastating. Washington is waging what amounts to siege warfare comprised of ever-expanding extraterritorial sanctions on Venezuela’s petroleum, gold, other mining and financial sectors.

A failed coup attempt by Juan Guaidó of the US-backed and -funded right-wing Voluntad Popular (Popular Will) party has only caused the Trump administration to double down on its strategy to bring down Nicolás Maduro’s government. A recent raid on the Venezuelan embassy in Washington and resulting arrest of anti-intervention activists invited by the Maduro government to occupy the building was yet another provocation indicating the administration’s contempt for of international law.

This predatory imperialist strategy, and the sanctions in particular, have been devastating for Venezuela’s population, worsening already astronomical inflation and forcing the government to reduce imports and ration what basic supplies there are at its disposal. Studies carried out before the most recent round of sanctions reported poverty levels unheard of in the formerly relatively wealthy South American nation.

One study conducted in 2018 by the Center for Economic and Policy Research attributed an estimated 40,000 deaths between 2017-2018 to American sanctions, with Venezuelans losing an average 24 pounds of body weight that year. A poll reported by the south-Florida Spanish-language newspaper El Nuevo Herald in September 2018 found that 30 percent of Venezuelans were regularly eating one meal a day, while another 28.5 percent reported eating “nothing or close to nothing” at least once a weak. Overall, 78.6 percent of respondents reported persistent difficulties obtaining food.

There is no doubt that these horrifying conditions have drastically worsened over the past year, considering ongoing efforts to strangle the country’s economy.

Meanwhile, a tiny layer of wealthy Venezuelans, whose members are made up of both “old money” and a newly minted layer of the ultra-wealthy deriving its wealth from connections to the current government (the so-called Boliburguesia), continue to fill upscale cafes in the wealthy districts of Caracas. Many other wealthy members of the Venezuelan upper class have decided to leave the country altogether and emigrate to Spain and the US, where they have invested in real estate or started small businesses.

These are the unequal conditions that have forced an estimated 2.5 million Venezuelan citizens to flee since 2014, with 2 million destitute Venezuelans having left for neighboring countries in the last two years alone, many of them former professionals and members of the middle class. Unable to secure the basic means of survival for themselves and their families, Venezuelans have emigrated on foot or by bus, traveling hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles with few possessions, and often with children in tow, to seek a better future.

The greatest influx of refugees has been to Colombia, where an estimated 1.1 million Venezuelans survive on the margins of society, many of them reduced to sheltering in the streets and begging for food. Some manage to pool together their limited resources and rent rooms, sleeping in extremely crowded conditions.

Colombia, like many other countries south of the United States border, is itself is a place of massive inequality, where the three richest men’s combined assets are equivalent to 10 percent of the country’s entire GDP. Poverty is especially acute in rural areas, where jobs and basic infrastructure are badly lacking. The current president, Iván Duque of the Centro Democrático (Democratic Center) party, a political protégé of ultra-right-wing former president Alvaro Uribe, was elected in August 2019 and swiftly proposed a “National Development Plan”—a broad package of austerity measures that includes major cuts in funding to the nation’s pension and health care systems.

The country also has its own refugee crisis resulting from decades of civil war, with an estimated 3.5 million internally displaced persons and at least 750,000 who have fled to neighboring countries. As the Duque government represents Washington’s closest ally in the region, the US and Western media pay scant attention to these Colombian refugees.

With the public health care system chronically underfunded, average Colombians have to wait months for urgent tests and appointments, and for Venezuelan refugees in Colombia, the situation is even worse. They cannot see doctors for routine visits or procedures and are only attended to once a health problem has become an emergency situation. Schooling is also out of reach for many of their children, the majority of whom lack the necessary documentation for enrollment. Often, school is not an option simply because young children are expected to help collect money for the family.

This WSWS reporter interviewed a 24-year-old Venezuelan refugee named Oriana who sells bottled water and soda on the side of the road in Medellin with her husband and six-month-old baby. Asked about her reasons for leaving, she responded:

“We came to Colombia on foot in September because we had no other choice. I was studying civil engineering, and Juan was working at a taxi business. We were able to make a living more or less, but everything started becoming unstable. Suddenly I couldn’t continue my studies because all the teachers started quitting over pay. Then we found out I was going to have a baby, and at the time you couldn’t find any diapers or medications in the stores, and there were long lines in the hospital. Once you finally made it to the front, you had to pay for everything just to be able to see a nurse—even gloves! Really, we had to get out of there because we felt like our baby could die if we stayed.”

For Oriana and many other Venezuelans, survival depends on the generosity of the locals and their ability to sell small items to passing drivers. Oriana had this to add:

“We feel much better being here; people in Colombia have helped us out a lot to be able to raise the baby—giving us diapers and milk, though when we first arrived, we were sleeping on the streets. And I’m talking about just regular people, not the government, people who drive by here, they’ve really helped us out, and we’re very grateful.”

Eking out a living on the streets means spending long hours exposed to the elements and fumes of traffic from dusk until dawn, in an effort to scrape together enough pesos for food and shelter for the night.

Diego, 16, arrived with family and friends recently, and spoke about what a typical day is like:

“The situation became dire back in Venezuela, so here we are now, waking up at 5 a.m. to earn our daily bread. We spend all day standing around at a stoplight handing out pieces of candy and hoping people will give us some change. We don’t have the necessary documents to work or get medical care. At least we are able to pay for a place to sleep and food among us with what we earn here, though we try to scrape something together to send to our family back in Venezuela, too. And you know who suffers the most in this situation? It’s the kids.”

Among the refugees, there is broad hostility to both the existing government of Nicolás Maduro, which, its “Bolivarian socialist” pretensions notwithstanding, defends capitalist property and presides over deepening social inequality, and to Guaidó, who is seen as a representative of the traditional oligarchy and US imperialism.

Asked about the political situation and threats of direct military invasion by the United States, Oriana’s husband Juan had this to say:

“We need to get the current government out of power. I was alive during the Caracazo [mass anti-austerity riots in the nation’s capital, Caracas] in 1989 when people were massacred in the streets by the government. Of course, Guaidó is also a right-wing politician, he could do the same thing as the current government, so we need a new government, not Maduro and not Guaidó.

“As for an invasion—Venezuela doesn’t need an invasion, people would certainly be worse off. Just look, everywhere the Americans have gone, it’s been a catastrophe.”

Enrique, a former resident of Caracas in his twenties, had a similar political outlook:

“Guaidó is just another corrupt politician, he’s not actually doing anything except going around giving interviews, posing for photo ops. He’s totally corrupt, but we do have to get Maduro out, too.”

Honduran government cracks down on strike by teachers, doctors and nurses

Andrea Lobo

Educators in Honduras have been on a general strike since Thursday, and university students, doctors and nurses have carried out demonstrations and partial strikes since May 20 against the government of Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) of the National Party (PNH).

All regions of the country have seen roadblocks, marches, and university occupations, including a march of tens of thousands of people Monday and Tuesday in the country’s capital, Tegucigalpa. Virtually all have been met with violent repression by the Honduran police and military.

Mass demonstration on Monday in Tegucigalpa (@TONYDIAZGALEAS)

This follows an initial week of strikes that began on April 26 against two proposed reforms aimed at privatizing health care, pensions and education. The reforms are dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and involve expedited budget cuts and mass layoffs.

On Monday night, a large contingent of demonstrators protested in front of the US embassy in Tegucigalpa in an acknowledgement that the social attacks imposed by the Honduran ruling class originate in Wall Street boardrooms and in Washington DC.

Amid a growing resurgence of the class struggle, including among tens of thousands of US teachers fighting in defense of public education, the Honduran trade unions and the opposition parties have done everything possible to keep workers from appealing to their class brothers and sisters across the region and particularly the United States for a common political struggle against social austerity, militarization and corporate attacks led by US imperialism.

On May 21, as the protest movement reached new proportions, the Trade Union of Public Education Employees (SIEMPE) and the Honduran Medical Association convoked a “National Assembly of Departmental Platforms for the Defense of Health and Education,” as a negotiating table to contain the protests and channel them behind talks with the ruling National Party.

The corporate media, along with the student and pseudo-left organizations, including those that orbit the ostensible opposition party, Libre, have promoted the president of the Medical Association, Dr. Suyapa Figueroa, as the spokeswoman of the protests, citing her vocal condemnations of the social crisis.

In an interview with CNN last Friday, for instance, Figueroa said “the health care system has not been able to perform surgeries. There have been instances of no water for developing x-rays. No water at operating rooms to wash one’s hands.” She soon added, however, that the protest movement was “apolitical” and that “this struggle has a lot of people that belong to the ruling party, which is only natural, and they are supporting us.”

The government, however, has made clear that it will respond to any challenge to the interests of the Honduran and international financial elites in a totally uncompromising and ruthless fashion.

The corresponding ministers announced yesterday sanctions and firings against teachers, along with criminal charges against medical personnel and the hiring of replacement scabs.

A new criminal code that went into effect May 15 criminalizes demonstrations in the broadest terms with up to four years in prison and 15 years for leaders or promoters. It also establishes a prison term of 3 to 10 years for carrying out abortions.

During the last week, teachers have repeatedly denounced to reporters and in social media the presence of the Tigres special forces participating in the repression against demonstrations. National Police officers and the lethal Tigres were recorded accompanying a plainclothes agent on Monday unsuccessfully trying to kidnap two teachers seeking refuge at a restaurant in the town of Santa Cruz de Yojoa.

On April 29, a plainclothes police officer shot a teacher protester in Tegucigalpa with live ammunition.

The Honduran special forces deployed against workers and youth were trained by the US Green Berets for “urban combat.” In 2015, the US Army described their training: “Many periods of instruction focused on instilling fundamental principles of close quarters battle and knowing how to execute them amidst the chaos that is combat.” The commander of the US 7th Special Forces Group in charge of the training, Col. Christopher Riga, declared during the graduation, “I promise you at some point in time, together, we’ll be on target killing terrorists and drug traffickers together.”

The last decade has been marked by deadly military and police crackdowns against mass antigovernment protests and activists in Honduras to resist the dramatic deterioration of living standards. This escalation of the police-state measures to enforce social attacks has proven to be the purpose of the military coup orchestrated by the Democratic Party administration of Barack Obama in June 2009 to topple president Manuel Zelaya.

Emails released in 2010 by WikiLeaks showed that the State Department under Hillary Clinton backed the coup and used the Organization of American States to undermine opposition by other governments. It is the preparation of new imperialist crimes, including the continued backing of the murderous regime in Tegucigalpa, that is fueling the ongoing persecution by Washington of WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, and the jailing of the former army specialist who leaked those diplomatic cables, Chelsea Manning.

The Honduran congress approved the education and health care bills after a month of negotiations between the regime and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which finally agreed to a two-year deal involving a credit line and policies to “improve the framework of macroeconomic policies, elevate the quality of public spending and strengthen the rule of law.”

The immediate step announced by the chief IMF negotiator, Esteban Vesperoni, was a $311 million loan to the Honduran government, partially to “rescue” the state-owned National Electric Company (ENEE). Ironically this money will facilitate the “implementation of the structural electric sector law,” which privatized the distribution of electricity in 2014. Vesperoni also ordered “revising the contract with the [private] Empresa Energía Honduras (EEH) to incorporate the necessary incentives.”

In 2016, in the words of EEH general manager German García, “the whole distribution network of the country was given in a trust to Ficohsa [Honduran Commercial Finance Bank] and we won the bid.”

The example of ENEE spells the fate for the still unannounced measures regarding health care and education. The latest loan adds to hundreds of millions more flushed by the IMF in this period through the bankrupt ENEE, the privatization of which has channeled vast wealth to the Honduran and international financial elite—handing out slices to Wall Street creditors through the IMF. Other beneficiaries include Ficohsa owner and Honduran billionaire Camilo Atala as well as Colombian magnate William Vélez, the majority owner of EEH through his Grupo ETHUSS. One of the other uses for these funds has also been expanding the Honduran military, which became a top debtor of ENEE.

In the final analysis, the working class has paid the cost through more than 2,000 layoffs and other concessions at ENEE as well as constant hikes of the electricity rates.

Thousands more have been fired under the Hernández administration in the Aqueduct and Sewer Authority (SANAA), Honduran telecommunications Hondutel, the National Port Company, the state tax agency (DEI) and other public agencies as part of the escalated drive of privatizations and social cuts dictated by the IMF.

The government has denied that the education and health care bills will result in mass layoffs, but it has openly stated their goal: “saving” $300 million, the bulk of which will go to servicing the public debt to financial vultures and building up the repressive apparatus. The wreckage of the health care system, including the outward stealing of hundreds of millions of dollars by the PNH regime under Porfirio Lobo, has led to thousands of unnecessary deaths while feeding the business of private clinics.

While expanding the ranks of the super-rich in Honduras, the effects for most of the population have been calamitous, with the poverty rate increasing more than 10 percent since the 2009 coup to roughly 70 percent of the population. Economists at the National Autonomous University (UNAH) predicted that 110,000 more people will fall below the official poverty line this year.

Despite the brutal repression by the Honduran state, the struggles against these intolerable conditions, which in turn fuel thousands of yearly killings from gang warfare, will only grow larger and more militant.

Hundreds of thousands of educators, doctors, students, other workers and peasants from Honduras and the region continue to seek safer and better conditions for themselves and their families by migrating north in the face of the anti-immigrant policies by both Democratic and Republican administrations that have culminated in the militarization of the border, squalid detention camps, family separation and the gradual destruction of asylum rights by the Trump White House.

The number of apprehensions at the US-Mexico border, mostly of migrants from northern Central America, topped 100,000 per month in March and April, nearly doubling the record highs in 2014.

European election debacle for Conservatives and Labour

Robert Stevens

The ruling Conservatives have suffered their worst ever election result, while Labour suffered a debacle almost as bad.

Coming fifth nationwide with just 9 percent of the vote and taking just three seats, the Tories were eviscerated, suffering the largest ever loss since the party was founded in 1834. Their previous worst national performance was in the 2014 European election when they received just 24 percent, more than double that just recorded.

The result comes amid an ongoing leadership election contest, following the announcement that Prime Minister Theresa May will resign on June 7. It will be seized on by frontrunners to demand a harder anti-European Union (EU) line including threatening a “no deal” exit.

The UK vote in its entirety was refracted through a pro- and anti-Brexit prism.

Tory party supporters deserted en masse to Nigel Farage’s recently formed Brexit Party.

The far-right Brexit Party won the election outright, taking 32 percent of the vote and winning 29 of the 73 seats available. It came first in every region in England—North East, North West, East of England, Wales, West Midlands, East Midlands, Yorkshire & Humber, the South West and South East—failing to win only in London.

It sucked up almost all the pro-Brexit vote, including from Farage’s previous vehicle—the UK Independence Party—which won the 2014 European elections. UKIP lost all 24 of its seats, taking just 3 percent of the vote.

The pro-EU Liberal Democrats, who campaigned as the only major party calling for revoking the Article 50 legislation governing the UK’s exit, came in second with just over 20 percent of the vote (up from 13.4 percent)—at Labour’s expense.

Seen as the most consistent Remain party, the Lib Dems were able to go from their worst ever European election result in 2014, where they took just one seat, to their best result (16 seats).

The pro-Remain Greens came fourth, with 12.1 percent (up 4.2 percent) and seven seats. Change UK, recently formed by eight Blairite Labour right-wingers and three Tories who defected from their parties in February, recorded a meagre 3.4 percent of the vote, not enough to win any seats.

Every attempt to tabulate the vote shows a deeply divided country on the issue of Brexit, as it was in 2016. A tally of those parties standing on a pro-Remain ticket—Liberal Democrats, Change UK, the Greens and Plaid Cymru—equated to approximately 38 percent of the vote. The two parties supporting Brexit, and specifically leaving the EU without a deal in place—the Brexit Party and UKIP—won 37 percent.

Labour saw a collapse in its vote to just 14.1 percent (down 11.3 percent), with both pro-Remain and Leave parties taking votes.

According to the Financial Times, “Labour’s change in vote share against the results of the 2016 EU referendum shows that the party performed worst in areas at either end of the Brexit spectrum.

“Labour’s vote share fell by an average of 15 percentage points in parts of Britain that had returned the highest Remain support in the referendum. But the party’s vote share fell by 11 points—the second greatest margin—in areas that had most strongly backed Leave in the referendum.”

In Wales, where Labour has won every national vote bar one for a century, it came third with just 15.3 percent of the vote, behind the Brexit Party and the pro-Remain Plaid Cymru. Wales voted narrowly to leave the EU.

In Scotland, Labour no longer has any MEPS, suffering its worst election result since 1910. Labour lost heavily, coming fifth with less than 10 percent of the vote, behind the Greens, Lib Dems and Brexit Party. The Remain-supporting parties won nearly 62 percent of the vote, with the pro-Remain ruling Scottish National Party winning on 38 percent.

In the North West of England, a Labour heartland that voted Leave in the 2016 referendum, Labour won 21 percent. The Brexit Party and UKIP took 34 percent of the vote. The pro-Remain parties—Lib Dems, Greens and Change UK—took around 32 percent of the vote.

In Manchester, Labour won 37 percent of the vote, while the Brexit Party (13.9 percent) and UKIP (2.4 percent) won a combined vote of just over 16 percent. Overall, the three openly pro-Remain parties won over 40 percent of the vote in the city which voted Remain in 2016.

In the UK’s second largest city, Birmingham, Labour won with 35 percent of the vote (77,551). This was around 25,000 votes more than the Brexit Party at 24 percent (52,953 votes). The pro-Remain parties took a larger share of the vote than pro-Brexit parties. In 2016, Birmingham voted Leave narrowly by a margin of just 3,400 votes.

Pro-Remain parties also won more votes than the Leave parties in Sheffield, South Yorkshire (which voted narrowly to leave in 2016) and in Leeds, West Yorkshire, which narrowly voted Remain. As in so many places, the split Remain vote in Leeds meant that the Brexit Party still won, with Labour coming second.

Under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, Labour voted at its last conference to respect the Brexit vote, while seeking an alternative to the deal put forward by May ensuring tariff-free access to the Single European Market. But, in a policy described as “constructive ambiguity,” failure to achieve this would lead first to a demand for a general election so that Labour could fight for its alternative Brexit or, failing this, other options, including a possible second confirmatory referendum on any deal, might come into play.

Following the election, the Blairites have upped the ante, declaring that Labour’s vote collapse proves that Corbyn’s declared aim to represent both the Remain and Leave vote has failed. Labour must now not only unconditionally endorse a second referendum, but also campaign to remain in the EU, they insist.

Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry declared even before the votes were counted, “We should have said quite simply that any deal that comes out of this government should be put to a confirmatory referendum, and that Remain should be on the ballot paper, and that Labour would campaign to remain.”

On Monday, Blairite peer Andrew Adonis wrote in the Guardian, “The time has come to make a second referendum our clear and settled policy, and for Labour to declare that it will lead the remain campaign.”

Corbyn’s closest ally, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, immediately acceded to the first demand, tweeting Monday, “We must unite our party & country by taking issue back to people in a public vote."

He told the BBC, “We want a general election, but realistically after last night there aren't many Tory MPs that are going to vote for a general election. It would be like turkeys voting for Christmas.”

Corbyn stated that he was “listening very carefully” to both sides. The party’s preference was still general election but any Brexit deal “has to be put to a public vote.”

Corbyn’s failure to unite workers across the Brexit divide is not because this was a doomed venture. His real goal was not to secure class unity, but to maintain “national unity” in the interests of British imperialism. Despite his occasional rhetoric regarding the social crisis facing the working class, he offered no socialist alternative capable of unifying the working class against the entire ruling elite, however it is divided over Brexit.

Corbyn faced all ways at once. He could never take a stand against the nationalist sentiment whipped up by the Brexit wing of the bourgeoisie, because he shares much of their nationalist agenda—not only the view that the immigration associated with free movement of labour is a problem that must be curbed but the glorification of “parliamentary sovereignty” as the guarantor of social progress. He could never oppose the Remain wing’s apologetics for the EU and its pro-austerity, pro-business agenda. His line was dictated by the dominant view of the City of London, which never wanted Brexit and insisted that, if it could not be prevented, then the UK must maintain access to strategic European markets at all costs.

Based on exploiting the sympathy he enjoyed among workers, Corbyn tried to assume the pose of national saviour—and ended up a national joke instead. In the run-up to the EU elections, he spent six weeks ensconced in talks with May hopelessly trying to secure a Brexit agreement that would pass in parliament while clinging onto the stinking semi-corpse of the Tory Party.

It is thanks to Corbyn that the Tories are still in government and busy electing a new leader. It is he who bears responsibility for continued divisions over Brexit that can only be overcome based upon a perspective for uniting British workers with their European brothers and sisters in a continent-wide struggle for socialism.

Dressbarn to close all its stores as US “retail apocalypse” exceeds 2018 closures

Anthony Bertolt

Last week, parent company Ascena Retail Group, which also owns Ann Taylor, Loft and Lane Bryant stores, announced the closure of all 650 of its Dressbarn retail stores. Ascena also recently sold its Maurices clothing chain for a sale price of $200 million cash to the UK-based private equity firm OpCapita, portending further closures.

In a statement last Monday, Steven Taylor, the chief financial officer of Dressbarn, said that the chain had “not been operating at an acceptable level of profitability in today’s retail environment,” alluding to the increasing dominance of online marketing and retail. Although a final date how not been set for the store closures, Taylor said that the company will finish operations within the next 6 to 12 months.

Competition from online giants like Amazon has fed into mass store closures, putting pressure on major retailers to shift from already low paying jobs to more labor-intensive and exploitative distribution center jobs.

Approximately 6,800 workers will be thrown out of work by the liquidation of Dressbarn, all of whom the company insists will be offered timely information about their store closings and options for financial support.

However, the reality for the vast majority of these workers is that the store closures mean that they will be either unemployed or forced to take even lower paying work to meet their basic needs as clothing retailers like Ascena Retail Group look for ways to compete with major corporations like Amazon and Walmart.

Retail workers are already among the lowest paid workers in the United States. According to reports by employees to indeed.com, associates at Dressbarn earn as little as $8.95 an hour to $12 an hour for an assistant store manager. Meanwhile Ascena CEO Gary Muto’s total compensation was nearly $6 million in 2018, including a base pay of more than $1 million.

The recent wave of retail closures, dubbed the “retail apocalypse,” has intensified this year with the number of closings exceeding 7000 before Dressbarn’s announcement, surpassing the number of closures in all of 2018. According to Coresight Research, there were 5864 retail closures in 2018, which included all of the remaining Toys R Us stores, along with other major retail stores like Sears and Kmart. The record for number store closures announced in a single year was 2017 with 8,139.

These closures have hit areas in the Midwest and Northeast US particularly hard. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, retail employment in these areas has fallen by more than ten percent between January 2007 and February 2019.

Along with Dressbarn, other major retail chains that have announced large closures across the United States in 2019 include:

* Payless ShoeSource announced that it will close all 2589 of its stores after a second bankruptcy filing, including 248 stores in Canada.

* Gymboree Group, which owns both Gymboree and Crazy 8 stores, announced in January that it would close all 800 of its stores and shut down its website.

* Foot Locker, despite reporting a record earnings report, announced that it will close 165 stores.

* Gap announced that it will close 200 stores this year to focus more on its online store, which now accounts for 40 percent of its revenue.

* Charlotte Russe has announced that it will close all 500 of its stores after it announced the closure of 94 of its stores and could not find a buyer for those that remained open.

* Dollar Tree which, owns the Family Dollar chain, announced that it will shut down about 390 Family Dollar stores.

* Sears announced in February that it would downsize its stores by 1275, keeping 425 stores in operation after filing for bankruptcy.

At the rate retail store closures have been announced, this year will soon surpass the record set in 2017. Since the 2008 financial crisis, major retail companies have been subject to buyouts, acquisitions and mergers as retailers have been forced into bankruptcy by Wall Street. According to the real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield, more than 9,000 stores are predicted to close in 2019 and 12,000 will follow in 2020.

Rumored deal between Fiat-Chrysler and Renault foreshadows mass layoffs

Tom Hall

Fiat-Chrysler (FCA) and French automaker Renault are in advanced talks to establish a corporate alliance, the financial press reported over the weekend. An announcement of the deal could come as soon as today.

The talks have reportedly developed very rapidly in recent days, and it is unclear as of this writing what form the deal will ultimately take. Reports have ranged from an alliance involving a share swap to a full merger. Bloomberg News reports that the deal is an “operational tie-up … that could lead to a full merger.” “At a minimum,” according to the New York Times, “the two sides have agreed to share technology, intellectual property, supply chains and plants to develop and manufacture vehicles, these people said.”

Whatever ultimately emerges from the discussions, if a deal is made there can be no doubt that the net impact for the workers at both companies will be massive layoffs and plant closures, as such a move would be aimed at eliminating redundancies and excess capacity across both companies in order to boost profits at each.

Automotive News speculated that the deal could help FCA consolidate its less profitable European operations, which accounts for one-third of its workforce even though almost all of the firm’s profits are made in North America. “Renault, which is 15 percent owned by the French government, counts on Europe for almost half its sales,” the industry website said. Meanwhile, the deal would give Renault greater access to the lucrative North American market.

The deal is part of a global restructuring of the auto industry amid growing signs a world-wide recession. The auto industry in particular is facing declining demand for new vehicles and rising capital costs associated with emerging technologies such as electric vehicles and self-driving cars. Analysts have pointed out that one of the advantages of the deal for FCA would be access to Renault’s research in electric vehicles, which FCA has been slow to adopt.

Wall Street and other financial institutions are demanding consolidation of the giant automakers and a further massacre of jobs. In January, VW and Ford announced a global alliance to jointly build pickup trucks and commercial vehicles, and last month Bloomberg News posted an article, titled “The Auto Industry Is Overdue a Bout of Mega-Mergers.”

US auto assembly and parts producers are now cutting jobs at the highest rate since the 2009 financial crisis, when both Chrysler and GM filed for bankruptcy, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The auto industry in the US announced nearly 20,000 layoffs through April, more than three times the figure at the same point last year. This figure does not include Ford’s 7,000 salaried job cuts announced earlier in May.

FCA carried out thousands of layoffs at its North American facilities over the last three months, with many more rumored to be on the way. In March, the company announced the elimination of an entire shift of 1,500 workers at its Windsor Assembly plant in Canada and laid off 1,400 workers on the third shift at its Belvidere plant in northwestern Illinois via a robocall.

It is currently unknown how the rumored deal with Fiat-Chrysler will impact the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance. This “strategic partnership,” taken as a single entity, would be the largest automaker in the world, although the three companies are considered distinct entities which own stock in each other.

Insiders have suggested that FCA may eventually join the alliance, but the fact that Renault has apparently been negotiating with Fiat-Chrysler without the involvement of its alliance partners points to a serious deterioration in the relationship between the constituent companies within the Alliance.

The Alliance was founded in 1999 by Renault and Nissan, at a time when the Japanese automaker was on the verge of bankruptcy, with Mitsubishi joining in 2016. Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn, who later was installed as Nissan CEO in 2001, returned Nissan to profitability after laying off 21,000 workers and closing five factories, for which he was named “Businessman of the Year” by Forbes in 2002.

Although Nissan is by far the largest company in the Alliance by sales volume, Renault effectively wields control by virtue of its ownership of a 43 percent voting stake in Nissan, while Nissan holds only a 15 percent non-voting stake in Renault. This unequal relationship has been a source of friction for years.

The arrest of Ghosn last November in Japan on financial misconduct charges has placed the future of the Alliance in question, as well as contributing to a plunge in Nissan’s profits by 45 percent. The charges, while credible, arose out of deep factional divisions among top Alliance executives, especially between Nissan and Renault.

At issue is Renault’s push for greater consolidation of the Alliance, including a proposed scheme which would have effectively given Ghosn personal control, including giving himself the ability to set his own compensation without board oversight. The revival of this proposal last spring, after being rebuffed in 2017, coincided with the beginning of a secret investigation by Nissan executives into potential misconduct by Ghosn.

Ghosn had also been pushing for a full merger between Renault and Nissan, which was bitterly resisted by Nissan executives. While merger talks are currently on hold, the proposed deal with Fiat-Chrysler could be a way of putting pressure on Nissan’s board of directors, some analysts speculate.

The announcement of the impending deal between FCA and Renault, as well as the massive job-cutting by the other US automakers, occurs in the run up to the mid-September expiration of the four-year labor agreements with the United Auto Workers union, which cover 155,000 GM, Ford and FCA workers in the US. Corporate management is confident that the UAW, which accepted millions in bribes to force through concessions in previous contracts, will continue its role as the bought agents of the bosses. However, the auto companies and the UAW face an increasingly rebellious mood among autoworkers, who are determined to win back everything that has been taken from them over the past four decades.

By carrying through plant closures, layoffs, mergers and other measures directed at increasing the exploitation of its workforce in advance of the contract negotiations, the automakers are attempting to present the workers with a fait accompli, shifting the narrative away from pay and hiring increases towards determining what will be cut and when.

However, the conditions exist for a powerful counter-offensive by the autoworkers. Autoworkers must take the conduct of the struggle into their own hands by forming rank-and-file factories committees, independent the unions. The fact that the assault on jobs and living standards is taking place internationally underscores the need for US workers to unite with workers in Europe, Asia, Latin America and throughout the world to fight the global corporations.

Ruling conservatives, social democrats collapse in EU elections

Alex Lantier

The European elections ended yesterday, after every state in the 28-member European Union (EU) elected its representatives to the European parliament on one day between Thursday and Sunday. The result was a dramatic defeat for the conservative and social democratic parties that governed Western Europe for decades and built the EU with the Maastricht Treaty adopted in 1992, after the Stalinist restoration of capitalism in Eastern Europe.

In Germany, France, Britain and other countries across Europe, these parties that once formed a duopoly dominating the parliament failed to win 50 percent of the vote combined. Most voters voted for other parties. Voters also punished, in addition to the conservatives and social democrats, petty-bourgeois populist parties tied to the trade unions, who have opposed growing social protest against the EU.

These parties are hemorrhaging support, as a wave of strikes and protests oppose policies of austerity, militarism and police repression that millions of workers identify with the EU. Mass strikes against EU-dictated wage freezes have gone forward in Berlin and other regions of Germany, Portugal and Belgium, amid “yellow vest” protests against French President Emmanuel Macron. At the same time, protests are mounting across Eastern Europe, with the Polish national teachers strike and protests against Hungary’s “slave law” mandating unpaid overtime.

Mounting opposition in the working class can find no expression within the political establishment, however. Some Green parties, who are closely linked to the social democrats, won increased support in elections that unfolded immediately after mass youth protests against climate change. Across much of Europe, however, the prime beneficiaries of the discrediting of the EU and the traditional ruling parties were far right parties.

In Germany, the EU’s economic powerhouse and largest country by population, the conservative Christian Democratic Union-Christian Social Union (CDU-CSU) won 28 percent of the vote and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) 15.5 percent—down 7 and 11.8 percent, respectively. The national CDU-CSU-SPD “Grand Coalition” government now has only 43.8 percent of the vote. The Left Party fell 2 percent to 5.4 percent, while the Greens and the neo-fascist Alternative for Germany both rose to 22 percent and 10.5 percent, respectively.

German youth massively turned against the ruling parties: among under-30s, 13 percent voted for the CDU-CSU and 10 percent voted for the SPD, while 33 percent voted for the Greens.

Marine Le Pen’s neo-fascist National Rally (RN) again won the European elections after its 2014 victory at 23.3 percent, narrowly beating Macron’s Republic on the March (LRM) at 22.1 percent. The Greens took third with 13.1 percent. The Gaullist The Republicans (LR) and the Socialist Party (PS), France’s traditional parties of rule since the May 1968 general strike, fell to a humiliating 8.4 percent and 6.6 percent, respectively, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France (LFI), which won 20 percent of the 2017 presidential vote, took only 6.6 percent.

While LFI was hammered for not supporting the “yellow vest” protests against the bitterly unpopular Macron, and by the defection to the RN of LFI member Andréa Kotarac, the RN tried to claim the mantle of “best opponent” of Macron. RN election list leader Jordan Bardella called for “dramatically reorienting” economic policy and new attacks on immigrants. Both Bardella and Le Pen called for new French legislative elections.

With almost all results counted in the UK, Nigel Farage’s far-right Brexit Party emerged victorious at 31.6 percent, with the Liberal Democrats (20.3 percent) beating the traditional ruling parties, Labour and Conservatives, into third and fifth place with 14.1 and 9.1 percent, respectively. The Green Party beat the Tories on 12.1 percent of the vote.

The Brexit Party carried large swathes of the Tory rural vote, resulting in the worst vote in the party’s 185 year-history, but also made headway in cities in pro-Brexit northern England and in Cardiff. Farage took almost all the vote of his former UK Independence Party, which won the last EU elections. Labour lost pro-Remain votes to the Liberal Democrats, who even took Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s Islington district of London. Labour also lost votes to the pro-Remain Greens. In London as a whole, the Brexit Party was beaten into third place by the Lib-Dems and Labour. 

In Scotland, Labour was wiped out by a sweeping victory for the Scottish National Party.

In Belgium, a collapse of the New Flemish Alliance (NVA) and a surge of the fascistic Flemish Interest (VB) put the two parties in the lead, at 13.5 and 11.5 percent respectively, ahead of the Francophone Socialist Party (PS, 10.5 percent). The French and Flemish wings of the Green party combined won 15 percent. With general elections unfolding in parallel with the European elections, it appears that the so-called “sanitary cordon” agreement between the other bourgeois parties not to include the VB in a Belgian national government may collapse.

In some countries—including Austria, Spain and the Netherlands—one or the other traditional ruling party eked out an electoral victory. In Austria, where the far-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) faced a scandal as a video exposed its leader and Austrian Vice Chancellor Heinz Christian Strache seeking corrupt deals with individuals he believed to represent a Russian oligarch, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) won 35 percent of the vote. The social democrats (SPÖ) won 24 percent and the FPÖ fell around 7 percent to 17.5 percent.

In the Netherlands, after bitter debates between Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD, 15 percent) and Thierry Baudet’s far right Forum for Democracy (11 percent), the Labor Party (PvdA) won a surprise first place finish, though with only 18 percent of the vote.

In Spain, the European election results largely mirrored the recent general elections, which saw a substantial turn-out of voters for the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) to block the rise of the fascistic Vox party. The PSOE took 30 percent, the right wing Popular Party (PP) and Citizens 19.5 percent and 14 percent, and the Podemos-led alliance 11 percent. Vox received six percent of the vote. This represented a significant fall for the alliance led by Podemos, the Spanish ally of the German Left Party and LFI, whose component parts had won 18 percent in the last EU elections.

In Greece, the right-wing New Democracy took 34 percent of the vote, beating the pro-austerity Syriza (“Coalition of the Radical Left”) government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras into second place with 27 percent of the vote.

Across much of Europe, however, far-right parties solidified their hold over bourgeois politics. The far right Lega party of Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini led with 30 percent of the vote. The Democratic Party (PD) with 22 percent narrowly edged out the Five Star Movement (M5S, 21 percent), while Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (FI) fell to only 10 percent. There was speculation that Salvini could push for new elections in order to throw the M5S out of government and install a one-party Lega government in Italy.

Far right parties advanced in several Eastern European countries. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party winning a 56 percent majority, relegating the social democrats to 10 percent and the fascistic Jobbik party to 9 percent. In Poland, the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) won 43 percent of the vote, beating the European Coalition at 38.4 percent.

The EU elections are further confirmation that while working people across Europe are increasingly entering into struggle—driven by anger at social inequality, militarism and attacks on democratic rights—the ruling elite is relentlessly shifting to the right. For now, a mass-fascist movement like those of the 20th century has not developed. But facing growing social anger, the ruling class is pouring hundreds of billions of euros into the armed forces, carrying out violent crackdowns like Macron’s attack on the “yellow vests” and building a vast network of prison camps for immigrants.

The differences between the traditional pro-EU parties and the far right parties on these issues are almost entirely tactical matters of foreign policy, over whether the EU could be an effective vehicle for building a common European armed forces to threaten America, Russia and China. This found consummate expression in French Defense Minister Florence Parly’s call for an EU army and a vote for Macron’s party “if you don’t want a defenseless Europe.” Predictably, the turn far to the right by the entire ruling class has again allowed the far right to pose as populist opponents of the EU.

It cannot be fought by a turn to pro-EU parties like the Greens, a coalition of pro-capitalist parties across Europe who are the undeserving beneficiaries of mass social anger against the reactionary policies pursued over decades by the conservatives and social democrats. Their pro-imperialist politics are epitomized by the record of the German Greens, the largest Green party in the continent. Having shed their pacifist pretensions and backed NATO’s Balkan wars in the 1990s, they entered into coalition with the SPD in the 2000s to ram through the hated Hartz IV austerity laws.

They are just as distant from and hostile to growing workers struggles as the scoundrels such as the German Left Party, LFI, Corbyn, Podemos or Syriza, which have done everything in their power to disorient or suppress growing working class struggles.

The decisive question now facing workers and youth across Europe, faced with the imperviousness of the financial aristocracy to all social protest, and its ruthless policy of police-state repression, is a turn to revolutionary struggle.

The turn now is to the struggles of the working class and the fight to unify them across Europe and internationally on a common socialist revolutionary perspective and leadership. It was for this purpose that the International Committee of the Fourth International’s European sections intervened in the election campaign, including running candidates of the German Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei, to launch the struggle to build the ICFI in countries across Europe.

Germany continues deportations to Afghanistan

Marianne Arens 

On Tuesday evening another 26 Afghans were forcibly deported from Germany to Kabul on a charter flight. A total of 591 people have now been sent back to war-torn Afghanistan since December 2016. Tuesday evening’s was the 24th such flight.

Protesters at a demonstration in defense of refugees

This latest deportation, just four days before the European elections, exposes the hypocrisy of all those politicians who promise a “humane” and “social” Europe. The very same politicians are responsible for the detention and forced deportation of people who have sought protection from persecution, war and social upheaval and are now forced to return to the source of their misery.

The Bavarian Refugee Council has uncovered new cases documenting the brutal actions of the German authorities.

Among the victims is a family from Nuremberg—mother, daughter and twin sons—who were deported to Iran. The husband remained in Germany due to missing documentation. His children had attended school for some time in Germany and were about to graduate from high school or middle school. Repeatedly, entire families have been apprehended in the middle of the night and deported.

Just a few days before the latest deportation, the Council of Europe’s anti-torture committee criticised the fact that victims had been mistreated during a previous deportation flight directly under the eyes of observers. One man was squeezed by his genitals to make him docile, and was then restrained with a choke strangle.

Another man, fearing deportation, had jumped out of a window and broken a lumbar vertebra. He was nevertheless deported. He was only able to withstand the flight lying down and in great pain. The anti-torture committee also criticised conditions in the Bavarian correctional facility, Eichstätt, which had been recently transformed into a so-called departure custody facility.

The response of the government to this criticism has been to step up and accelerate its incarceration and deportation practices.

This was clear last week when the Bundestag debated interior minister Horst Seehofer’s “Orderly return law”. The legislation, which is described as a “get out” or “foreigners out” law, facilitates and accelerates deportations. It treats asylum seekers de facto as criminals and plans to house “refugees required to leave” in regular prisons.

The same parties in Germany which claim to oppose the rise of the extreme right in Europe are in practice implementing the policies of the far-right Alternative for Germany. This is true not only for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU), but in particular for the Social Democratic Party (SPD) as well. In the parliamentary debate, SPD spokesman Helge Lind openly admitted he saw “no alternative” to Seehofer’s law. The German justice minister, Katarina Barley, lead candidate of the SPD for the European elections, approved the bill a month ago in the cabinet. So much for the SPD’s claims in the election campaign, that it favoured “a social Europe” and was the party that “had fought the right wing since its inception.”

Barley sits in a government that has deported nearly 24,000 people from Germany in 2018 and more than 5,600 in the first quarter of this year. The majority of those affected are secretly deported to Kosovo or other ex-Yugoslav countries, Turkey, the Middle East, Iraq, Iran, Georgia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan or Nigeria, or even to other EU countries where they had first been registered.

There is broad agreement with the anti-refugee policy of the grand coalition by those parties which criticised the law in the parliamentary debate, i.e., the Greens and the Left Party. In those German states where they govern together with the SPD and the CDU, or even appoint the prime minister (the Greens in Baden-Württemberg, the Left Party in Thuringia), they deport as readily as the governing parties.

For almost a year, the anti-refugee and xenophobic policies of individual EU states has become the official guideline for the entire EU. With its decision of June 30, 2018, the EU effectively ceased all efforts to rescue refugees from drowning, and has expressly prevented private maritime rescue—with catastrophic consequences.

Less than two weeks ago, about 65 people drowned off the coast of Tunisia when their boat capsized in high waves. Only 16 survived and were rescued by fishermen from the water. It was the worst accident for months on this dangerous escape route.

The Mediterranean is increasingly becoming a mass grave. The mass drowning in Tunisia on May 10, brings the number of people who have drowned in the Mediterranean this year to over 500. According to the IOM (International Organization for Migration), there have been 18,426 deaths in the Mediterranean region since the beginning of 2014. This is an average of more than nine people per day.

The UN Refugee Council noted that the risk of perishing on the Libya-Italy route has increased significantly. In the first four months of this year, a fourth of all those attempting to reach Europe drowned, declared UNHCR Special Envoy for the Mediterranean, Vincent Cochetel. “If we do not act now,” he added, “then we’ll almost certainly face more tragic cases in the coming weeks and months.”

The EU, however, refuses to lift a finger to assist refugees from Libya. The only chance of rescue is offered by private NGOs, and these volunteer and donor-based organisations face almost insurmountable legal hurdles and harassment.

“Sea-Watch 3”, which rescued 65 refugees from a rubber dinghy, was forced to stay at sea for four days, before it could land the remaining 47 victims on the Italian island of Lampedusa on May 19 (18 sick and dehydrated migrants, including several children, had previously been evacuated). Although the organisation did not break any law, its ship has now been confiscated by the Italian judiciary.

The EU is pursuing a refugee policy based on the motto: “Let them all drown.” The banner of the Sea-Watch group on demonstrations held against nationalism last Sunday read: “This EU kills.”

In 1940, in its World War II manifesto, the Fourth International wrote a sentence that applies fully to the current situation: “Amid the vast expanses of land and the marvels of technology, which has also conquered the skies for man as well as the earth, the bourgeoisie has managed to convert our planet into a foul prison.”

But what is the answer? For the bourgeoisie, the answer is clear: it is arming state forces to the teeth and basing itself on the most reactionary forces in Germany—the AfD and other fascist organisations.

The working class has to give its own answer. It must unite worldwide and take up the fight for a socialist programme. In Europe, it must fight against the bankrupt EU and for the United Socialist States of Europe.

This is the only way to ensure that the Bundeswehr and all European troops withdraw from the Middle East and Africa, that every human being has the right to live and work in the country of their choice, and that the billions of euros squandered for building an EU army and Frontex is spent to fulfil the social and cultural needs of the population as a whole.

UK Prime Minister May to quit as Conservative leader June 7

Chris Marsden

UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s resignation announcement as leader of the Conservative Party, effective June 7, will unleash a vicious campaign to replace her. Whoever wins in July—current favourite Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Jeremy Hunt, Dominic Raab or someone now seen as less likely—will steer the government still further to the right.

This will not only place it on a collision course with the European Union—Johnson made his pitch for the party’s hard-Brexit vote by declaring that the UK would leave the EU on October 31, with or without a deal. It signals a coming conflict with the working class.

When May delivered her farewell speech outside 10 Downing Street, the only tears shed were her own—in a nauseating display of thwarted ambition and self-pity.

She came to lead the country in 2016 as a hated figure and leaves it as a despised political failure.

As Britain’s longest serving Home Secretary under David Cameron, she was adored by the party’s most xenophobic right-wingers. She is associated with the promise to reduce net migration by two thirds and to create a “really hostile environment for illegal immigration.”

Theresa May (Credit: C-Span)

This involved refusing to accept an EU quota of refugees from war-zones, restricting the right of migrants to bring in their spouses and children and blatantly criminal acts against individual asylum seekers for which she faced the threat of fines and imprisonment for contempt of court in June 2012.

The most grotesque examples of her “hostile environment” policy was to commission a campaign involving lorries driving through immigrant areas with billboards warning, “Go home or face arrest.” Its legacy included the death of members of the Windrush Generation of Afro-Caribbean British citizens among more than 80 wrongly deported to the West Indies.

This made her an acceptable compromise leader, as a supporter of remaining in the EU, after Cameron was forced to resign in July 2016 following the referendum vote to leave the EU.

The poison chalice she took up was to seek a “soft-Brexit”, involving continued tariff-free access to the vital Single European Market, when this involved compromises with Brussels that were unacceptable to the dominant Euro-sceptic Tory right and, from 2017, also her confidence and supply partners in the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

May’s premiership was short-lived—less than three years. It would have been shorter still had May not been able to count on what has turned out to be her one political asset—Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party and of Her Majesty’s Opposition.

Corbyn had everything going for him that May did not. She was elected by 199 Tory MPs. He was elected party leader in 2015 by an overwhelming majority of hundreds of thousands of Labour members and supporters. In 2016, his right-wing MPs tried to depose him by a vote of no confidence, on the basis that he had not campaigned to stay in the EU with the necessary enthusiasm! He won again in September that year by a still larger majority.

In June 2017, a snap general election called by May was held. She hoped to strengthen her hand by exploiting the constant offensive by Labour’s right-wing and the media against Corbyn. This ended in disaster, as Labour’s vote increased massively. The Tories were reduced to a minority, reliant on 10 DUP MPs and with May even more surely a political hostage to her hard-Brexit critics and opponents.

Corbyn rescued May again and again. He did so by betraying the mandate of those who twice elected him to drive out the Blairites, break with their warmongering and take the fight to the hated Tory government. If May’s period in office is a slow-motion train crash, Corbyn’s is a series of ignominious retreats before his political opponents, ceding everything without a fight, along with constant efforts to suppress the class struggle and keep social and political discontent confined to support for his own parliamentary manoeuvres.

Since May began the process of withdrawing from the EU in March 2017, she has unsuccessfully put the Brexit deal she negotiated with the EU before parliament on three occasions—including a defeat by the largest majority in history by a government in January. She faced a no confidence vote by her own MPs in December 2018 and a parliamentary vote of no confidence in January 2019 and has been living under an axe since her third Brexit deal defeat in March—after promising to step down as prime minister if her deal was passed, without success.

Corbyn’s response to all of this was to spend his every waking moment trying to keep his own fractious party together—especially by a policy of “constructive ambiguity” on whether Labour would support the second referendum to overturn Brexit favoured by the Blairites. Even this did not stop seven Blairites from defecting under Chukka Umunna to align with a handful of pro-EU Tories in the misnamed “Change UK”.

More important still, Corbyn assumed the mantle of statesman and guarantor of the national interest, while Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell became his emissary to the City of London, promising that a Labour government would do the bidding of big business.

This reached its nadir, after Corbyn agreed to what became six long weeks of negotiations with May on securing a Brexit deal that could win majority support, when there was never any chance of such an outcome. Part of the deal was that Corbyn ended all calls for a general election.

The result, as always, was to exclude the working class from political life and give free rein to a government that was dead on its feet. The talks ended on May 16. Eight days later May was weeping on the steps of Number 10 Downing Street.

Even now, Corbyn refuses to do anything that could be interpreted as irresponsible by Britain’s boardrooms and banks.

"Whoever becomes the new Conservative leader must let the people decide our country's future, through an immediate general election,” he declared. This is a new definition of immediate! A general election only after two months in which the Tories have been allowed to regroup, and only then if this is acceptable to the new leader of the party.

May’s resignation speech was a calculated insult, beginning with her ludicrous claim to have “striven to make the United Kingdom a country that works not just for a privileged few, but for everyone.” May was “bringing an end to austerity” and helping “more people than ever [to] enjoy the security of a job” with her “decent, moderate and patriotic Conservative government.”

She even had the gall to cite her record on education, the National Health Service and in launching the inquiry into the Grenfell Tower inferno as a “search for the truth” even as the guilty continue to walk free.

Speaking for the families of the 72 who lost their lives, Grenfell United replied, “It’s hard to think of a greater injustice in recent years than Grenfell.”

This week, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty Philip Alston issued his final report comparing the UK to a giant Victorian workhouse—with close to 40 percent of children predicted to be living in poverty by 2021, one fifth of the population (14 million) living in poverty, over 1.5 million destitute and a further 2.5 million on incomes no more than 10 percent above the poverty line. The week also saw British Steel Limited going into liquidation, threatening 25,000 jobs in total; 1,000 jobs lost at Jamie Oliver’s collapsed restaurant chain; and confirmation that Honda in Swindon will close in 2021 with 3,500 redundancies.

May’s imminent downfall must spur on all those workers and young people who want to fight these attacks to reject the soporifics of Corbyn and his allies in the trade union bureaucracy, and wage an independent class struggle in alliance with their fellow workers throughout Europe and internationally for socialism.