Ford announces 5,000 job cuts in Germany

Marianne Arens

Ford plans to cut 5,000 jobs at its plants in Germany. Management announced its plans in a letter sent to the company’s workforce on March 15. It has been known since September 2018 that the company was planning to carry out mass lay-offs and shutter plants in Europe. The IG Metall trade union and works councils at Ford’s German plants support the plan in principle and are attempting to divide and demoralise the workers in order to block the development of any organized opposition.

The mass lay-offs are a component of Ford’s global onslaught on jobs known as the Fitness Programme, which aims to eliminate 25,000 jobs around the world. Ford intends to save $14 billion with the measures in order to double its profit margin and boost share dividend payouts for investors. Last year alone, the company paid out $2.3 billion in dividends.

In Europe and Russia, where Ford employs around 52,000 workers, the company is seeking to compensate for the impact of Brexit and the diesel emission scandal by substantially reducing its operations. With regard to the transition to electric vehicles, Ford is pushing ahead with plans to cooperate with VW, while it cuts jobs to save costs where possible.

Ford’s French Blanquefort plant near Bordeaux is scheduled to close in August with the loss of 850 jobs, and 1,600 jobs are threatened, including one of three shifts, at the German plant in Saarlouis. In Russia, the Vsevoloshsk and Nabareshnyje Tchelny plants are under threat of being shuttered, with the loss of 3,000 jobs, and production is also being cut back at the Valencia and Dagenham plants in Spain and Britain.

In the March 15 letter, head of Ford’s operations in Germany, Gunnar Hermann, and business manager Rainer Ludwig demanded “at least €500 million in structural cost savings, which is to be achieved through a consolidation of all organisational structures. This includes lay-offs in Germany of more than 5,000 (including short-term contractors).”

In addition to Ford’s Cologne plant, which taken together with the research centre in Aachen employs 18,000 workers, Ford Germany also includes the Saarlouis facility with 6,000 jobs. Management is already calling into question the employment guarantees provided to these facilities, which were supposed to run until 2022. Hermann told public broadcaster Saarländische Rundfunk in December that Brexit has changed everything, stating, “You can’t rely on contracts any more. We can’t do anything about Brexit taking place.”

How are the IG Metall union and works councils now responding to the renewed declarations of war from the company’s board?

A revealing interview providing an answer to this question was published by the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger on January 22 with Martin Hennig, chairman of the joint works council at Ford. “I expect a large number of job cuts,” he said. “When it comes to job cuts, Cologne will certainly be hit the hardest.” Asked if he thought the measures were appropriate, the works council chairman answered that he felt it is “correct in principle to subject everything to review and deal with the issues that are affecting the entire auto sector.”

The works council leader speaks like a top manager. He repeatedly makes clear that he considers himself part of company management, thinking and acting in terms of Ford’s profit margin. In an earlier interview given to the Kölnische Rundschau last summer, he noted (of course in the “we” form), “In Europe, we live on small and medium-sized cars. They run well, and we make good money with them. But nothing is left from the profits. So we have to take a look at costs. This is top management’s most important task ... If we have control over costs, then the European business can contribute to Ford’s profits.”

Hennig responded to the job cuts by seeking to place the blame on suppliers and sub-contractors. He told the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, “The overall total of external contracts in Europe amounts to €11 billion. I get the impression that the European headquarters isn’t even aware of this figure. If they want support from us in the current situation, company management has to deal with this.”

Hennig was merely formulating IG Metall’s official policy, which generally refuses to defend contract workers, sub-contractors, and the workers at parts suppliers, thus driving a wedge between them and Ford employees. Ford has thousands of short-term contract workers in Cologne and Saarlouis whose contracts have either already expired or will do so in June. Although contract workers pay union dues to IG Metall, the union and works council accepts lower pay and poorer working conditions for them, and are supporting them being laid off.

IG Metall also encourages divisions between plants, countries, and continents. Saarlouis works council chairman Markus Thal notes at every opportunity that IG Metall will protect German jobs (with the emphasis on “German,” and not French, Romanian, or American jobs). And in Cologne, Hennig rails against the advantages enjoyed by the “US owner.” He told the Kölner Stadt-Anzeigerthat in the US, Ford “obtains better terms from global suppliers as we do in Europe as a subsidiary,” and can thus achieve “a higher rate of profit ... This is hard to comprehend and unfair.”

This was the same policy used by IG Metall five years ago to play one location off against another as Ford’s plant in Belgium was shuttered virtually simultaneously with VW’s Bochum plant.

The reality is that Ford Motor Company attacks its workforce just as brutally in the United States as it does in Europe or Latin America. In Brazil, Ford is closing an entire plant in Sao Paolo and withdrawing from truck production in Latin America. At the same time, Ford is eliminating 1,000 production jobs at its Flat Rock plant in Michigan. It is being supported in this by the United Auto Workers, IG Metall’s US counterpart.

These examples underscore that Ford workers can only defend their jobs if they organise themselves independently of the unions and take the struggle into their own hands, uniting with their brothers and sisters around the world.

Autoworkers and parts workers in the supplier industry face the threat of a global jobs massacre. In North America, General Motors is currently closing five plants with the loss of 15,000 jobs, while in Germany, Opel, Audi, and VW are also laying off workers. Things are similar for workers in the parts industry, such as for workers at Bosch.

Ford workers must form rank-and-file action committees to organise the defence of jobs and initiate contact with their colleagues at other Ford plants and other sections of the working class. The working class is a powerful social force, with around 800,000 workers in Germany alone employed in the auto industry.

But under capitalism, every progressive development is being turned against them. Even tremendous technological advances—electric vehicles, self-driving cars, and artificial intelligence—do nothing to improve the lives of workers, but are merely used to increase exploitation, intensify surveillance and accelerate rearmament.

A socialist programme is required, which aims at confiscating the vast wealth of the banks and super-rich, placing it under workers’ control, and deploying it for the benefit of humanity as a whole.

French army receives authorization to shoot “yellow vest” protesters

Alex Lantier

Yesterday, the governor of the Paris military district told France Info that soldiers of the Operation Sentinel counter-terror mission had been authorized to fire today on the “yellow vests.” Asked about whether soldiers were capable of carrying out law enforcement duties, General Bruno Le Ray replied: “Our orders are sufficiently clear that we do not need to be worried at all. The soldiers’ rules of engagement will be fixed very rigorously.”

“They will have different means for action faced with all types of threats,” he continued. “That can go as far as opening fire.”

Le Ray added that soldiers will have the same rules of engagement for shooting protesters as those for gunning down terrorism suspects inside France: “They will deliver warnings. This has happened in the past, as in (attacks at) the Louvre or at Orly. They are perfectly able to assess the nature of the threat and to respond proportionally.”

These threats against a protest movement against social inequality that is largely peaceful must be taken as a warning by workers and youth not only in France but internationally. As mass protests and strikes erupting outside the control of the union bureaucracies spread across the world, the military and security agencies of the financial aristocracy are preparing to carry out ruthless repression. Even in countries like France with long bourgeois-democratic traditions, they are rapidly moving towards military-police dictatorship.

Soldiers from Opération Sentinelle on patrol in Strasbourg in 2015

Since the imposition of a state of emergency suspending basic democratic rights after the 2015 Paris attacks, the army’s Operation Sentinel has sent squads of soldiers marching in France’s streets, wearing bulletproof vests and carrying assault rifles. The current crisis vindicates the WSWS’s longstanding warnings. In every country, the ruling class has used the “war on terror” as a pretext to reinforce state repression that is aimed above all at opposition in the working class.

Amid yesterday’s European Union summit in Brussels, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke to downplay the significance of sending the army against the “yellow vests.” The army is “in no way responsible for maintaining order and public order,” he claimed, mocking criticisms of his resort to the army as a “false debate” fueled by “those who play at scaring themselves and others.”

French Defense Minister Florence Parly followed Le Ray onto France Info and also trivialized the decision to send troops to police the protests. Without explicitly contradicting Le Ray’s report on the orders given to Operation Sentinel forces, she said: “The soldiers of the French army never fire on protesters. … All those who play around with fantasies, who speak about opening fire, are only sowing confusion.”

It is impossible to know in advance whether or how many lives will be lost during army operations against the “yellow vests” today. But the soporific and historically inaccurate statements of Macron and Parly are being openly contradicted by certain soldiers, who are violating military discipline to tell the media about their anger and concern at the orders they are receiving.

“We have no business interfering in this ‘yellow vest’ business,” one soldier anonymously told France Info. “We do not have the necessary equipment, we just have truncheons and little pepper spray bottles like what girls have in their purses. After that, the next thing we have is our assault rifles. … So, if we go up against too many protesters, unfortunately we will probably see fatalities.”

Another soldier stressed his anger at receiving orders from Macron to target the French people: “It is absurd, it’s arbitrary. We are not prepared for this. In technical terms, we fight military enemies. And the enemy cannot be the entire population, that is not possible. That is the situation they are trying to put soldiers in today.”

General Vincent Desportes, the former head of the War Academy, made clear his skepticism about claims from within the Macron government that riot police will always manage to get between protesters and the soldiers, to ensure that the latter do not fire on the former.

He said, “Until now the security forces have not shown themselves entirely capable of controlling large crowds of protesters. If violent protesters come into contact with the soldiers, there is a serious risk that blood will be spilt. … The last time soldiers were used for law enforcement was in Algeria, more than 50 years ago. As you well know, at that point blood was spent, a lot of blood was spent.”

The result of the last intervention of the army against workers on what is currently French soil, in the insurrectionary strikes of 1947-8 against the bourgeois Republic established by the Gaullists and Stalinists after World War II and the fall of European fascism, was a massacre. As 350,000 miners went on strike, the army occupied the mines with an authorization to fire on the strikers. The resulting clashes led to six dead, thousands of wounded, and the firing of 3,000 miners, a decision legally recognized as discriminatory in 2011.

In Algeria, the use of the army to torture and kill Algerians rising up against French colonialism, barely more than a decade after these same methods were used in France itself by the Nazis and the Nazi-collaborationist Vichy regime, left over 300,000 dead in the 1954-1962 war.

These historical events are a warning as to the implications of mobilizing the army against the working class. They vindicate the strategy proposed by the Parti de l’égalité socialiste (PES) amid the “yellow vest” movement. Amid widespread hostility of workers internationally against the union bureaucracies and established political parties, the PES called for building independent committees of action and stressed the necessity of transferring state power in France and across Europe to such organizations of the working class.

This also requires building the PES as the political alternative to the petty bourgeois political parties, rejected by a broad majority of “yellow vests.” These parties try to tie the workers to Macron by proposing to negotiate a democratization of society with him and the trade unions.

Many of these parties—including the French Communist Party, the New Anticapitalist Party, the Greens, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France, and the Independent Democratic Workers Party—came together yesterday to issue a pathetic “united” appeal to Macron.

Criticizing “the government’s authoritarian excesses,” they begged Macron to cease ignoring them and negotiate more with them to try to calm the situation: “The sidelining of the social, ecological and trade union movements, contempt for those who speak truth to power, is a way of preventing all dialog, all positive outcomes to the crises of our time. … The calming of tensions we desire also requires the state power to respond concretely to the aspirations for social justice that are widely expressed in our country.”

But there is nothing to negotiate with Macron. By sending the army against the “yellow vests,” he is sending a clear signal that the financial aristocracy and the state authorities have no intention of realizing the social aspirations of the working class. They want to crush these aspirations, and if necessary to drown them in blood.

The current crisis exposes the utter bankruptcy of their strategy of tying the workers to capitalist politicians and the capitalist state. During the 2017 election, all these parties adapted themselves to the official propaganda presenting Macron as a lesser evil than neo-fascist candidate Marine Le Pen. Now that Macron has declared his admiration for fascist dictator Philippe Pétain and sent the army against the “yellow vests,” this propaganda is exposed as an utter fraud.

Faced with Macron’s historic threat against the workers, the turn is to the construction of independent organizations of the working class and of sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International as their revolutionary vanguard.

Twenty years since the US bombing of Yugoslavia

Bill Van Auken

March 24 marks 20 years since the US and NATO launched a one-sided war against Yugoslavia, bombing Serbia and its capital Belgrade for 78 straight days. Factories, schools and hospitals were destroyed, along with bridges, roads and the electrical grid in a bid to bomb the Serbian population into submission to US and Western European imperialism’s domination of the Balkans.

The airstrikes killed around 2,500 people and wounded another 12,500 according to Serbian estimates.

One of the US-NATO airstrikes used laser-guided bombs to take out a railway bridge in southern Serbia, killing at least 10 people on a passenger train. Another slaughtered 21 people in a nursing home. And a deliberate strike on the TV broadcaster RTS in Belgrade took the lives of 16 civilian workers.

In one of the most provocative acts of the war, the US carried out a strike on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three people. Washington claimed that the bombing was an “accident,” but Beijing and the Chinese population rightly saw it as an act of aggression that foreshadowed an escalating US military buildup against China.

“Operation Noble Anvil”, as the bombing campaign was dubbed, was launched without any authorization from the United Nations after Serbia’s President Slobodan Milosevic refused to accept the so-called Rambouillet Agreement, which in reality was a US-NATO ultimatum that demanded Belgrade allow NATO troops to occupy the province of Kosovo and be granted free rein over all of Yugoslavia. Even the veteran imperialist war criminal Henry Kissinger acknowledged that the so-called agreement “was a provocation, an excuse to start bombing.”

The war constituted the final chapter in the imperialist dismemberment of Yugoslavia, a country that had existed since 1918. Having pulled the rug out from under the Yugoslav economy, the major imperialist powers encouraged the growth of ethnic nationalism—spearheaded by ex-Yugoslav Stalinist bureaucrats turned communalist capitalist politicians—warming their hands over the fire as they pushed Serbs, Muslims and Croats to slaughter one another, and using Yugoslavia as a testing ground for military intervention and a new generation of so-called precision-guided munitions.

The essential precursor of the war was the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the hands of the Moscow Stalinist bureaucracy. During the Cold War, Washington and its NATO allies had supported the unity of Yugoslavia as a counterweight to the influence of the USSR in the lands to its south. But after the Stalinist bureaucracy’s drive for capitalist restoration culminated in the breakup of the Soviet Union, the imperialist powers launched a reckless and ultimately catastrophic scramble for the Balkans.

Germany began by recognizing the independence of the Yugoslav republics of Slovenia and Croatia, flexing its new-found muscles as an imperialist power in Europe following its 1990 re-unification. While Washington first opposed the move, it subsequently threw itself into the carve-up by recognizing Bosnia-Herzegovina as an independent “nation” meriting its own state. This set the stage for a bloody conflict between the territory’s three constituent populations –Muslims, Serbs and Croats–and ultimately imperialist intervention.

Underlying the drive to war over Kosovo was the imperialist imperative of bringing Serbia, the strongest power in the region, to heel in order to solidify US-NATO hegemony.

The war was launched by the Democratic administration of President Bill Clinton under the thoroughly discredited and hypocritical banner of “humanitarian intervention” and the claim that the US and its allies were intervening to stop a massacre of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian population at the hands of Serbian security forces.

Washington and its European imperialist allies, backed by a thoroughly pliant capitalist media, cast Serbian leader Milosevic as a new “Hitler” and the Serbian people as a whole as “Nazis,” obscenely comparing the repression in Kosovo to the Holocaust.

Claims that 100,000 ethnic Albanians had been slaughtered that were floated in advance of the US-NATO war were debunked in its aftermath. The real death toll in Kosovo before US and NATO bombs began to fall was revealed after the war to have been closer to 2,000, with the majority of the killings committed by the armed separatist group, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)

The KLA, previously classified by Washington as a terrorist organization, was elevated in the run-up to the war as the sole legitimate representative of Kosovo’s population. Its extensive ties to organized crime throughout Europe as well as to Al Qaeda were swept under the rug as the CIA poured money and arms into the group, which carried out terrorist bombings and ethnic killings against the Serbian population. The KLA, working in close collaboration with its US sponsors, sought to create as much violence and death as possible in order to pave the way to Western intervention.

Twenty years later, the former chief of the KLA, Hashim Thaçi–proclaimed in Washington as “the George Washington of Kosovo”–has headed a succession of governments, even as control of the landlocked mini-state’s economy remains in the hands of European Union officials and its territory is still occupied by 4,000 NATO troops, including 600 US soldiers.

Thaçi has been exposed in numerous investigations as the head of a criminal organization involved in drug trafficking and prostitution as well as in the appalling trafficking in human organs “harvested” from captured Serbs. Washington and the EU have repeatedly intervened to prevent him from being prosecuted for war crimes and other criminal activity.

The “humanitarian” intervention to halt “ethnic cleansing” has resulted in massive ethnic cleansing, including the driving out of two-thirds of the 120,000 Roma and Ashkali living in Kosovo as well as many thousands of ethnic Serbs.

Despite Kosovo being the largest per capita recipient of foreign aid on the planet, the landlocked mini-state remains the poorest territory in Europe, with an official unemployment rate of 30 percent (55 percent for youth) and wages averaging just $410 a month. With all of its wealth and military power, US and German imperialism have managed to create only a failed state and a government controlled by a Mafia.

None of the wounds inflicted upon the former state of Yugoslavia by imperialist intervention have healed. The Balkans remain a powder keg that can be set off at any moment, igniting–as they did in the 20th century—a wider war that can bring in the major powers.

Among the most politically significant features of the 1999 Kosovo war was the unabashed and enthusiastic support lent to the US-NATO bombing of Serbia by former opponents of the American intervention in Vietnam and even self-proclaimed socialists in both Europe and America. This emerging pseudo left, whose social base was among privileged layers of the middle class, would go on to provide crucial political support to imperialism in similar bloody “humanitarian” regime change operations that have devastated both Libya and Syria.

The World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International opposed this reactionary outlook from the start, denouncing the onslaught against Yugoslavia as an imperialist war waged to assert US hegemony over the Balkans as part of a re-division of the territories of Eastern Europe and Central Asia left in a political vacuum following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

In June of 1999, after the relentless bombing of Serbia forced Belgrade to withdraw security forces from Kosovo and open the way to US-NATO occupation, the World Socialist Web Site warned in an statement by David North, the chairperson of the WSWS and the Socialist Equality Party (US) titled “After the Slaughter: Political Lessons of the Balkan War,” “The bombing of Yugoslavia has exposed the real relations that exist between imperialism and small nations.”

The statement continued, “The great indictments of imperialism written in the first years of the twentieth century—those of Hobson, Lenin, Luxemburg and Hilferding—read like contemporary documents. Economically, small nations are at the mercy of the lending agencies and financial institutions of the major imperialist powers. In the realm of politics, any attempt to assert their independent interests brings with it the threat of devastating military retaliation. With increasing frequency, small states are being stripped of their national sovereignty, compelled to accept foreign military occupation, and submit to forms of rule that are, when all is said and done, of an essentially colonialist character.”

It went on to warn that the “cult of precision-guided munitions” promoted on the basis of the United States’ casualty-free Kosovo war, ignored the more basic tendencies of economic development. “Neither this advantage [in the arms industry] nor the products of this industry can guarantee world domination,” it said. “Despite the sophistication of its weaponry, the financial-industrial foundation of the United States’ preeminent role in the affairs of world capitalism is far less substantial than it was 50 years ago.”

Nearly two decades later, this prognosis has proven correct. For more than a quarter century, the US ruling elite has sought to sustain its global dominance through the uninterrupted and reckless use of military power. This has resulted in a string of failures from Afghanistan to Iraq, Libya and Syria–as well as Kosovo—that have served only to exacerbate the crisis of the global system, while exposing the limitations of American military power.

The US-NATO war in Kosovo has been followed by NATO’s relentless expansion eastward, bringing US troops to the very border of Russia. While still playing the “humanitarian” card on occasion, Washington has jettisoned the “war on terror” as the central rationale for global US militarism, adopting a strategy of “great power” conflict, openly preparing for war against nuclear-armed Russia and China, as well as potential challenges from its erstwhile allies in Europe and Asia.

The destructive policies pursued by US imperialism are giving rise to an immense growth of social tensions and class struggle around the world, including in Kosovo, which has seen a wave of strikes against the abysmal conditions facing the working class, as well as in the United States itself. This rising movement of the international working class provides the only viable answer to the growing threat of multiple military conflicts across the globe igniting a new world war. The decisive lesson of the Kosovo war and what has followed is the necessity of building an international, socialist antiwar movement based upon the working class.

Australian property prices fall faster than during global financial crisis

Oscar Grenfell

Australian house prices have continued their precipitous fall, prompting warnings from analysts and financial institutions of a crash of the inflated property market, which could trigger a broader economic slump.

Australian Bureau of Statistics data released this week showed that house prices in Australia’s capital cities fell by a combined 2.4 percent over the 2018 December quarter. This equates to a market contraction of $133.1 billion in just three months. The declines were sharpest in Sydney, where prices fell by 3.7 percent, and Melbourne, where they were down 2.4 percent.

There are growing signs that the slowdown is spreading beyond the east coast capital cities, with price reductions also registered in many other locations.

The latest decline follows price falls in Sydney every quarter since September 2017, and in Melbourne, during the past 12 months. Sydney values have plunged by 16 percent since their peak in 2017, while in Melbourne, the price decline is approaching 10 percent.

Indicating the magnitude of the slowdown, 2018’s national price fall of 5.1 percent is greater than the annual drop of 4.6 percent in 2009, in the immediate wake of the global financial crisis.

Analysts have declared that house prices are falling more quickly than in any previous property market contraction. Recent modelling by BIS Oxford Economics senior manager Angie Zigomanis found that price falls were occurring at roughly twice the speed of an average downturn.

Commentators noted that the current reversal is taking place under conditions of far greater global economic and geopolitical turbulence than during previous property market slumps, including a protracted slowdown in the 1980s.

They have warned that a host of global factors, including US trade war measures against China and other countries, political upheavals in Europe and the slowing of the Chinese economy, could transform the downturn into a full-blown crisis.

Others have insisted that unlike previous property slowdowns, the current declines are intersecting with deep-rooted structural factors, including soaring household debt and the unprecedented exposure of the banks and financial institutions to mortgage debt.

In comments to news.com.au this week, John Adams, a former Liberal-National Coalition advisor, pointed to the parallels between Australia’s property slowdown and the Irish housing market crash that began in 2007, and triggered a full-blown financial crisis.

Adams noted that Australian household debt to gross domestic product (GDP) stood at 120 percent, compared with 100 percent in Ireland in 2007. In that year, Ireland’s household debt to disposable income ratio was roughly 200 percent, while the Australian figure stands at around 188 percent, one of the highest ratios in the world. Some two thirds of net Australian household wealth is invested in real estate, compared with 83 percent in Ireland before its crash.

Adams said that while Australia had “never been the first economic domino to fall during a global economic crisis,” it “may buck this trend and go first.”

Eddie Hobbs, an Irish financial advisor, similarly drew a parallel between the financial speculation that led to the Irish crash and the flood of investment into the Australian property market over the past decade. “Much like Ireland ingesting mispriced capital caused by the aftermath of German reunification, which stoked the Irish bubble, Australia has had a similar steroid after the GFC [global financial crisis] and precisely at the wrong time,” he said.

Martin North of Digital Finance Analytics commented that international experience had indicated that if price falls exceeded 20 percent, it often led to “second order falls as buyers seek to sell,” so that “further falls then become self-perpetuating.”

North stated: “We have already passed this benchmark in some postcodes like Liverpool [a Sydney working class suburb] (with 23 percent falls). Plus, we know many households are finding it hard to manage their finances as flat incomes, rising costs and large mortgages create medium-term pressure on many.”

Already there are indications that the property slowdown is hitting the broader economy. An estimated 40,000 jobs have been destroyed in the construction sector over the past year.

Property developers, who have amassed immense wealth, are increasingly abandoning projects for fear they will not be sufficiently profitable. BCI Australia, a construction group, recently surveyed the fate of property developments planned in 2015. Only half had reached the construction stage in New South Wales and South Australia, while the figure was just 20 percent in Victoria.

The reduction in building activity threatens further mass job losses, amid a broader destruction of permanent positions, enforced by state and federal governments and the trade unions. The construction sector employs an estimated 1.1 million people across the country.

The property slowdown is creating a social crisis for millions of working class mortgage holders. More than one million households, accounting for 30 percent of owner-occupiers, are already afflicted by mortgage stress, meaning they struggle to meet their repayments.

Moody’s Investor Service this week predicted an increase in the number of mortgage delinquencies over the coming months. An estimated 400,000 homeowners owe more on their mortgage than the current value of their homes. In other words, they are unable even to sell off their property and clear their debt.

Moody’s wrote: “Meanwhile, a large number of interest-only mortgages are due to convert to principal and interest loans over the next two years, which will cause some delinquencies over this period.”

The widespread provision of interest-only loans, whereby the borrower pays just interest for a fixed term before beginning to pay the principal, was part of a broader promotion of risky lending practices by the banks, assisted by financial regulators. The major banks are therefore heavily exposed to any housing crisis, with mortgage debt comprising up to 60 percent of their assets.

Having promoted a frenzy of speculative investment, governments and financial regulators confront a dilemma. The Reserve Bank has held the official interest rate at a record low 1.5 percent for 30 consecutive months. It fears that any move to raise interest rates could lead to a sharp contraction in lending, precipitating a major slump. Already, a limited tightening of lending practices by some banks has led to warnings of a broader credit crunch.

That is why the Reserve Bank has recently flagged the possibility of further rate cuts. This would be a desperate attempt to stimulate the economy. The major private banks, however, are under pressure to increase their own lending rates, in line with hikes on international markets, where they borrow their funds.

Whatever measures are carried out, the banks and financial institutions, and the Labor and Liberal-National governments that represent them, will do everything they can to place the burden of the deepening crisis on the backs of workers, young people and the poor.

UK police colluded in blacklisting of workers

Trevor Johnson

The release of a previously secret report exposes how the police collaborated with big companies to blacklist workers.

The report was marked on its front cover “[Police] Commissioner only.” While the released version is heavily redacted, it shows that police agencies including the Special Branch secret service and its infiltration unit, the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), colluded with blacklisting agencies such as the Consulting Association (CA), a secretive body funded by employers, and its predecessor the Economic League (EL).

Blacklisting was only made illegal at the end of the Labour government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2009, and even then only as a civil offence, not a criminal offence.

Big businesses used the CA and the secret police to spy on workers and hired and fired them based on the information collected—often lies and distortions. The blacklisted workers and their families were condemned to a life of poverty and hardship.

One worker was falsely described by the police as having a link to terrorism, ensuring he was refused employment. Showing how the EL worked in 1978, the case was uncovered as a result of a senior police officer who was related to the blacklisted worker and intervened on his behalf.

An active trade unionist, the worker had applied for a job making training videos for a company with links to the construction firms. The company asked the EL for information on him, causing the EL to go to the police “due to the perceived risk of involvement in education.”

“The receiving officer’s initial inquiries revealed a potential link to [redacted] which in his opinion had not been resolved satisfactorily... he returned to EL asking for any further information, stressing the matter’s importance due to the possible link to terrorism. This was recorded as fact by the EL representative.”

The EL reported back to the employer and the worker was turned down.

The Economic League was wound up in 1993, before blacklisting was made illegal. It had accumulated files on around 22,000 people. The CA was founded in the same year by Ian Kerr, described as a “key” figure in the EL by its director.

The CA was raided by the Office of the Information Commissioner in February 2009. Although only 15 percent of CA’s material was confiscated by the IC, it was enough to prove that it was illegally keeping a blacklist on more than 3,000 workers based on their trade union membership, political views and any raising of health and safety concerns.

It got information from the police agencies, including the Special Branch and the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS).

Building workers were the most frequently targeted, but the blacklist also included teachers, dockworkers, firefighters, students and many others.

The CA got its funding from companies, which paid fees of several thousand pounds per year, as well as paying for each file they accessed. The list of more than 40 companies includes all the major construction firms.

The report states, “Police, including Special Branches and the Security Services supplied information to the blacklist funded by the country’s major construction firms...”

The Metropolitan Police Special Branch Industrial Unit spied on trade unionists “from teaching to the docks, attending conferences, and protests personally, and also developing well placed confidential contacts.”

The report makes clear that police are still sharing information about workers with big businesses and other bodies by means of the Industrial Liaison Section of the National Domestic Extremism Unit.

Mark Jenner was an undercover police spy from 1995 to 2000, who entered a five-year relationship with an innocent, law-abiding woman as part of his cover story. He posed as a construction worker and joined UCATT. He also infiltrated the Colin Roach Centre, which was involved in numerous industrial and union disputes, particularly in the construction industry.

The centre was associated with the Building Workers Group (BWG) and hosted some of its meetings. Jenner was also a member of the BWG.

His activities in UCATT, the BWG and the Colin Roach Centre gave Jenner “ample opportunity” to spy on workers involved in disputes. He provided information on more than 300 people, at least 16 of whom appeared in the illegal blacklist.

On March 12, 2015, former SDS police spy-turned-whistleblower Peter Francis made a statement on his own and Jenner’s activities targeting trade unions, saying, “[H]ere in this supposed home of UK democracy, please let me state very clearly that Mark Jenner was 100 percent one of my fellow undercover SDS Police Officers deployed alongside me in the 1990s.

“Jenner, who has now been very publicly exposed, should be forced to appear in person at the public inquiry to account for his spying on, amongst numerous other political protesters, the totally law-abiding construction union UCATT members whose only ‘crimes’ were being union members.

“I would also like take this opportunity to unreservedly apologise to all the union members I personally spied upon and reported back on whilst deployed undercover in the SDS.”

The targets of his spying included “not only [those] engaged in working in the construction industry but also those in the National Union of Students (NUS), National Union of Teachers (NUT), Communication Workers Union (CWU), UNISON and the Fire Brigades Union (FBU).”

After becoming a whistleblower, Francis was threatened with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act.

The EL also worked with trade union officials to supply detailed files on workers—an aspect of its blacklisting work studiously avoided by the capitalist media and the Stalinist Morning Star.

Trade unionist Michael Anderson “discovered that on his file there was a note saying that the union Amicus had recommended he not be employed. Several of those who have received their files have raised concerns that information appears to have come from union officials. Anderson said: ‘I have written and asked Unite the union to conduct an independent inquiry into who “of Amicus” was responsible for supplying information that I was “not recommended” by my own trade union. I have received no reply. I have also asked how other privileged detailed information about which members attended union branch meetings and discussions held at branch fell into the hands of The Consulting Association. I have received no plausible reply.’”

The fact that the employers relied on the tip-offs given to them by trade union officials alongside the reports of police spies confirms the role of the union bureaucracy as an industrial police force on behalf of big business and the capitalist state.

The building industry has the worst record of all for fatalities at work, with 38 deaths in 2017-18. The report on blacklisting sheds some light on the methods by which such dangerous conditions were imposed, but a lot more is yet to come.

The official papers on the prosecution of the Shrewsbury building worker pickets in 1972 and how they were railroaded into prison have yet to be released. One of the pickets, Des Warren, who became a member of the Workers Revolutionary Party, then the British section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, was kept drugged while in prison and suffered permanent damage to his health and an early death.

His son Andy Warren has stated, “My dad argued that he was not a criminal, he was a political prisoner. He spent eight and a half months in solitary confinement. Both him and Ricky Tomlinson went on hunger strikes in protest at the way that the prison authorities treated them. My dad endured three hunger strikes, the longest lasting 22 days…

“When my dad was finally released and came home he was never the same… My dad never worked again. Every employer in the country blacklisted him. After a time his health began to fail due to the treatment that he had endured in prison, particularly the drugs.” 

Des Warren died in 2004 aged just 66.

Fiction and reality: The Italian Five-Star Movement’s citizen income scheme

Marianne Arens

On March 6, the application process for the so-called “reddito di cittadinanza” (citizen income) opened to Italian citizens. This scheme is a vanity project of the co-governing Five-Star Movement as they seek favour ahead of the European elections. It will not, however, change the stark social inequality in the country.

According to the statistical institute Istat, more than five million people are considered to be living in “absolute poverty” in Italy. This means they are unable to meet their basic daily needs for food, housing, clothing, medical care and social inclusion. The number has almost tripled from 1.8 million in 2007 to over five million today. The younger generations and southern Italians are worst affected—one in ten among them in absolute poverty.

This rampant impoverishment is the result of systematic wealth redistribution in recent decades. This fact is reflected in Italy’s changing tax rates. In 1974, there were 32 tax brackets in which inhabitants had to pay a rate, depending on their income, between 10 and 72 percent. Today there are only six brackets. The lowest income earners pay no less than 23 percent, while the highest tax rate does not exceed 43 percent. This tax rate also applies to billionaires like Berlusconi, Ferrero or Giorgio Armani.

Workers’ households are particularly affected by the economic decline. According to the Istat report, absolute poverty in households “where the caregiver is a worker” has risen to a dramatic 11.8 percent.

So it is not surprising that in the first week following March 6, more than 350,000 Italians sent in online or postal applications for the citizen income scheme. In theory, the scheme entitles citizens to 780 euros per month, with a 1,300 euro limit for families. In practice, however, the assistance is subject to numerous terms and conditions.

Originally, Beppe Grillo had promised every Italian an “unconditional basic income” as a fixed monthly sum. Yet now, the Italian government has reduced the “reddito di cittadinanza” to a weak imitation of Germany’s Hartz IV labour reforms, with additional high hurdles.

In order to be eligible, citizens must prove that they have less than 9,360 euros available and no more than 6,000 euros in a savings account (the numbers are slightly higher for families). The number of recipients may be reduced after March 28, as only then will the final wording of the law be decided. By the end of March, Parliament has to pass the previous decree into law, and until then new restrictions are always possible.

It was recently revealed that recipients of the citizen’s money scheme must be prepared to commute up to 100 kilometers for the first available job. For the second, they have to travel up to 250 kilometers, and, if after two rejections, they get a third offer, they must accept it, no matter where in Italy it is.

The right to the citizen income scheme expires after 18 months. Recipients will be given a yellow plastic card, with which they can only buy from grocery stores, supermarkets or pharmacies. This is officially justified as an insurance measure to prevent gambling and squandering. There is a cap of 100 euros on every transaction.

Punishment for violations range to up to several years in prison. The new citizens’ income thus equals a hastily introduced state employment scheme. Lately, public debate has raged around how applications are scrutinized and the ways in which recipients are tightly controlled to prevent misuse.

To this end, the government wants to recruit 3,000 students and unemployed academics to become so-called “navigators” for the state’s employment offices. These “navigators” are themselves precarious auxiliaries. As one state secretary described the positions: “You gain work experience and then you are available for the competition.” This temporary workforce is supposed to check applications as quickly as possible so that the first payouts can be made by the end of April.

The Five-Star Movement is desperately hoping to counter its rapidly declining poll numbers with this citizen income scheme. Yet, as the realities of its implementation materialise, the artificial euphoria is turning into disappointment and anger. Workers’ voices against the project are becoming ever clearer.

The online journal francetvinfo quotes unemployed Marco (34) from Rome saying: “The state gives us a bare minimum, but we had hoped to find work.”

On the internet, one M5S member disappointedly wrote: “The citizen income scheme is a flop (...) Thanks to the selection criteria, those in need of help will not only be humiliated by poverty, they will now be treated as potential fraudsters as well. You are told how, where and for what you can spend the money on (...) This income scheme treats you like a criminal.”

”Last year, I chose the five stars because I wanted something to change,” said a disappointed worker from the former Sardinian mining area of Sulcis to the daily La Stampa .

On the issue of the citizen income scheme, all of the opposition parties are against the Five-Star Movement. Yet, all these parties are arguing from the right, from the point of view of the Italian economy. From the PD (Democratic Party) and the trade unions to Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, they criticize the “reddito di cittadinanza” because it is harmful and impossible given empty state coffers and high public debt.

An example of this is the trade union representative Alfred Ebner (CGIL South Tyrol), who sees a “limit” in the scheme, since “only limited financial resources are available. When such resources have been exhausted, the scheme is either over or it will be scaled back.”

Even the Lega, the Five-Star Movement’s coalition partner, refuses to back it on the citizen income scheme. A few days ago, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini (Lega) asserted that the richer regions in the north—South Tyrol and the two Lega strongholds of Veneto and Lombardy—would have a substantial say in the implementation of the scheme.

As the European elections near, the rifts in the coalition government widen. There are now new conflicts between the Lega and the M5S every other day. Yet this gives the Lega an advantage, as it continues to attract Berlusconi and neo-fascist voters with its right-wing and xenophobic program.

According to polls, the Lega may almost double its 2018 parliamentary election results, from 17.4 percent to 33.2 percent. The party is contemplating a swap of coalition partners after the European elections to bring an even more right-wing government into office.

The Five-Star Movement, which reached 32.7 percent in parliamentary elections a year ago, has now fallen to 22 percent in polls. Beppe Grillo’s party, with its shrill protest and promise of a citizen income scheme, was able to venture into the vacuum left by the Democrats and Rifondazione. They became the strongest single party by using anger and frustration against the existing political parties and the EU for their own purposes. But once in government, Five-Star turned out to be just a placeholder for the ultra-right Lega.

Putin signs Russian internet censorship bills into law

Clara Weiss

On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law two bills that dramatically escalate the government’s censorship of the internet and crackdown on free speech. The first bill provides for the removal of and ban on sites and blogs that allegedly spread “fake news”, and the fining of their authors. The second outlaws the alleged disparaging of state symbols and the government, and the inciting of society to “hooliganism”.

Individuals accused of spreading “unreliable information” on “socially significant” issues that could cause harm to individuals or social disorder, can be fined 30,000-100,000 rubles (US$ 466-1,553) for their first violation of the law – an amount that surpasses what a sizable portion of the population make in a month – and up to 400,000 rubles (US$ 6,211) for repeated offenses. Legal entities can be charged up to 1,5 million rubles (US$ 23,292).

What constitutes “unreliable information” is nowhere defined and will be decided by the General Prosecutor’s office, which will be overseeing the implementation of the law, as well as the state agency Roskomnadzor (Russian Communication Oversight), the main agency responsible for the surveillance and censorship of the internet in Russia.

The two laws are part of an international campaign by the ruling class to crack down on the internet, which has become the main platform for the dissemination and discussion of news and opinions that run counter to the official bourgeois mainstream media, as well as for the organization of demonstrations and strikes.

The bill had been approved in a first and second reading by the Russian parliament earlier this year, amid a strike of some 12,000 truckers in southern Russia. The signing of the bills by Putin occurred on the same day as medical personnel at several hospitals in Novosibirsk launched a work-to-rule action to protest against their miserable salaries (about 20,000 rubles monthly or US$ 314 with overtime) and the ongoing cuts in the health care sector.

If the US political establishment and corporate media have based their campaign of internet censorship ideologically on the fight against alleged “fake news” with reference to the “Russian meddling” in the election, the Russian government and state media have justified Moscow’s own clamping down on free speech on the internet by citing the international campaign against “fake news” as well as the Ukraine conflict and the overt propaganda by the Western bourgeois media.

Amid escalating tensions with the US and European imperialist powers, and rising levels of social inequality, the Russian government in recent years has worked to set up what is now a comprehensive framework for the surveillance of the internet and individual users. It has banned the use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) that hide users’ actual internet IP, allowing them to surf on the internet without being automatically identifiable; public WiFis require personal identification for usage and the government has also obliged corporations running social media platforms to store their information about users on Russian servers and make them available upon request to the secret service. Meanwhile, a 2018 attempt to ban the popular messaging app Telegram, which enables encrypted communication, has largely failed.

In addition to these two new censorship laws, the Russian government is also actively preparing to create a Russian internet that would be separate from the World Wide Web. In February, the Russian parliament approved the first reading of a such a bill. The Kremlin has presented the law as a response to the US national cybersecurity strategy that was passed in 2018, and Putin has defended the law as necessary to guarantee the “security” of Russian citizens.

While there is no question that the open war preparations by the United States and NATO against Russia are a major motivation for the efforts to create a separate Russian internet, at least as important a factor is the fear of the Russian oligarchy that the internet can be used by Russian workers and youth to access information about and link up their struggles with the growing struggles of the working class all over the world. Russia is the most unequal large economy in the world, with the top 1 percent owning as much as one-third of the country’s net wealth and the bottom 50 percent of the population owning less than 5 percent.

The yellow vest protests in France, as well as the strikes by Iranian workers and, most recently, the mass protests and strikes in Algeria have been closely followed in Russia, where over 90 percent of the population has expressed opposition to the raising of the retirement age by five years, which was rammed through in the summer and fall of last year.

The US media coverage of the new censorship laws in Russia, feigning outrage over the Kremlin’s crackdown, has been entirely hypocritical. Thus, the editorial board of the Washington Post denounced as an “authoritarian assault” on the “potential value of the Internet, and its very freedom”.

The same Washington Post has been fully complicit in the internet censorship campaign in the US. It has been one of most vociferous proponents of a campaign against “fake news”, and, in November 2016, it published a “black list” of anti-war and left-wing web sites, many of which, including the World Socialist Web Site, were subsequently demoted by Google in search results, and purged by Facebook.

Unsealed documents shed light on state conspiracy against Chelsea Manning

Kevin Reed

On Wednesday, the U.S. Eastern District Court of Virginia unsealed several filings concerning Chelsea Manning’s legal challenge to the subpoena attempting to force her to testify before a grand jury involved in fabricating charges against WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.

Among the unsealed documents is Manning’s legal motion of March 1 to have the subpoena thrown out on the grounds that it violates her First and Fifth Amendment rights, that it is an abuse of the grand jury process and that it is the product of illegal electronic surveillance by the government.

The documents include the government’s response to Manning’s motion and other filings related to unsealing the documents as well as a transcript of a March 5 hearing before US District Judge Claude Hilton on these matters.

Chelsea Manning

Chelsea Manning—who has taken a brave and principled stand against the attempt to frame up Assange—was jailed on March 8 on civil contempt charges for refusing to testify before the secret grand jury. Judge Hilton cruelly sentenced her to jail indefinitely knowing full-well that she had already served seven years in prison—including long stretches in solitary confinement—even though she is recognized throughout the world as a courageous whistleblower and defender of the truth.

The unsealed documents shine a light on the desperate measures to which the US government has resorted in pursuing a legal pretext to prosecute Julian Assange. It also exposes the fact that Chelsea Manning has been the target of an endless campaign of intimidation and conspiracy in violation of her democratic rights.

In Manning’s legal filing of March 1, “Omnibus Motion to Quash Grand Jury Subpoena,” it is explained, for example, that a primary objective of the grand jury questioning is to prove that she made “false or mistaken” statements during her 2013 court-martial trial.

The document states, “Given the prosecutor’s unwillingness to disclose information to Ms. Manning that would help her evaluate the risks of testifying, she must assume that the grand jury is a ‘perjury trap’ or even worse, a subterfuge for another military prosecution.” Such an entrapment, the motion argues, would violate her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

The document also elaborates further on the First Amendment basis for Manning’s refusal to answer questions before the grand jury. Manning’s lawyers write, “First, there is a likelihood that this grand jury to be used expressly to disrupt the integrity of the journalistic process by exposing journalists to a kind of accessorial liability for leaks attributable to independently-acting journalistic sources. This administration has been quite publicly hostile to the press, and there is reason to believe that this grand jury may function to interfere profoundly with the operation of a free press.”

In other words, the Trump administration intends to make examples of both Manning and Assange and threaten any future journalists who report the truth about the crimes of American imperialism and its criminal military and intelligence operations around the world.

Manning’s motion also exposes the fact that federal prosecutors are using the grand jury mechanism in a wholly unconstitutional manner. They write, “Furthermore, it is possible that this subpoena represents an effort on the part of the FBI or another investigative agency in collaboration with government prosecutors to compel by grand jury process testimony that would otherwise be inaccessible.”

In violation of her legal rights, the FBI attempted unsuccessfully to question Chelsea Manning in 2010 while she was at the Quantico military brig in Virginia. Federal authorities are now attempting to use their power to compel testimony that was otherwise off limits to them.

Finally, and most significantly, Manning’s motion to quash the grand jury subpoena exposes the fact that she has been subjected to massive unlawful electronic surveillance in violation of her First Amendment rights.

The legal team writes, “There can be little doubt that local police, federal agencies, and possibly the military have been involved in surveilling and communicating about Ms. Manning, people with whom she is lawfully associated, and the entirely lawful activities in which they engage. Likewise, there is reason to believe that non-state actors may have enabled the state to circumvent legal constraints on electronic surveillance, by surveilling Ms. Manning, and then conveying their intelligence to state actors.”

Furthermore, the document explains, “… Ms. Manning has encountered at least one individual who appeared to tape her while attempting to goad her into conversations about unlawful uses of technology, she reasonably fears that this or something similar is happening to her.”

Considerable public criticism emerged after Manning was sent to jail, which no doubt contributed to the decision of the US government attorneys to also support Manning’s motion to unseal the documents. The World Socialist Web Site and International Youth and Students for Social Equality have called a series of rallies and meetings to demand Manning’s immediate release from jail.

Media reports on the unsealed documents have focused exclusively on the federal prosecutor’s assertion that Manning gave “false or mistaken” statements in her 2010 court martial trial. That this fact was exposed by Manning’s legal team as the means through which the prosecutors wish to entrap her is buried in coverage.

Given the well-documented record of US government spying and surveillance of political opponents over many decades, combined with Manning’s own declarations, the record of harassment and intimidation and attacks on her democratic rights must be understood as a threat to the entire working class.

The information contained in these unsealed documents confirms that the imprisonment of Chelsea Manning is part and parcel of a US government conspiracy to punish her, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for telling the world the truth about the crimes of US imperialism.

European Union leaders grant May extra time to pass Brexit deal in UK parliament

Robert Stevens

The European Union’s (EU) 27 member states have agreed a plan allowing a delay of Brexit to May 22. But this is only on condition that UK MPs approve the deal the EU agreed with Prime Minister Theresa May by the previous official exit date of March 29.

May and the EU leaders hope that the threat of a “hard-Brexit” as the only alternative will swing enough MPs behind the proposed “Strasbourg Agreement” between May and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. If not, the UK will have only until April 12.

Any further extension would involve UK participation in elections to the European parliament—a further incentive to the Conservative Party’s hard-Brexit faction and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to come on board.

This only gives two additional weeks towards a new “cliff edge.” After that the EU has made clear that essentially only an abandonment of Brexit will prevent the UK crashing out without a deal. There will be no further renegotiation.

May came to the two-day summit just eight days before Britain was due to exit the European trade block under the terms of Article 50—following the June 2016 referendum vote to leave the EU. She arrived after making a televised statement to the nation the previous evening in which she posed as the people’s champion against a recalcitrant Parliament.

“You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with. I agree. I am on your side. It is now time for MPs to decide,” May said.

May’s request was for an extension to June 30. The proposal agreed fixes May 22 as the new Brexit date because that is when EU elections begin. May has so far ruled out any scenario which would mean UK participation in the elections.

All reports and public statements portrayed French President Emmanuel Macron as taking the hardest line—most notably against Germany. But this was likely a prearranged case of good cop/bad cop. Macron in fact spoke for the entire EU when he warned, “In the case of a negative vote [in the UK parliament], we will go towards no deal—we all know it.”

He stressed that the stability and homogeneity of the EU was at stake. “We must respect the will of the British people, but also the European project. European leaders understand and respect the will of the British people, but we defend the interests of our own people… We are ready for Brexit. France didn’t choose this, the British people did… The European project must continue and must be stronger.”

Europe’s ruling circles must do whatever they can to limit the massive social, political and economic damage threatened by Brexit. François Heisbourg, special adviser of the French Fondation de la Recherche Stratégique think tank, said that in France and within the EU it was viewed that “Britain, having dragged itself deep into the cesspool, will now drag us into the cesspool as well.”

Tensions over Brexit in UK ruling circles have resulted in a full-blown constitutional crisis.

Last week, Parliament’s Speaker, John Bercow, a supporter of remaining in the EU, dredged up an archaic clause dating back to 1604 to prevent May putting her deal to a third vote if it was “substantially the same” as those previously rejected.

It has been suggested that May’s deal will now be put to Parliament again on Tuesday, March 26, in a “meaningful vote”—with the government arguing that Bercow’s ruling is invalidated by the change of date agreed. But given the continued difficulties May has in getting the DUP and her hard-Brexiteers on board, this is by no means certain—especially as there are reports of MPs wanting her to step down. May can now hold a vote in Parliament any time before April 12.

As the summit began, MPs on both sides of the house denounced May’s national address. In language evoking an impending civil war, Remain supporting Labour MP Wes Streeting described May’s Downing Street address as “incendiary and irresponsible. If any harm comes to any of us [MPs], she will have to accept her share of responsibility.”

Labourite Lisa Nandy stated, “Pitting Parliament against the people in the current environment is dangerous and reckless.” With MPs speaking of death threats being made against them, Bercow felt obliged to intervene again, saying to MPs, “None of you is a traitor.”

A pro-Remain online petition calling on the government to revoke Article 50 reached over two million signatures last night, at one point crashing the government’s petition website. This is aimed at galvanising support for Saturday’s “People Vote” march in London for a second EU referendum that is expected to be attended by hundreds of thousands of people. But in Parliament at this point there doesn’t appear to be a possible majority for a second referendum.

With no solution to the deadlock over Brexit in place, the government announced that extraordinary powers are to be enacted next Monday through its “Operation Yellowhammer” “command and control” contingency plans for a no-deal outcome. The government’s Cobra committee, which is only convened under conditions of national emergency, is now empowered to deal with all no-deal preparations, including having 3,500 troops on standby.

With dire implications for the working class and democratic rights, the operation allows sweeping powers embodied in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, introduced by the Labour government of Tony Blair, to be rolled out. In January, the Times revealed that scenarios for martial law were being considered and that “curfews, bans on travel, confiscation of property [and] deployment of the armed forces to quell rioting are among the measures available to ministers”.

On Thursday evening, Sky journalist Deborah Haynes, tweeted, “UK military has activated team in a nuclear bunker under the @DefenceHQ [Ministry of Defence] main building to step up preparations for a no-deal Brexit… The crisis management operation—dubbed Operation #REDFOLD… will direct 3,500 personnel who have been put on standby to help government if required if UK leaves EU next Friday without a withdrawal agreement. The REDFOLD mission is military dimension of cross-Whitehall no-deal contingency preparations, called Operation Yellowhammer.”

Under conditions of the greatest crisis of rule in Britain in peacetime, the working class has been reduced to the role of spectator. That a hated government still remains in place despite being in political meltdown is entirely the responsibility of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Nothing he says or does is aimed at alerting workers to the gravity of the political threat they face, under conditions in which senior military figures have warned that central to the armed forces’ remit under Operation Yellowhammer is breaking strikes, particularly in the transport sector.

Corbyn has made no appeal to the working class to intervene independently in this mounting crisis. That would involve rejecting support for any faction of Britain’s ruling elite, whose conflict is over how best to pursue trade war policies—inside or out of the EU—at the expense of the working class. It would mean making an appeal for a unified offensive of the European working class against all of Europe’s capitalist governments and for socialism.

Instead his sole aim is to convince the ruling class that he is a safe pair of hands in defending the “national interest.”

Corbyn walked out of cross-party talks with May on Wednesday evening—due to the presence of Chuka Umunna, the leader of the Blairite breakaway Independent Group. But he then took a private phone call with the prime minister!

His next stop was Brussels, for what he described as “very constructive discussions” with EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and European Commission secretary general Martin Selmayr. These focused on “Our determination… to prevent a no-deal exit from the European Union next Friday… and looking for alternatives and building a majority in Parliament that can agree on a future constructive economic relationship with the European Union.”