Overwhelming Public Support for NHS Strike Pickets but Starmer & Streeting Refuse to Support the Nurses

 The Failure of Starmer & Streeting to Give Any Support to the Nurses Proves the Irrelevance of the Labour Party - We Need a New Working Class Socialist Party

NHS Strike Picket Today at Brighton's Sussex County Hospital

As you can see from the video the NHS strikers have overwhelming public support.  But public support doesn’t translate into victory against a government which is committed to transferring wealth from the poor to the rich.

We have had neo-liberal governments for the past 40 years and in that time the rich have grown richer. Since 2020 the richest 1% have, according to a new Oxfam report, grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population. During the past decade, the richest 1% have captured around half of all new wealth. 

The table below shows how, beginning with Ronald Reagan in the United States, wealth flowed from the poor to the rich. In 1967 the richest 20% had 43.6% of wealth. By 2014 this had increased to 51.2%, whereas the share of the poorest 20% declined from 4% to 3.1%. This continued under the Democrats and under Trump, with his tax cuts for the rich and Biden, the trend has continued.

According to Statista and the Sunday Times Rich List the UK’s top 10 richest people are wealthier than ever. The cumulative wealth of the top 10 billionaires in the UK has grown from £47.77 billion in 2009 to £182 billion in 2022 - an increase of 281%.

Following the 2008 crash, UK’s billionaires have seen a steady and steep incline in their wealth. The upward trend continued despite the pandemic, which saw the UK’s economy shrink by 20.4% in the second quarter of 2020. 30.5m people in Europe were pushed into poverty. By way of contrast the UK’s 250 ultra wealthy saw their collective wealth surge to a record high of £653 billion in 2022.

George Dibbs, the head of the Center for Economic Justice at the Institute for Public Policy Research, explained how we are seeing a widening wealth gap

As we enter a once-in-a-generation cost of living crisis, the Sunday Times rich list shows us again that vast wealth often begets more wealth. That has proved particularly true during the pandemic, when the wealthiest accumulated more wealth than poorer people, who saved nothing.

As most people faced a cost of living crisis Rishi Sunak and Akshata Murty joined the UK rich list with a combined £730m fortune. Dominic Raab, now Deputy Prime Minister, said it was “fantastic” news that Sunak had joined the rich list.

“He’s a fantastic example of someone who’s been successful in business, who’s coming to make a big impact in public service. I think we want more of those people. I think it’s fantastic that you’ve got someone of British-Indian origin, showing all people in our country that you can get to the top of politics.

The UK now has a record 177 billionaires, up six on 2021. Their combined wealth is up 9.4% to a record £653bn.

Nurses Picket Outside Brighton's Sussex County Hospital

This is the background to the current strike wave. It also explains the new anti-strike laws and the further attack on public protests with the new Public Order Bill. These bills have nothing to do with preventing ‘disruption’ to the public despite government’s lies. They have everything to do with defending the right of the rich to get richer.

The refusal of Starmer and Streeting, both of whom support further privatisation of the NHS, is contemptible. If they had a shred of honesty they would change the name of the Labour Party to ‘The New Tory Party’ but Honesty and Starmer is an oxymoron.

At the same time we have seen massive corruption arising from giving COVID contracts to friends and cronies of the Tories. Just 10 Conservative MPs and peers referred companies to a “VIP lane” that won £1.6bn of PPE contracts. The “VIP lane” was recently declared unlawful by the High Court but no one has been prosecuted by the Police because their sole focus is on benefit claimants. Government corruption is not their concern.

One Fifth of Covid contracts ‘raised red flags for possible corruption’. We have a corrupt government and a corrupt capitalist system where wealth flows upwards, away from workers to the parasites who preside over this system.

When Sunak and Starmer tell workers that we ‘cannot afford’ 19% pay increases for nurses we should bear in mind that the average pay packet of Chief Executives in the FTSE 100 companies jumped by 39% to £3.4 million. The average UK CEO now collects 109 times that paid to the average British worker, up from 79 times in 2020.

About this Starmer, Reeves and the rest of the traitorous Labour MPs have nothing to say. After all Labour is now ‘business friendly’.

What we need to create is a genuine working class socialist party that defends the poor against the spivs, speculators and parasites who have plundered the economy whilst telling us that we ‘cannot afford’ to pay decent wages and benefits. Neo-liberal capitalism means privatising the public sector and allowing the capitalist pigs to hide their ill gotten gains in tax havens whilst avoiding paying taxes.

Corbyn still does not understand that the ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations were designed to remove him and nothing more

People should sign up to the Socialist Labour Network’s appeal for a new mass working class party. The time is for socialists to get together and organise after the debacle of Corbyn who has proven that he couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag with his appalling interview with Liz Kendall when, despite everything, he still accepted that there was a genuine ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis in the Labour Party.

Nurses Picket Outside Brighton's Sussex County Hospital

It is time for the trade unions to fight back. Individual strikes are not enough. Only a general strike that challenges the privileges of the idle rich and their supporters in parliament will challenge the Tories. It is clear that although welcome, the current strike wave, uncoordinated as it is, is not enough.

Nurses Picket Outside Brighton's Sussex County Hospital

Meanwhile everyone who can should join the strike picket lines and reject the divide and rule tactics of the ruling class. The trade union bureaucrats want a quiet life and would prefer to accept minimal concessions rather than lead a fight back. They need to have their feet held to the fire. We need a strategy of outright defiance of the trade union laws. Anti-strike laws are a negation of the most basic principles of a democratic society. It was Hitler who outlawed strikes and unions on May 2 1933. The anti-strike laws are nothing but a continuation of Hitlerism by other means.

Tony Greenstein

Petition to Remove anti-Protest Police State Measures from the Public Order Bill

Let’s Use Johnson’s Imminent Demise to Get Rid of His Poisonous Legacy

Please Sign Here 

In the coming session of Parliament the Government intends to introduce a new Public Order Bill which will effectively abolish the right to all except ineffective protests and demonstrations.

Interfering with ‘onshore oil and gas exploration and production facilities’ i.e. fracking will now be a specific offence in itself. Because ‘onshore oil and gas exploration’ will now be defined as ‘key national infrastructure’. And oh yes, there is no more important infrastructure than Rupert Murdoch’s printing press. Blocking them will also be an offence. Locking on to a gate or person will also be a new offence.

A whole range of forms of direct action will be criminalised. The right to protest under the European Convention of Human Rights will be abolished. The recent Supreme Court decision in Ziegler will be overturned.  In other words the owners of big business and capital can go about their way, harming however many people they chose to hurt and it will be a criminal offence to get in their way.  It is the dictatorship of capital.

This is the first Parliamentary Petition that I have initiated. It couldn’t be more important that you sign it. If the Bill is passed it will be a milestone on the road to a Police State. You can only sign it if you are a British Citizen. Just as importantly share, share and share again on social media and place it on your site(s).

This Bill represents a major threat to those most basic of rights in any society that calls itself democratic - the Right to Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Assembly and Association. These rights are enshrined in Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights It is little wonder that the Government intends to replace the Human Rights Act 1998 which implements the ECHR.

I confess to having a personal interest in since I am currently on bail for having participated last March 2021 in an action against Israel’s arms factory, Elbit. This Bill targets and seeks to penalise Palestine Action, Extinction Rebellion, Climate Action, Insulate Britain and similar direct action protest groups.

In June 2021 the Supreme Court in DPP v Ziegler upheld previous decisions of the European Court of Human Rights that

‘the protection of articles 10 and 11 ECHR extends to a protest which takes the form of intentional disruption obstructing others. However, the extent of the disruption and whether it is intentional are relevant factors in the assessment of proportionality’.

The Supreme Court upheld the acquittal of protesters at Stratford Magistrates Court who had locked on to an access road at the Arms Fair at the Excel Centre in East London in 2017. This Bill effectively reverses Ziegler as well as conflicting with Articles 10 and 11 of the ECHR.

If this petition gets 100,000 signatures then the Petitions Committee will consider whether it should be debated in Parliament.

As the Government openly admits (below) the provisions of the Bill are aimed at the right to protest with measures that can only be called draconian.

What would the Public Order Bill do?

The Bill would bring in three major changes to the way protests are policed in England and Wales.

·         Expanding protest related offences: the Bill would introduce four new criminal offences related to disruptive protest including “locking-on”; being equipped to “lock-on”; obstructing major transport works; and interfering with key national infrastructure.

·         Extending police stop and search powers: the Bill would provide the police with new powers to stop and search people for items related to specified protest-related offences.

·         Introducing a new preventative court order: the Bill would create Serious Disruption Prevention Orders aimed at people who repeatedly engage in disruptive protest activity. The orders would be issued with conditions to prevent individuals from being in particular places or with particular people or from participating in certain activities

EXPLAINER: The Public Order Bill 2022

The Network for Police Monitoring has produced below an explainer detailing the proposals in the Bill and their implications, especially for direct action groups. Some of these offences like the Serious Disruption Orders can be used against trade unions and strikers. They have massive implications for our democratic rights.

New ‘locking on’ offences

The Bill proposes that if a person locks themselves onto another person, an object or to land and subsequently causes (or could cause) serious disruption to two or more individuals or an organisation, then an offence is committed. For ‘organisation’, read corporate interest. The maximum penalty is six months imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine.

It also proposes another new offence of “going equipped for locking on”. This is defined as having an item “in a place other than a dwelling with the intention that it may be used in the course of or in connection with” an attempt to lock on. This could mean a bicycle D-lock or a tube of superglue. The proposed maximum penalty is an unlimited fine.

New stop and search powers

The Bill also seeks to amend section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) to provide the police with wide-ranging new grounds for using stop and search powers.

These include suspicion that someone is going to commit the offence of obstructing the highway (under section 137 Highways Act 1980), public nuisance (section 78 of the PCSC Act) or all the new offences proposed by the Public Order Bill (see below).

If that was not alarming enough, the Bill would also introduce a new blanket stop and search power that does not require “reasonable grounds”. This is essentially a version of existing section 60 powers (Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994) that are authorised when there is an alleged threat of serious violence or the use of weapons.

If passed, this would put obstructing the highway, public nuisance and the other offences in the Bill on the same footing as an imminent threat of violent disorder.

It also means that if a senior officer believes these protest offences are likely to take place in an area, they can approve far-reaching new stop and search powers for a 24-hour period.

Blanket search powers are already hugely controversial, as they excuse the police from needing to show reasonable suspicion when stopping someone and have largely been used for racist harassment.

Black people are 40 times more likely to be stopped under Section 60 powers than their white counterparts, and less than 2% of searches result in any further police action. In May 2021, the Criminal Justice Alliance made a super-complaint calling for the repeal of Section 60.

These powers are likely to be used by the police to harass anyone they think is on the way to a protest and is part of a movement whose very legitimacy they question. However, they are particularly worrying for marginalised communities that already bear the brunt of racist policing.

Interference with ‘key infrastructure’

The Bill proposes an offence of interfering with “the use or operation of any key national infrastructure in England and Wales” (or intending to). So, what does this include? Although the Bill gives the Home Secretary the power to add to the following list, it says infrastructure includes:

• road transport
• rail
• air transport
• harbour
• downstream (refining) of crude oil
• downstream (processing and purification) of natural gas
• onshore oil and gas exploration and production
• onshore electricity generation, or
• newspaper printing infrastructure.

Had these proposed offences been in place over the last decade, they would have severely restricted sustained and ultimately successful local opposition to fracking sites and other environmentally destructive fossil fuel extraction. The inclusion of newspaper production appears to result from ministers’ anger at Extinction Rebellion’s blockade in September 2020 of sites belonging to the government’s close friends at News Corp.

The maximum penalty is six months imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine in Magistrates’ Court or 12 months imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine on indictment at the Crown Court.

Obstruction of major transport works

For anyone wanting to take action against large-scale and damaging transport projects such as HS2, an airport expansion or a new motorway, there is a proposed new offence of obstructing major transport works, by blocking or interfering with equipment or blockading, for example, construction work.

However, like so much of the Bill, this is vaguely worded and open to very broad interpretation: obstructing construction staff from “taking any steps that are reasonably necessary for the purposes of facilitating, or in connection with, the construction or maintenance of any major transport works” is also an offence and could mean almost any activity.

The maximum penalty is six months imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine.

Serious Disruption Prevention Orders

This is one of the most disturbing elements of the new Bill. These orders can either be made following a protester’s conviction or on application to a Magistrates’ Court from a Chief Constable of a local police force.

Crucially – because you do not need to be convicted of an offence to be issued with one – Serious Disruption Prevention Orders actively encourage the expansion of police intelligence gathering on a range of social and political movements.

This is because they will be used to seek out and target people whom the police perceive as key organisers and to potentially ban them from attending, organising, or promoting protests seen as “disruptive to two or more individuals or to an organisation” for two years or more, even if they have never been convicted of a crime.

Furthermore, the state may decide they become guilty of a crime if they break the rules of the order in any way – or even fail to notify the police that they are staying somewhere else.

As Serious Disruption Prevention Orders are civil orders, the government may allow courts to decide, on the balance of probabilities (the civil standard of proof), that an individual is likely to cause disruption based solely on intelligence from the police.

In March 2021, a review on the policing of protests by the inspectorate body HMICFRS gave a green light for increased surveillance on so-called “aggravated activists”. Serious Disruption Prevention Orders provide a renewed impetus for police to seek out this new classification of campaigner.

Two of the following conditions need to be met for a Serious Disruption Prevention Order:

·         A person has committed a protest-related offence.

·         A person has committed a breach of an injunction leading to a conviction for contempt of court.

·         A person has “carried out activities related to a protest that resulted in, or were likely to result in, serious disruption to two or more individuals, or to an organisation, in England and Wales”.

·         A person has “caused or contributed to the commission by any other person of a protest-related offence or a protest-related breach of an injunction”

·         A person has “caused or contributed to the carrying out by any other person of activities related to a protest that resulted in, or were likely to result in, serious disruption to two or more individuals, or to an organisation, in England and Wales “.

Modelled on the draconian Knife Crime Prevention Orders that systematically criminalise Black youth, conditions of Serious Disruption Prevention Orders can include:

·         Not associating with named people

·         Not going to certain areas

·         Banning people from attending protests

·         Reporting to a police station at certain times

·         Not participating in certain activities

·         Not using the internet to commit a protest-related offence or to “carry out activities related to a protest that result in, or are likely to result in, serious disruption to two or more individuals, or to an organisation, in England and Wales”.

There is also a provision in the bill for electronic monitoring (wearing an ankle tag) of those subject to orders, for up to a year.

The version of the Public Order Bill that has received its first reading in the House of Commons is available here

Please sign the Petition here

The Petition reads:

We want the Government to remove provisions for:

- electronic tagging of people who intend to attend demonstrations

- orders not to use the internet in certain ways

- expanded stop and search powers

- new offences for "locking on" to others, objects or buildings

We believe the measures proposed are another step in the creation of a police state in this country, and represent a fundamental attack on our civil liberties.

Boris Johnson’s Pyrrhic Victory – But the Real Issue is Whether his Attack on the Right to Protest Survives a Change in Prime Minister

It is Doubtful Whether Johnson Will Survive to the End of June but Underlying the Vote Are Political Differences Such as Brexit

There is a word for taking delight in someone else’s misfortunes – Schadenfreude. It is difficult to think of a more detestable character than Boris Johnson. A bona fide racist, homophobe, anti-Semite, Zionist, arch imperialist and warmonger, anti-democratic, contemptuous of the poor, sexist. There aren’t enough adjectives to describe this sociopath.

Johnson's nearly 3-year stint as Prime Minister has been one unmitigated disaster. Brexit has resulted in political paralysis in Northern Ireland and a £20 billion drop in exports to Europe compared to 2018, some 12%.

But it is in the sustained attack on refugees and asylum seekers and democratic rights which marks this government out. The Police & Crime Sentencing Act, the ‘Spy Cops’  or Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill, which allows government bodies to authorise law-breaking by undercover operatives in the UK. The other is the Overseas Operations Bill, which is gives state operatives a license to murder and torture. The new Public Order Bill continues the tradition.

The fact that Starmer’s Labour abstained on the first two demonstrates just how far to the right the Labour Party now is. The proposed Public Order Bill continues in the tradition of giving the Police yet more powers whilst whittling away at the right to protest and demonstrate such as for example locking on.

It even proposes banning people from taking part in demonstrations. The Serious Disruption Prevention Orders can either be made following a protester’s conviction or on application to a Magistrates’ Court from a Chief Constable of a local police force. You do not need to be convicted of an offence to be issued with one. Serious Disruption Prevention Orders encourage the expansion of police intelligence gathering on a range of social and political movements.

Jeremy Hunt, a leadership candidate stuck the knife in earlier today

So there are no regrets at Johnson’s imminent demise. However there is no reason to believe that his successors will be any more enlightened. It is the lack of any serious socialist challenge to the present ruling class consensus which is most worrying.

Underneath the present crisis are the continuing tremors from Brexit and Britain’s role in the world. Johnson was of course happy to throw in British imperialism’s lot with US imperialism whereas his opponents looked to Europe. Except that in the current crisis of a proxy war in Ukraine the European Union has itself subordinated its foreign policy to the United States.

We can however enjoy the scene of the wretched corrupt Johnson twisting in the wind as his opponents move in for the kill. Let us hope that he takes Pritti Patel with him!

Sturmer demonstrates he is unable to rise to the occasion

Keir Starmer of course has demonstrated how useless he is, even for a bourgeois politician. He is not only humourless and boring but he has no political antennae. The obvious reaction to 41% of Tory MPs voting against Johnson was to say he had lost the confidence of his own MPs (just 60 Tory backbenchers supported in addition to the payroll vote) and should resign.

What did Mogadon Man do?  He said that Tory MPs should be condemned for their vote of confidence in Johnson. A complete misreading of the situation as tomorrow’s newspaper headlines will remind him. Even The Telegraph, Johnson’s old paper nicknamed the Torygraph for its loyalty to the Tory Party has called the vote a ‘Hollow Victory’ and said that it ‘’tears the Tory party apart’ and that Johnson’s authority is ‘crushed’ with ‘rebels circling to finish him off’.

The tragedy is that the Labour Party doesn’t have a similarly ruthless way of finishing off the tailor’s dummy who is currently leading it. If by some mischance Starmer were to become Prime Minister then  his popularity and authority would decline at an even faster rate than Johnson’s as they share the same poisonous politics but Starmer lacks Johnson’s synthetic charisma. If Johnson’s aversion to the truth was seen as his major personal handicap we should remember that Starmer is no less the liar.

The 10 Pledges he used to win the Labour leadership election have been junked. Starmer also deliberately hid the fact that he was backed by an assortment of the mega rich including open Zionists and other racists. After all Starmer is a ‘Zionist without qualification’ and he has signed up Johnson’s agenda on NATO and Ukraine.

We should take the opportunity that Johnson’s imminent demise offers to strengthen our own opposition to the raft of Tory legislation in the offing.

Tony Greenstein