“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of the world, unite!” – The Communist Manifesto
2024 will be a year of advancing class struggle. After a year of continuous scandals and upsets among the ruling class, and timidity and cowardice among the reformists, a powerful revolutionary tide is preparing to come in.
As the Tory party continues to self-destruct and anger about the cost-of-living crisis builds, public support for striking workers has only grown. Many bourgeois commentators are attributing this to the ‘Mick Lynch effect’: the RMT leader has gone from an obscure trade union official to a household name in the matter of months.
The RMT has begun a major industrial ballot, involving over 40,000 rail workers across Network Rail (NR) and 15 train operating companies (TOCs). This follows on from the successful ballot of 13,000 workers at Transport for London.
If successful, this will result in “potentially the biggest rail strike in modern history”, according to the RMT.
Ghislaine Maxwell — partner-in-crime of the billionaire playboy and convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein — has been sentenced for up to 65 years, for charges relating to the grooming and trafficking of minors. It is likely she will spend the rest of her life behind bars.
In 2022 the UK once again finds itself staring down COVID calamity. The omicron variant has spread completely out of control, infecting millions of people and disrupting the winter holidays for millions more. The Tories and their hangers-on are still responsible for this mess, but the world is particularly vulnerable due to one underlying health condition: capitalism.
With Boris Johnson and his government of imbeciles going from bad to worse, many must be praying for the return of Guy Fawkes to finish where he left off.
Ever since their election victory almost two years ago, Boris Johnson and the Tories have tried to convince voters that ‘austerity is over’. And many commentators, including some on the left, have bought into this idea.
The 1999 Macpherson report established that there was ‘institutional racism’ within the police force. Over two decades later, according to this recent Home Affairs Committee report, there has been little progress on this front. In fact, things have gone backwards.
Stop and search
The findings of this latest report on policing are a damning indictment on the entire institution. In many ways, the Committee concludes, racist policing is worse now than at the time of the Macpherson inquiry.
Stop and search practices, for example, also known as ‘sus laws’, have continued to be deployed in a racist manner, disproportionately targeting black people.
Stop and search laws were originally introduced in 1824 with the Vagrancy Act. The Act gave the police powers to stop, search, and even arrest anyone they suspected of committing a crime. The law was repealed in 1981, after a summer of riots in protest at racist policing. It was replaced with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) in 1984.
What’s clear from this latest parliamentary report, however, is that the function and essence of the law has remained the same. Not only that, but the disproportionate use of these laws has increased.
The estate had been the location of another riot 25 years earlier, in 1985. This riot was caused after Cynthia Jarrett died of heart failure when four policemen burst into her home during a raid. They entered her house for a search after falsely arresting her son on suspicion of theft. He was subsequently acquitted of all charges.
Just a few years before that, more riots had taken place throughout the UK. In 1981, police brutality surrounding the death of Michael Bailey led to an uprising in Brixton, known as ‘the Brixton riots’.
A mere four years later, police shot Cherry Groce in front of her 11 year old son, in their home in Brixton. The shooting left Groce paralysed. But confusion led people to believe she had died – culminating in another riot.
These weren’t isolated phenomena, but spread far beyond Brixton. In July 1981 in Toxteth, Liverpool, just a few months after the events in Brixton, black youth protested alongside others from the local community against the city’s police.
In Handsworth, Birmingham, in July 1981, it was the same again. The Birmingham riots took place in the context of the police dismissing the threat of a National Front march that was planned to take place.
And again in Chapeltown, Leeds, also in July 1981. These events taught black workers and youth lessons on the role of the police that would not be easily forgotten.
Harassment and humiliation
From 1981, to 1985, to 2011, to today: the violent and repressive role that the police have played in these communities has remained the same.
Police brutality is the most extreme form of harassment and repression that members of these communities face. But it is the day-to-day experience of practices such as stop and search that pushes these communities to the edge.
It has been 40 years since the Brixton riots, and 22 years since the Macpherson report declared the police to be ‘institutionally racist’ – but nothing has changed.
Stop and search, for decades, has humiliated and targeted young black men. Now this parliamentary report shows that all the recommendations of the Macpherson inquiry have failed.
In fact, not only have they failed, but the report shows that since Macpherson, disproportionate use of stop and search has gotten worse.
1/ The Macpherson report on the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence had a big impact on policing & tackling racism when published. But 22yrs on @CommonsHomeAffs found progress has stalled &there are still deep-rooted racial disparities. Urgent action needed https://t.co/6Zb8NlBFMC
Macpherson stated that, in 1997-98, “overall black people were five times more likely to be stopped than whites”.
The new report, meanwhile, finds that: “Over the year 2020 ‘black people were nine times (8.9) more likely than white people to be stopped and searched, under all powers, while the wider category of BAME people were over four times (4.1) more likely to be subject to the powers.’”
20 years of ‘unconscious bias’ training and targeted recruitment of black officers – yet none of this has made a difference. It demonstrates, irrefutably, that racism in the police is systemic, and cannot be reformed away or undone by inspecting the minds of individual officers.
Abolish the system
A racist police force does not drop from the sky, however, ready made with prejudice.
The police are a key pillar of the capitalist state, which exists to act as the guardians of the rich and their private property. And this wealth and property is based on the exploitation of a working class that is actively divided by the ruling class using racism and bigotry.
The racism, repression, and violence of the police is therefore a reflection of the racism, repression, and violence of the capitalist system that they serve to protect and defend – a system that inflicts poverty and hardship on the entire working class, and the black working class especially.
The result is that the most oppressed layers of the working class experience the full force of the state.
As long as the gulf between the rich and poor remains, so will the police and all their racism and violence. What is the source of gang-related crime, drug dealing, and theft if not poverty? And what is the source of that?
The blame for poverty, unemployment, and all these social crises lies firmly and squarely with the capitalist system and its representatives.
Only once this system is overthrown can the police be abolished, along with the racism, oppression, and violence that black and working-class communities suffer from under capitalism.
In the course of scarcely a month, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has begun imploding in spectacular fashion. Arlene Foster – the DUP leader and First Minister at Stormont who survived the RHI scandal, the collapse of Stormont in 2017, and the introduction of Northern Ireland Protocol earlier this year – has finally and unceremoniously been booted out. The straw that broke the camel’s back? Her opposition to gay conversion therapy.
After a stormy inauguration that saw bitter exchanges, walk-outs and resignations aplenty, her replacement, the Young Earth creationist Edwin Poots, has now also been ejected. At just three weeks in the job, his tenure as DUP leader has been the shortest yet. Had you blinked, you would have missed it. But, as one person commented, he can at least brag that he was DUP leader for three times longer than it took God to create the Earth.
Now the so-called ‘moderate’ Jeffrey Donaldson has been crowned leader. This will prove a poisoned chalice as the crisis is far from abating. Things will only get worse for the beleaguered party. The DUP’s crisis could prove to be an existential one, reflecting the deep malaise of unionism that has dragged out for decades, but which has now reached a turning point.
The knives are out
The knives have been out for Foster for some time. Anger has been simmering among the DUP’s hardliners, who believe Foster threw away unprecedented influence at Westminster and landed them with the Northern Ireland Protocol – which they see as an ‘economic united Ireland’ and a stepping stone to Irish unification.
After months of brewing discontent in the DUP, Foster is out. The media have wasted no time painting her as a ‘reforming moderate’.
Her replacement, Poots, fully encapsulates the party’s poisonous reactionary ‘tradition’ of misogyny, homophobia, racism, and sectarianism. A fundamentalist; a proponent of gay conversion therapy; last year he (baselessly) claimed that COVID-19 was more prevalent in Catholic communities than in Protestant ones, a transparent attempt to make the pandemic a sectarian question.
Since the start of the year, he has been among the more vocal Unionists calling for any and all means to be used to bring down the NI Protocol prior to the outbreak of a series of violent sectarian riots in April.
Faced with Poots, the media has been very efficient in airbrushing the records of Foster and her allies. They are being repainted as supposed ‘reforming moderates’. Make no mistake, there is no difference of principles between the DUP’s ‘moderates’ and ‘hardliners’.
Et tu Brute?
The coup against Foster immediately brought all the simmering tensions inside the DUP to the point of civil war. Foster’s local DUP association publicly exclaimed its “disgust” at her treatment. Her ally, Jeffrey Donaldson, claimed the UDA had threatened not to ‘campaign’ (read: bully) on behalf of those who failed to sign the no-confidence motion in Foster, and physically threatened those not backing Poots’ nomination as her replacement. In a public repudiation of Poots’ leadership, senior figures including Foster, Donaldson, the MLA Diane Dodds and the MP Gregory Campbell sensationally walked out of the meeting to ratify his leadership.
On the back of this very public descent into civil war, Arlene Foster, some councillors, and former MPs resigned from the party. In the war of words that followed, Ian Paisley Jr. (son of DUP founder, Rev. Ian Paisley) accused former party leader and Foster ally, Peter Robinson, of killing his father by carrying out his own coup against him. Personal and political animosities have now burst into the open. For all the subsequent diplomatic talk about “healing the rift” in the party, the DUP is now mortally divided.
No sooner had the creationist and all-round reactionary Edwin Poots ousted Foster than he himself was ousted.
But before Poots could even get comfortable he also found himself being defenestrated. The problem was, having ejected Foster he wanted his man in the post of First Minister. But this meant an agreement with Sinn Féin, who insisted that Poots guarantee that Irish language legislation will be introduced.
Arlene Foster has long played sectarian football with this question, once notoriously stating that to grant nationalists their demand for an Irish Language Act (which would give the Irish language equal status with English) would be akin to “feeding a crocodile”. The nationalist “crocodile” would inevitably come back for more.
In the agreement she signed in January 2020 to restore Stormont, she nevertheless accepted some form of legislation. Yet this has been indefinitely deferred for the last year and a half. As such, Sinn Féin made a guarantee from Poots on this question a condition of accepting his nominee for First Minister. Poots could not stomach such a demand, which was roundly rejected by the DUP hardliners who had elevated him to power.
In stepped the British government to give him an apparent escape route from the situation. They offered to pass the legislation through Westminster. The hardliners weren’t to be fooled by this. Yet, eager for power, Poots hastily proceeded to nominate Paul Givan as his First Minister. The DUP hardliners were in uproar. Three weeks after he took the post, Poots found himself ousted along with his First Minister.
Where next?
The new leadership contest has handed the so-called ‘moderate’ Donaldson the party leadership unopposed. But frankly, he is going to face the same dilemma. Does he accept Irish language legislation? Does he refuse, inviting Sinn Féin to collapse the Stormont Assembly? Or does he collapse the Assembly himself by refusing to nominate a First Minister?
If he opts for the former, he may be in with a chance of surpassing Poots as the shortest-serving DUP leader in history. The latter options would trigger new NI Assembly elections, which would almost certainly see the DUP relegated from the position of first party at Stormont, and perhaps even relegated to third or fourth!
Here we get to the crux of the civil war inside the DUP. The party is hurtling off a cliff. Unionism is split three ways (four if you include the officially unaligned but de facto soft-unionist Alliance party), with the DUP being ripped apart by polarisation to its right (TUV) and centre (Alliance and UUP). Such polling, translated into an election outcome, would give Sinn Féin the First Minister post – a historic outcome.
The third DUP leader in one month, Jeffrey Donaldson, inherits the leadership of Unionism’s biggest party at the time of Unionism’s greatest crisis.
Besides the substantial number of careers at risk, some in the party are looking at the future of Unionism and can see only an abyss. Demographic changes and disillusionment in Protestant communities are undermining the Unionist vote, and fracturing it among many parties. And the Northern Ireland Protocol is pointing – as they see it – towards a United Ireland. Some in the DUP are therefore drawing the conclusion that they have to go back to the days of “no surrender”, refusing to cede an inch to the nationalists, and throwing everything, including the kitchen sink and UDA petrol bombs, at stopping the NI Protocol.
Unable to offer anything to working-class Protestants, the DUP has been forced to heighten its sectarian demagogy over time. As it has done so, its base has become narrower and narrower. For a time it grew at the expense of the old UUP, but the other side of the equation was a tiredness with the sectarian circus at Stormont among a layer of Protestant workers and youth, who increasingly preferred to abstain or perhaps vote for Alliance.
Now this polarisation is tearing apart the DUP itself, with the TUV snatching its support from the right. As its base has narrowed, a virulent right-wing can only imagine a future if they cease any cooperation with Sinn Féin and collapse Stormont, perhaps never to return.
A party steeped in reaction
In many ways, the DUP epitomises the impasse of Unionism. It was formed 50 years ago by the fundamentalist preacher, Rev. Ian Paisley, in the context of growing unrest among Catholics over the denial of their basic civil rights. Paisley came from outside the Unionist establishment, and his antics were completely beyond their control. He and his supporters whipped up Protestant mobs to meet the civil rights movement, pushing the region in the direction of sectarian civil war. Originally (and more appropriately) named the Protestant Unionist Party, the DUP was founded as the political vehicle for Paisley and his followers in his fundamentalist Free Presbytarian Church. Through it, they sought to block any, even perceived concessions to nationalism or ‘popery’.
The sectarian violence they whipped up helped destabilise the region, creating a nightmare for the ruling class. The prominent role Paisley played, and the rise of the DUP at the expense of the traditional party of the Unionist bourgeoisie, the UUP, has epitomised how Protestant sectarianism has grown beyond the control of the ruling class and has developed a life of its own. The DUP rested upon disillusionment among working-class Protestants, feeding off of and further encouraging a sense that their communities are under siege, and that only they (the DUP) will defend Protestants from the IRA, Sinn Féin, and the evils of Irish unification.
The Unionist bourgeoisie and British imperialism, both of whom sought to whip up Protestant sectarianism when it suited them, have been at a loss to control this Frankenstein’s monster of their own creation and to prevent the DUP’s rise.
After suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2002, the growth of the DUP to the biggest Unionist party at Stormont in 2003 potentially spelled trouble for the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), which the party had campaigned against. But the fact was that in signing the GFA, it was Sinn Féin that had made all the concessions: they accepted the Unionist veto, the established police force, the decommissioning of their weapons, yet they gained no guarantees concerning Irish unification.
The economic programme of Sinn Féin was not fundamentally distinct from that of the DUP, and with a Unionist veto in hand, it was possible for the British government to eventually coax Paisley and company into coalition with Sinn Féin. Indeed, so famously did Paisley and McGuinness get on that they came to be regarded as the “chuckle brothers”, much to the chagrin of some in the DUP.
In government, the DUP attracted its share of defectors from the UUP, including Arlene Foster and Jeffrey Donaldson. The only difference between the ‘hardliners’ and the ‘moderate’ newcomers is that the former perhaps believe the sectarian and fundamentalist creed of the party, whereas the latter, no less sectarian, are happy mouthing the words to the same hymns, whilst it’s their careers that ultimately come first. The party concentrates within itself the distilled essence of reactionary Protestant sectarianism.
Working-class Protestants
There is a yawning abyss between the Unionism of the DUP reactionaries – and we might add, of the reactionaries of the TUV and UUP – and the working-class Protestant communities that they purport to represent. Working-class Protestants in the North of Ireland have been led down a blind alley by British imperialism and the political exploiters of their communities.
The historic basis of Unionism in working-class Protestant communities lay in fear of the consequences of becoming a minority in a Catholic Church-dominated united Ireland, and of losing the relative privileges that Protestant workers enjoyed over Catholic workers.
Today much has changed. In the South of Ireland, the domination of the Catholic Church has been subject to blow after blow by the masses. Meanwhile, the relative material advantages enjoyed by Protestant workers have been eroded by deindustrialisation and years of austerity. And yet, Unionism has not and will not automatically be supplanted.
Working-class Protestants have been abandoned to the scrap heap by their bosses. Their co-religionist political ‘representatives’ have climbed onto their backs only to enrich themselves. The British ruling class nurtured the idea of loyalty to the union, whilst showing loyalty only to their own profit margins. Behind the Union Flag, working-class Protestants have been led up a blind alley and abandoned – and they know it.
Healthcare is dilapidated with 335,000 people on waiting lists, and 185,000 on them for more than a year. This out of a population of just 1.8 million! Schools in the North experienced average spending cuts of 11% from 2011 to 2019, the highest cuts in the UK. Whilst as bare averages, the living conditions of Catholics are worse on all indices, nevertheless, both the Catholic-majority Falls Road and the Protestant-majority Shankill in Belfast are listed in the top ten most deprived regions in the North of Ireland.
With living standards sliding, it is no wonder that, deprived of every material comfort, many hold onto the one immaterial thing that cannot be taken from them – indeed the only thing that imperialism and Unionism have left them: the flag, the crown, and annual bonfires and marches that hark back to a mythical past.
These trappings, which are called ‘culture’ by Unionists, are really the paraphernalia left behind by British imperialism and an era of Protestant supremacy. The irony is that British imperialism regards working-class Protestants in the North with complete and utter contempt, and the representatives of British imperialism are in turn regarded with seething bitterness by working-class Protestants.
Conditions in working-class Protestant neighbourhoods are deteriorating, as they are in working-class Catholic neighbourhoods. It is precisely because no party offers anything material that some hold on so tight to the one thing that they believe they have left: the flag and other trappings of British imperialism.
The reason then that so many workers do not let go of these cold, immaterial comforts is that they are offered nothing of substance with which to replace them. The influence of Unionism over Protestant workers will not die of its own accord. It will only do so once a clear way out of the social crisis is offered – a way out that can only come through a revolutionary programme to overthrow capitalism. But to achieve this, a revolutionary party, equipped with a clear class-based programme and comprising the advanced layer of workers in all communities, must be built.
Some on the left are lamentably inclined to write off working-class Protestants as one reactionary mass. This is false to the core, a fact amply attested to by history. Were it true, a Socialist United Ireland would be off the agenda indefinitely. The sentiments among working-class Protestants have nothing in common with and are at direct odds with the Unionism of the DUP and of the other parties. Working-class Protestants, and particularly the youth, have no interest in the status quo and the careers so dear to the ‘moderates’, nor in the Biblical literalism and fundamentalist insanity of the ‘hardliners’.
There exists a burning class anger, as there does among all workers. However, in some of the most depressed working-class Protestant communities, this anger has become distorted beyond all recognition and directed into a force aimed at the very people who have suffered the same neglect and exploitation, and who represent the only real potential allies of working-class Protestants: namely, working-class Catholics.
The perspective in the coming months is potentially a very dangerous one. In the coming weeks, loyalists are likely to throw everything they’ve got at creating chaos across the region in the course of the marching season. By encouraging sectarian violence, they hope to widen the gulf between Protestants and Catholics, corralling working-class Protestants around themselves and the most reactionary elements of political Unionism. By threatening to destabilise the situation they hope to blackmail the Tory government into jettisoning the Northern Ireland Protocol.
This is a dangerous game, which could have extremely reactionary consequences. But as we saw during the riots in April: when unionised bus drivers were subjected to violence by rioters and organised protests in response, they were met with overwhelming sympathy. The methods of the loyalist reactionaries backfired.
The bus drivers showed how reaction could potentially be stymied by the organised labour movement. Imagine what more could be achieved by a labour movement prepared to mobilise every single worker to isolate the loyalist paramilitaries, to politically expose the reactionary politicians, and to fight tooth and nail for class demands, mobilising workers around a common programme. But that would require a revolutionary leadership of the working class to be built in opposition to the ‘meek and mild’ reformists at the head of the labour movement today.
Having struggled through the COVID catastrophe, heroic NHS staff are now working flat-out to treat the millions on waiting lists. At the same time, private health providers are looking to profit from the crisis.
While hospitals struggle to recover from the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic, an ongoing backlog of 4.7 million patients brings a new threat to our ailing healthcare system. Meanwhile, private healthcare corporations rub their hands in glee at the prospect of further profits.
In response to the massive demands of tackling the pandemic, almost the entire capacity of the private health sector was bought up by the NHS. £400 million per month flowed from the public purse to private companies, to allow access to more beds and other resources.
Private sector CEOs bragged of ‘collaboration’, as public and private health care bodies ‘worked together’ to protect patients’ lives. Apparently, the much-maligned privatisation of the NHS was its saving grace during a time of need.
It should come as no surprise that these claims of private-public ‘unity’ are hollow and false. For the private sector bosses, the pandemic was a profit-making bonanza.
Parasites
Some companies saw a 50% growth in their revenue from the NHS thanks to these public-private ‘partnerships’. While claiming to be ‘independent’ healthcare providers, many rely on the NHS for up to 80% of their income.
Instead of the so-called free market, private providers collude to extort vulnerable patients. Last year, private firm Spire Healthcare was fined £1.2 million for price-fixing. While tens of thousands died unnecessarily, these fat cats lined their wallets with public money.
A well-resourced NHS would render these one-sided ‘partnerships’ redundant. The private sector uses buzzwords like ‘collaboration’ and ‘partnership’ to hide the truth: this is a unity of the public purse with the bank accounts of the parasites.
Although many corporations are keen to continue this lucrative set-up for years to come, they stand to make money even if these deals fall through. Long waiting lists encourage patients to go private to ‘skip the queue’.
This is the cold calculus of capitalism in medicine: margins matter more than treating disease.
The Tories have been unashamedly complicit in colluding with the private sector. Health Secretary Matt Hancock used a private ‘VIP’ Whatsapp group to coordinate PPE deals with dubious companies. While under-paid, overworked staff were forced to wear bin-bags due to PPE shortages, one contract fixer was paid £21 million for his ‘services’.
The SNP have been more shamefaced about the privatisation in NHS Scotland. Tens of millions of pounds have been paid to profit-seeking private providers to expand health service capacity, while the SNP claims to have drawn a red line on profiteering in the NHS.
Decimated
Alongside ballooning waiting lists, it has been reported that there are 45,000 ‘missing cancer patients’ across the UK due to a drop in GP referrals and screening services. Cancers will inevitably be detected and treated later than they could have been, harming thousands.
Even when these patients are referred to hospital, many will not be seen on time. While COVID may have exacerbated this problem, data shows that services have struggled with efficiently treating patients for many years.
The health and social care sector has been decimated by over a decade of austerity, affecting resources and staff. The pathetic 1% pay rise offer for nurses is a spit in the face of those who sacrificed their lives to protect us. The 4% coughed up by the Scottish Government is not much better, and has provoked deep indignation among healthcare workers.
Even after our NHS staggers out of this pandemic, the colossal debts piled up during the pandemic will at some point need to be paid. The capitalist class will ensure that it will be workers – through cuts to their wages and their publicly-provided services – who will be made to pick up the bill.
Emergency
It is argued that private hospitals help to ‘take the burden’ off the NHS. But the NHS wouldn’t need such ‘help’ if the healthcare facilities currently in private hands were instead part of the NHS. And, of course, if the NHS was properly funded and resourced.
Let’s be clear: this health emergency is avoidable. Right now, millions are waiting for procedures that would relieve them of pain and anxiety. We should be using all the facilities at society’s disposal to clear this backlog safely and quickly.
Instead, private hospital owners will only help if there is a guarantee of fat profits. They are effectively holding millions of the sick and vulnerable to ransom.
Instead of forking out millions from public funds to convince millionaire shareholders to help us, these companies should be urgently nationalised. In doing so, we could rapidly allocate resources to those in need.
We say:
Nationalise all private sector healthcare assets without compensation!
Pay our health heroes a fair wage!
For a union-led mass recruitment drive of health workers!
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