Transgender rights are firmly in the crosshairs of US President Donald Trump’s second administration. Among the 26 executive actions signed on Trump’s first day back in office was a sweeping order aimed at eliminating the idea of a “gender identity” separate from sex in the federal government. Among other measures, “gender” will be changed to “sex” on all government forms, and funding for anything pertaining to “gender ideology” will be cut.
Three subsequent executive orders encourage the US military to disqualify “individuals with gender dysphoria”, direct the Department of Health to de-fund “chemical and surgical mutilation of children” and compel athletic and educational institutions to “keep men out of women’s sports”. Trump’s language is deliberately brutish. His aim is to vilify and intimidate an already highly stigmatised community, and to send a message to all those who dare not conform to society’s institutions and expectations: be afraid. 
The initial order claims that so-called gender ideologues have used “socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces”. The not-so-veiled implication is that transgender women pose an insidious and potentially violent threat to the rest of the female population. The order on gender-affirming care singles out “impressionable children” as especially vulnerable to “radical and false ... gender ideology”.
Fearmongering around the safety of women and children is a longstanding tactic of the American political right. Jim Crow-era panics about “race mixing” have morphed into modern narratives that link migrant communities to child-trafficking and violent crime. Trump’s anti-trans crusade fits squarely into this playbook, reinforcing and reinforced by simultaneous racist uproars around border control and law enforcement.
Such frenzies create a sense of escalating crisis and imminent danger. The far right presents these as problems that only harsher policing and authoritarianism can resolve. Other executive orders signed upon Trump’s inauguration include, predictably, “Securing Our Borders”, “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” and “Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety”.
Republicans have also incorporated transphobia into economic appeals to voters. The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/08/us/politics/trump-republican-transgender-ads.html">estimates</a>
the party spent $37 million on election adverts condemning federal funding for gender-affirming care in 2024. The broadcasts focused on trans prison inmates in particular as undeserving of medical support. In a country where 15 million people are saddled with medical debt <a href="https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-finds-15-million-americans-have-medical-bills-on-their-credit-reports/#:~:text=WASHINGTON%2C%20D.C.%20%E2%80%93%20The%20Consumer%20Financial,medical%20bills%20on%20credit%20reports.">according</a>
to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Republicans see an opportunity to tap into existing anger about government spending priorities and direct it against the marginalised and oppressed.
In their recent book Who’s Afraid of Gender?, gender theorist Judith Butler outlines how the global far right have incorporated transphobic hysteria into their broader political framework over the past decade. “Intimate fears and anxieties” about personal identity, safety and the traditional nuclear family “become socially organized to incite political passions”, Butler writes. 
US legislative records bear this out. In 2015, according to researchers at <a href="https://translegislation.com/">Trans Legislation Tracker</a>, 21 bills targeting trans rights were brought before US state legislatures. Those proposals mostly sought to restrict trans women’s access to public bathrooms. The number of bills snowballed over subsequent years as a coalition of Christian fundamentalists, conservative think tanks and Republican lawmakers worked together to extend their scope into health and education. 
In 2024, some 674 anti-trans bills were considered in 43 states. This avalanche of persecution now targets trans people and their supporters in almost every sphere of life, from inclusive schooling to workplace rights and gender-affirming medical care.
Anti-trans agitation in public schools is particularly important for Republican politicians because it connects them to a reactionary “parental rights movement”. According to the New York Times, that movement <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/us/parental-rights-school-board-elections.html">gained momentum </a>in 2022 by opposing coronavirus health measures, but it also opposes teachers’ unions, LGBTI-related literature, history curricula relating to slavery and evolutionary theory. US social conservatism weaves together racism and gender oppression with anti-abortion religious sensibilities in reaction against progress on multiple fronts.
Trump clearly places transgender rights under the shadow of a broader “woke” agenda. A White House memo from 27 January directs federal agencies to cease spending on any social programs that “advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering”. In a Fox News <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/former-president-trump-calls-enemy-within-more-dangerous-any-foreign-entity">interview</a>
last October, Trump warned, “We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics”. He then suggested that the National Guard or military should be deployed against this “enemy from within”. In a campaign speech last October, he declared “I will take historic action to defeat the toxic poison of gender ideology and reaffirm that God created two genders, male and female”. 
Transgender people are being targeted not only as a specific minority group, but as part of a multifaceted “enemy” that’s been constructed to advance Trump’s reactionary agenda. The notion that “gender ideology” permeates institutions at various levels helps to justify and fuel the new administration’s broader agenda of reorganising government and its priorities. Trump has repeatedly promised to dismantle the Department of Education specifically, which <a href="https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47/president-trumps-plan-to-save-american-education-and-give-power-back-to-parents">he says</a> is infiltrated by “radicals, zealots and Marxists”.
Any organisation receiving federal funding can become a target for conservative campaigns if it does not follow strict norms around gender identification and segregation. Any federal employee who supports trans people as part of their job now risks being fired. This is not only a direct attack on trans people, but a way of normalising an atmosphere of heightened repression and surveillance in an increasingly authoritarian United States.
Around the world, the far right are looking to the US as a model for the sort of society they want to create. A fight back is urgently needed both to defend trans people from Trump’s vicious attacks and to take on the reactionary agenda that motivates them and threatens us all.

Ruby Healer

Trump’s transphobia must be stopped

“The great majority of you are fed up to the back teeth with them. The election gives you the chance to make it clear to these people how you feel.” 
Conservative British Prime Minister Edward Heath was muttering, weeks before the 1974 general election. “These people” were striking coal miners—the advance guard of the British working class in those days.
The last few years had shaken capitalism to its core. Massive strikes and unofficial actions were the norm. Conservative attempts to break the unions with new industrial laws and wage-freeze policies had only let loose a torrent of resistance.
In July 1972, the government imprisoned five docker shop stewards for defying a legal injunction. Forty-four thousand dock workers struck to demand their comrades’ release—all this without hesitation or recourse to “official” union authorisation. The call from the Trades Union Congress (TUC) to stop work didn’t come until ten days into the national strike.
As rank-and-file stoppages landed blows against Heath’s industrial laws, solidarity action was breaking his policies on wages. Heath insisted that no worker should receive a wage increase above 7 percent. In January 1972, more than 25,000 coalminers struck for a 35 percent rise.
The government tried circumventing the action by hoarding coal at power stations and transport hubs. It wanted to prove to the miners that it could keep fuelling the industry even if every pit stopped digging.
A class-wide battle ensued, as the National Union of Miners (NUM) won solidarity to stop the movement of coal. Wherever the government had stockpiles, miners travelled to convince workers not to burn, refine or transport the material. Broad layers of unionists, students and other sympathisers were drawn into the fight against Heath.
“I was away from home, at college in Enfield”, Jean Spence told Tribune magazine 50 years later. “My dad was a striking miner at Dawdon pit. We hosted striking miners—flying pickets—from Kent in our student flat, and I had my first experience of picketing at Picketts Lock Power Station. An old trade unionist taught us how to deal respectfully with lorry drivers we were trying to turn away.” 
The best-remembered battleground of the 1972 strike was the Saltley fuel plant in Birmingham, where the Conservatives claimed to have 100,000 tonnes of processed coal ready to burn. There, 20,000 engineers struck to support thousands of miners who picketed the gates, pushing back police. This crucible of solidarity forced the government into submission—days later, the miners won their wage increase.
The following year, a global recession emerged. Once again, the NUM led the way by imposing an overtime ban to win higher wages. With energy and steel production impacted, Heath saw a political opportunity. He was determined to push back the militant edge of the labour movement, turn popular opinion against the miners and bury them under a landslide election victory for the Conservatives.
On 13 December 1973, Heath announced nationwide power rationing in response to the miners’ bans. Under a State of Emergency, households were subjected to a rotating schedule of energy stoppages. Electricity would be limited to three days per week for industry—workplaces were directed to shut down operations for the remaining four days. Heath maintained this “three-day week” for the whole northern winter. The government was in effect imposing a lockout against the entire British working class in punishment for the NUM’s action.
Back then, coal accounted for three-quarters of the UK energy supply, and steel remained a core part of Britain’s dwindling manufacturing base. By February 1974, miners had moved from overtime bans to all-out action, and the strikes had reduced steel production to 60 percent of its usual capacity. The miners held immense industrial power—and they were fighting on behalf of all workers facing real wage cuts. 
Barclay’s Bank profits had risen by 75 per cent since 1970, while food prices had increased by one-half. Much like our own “cost-of-living crisis”, the “recession” of the early 1970s was a recession for workers, while bosses prospered. If the miners could break through Heath’s wage policies, they could set a new standard for what other workers could win. 
For my parents and their siblings, images of 1974 still glimmer through murky childhood memories. Before I even knew what a strike was, I learned about the power cuts under Heath and those orangey, incandescent evenings in my Gran’s living room.
Winters in Glasgow are cold and dark. So during the three-day week, it was flickering candles and the buzz of a repurposed camping stove. John Peel’s prog-rock sessions had adolescents transfixed by the radio—television channels went dead by 10pm. My dad watched his older brother pore over Tolkien by candlelight, night after night. I can still find those volumes on my Uncle Jim’s shelf, lovingly dog-eared and worn. 
In the mornings, even by 9 o’clock, daylight would be hours away. The street lamps were knocked out by the power cuts. “We had to wear luminous vests going to school in the pitch black”, my Aunty Jackie explained. These were formative weeks, when the children of the British working class undertook with pride the task of outlasting Heath in his stand-off against the miners. 
The older kids at university found their own creative ways to support the NUM. Student unions were barred from sending direct financial donations. So, instead, striking miners were invited to mass meetings at Norwich, Warwick and Essex universities. Socialist student societies fundraised towards a £250 “speaker’s fee” for each miner—a cunning scheme to deliver solidarity funds to the pit communities.
The Tories employed dirty tactics to try to break the workers’ resolve. As a new ballot on industrial action approached, one Conservative MP growled, “Social security should not be made available to wives and children [of NUM members], because it allowed the enemies of the state to go on strike”.
The Thatcher administration would make good on this threat during the great battles of 1984-5. But for the time being, the Tories were driven back by the very union movement they’d hoped to extinguish.
Heath ran the 1974 election on the now infamous slogan, “Who governs?” Would voters prefer questions of economic policy to be decided by responsible Conservative ministers, or by the trade unions? The British working class at that time answered unswervingly: “Who governs? Not you!” 
Heath lost the election in a hammering defeat. Over the next decade, the Tories geared up for another showdown. These years of humiliation at the hands of the labour movement would not go unavenged. 
As early as 1977, with the party still in opposition, Conservative MP Nicholas Ridley outlined a program for hoarding coal, slashing strikers’ entitlements and training a new army of riot police to attack picketers. The “Ridley Plan” would become widely recognised as the Tories’ blueprint for defeating the NUM.
Four years of Labour rule had curbed the tide of workers’ struggle. With Heath gone, union leaders accepted a shameful compromise—they would forgo wage rises and refuse to authorise strikes in exchange for more government welfare spending. In the winter of 1978-79, a heroic bout of wildcat actions arose over the heads of the officials. But Labour had successfully dulled strike rates and cohered union leaders around a new industrial peace. 
When Margaret Thatcher won the prime ministership in 1979, she tried to enforce this “peace” through open class warfare. Ruling classes around the world were looking to slash social welfare and privatise public services to stabilise profit rates after the recession. The Conservatives wanted to win a final, set-piece confrontation to force unions into total submission and ensure minimum resistance. Thatcher announced the appointment of her new energy minister in 1983 with the menacing words: “We’re going to have a coal strike”. 
The Tories were so determined to break the miners that they were prepared to reorganise totally Britain’s energy infrastructure. A massive expansion of nuclear power and North Sea oil was to displace coal—the mines would be closed down to drive out the country’s most powerful union.
Don Keating, a South Yorkshire miner, remembers the night he learned his pit would close. “I was doing a 6 o’clock evening shift with a mate”, he told the BBC. “I’m walking down Pit Lane and a couple of lads who were coming up off shift said, ‘Don, do you know pit’s shutting?’ A bit of a joke, we thought—more rumours. We got down there and ... they were saying, ‘Yeah, it’s been announced that Cortonwood will be shutting’.”
On 5 March 1984, the government’s National Coal Board declared a wave of closures across England, Scotland and Wales—twenty mines were to be shut and 20,000 miners sacked. Cortonwood miners had recently been assured their jobs were safe for another five years; now, the pit was to close within five weeks. 
South Yorkshire had always been a militant area. They’d been among the first to blockade Saltley Gate in 1972. The Cortonwood NUM sent mobile pickets across the Yorkshire coalfields. Kent, Durham, South Wales and Scotland followed. Pit by pit, day by day, the immense network of mines across Britain was being pulled out on strike.
It was the confrontation Thatcher had been waiting for. Faithful to the Ridley Plan, the government had stockpiled 9 million tonnes of coal over the preceding three years. They now unleashed the hell hounds of the state against picketers. Thousands of police from different branches were drafted to patrol roads and pit villages for the duration of the strike. Mike McKay, a BBC journalist at the time, recalled:
“I remember particularly one very early morning, I was driving up the A1, and on the other side of the road was this endless convoy of police riot vans. It just went on and on ... It was like you were watching an occupying army travelling to the front.”
Many who remember 1984 speak of “civil war”. Dave Creamer from the Yorkshire Silverwood colliery described the atmosphere as flying pickets worked to spread the strike in spite of police: 
 “We were setting off at four o’clock picketing, trying to get through roadblocks ... We went through every back alley you could think of, up farmers’ fields, down through woods—everything—just to get to that picket line.”
“It was quite an adventure at first”, Creamer recalled in a BBC interview. “I was 20-odd-year-old, it was exciting. The adventure became a bit of a nightmare later on.”
The miners fought with everything they had, but the mood darkened towards the middle of the year. On 18 June, a mass picket assembled at Orgreave, where fuel was being supplied to a major steelworks. Miners hoped to recreate the victory of 1972 by hitting industries beyond coal. Despite some hesitation from union leaders, thousands of NUM members were ready to confront the police. 
But nothing could have prepared them for the 6,000 officers, dressed in riot gear, who thrashed, clubbed and beat their way through the picketers on that day. Watching footage of the bloodbath will still turn your stomach, even 40 years later. Yet the British media cruelly doctored the scenes, framing strikers as the instigators of violence. 
From that moment on, the civil war against miners was played out on ideological terrain. Thatcher arraigned them as “the enemy within”—with the full backing of the mainstream press. Miners and union leaders were increasingly described as “thugs” and even likened to fascists. Print workers at the Sun newspaper refused to publish the vicious anti-NUM headlines prepared by their bosses.
Pockets of secondary action opened across the union movement. Dock workers struck for three weeks in August 1984 to stop employers transporting coal to the steelworks in Scunthorpe. In Leicestershire, unionised rail workers did not handle coal for 35 consecutive weeks. 
These exceptional cases needed to be turned into a tide of solidarity to face down Thatcher, the police and the media’s combined forces. After all, the Tories wouldn’t stop at smashing the NUM. Every worker had a stake in this fight.
Mainstream accounts of the 1984-85 miners’ strike describe a tragic arc; a losing battle against Thatcher’s inevitable victory. It’s true that the NUM couldn’t have won the dispute alone. A class-wide mobilisation against Thatcher was necessary—and possible. But it never materialised. 
After Orgreave, Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock encouraged comparisons between the so-called violence of picketers and the tyranny of the state. Some union officials even helped employers circumvent the strike’s impact, hoping they’d be rewarded with better sectional agreements. The TUC itself dealt the death blow, announcing in December 1984 that it would not endorse promised solidarity action after the High Court ruled the NUM’s strike illegal.
It’s difficult to communicate the gravity of this betrayal and the consequences that the British workers’ movement faced for decades afterwards. Unions have only recently begun to recover strike rates and membership numbers after the devastation of the Thatcher years.
Strikers themselves resisted the trajectory—they maintained their action through the Christmas and winter of 1984. In March 1985, miners reluctantly accepted a recommendation from NUM leaders to end the longest mass strike in British history. Dave Creamer recalls: 
“The night they held that branch meeting, when the orders came through from national level to go back to work ... There was almost fighting inside the club with people that wanted to stay out, people who wanted to go back ... It was one of the angriest meetings I’ve ever seen in my life.”
At the beginning of 1984, 170,000 miners worked across 170 collieries in Britain. Twenty years later, those numbers had dwindled to 4,000 workers in only eight pits. Unemployment destroyed whole communities. The economic power of the NUM—a power that had once disrupted heavy industry and toppled a government—was broken. 
Miners alone couldn’t defeat the arrayed powers of the ruling class. But they’d given Thatcher a serious fight. Because of them, the 1970s and 1980s in Britain are remembered not only as decades when the capitalist state attacked trade unions and working-class people. They are also memorialised as an era of defiant, tenacious and bitter class struggle, full of lessons. 
This history is the miners’ gift to every new generation of working-class resistance. For that, we owe them our gratitude.
Let them exhale
in unity
in hope
in disgust
and let them
remember
that shimmering sad yesterday 
when
people screamed no
—Extract from the poem “The unification” by Patrick Jones.

Remembering the British miners’ strikes

Capitalism’s new era of brutality found no greater expression this week than in the world’s richest man, Elon Musk—a supporter of European fascist organisations—openly and emphatically invoking the most reactionary of political doctrines. 
At an event celebrating Donald Trump’s swearing-in as the 47th president of the United States, the multi-billionaire unmistakably performed Nazi salutes. Yet this provoked little consternation among the mouthpieces of capitalism—the media that relentlessly smear anti-war protesters as antisemites. 
“Standing ovation for Elon Musk”, observed news anchor Erin Burnett during CNN’s live coverage. “You saw him come out with that odd-looking salute.” The New York Times
adopted the posture of a media establishment utterly unperturbed, with a headline that conjured a shrug: “Elon Musk Ignites Online Speculation Over the Meaning of a Hand Gesture”. 
For many years, the global ruling classes’ only defence against Trump’s right-wing electoral populism took the form of repeated warnings about the danger of fascism. Now, presented with the most culturally recognisable symbol of fascist politics from a member of Trump’s administration, they feign ignorance. 
This is no mistake. It is the wilful legitimisation of far-right filth by a system built on exploitation, oppression and militarism.
Big bank CEOs, industrialists, politicians and diplomats have brushed off Musk’s obscenity as they flock to embrace Trump. Salivating over the promise of tax cuts, deregulation and renewed imperial might, the profit-seekers are kneeling before their new master like so many Pavlovian dogs. 
On ABC News, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong congratulated the president and described the “honour” of attending his inauguration as “such an important event, the peaceful transfer of power in our democracy”. The Hitler salutes that featured in the celebrations—not to mention the reactionary programme of the incoming administration—weren’t worth mentioning, let alone condemning. 
Defenders of the status quo might try to deny reality. But the far right fully grasps the facts. Australian neo-Nazi Thomas Sewell posted a video of Musk’s salute, declaring it a “Donald Trump White Power Moment”. Right-wing US political commentator Evan Kilgore <a href="https://x.com/EvanAKilgore/status/1881431216181985720">wrote on X</a>: “Did @elonmusk just Heil Hitler at the Trump Inauguration Rally ... We are so back”. 
Among the global leaders of the parliamentary far right, Argentina’s President Javier Milei was first in line to stand with Musk. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Milei claimed that the Tesla CEO “has been unjustly vilified by wokeism ideology of recent days for an innocent gesture that simply reflects his enthusiasm and gratitude for people”. On X, Milei was <a href="https://x.com/JMilei/status/1881887233516482610">more forthright</a>: “Tremble, leftist motherfuckers”.
One of the most disgraceful defences of Musk came from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a US-based nonprofit that presents itself as an antisemitism watchdog. As footage of the rally circulated, the organisation offered <a href="https://x.com/ADL/status/1881474892022919403">an instant apology for it</a>:
“It seems that [Musk] made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute ... In this moment, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt ... Let’s hope for healing and work toward unity in the months and years ahead.”
The ADL, of course, has been unwilling to extend the same level of understanding to activists opposing genocide. Even Jewish opponents of Israeli war crimes have been labelled antisemites by the group. Mondoweiss, a US news website, reported last June that ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt had stated at a corporate panel event: “Saying ‘free Palestine’ to a Jewish person out of context is antisemitism, plain and simple”. In a previous address to an ADL leadership summit, Greenblatt insisted: “When campus organisations like SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine] interrupt speeches, disrupt events ... that is extremism”. 
If there’s one thing that should be simple to identify as extremism, it’s a Hitler salute by a man who recently wrote on X: “Only the AfD can save Germany”. (The AfD­—Alternative for Germany—is a fascist party led by a man <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-69012813">convicted for knowingly using a Nazi slogan</a> at a public rally.)
Musk himself clarified the situation by <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1882406209187409976">posting a sequence of puns</a> containing the names of high-ranking Nazi officials, capped off with, “Bet you did nazi that coming”. This is from a man who thinks UK far-right leader Nigel Farage ought to be <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2025/1/6/musk-turns-on-uk-politician-farage-over-jailed-far-right-activist">replaced by fascist street agitator Tommy Robinson</a>.
Yet Musk escapes official rebuke because of the power bestowed on him by wealth and his proximity to the incoming US president. Almost every institution of Western capitalism has declared its eagerness to work with Trump’s team. 
Nazi sympathies were no barrier to lucrative partnerships earlier in the twentieth century, as the <a href="https://www.thehistoryreader.com/historical-figures/hitlers-american-friends-henry-ford-and-nazism/">compatriots of Henry Ford knew well</a>. The US ruling class seems to be returning to the sensibilities of those times. Reservations are being voiced in some establishment circles—but the desire to make money is trumping the idea of putting up any serious resistance to the reactionary political tide. 
This episode is a grave forewarning about what our current rulers will tolerate. Our only hope in pushing back the far-right surge is to build radical opposition against the system that created this monstrosity in the first place.

The salute that was

<a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/night-britain-uk-fight-back-riots-southport-immigration/">Reports of the anti-racist demonstrations</a> sweeping Britain on the evening of Wednesday, 7 August, were a sight for sore eyes. Quite literally—those of us watching the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/7/mapping-far-right-riots-in-the-uk">racialised thuggery</a> unfold across the UK since July have genuinely had to hold back tears. If the threat posed by the far right in Britain is to be successfully pushed back, much more anti-racist protest will be needed.
Britain hasn’t seen this level of coordinated far-right terror since the late 1970s. It’s <a href="https://socialistworker.co.uk/features/beating-the-nazis-in-the-1970s-we-did-it-before-and-we-ll-do-it-again/">reminiscent of the dark days</a> of jackbooted skinheads and the rise of the far-right National Front: days many believed were long gone. But almost 50 years later, anti-racists have once again found themselves having to organise emergency counter-protests against an onslaught of targeted attacks on refugees and migrants. 
The turnouts for the 7 August rallies in major cities were large. In East London, 10,000 took to the streets; there were 7,000 in Bristol, 1,500 in Liverpool and the same number in Sheffield. In one west London neighbourhood, around 400 protesters faced down a pathetic showing of four or five far-right thugs, protected and spirited to safety by the Metropolitan Police. The crowd took up a <a href="https://x.com/deborahfinding/status/1821266059141455880">chant</a> both poignant and to the point: “There are many, many more of us than you!”.
Reports also suggest that Muslim youth have organised themselves to defend physically their mosques and community centres—an echo of the <a href="https://irr.org.uk/article/recollections-on-the-asian-youth-movements-that-emerged-in-the-1970s/">Asian Youth Movements</a> of the late 1970s. 
Back then, migrant communities could also rely on mass anti-fascist mobilisations of workers and young people cohered around the <a href="https://redflag.podbean.com/e/lessons-from-the-anti-nazi-league-with-moira-leahy/">Anti-Nazi League</a> (ANL). After a <a href="https://tribunemag.co.uk/2023/08/remembering-the-battle-of-lewisham-2">victorious march</a> against police and fascists in south-east London in 1977, the ANL chased the National Front off the streets wherever it was active. The radical socialists who organised the ANL also galvanised support from the most militant sections of the trade union movement; in 1979 the National Union of Mineworkers hosted a “Miners Against the Nazis” conference in collaboration with ANL activists. 
Today, unions are the only official institutions endorsing anti-racist demonstrations, union flags and contingents being present at many rallies. While left-pitching <a href="https://www.hastings.gov.uk/news/latest/joint-statement/">Greens</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C-V3tffo79c/">Labour</a> representatives shamefully warned their constituents against attending protests, many local union branches are trying to mobilise. One activist from the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers—which spearheaded a <a href="https://cms.redflag.org.au/article/britains-historic-strike-wave">strike wave</a> in 2022—told <a href="https://socialistworker.co.uk/anti-racism/7-august-fear-changes-sides-as-massive-protests-defy-the-far-right/">Socialist Worker</a> that a union conference held on 7 August had voted to attend a nearby anti-fascist protest en bloc. 
What the anti-fascist movement faces is a broad revival of serious and organised neo-Nazi street politics. The mainstream media have adopted terms like “rioting” or “disturbances”, but what we’ve seen are orchestrated physical attacks on mosques, immigration centres and refugee housing. According to UK anti-fascist research group Hope Not Hate, <a href="https://hopenothate.org.uk/2024/07/31/the-far-right-and-the-southport-riot-what-we-know-so-far/">flyers and social media posts</a> have been used to coordinate attacks at specific times and places.
On 27 July a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce4qd4e4e1vo">huge nationalist and anti-Muslim rally</a> of around 40,000 people was held in Trafalgar Square, London. Headed by notorious hate-monger Tommy Robinson, this mass mobilisation took place before the Southport stabbing that ostensibly triggered the wave of far-right violence across the country. And Robinson already had a follow-on <a href="https://www.thenational.scot/news/24490711.glaswegians-urged-stand-firm-tommy-robinson-promoted/">demonstration planned</a> for Glasgow’s George Square in September. This will be a major test for anti-racist counter-protesters to face down.
Hitler once wrote that mass rallies and street-level confrontations helped build the hardened core of Nazism because they “burn into the little man’s soul the conviction that, though a little worm, he is part of a great dragon”. 
Sinister <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVq4c-Wiazw&amp;rco=1">speeches</a> at Robinson’s event echoed this sentiment and delivered clear incitements to racist violence. “There is no political solution to this problem [of Muslim immigration]”, one speaker proclaimed. “The mass of you, the sea of you ... you are the solution. Defend your home ... take back your country and unite the Kingdom—God bless the king!” Another, dressed in full military garb, <a href="https://twitter.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/1818239415040221667">declared</a> to rapturous applause, “I will keep fighting until I’m lying on the streets, choking on my own blood”.
The establishment politicians, the police and media outlets now decrying “disorder” have done nothing to denounce the rhetoric spewing from Robinson’s brothers-in-arms. Indeed, they’ve pushed a hard-right racist agenda of their own in recent years. Former Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak tried to establish <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/how-australia-taught-britain-torture-refugees">offshore refugee detention</a> camps in Rwanda. His successor, Labour’s Keir Starmer, promises instead new counter-terror powers and faster deportations of asylum seekers directly back to their home countries. 
Establishment parties have given fuel to the far right by whipping up anger against migrants. Almost 17 per cent of voters in the recent British general election <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10009/">voted for</a> openly far-right candidates running with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK or as ex-Conservative independents.
When mass industrial action <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/britains-summer-industrial-discontent">broke out</a> in 2022, the British labour movement had an opportunity to impose a different narrative about rising inflation and falling living standards. Instead of scapegoating migrants and refugees, striking workers laid the blame squarely on the capitalist class gorging itself on the profits of the crisis. 
Keir Starmer condemned those strikes, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/27/sam-tarry-sacked-labour-frontbench-rail-strike-picket-line-keir-starmer">sacked</a> a Labour shadow minister for visiting a picket line. The Labour Party has actively engaged in racist fearmongering and undermined serious class resistance and solidarity. The chickens are now coming home to roost.
The ruling class is cohering around a <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/riots-starmer-turning-point-police-b2593477.html">“law and order” response</a> to the so-called disturbances of the past few weeks. British anti-fascists are well aware of the role police played in <a href="https://socialistworker.co.uk/features/eyewitnesses-to-the-battle-of-cable-street-fascists-did-not-pass/">defending far-right marches</a> in the 1930s and ’70s. The police daily enact their <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/24/outrage-after-british-police-officer-filmed-kicking-man-in-the-head">own racist violence</a> against Muslims and enforce the “order” of a perpetually unjust system. 
That’s why any movement against the far right must be imbued with a radical and unforgiving critique of the system that breeds fascist thugs. They are the political spawn of equally criminal bosses, media moguls and establishment politicians. Against all of them—all these fascist worms and their capitalist enablers—our side must respond decisively: “There are many, many more of us than you”.

‘There are many, many more of us than you’: British anti-racists mobilise against far right onslaught

Members of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) at the University of Melbourne are embarking this week on historic strike action. Ten months into our campaign for a new workplace agreement, management has refused to budge on our major demands. After a four-hour stoppage in May and a 24-hour stoppage in June, we are intensifying pressure in second semester with a weeklong strike. This will be the longest large-scale strike action at an Australian university campus for a decade or more. 
The escalation was sparked by members in the arts faculty, who voted to strike for seven days starting today. Their decision was only possible after years of dedicated work by activists that made arts the best-unionised area at the University. After the arts vote, a branch-wide meeting resolved to prepare for a half-day all-member strike. Members outside of arts jumped on the opportunity to build support for more extended action in their own workplaces. 
A flurry of organising across departments in recent weeks culminated in a series of successful votes to join the weeklong action. Union members in student services, libraries and scholarly services, the law faculty and the VCA’s schools of art and stagecraft will now join arts on strike for the full week. These votes showed that there is appetite across the branch for sustained strikes to win our demands. Deep seated resentment towards management after years of cuts mean that many members are prepared to vote for action above and beyond what’s been done in previous bargaining rounds. 
After the all-in action today, the weeklong strike will be limited to those areas that held votes for extended action. This will not be an all-member stoppage across the entire branch, despite the best efforts of militants to push for an all-out strike. But it will draw strength from the most organised and active work areas to seriously impact different levels of the university’s operations. And it can lay the basis for more recruitment and organisation, potentially opening the way for more all-out actions in future. When we participate in serious strikes, members get a chance to feel our own collective strength and develop strong arguments for our workmates to join the union. This week, strikers will be leafleting and running open union events to highlight the power of united action and to encourage engagement among all NTEU members.
This strike is a serious disruption to business as usual at Melbourne Uni—and also in the NTEU. It’s been quite some time since we’ve seen the union branch put forward an ambitious log of claims and embark on protracted strikes to push for them. The ambitious demands we put forward at the start of this bargaining round have inspired renewed levels of participation. In particular, the bold claim for a secure employment ratio—for 80 percent of all staff to be employed in ongoing roles—has inspired plenty of staff to get active in an institution in which most of us are on casual or fixed-term contracts. Claims for filling all vacant positions to address spiralling workloads, a wage rise that keeps up with inflation, and a strict limit on endless rounds of restructures have also inspired support.
The shorter work stoppages we’ve organised have been well-attended and lively, and have already forced some small concessions from management. With membership growing month-by-month, we are now the largest NTEU branch in Australia. What we win at Melbourne University—and how we win it—can have an impact across the country.
For decades, the NTEU has been stuck in a self-defeating cycle of lacklustre campaigns with modest demands that inspire little confidence in members. Our union leaders have shied away from serious industrial action, instead placing their faith in backroom negotiations to “win” small improvements around the edges. The inevitable outcome is that the union dilutes or withdraws its own demands, while members are left feeling disempowered and cynical about the bargaining process. So past NTEU campaigns have generally reinforced our weakness and lowered expectations about what our branches can achieve, instead of building union power.
The situation at Melbourne University today offers a glimpse of a different way forward. We’ve seen the potential for strong claims to inspire active participation from our workmates. It will be up to militant activists in the branch to resist a slide towards concessions in the coming weeks. This strike is the result of hard work from rank-and-file members. Let’s use it to expand our numbers, raise our own confidence and push beyond what’s been done before.

Katie Wood

What’s at stake in the strike at Melbourne University

The “catastrophic implosion” of OceanGate’s Titan submersible at 3,800m below sea level, which claimed the lives of five millionaires and billionaires last week, was a tragedy. But, as we have all learned in recent days, it was also an uplifting and inspiring event. OceanGate’s own press release found the bright side: “These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans”.
Subsequent revelations show that Stockton Rush, the OceanGate CEO who perished in the disaster, had for years been fighting against naysayers, safety bureaucrats and so-called submarine experts. We can only be grateful that he ignored their warnings and decided to take the plunge. And with more than 2,600 billionaires left on the planet, there are still many places left to explore. Here are five other destinations that the super-rich should get exploring in a hurry.
Reactor no. 4, Chernobyl nuclear power plant
Almost 40 years after the world’s most catastrophic nuclear meltdown, members of the public are still too cowardly to venture inside Chernobyl’s reactor no. 4. Tourists are content to take “happy snaps” at designated “safe” locations. But the reactor itself, housing 225 tonnes of radioactive material, remains encased in a structure made of more than 400,000 cubic metres of concrete. We know that entrepreneurs are all about risk-taking. They should crack that baby open and let themselves into one of the world’s least explored destinations.
Snake Island
Queimada Grande, an island off the coast of Brazil more commonly known as Snake Island, is home to the critically endangered and highly venomous lancehead pit viper. It is closed to the public to protect both people and the snake population—a classic example of bureaucratic red tape stifling the pioneering impulses of our billionaires. Snake Island should be opened to those who have the guts—and the income—to brave an overnight stay.
The Gates of Hell, Turkmenistan
At recorded temperatures of more than 400 degrees Celsius, the Gates of Hell crater has burned in the Karakum desert for 50 years. It burst into flame in 1971 when a drilling rig accidentally punched into a massive underground natural gas cavern, causing the ground to collapse and the entire rig to fall in. Thank God there was no bureaucratic red tape preventing that. This beautiful, flaming tribute to the indelible mark our innovators have had on the natural world could be the next top tourist spot for Fortune 500 CEOs. Oil industry executives in particular may be interested in visiting this piece of industrial history and seeing how far down they can go.
Sagittarius A*
At 26,000 light-years from earth, Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, measures an impressive 51.8 million kilometres in diameter. Scientists say that if a person were to travel into a black hole like this, their body would be subjected to a process called “spaghettification”. There’s only one way to know for sure—but just to be safe, pack yourself some meatballs!
Black Hills Forest
Conveniently located one hour’s drive from Washington DC’s Montgomery Film College, this is truly an untouched wonder boasting pristine woodlands and sites of historic interest. Despite its obvious natural charm, the Black Hills woods are shunned by residents of the neighbouring town, Burkittsville.
Places like these really do seem to hold their own special spiritual energy, and you will feel this intensely as you explore the burial cairns and small grave sites dotted around this beautiful forest. Visitors are few and far between; adventurers will be following in the brave footsteps of Maryland film student Heather Donohue and her friends “Mike” and “Josh”. Ignore any superstitious townspeople warning you about the Blair Witch who is said to reside here—we live in an age of science and rationality. Don’t let their tiny minds stop a billionaire from losing themselves in this breathtaking wilderness.

Luca Tavan

Five other places billionaires should explore

“It will be a historic moment, and I regard it as a great privilege ... to be present at Westminster Abbey when it occurs.” Thus spoke Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-05/albanese-says-king-charles-is-very-interested-australia/102306060">anticipation</a> of the coronation of King Charles III. And let’s be honest, it’s pretty exciting. Every few generations, subjects of the British Commonwealth are blessed with the chance to watch a precious metal hat being placed upon the empty head of our new God-sanctioned monarch.
And this time, we weren’t relegated to being passive observers of this important televised event. Viewers were given the opportunity to engage in the political process by swearing allegiance to the king in a newly worded “homage of the people”. If, like me, you hoped to make the most of the occasion by practising the oath in advance, you might have made use of <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-01/king-charles-homage-of-the-people-public-swear-allegiance/102286052">this handy guide</a> produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
After printing the text of the homage in full, the ABC reminded us, “If you’re watching the coronation at home on Saturday, just follow along and recite the lines above when it reaches the appropriate point in the service”. Easy peasy. But don’t get too comfortable; there were still some central details to be ironed out. “In the traditional homage of peers, members kneel before the sovereign, but it’s not clear this time around what the expectations are for people at home.” I’m sure that, after a few tense moments of hand wringing and some helpful guidance from the Australian media, we all figured it out.
At special and exciting times like these, it might seem that the continued existence of the British crown has degenerated into an absurdist farce. But make no mistake: for the international ruling classes, the coronation is no laughing matter. Far from being some obsolete feudal relic, the undemocratic and parasitic nature of the monarchy reflects all the basic values of the modern capitalist system.
As tireless revolutionary and Irish republican James Connolly <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1911/xx/visitkng.htm">wrote</a> on the eve of King George V’s 1911 tour to Dublin:
“The capitalist and landlord class flock to exalt him ... in him they see embodied the idea of caste and class; they glorify him and exalt his importance that they might familiarise the public mind with the conception of political inequality ... The mind accustomed to political kings can easily be reconciled to social kings—capitalist kings of the workshop, the mill, the railway, the ships and the docks.”
Coronations and royal visits are an opportunity to celebrate and cohere people around the most reactionary features of capitalist society, to glorify an ongoing legacy of violent imperialist subjugation and to normalise the most grotesque forms of inequality.
The coronation itself was expected to <a href="https://time.com/6275383/king-charles-iii-coronation-cost-taxpayers/">cost more than £100 million</a> in taxpayer money. This is while living standards in Britain have plummeted to Dickensian lows, where full-time workers are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/nov/10/nurses-among-rising-numbers-of-workers-using-food-banks-research-shows">forced to access</a> food banks in order to survive. Tens of thousands of British pensioners <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/31/business/uk-cost-of-living-crisis-elderly-tory-leadership-intl-gbr-cmd/index.html">freeze to death</a> in their homes each year as the royals spend an <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1664386/queen-royal-family-buckingham-palace-energy-bill-cost-of-living-crisis">estimated</a> £2 million heating their palaces and luxury private residences. Millions of trade unionists are <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/britains-historic-strike-wave">fighting</a> to win wage rises that keep up with runaway inflation, while King Charles controls an asset portfolio of <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2023/05/04/how-rich-is-king-charles-iii-inside-the-new-monarchs-outrageous-fortune/?sh=4227ef0a79c7">more than £46 billio</a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2023/05/04/how-rich-is-king-charles-iii-inside-the-new-monarchs-outrageous-fortune/?sh=4227ef0a79c7">n</a>. If any institution personifies the mindless injustice of modern capitalism, it is the British royal family.
Yet Australian politicians and media pundits are at pains to identify themselves with this band of thieves. In a recent <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/our-new-king-may-love-australia-more-than-australians-love-him-20230428-p5d41l.html">opinion piece</a> for the Sydney Morning Herald, former Attorney-General George Brandis wrote, “Australians should never underestimate the depth of Charles’ emotional connection to this country” and praised the king’s deep “knowledge of Australian affairs”. An <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/in-changing-times-king-charles-iii-renews-the-british-brand-20230505-p5d5vh.html">editorial</a> in the same publication weighed up some common criticisms of the monarchy, offering the conclusion that “such complaints contain truths, but they miss the role royalty has played in helping to understand the human condition”.
Albanese, for his part, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/australias-sydney-opera-house-wont-light-up-coronation-save-costs-2023-05-06/">reminds us</a> that, whatever personal republican leanings we Australians may harbour, “that doesn’t mean that you cannot have respect for the institution”. All this is to be expected from a ruling class that has derived its wealth and power from Britain’s genocidal invasion of this land, and later relied on British stewardship to build a thriving economy on the broken backs of migrant labour and Indigenous people.
Our current government is waging a <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/australia-class-war">war on the working class</a>, with real incomes falling more than 7 percent over the last two years. In pledging allegiance to the king, our modern-day rulers hope to win the allegiance of their subjects to a sick and sickening Australian capitalism.
After the pomp and pageantry of the coronation, we should remember Connolly’s invocations against “all these parading royalties, all this insolent aristocracy, all these grovelling, dirt-eating capitalist traitors”.
The last word and call to social revolution still falls to him: “If our masters and rulers are sleepless in their schemes against us, so we, rebels against their rule, must never sleep in our belief in the dignity of our class—in the ultimate sovereignty of those who labour”.
Artwork by Van Thanh Rudd.

God save the king, long live capitalism

The class struggle in Britain is undergoing a momentous transformation. After decades of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/may/30/strikes-in-uk-fall-to-lowest-level-since-records-began-in-1893">low strike rates</a> and declining union membership, workers are now engaged in serious and wide-ranging confrontations with bosses. 
Last June, a series of mass strikes on the railways smashed through years of industrial quiescence and put class struggle back on the agenda. The strikes garnered huge <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/chart-of-the-day/2022/07/public-opinion-stand-on-rail-strikes">public support</a>. As inflation and rising prices ate away at purchasing power, British workers’ real wages had fallen at the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-26/liz-truss-vs-rishi-sunak-next-uk-prime-minister-faces-strike-threats-over-pay">sharpest rate</a> in two decades. Years of austerity and public spending cuts under Conservative and local Labour governments had generated a mass of combustible resentment. When rail workers walked off the job, they provided the spark to set it alight. 
By September, 40,000 British Telecom (BT) employees had struck alongside 115,000 postal workers and 50,000 rail workers. Trade unions organised mass rallies and picket line visits to support the fight on the rails. Dock workers launched five weeks of rolling strikes while wildcat strikes rocked offshore oil rigs and Amazon warehouses. Ballots were out for industrial action across the public service as new layers of teachers, nurses and council workers joined the growing revolt. 
This strike wave has now generalised into the most <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/14/nearly-million-days-lost-strikes-december-uk-pay-growth">prolonged revival</a> of industrial action in Britain since the end of the Thatcher era. A single rail walkout in July 2022 involved more workers than an entire year’s worth of strikes across all industries in 2017. The <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/timeseries/bbfw/lms">figures</a> for August 2022, when BT and postal workers also took action, were more than double the total annual strike days for the whole of 2015. 
The last significant uptick in strikes in Britain occurred in 2011, when public sector unions held coordinated days of action over proposed pension changes. But the current wave is far broader and long lasting, extending to many branches of private industry and involving protracted disputes as well as one-day strikes. And while workers today are mainly organising around economic demands, these strikes have taken on their own political character by decimating ruling-class narratives about the “cost-of-living crisis”. Trade unionists in Britain have made it plain for all to see that inflation is class-war-from-above and that bosses are lining their pockets by withholding pay rises. 
The biggest disputes are taking place in the public sector, where the bosses negotiating pay deals are themselves Conservative Party heads of ministry. The railways, the post and the National Health Service (NHS) are all treasured services devastated by spending cuts and privatisations. This only heightens the sense that the organised working class is going head to head with a hated and unstable Conservative government, taking revenge for decades of Tory and Blairite “restructuring”.
When Red Flag <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/britains-summer-industrial-discontent">last reported</a> on Britain’s new strike wave, a number of questions remained unanswered. Would the millions of workers eager to fight really overcome <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/irj.12349">draconian thresholds</a> to win new strike ballots? Would key unions continue to act on existing mandates to strike, or embark on an orderly retreat? And how would union members respond when leaders tried to wind down action?
Today we can begin to answer these questions, albeit tentatively. We should first remind ourselves that Britain has some of the <a href="http://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/anti-strike_measures_in_the_uk_briefing.pdf">strictest</a> industrial relations laws in Europe, and it was hardly a fait accompli that unions would be able to generalise the struggle beyond the railways in the way we have seen. 
Yet workers did crash through restrictive balloting thresholds in sector after sector and return overwhelming mandates to strike. Then, following the death of the queen in September, unions <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/09/royal-mail-and-rail-workers-cancel-strikes-after-the-queen-death#:~:text=Royal%20Mail%20and%20rail%20workers%20cancel%20strikes%20after%20the%20Queen's%20death,-This%20article%20is&amp;text=Strikes%20by%20postal%20and%20rail,dispute%20over%20pay%20and%20conditions.">called off</a> actions in rail and communications. Some union leaders began to speak of “getting around the table with the bosses” to wind up their disputes. For a moment, it seemed like the momentum could be pissed up the wall. But getting bosses “around the table” proved harder than the union officials might have hoped. Workers rightly rejected September’s below-inflation pay offers, and in rail and the postal service, bosses dug in their heels and refused to negotiate further. Simon Thompson, chief executive of Royal Mail, even <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/09/22/royal-mail-tear-trade-union-deal-bid-end-wave-strikes/">threatened</a> to tear up existing union agreements, unilaterally impose “productivity” measures on workers and cut 10,000 jobs. 
This intransigence forced union leaders to prolong their disputes, and strikes continued on the railways and in the post. Then came the massive mandates for strikes in the <a href="https://www.nursingtimes.net/news/policies-and-guidance/rcn-ballot-nurses-secure-strike-mandate-in-130-nhs-employers-in-england-10-11-2022/">NHS</a> and other <a href="https://socialistworker.co.uk/news/build-the-pcs-strikes-and-push-for-national-action-say-no-to-bt-deal/">public services</a> around Christmas. By 1 February, half a million workers were out in a day of united action that shut down schools, hospitals and train stations. And they didn’t just stay at home—strikers took to the streets around the United Kingdom, with <a href="https://socialistworker.co.uk/news/1-feb-strike-london-rally/">40,000</a> marching in London alone. Another day of coordinated strikes on 15 March brought similar scenes – this time workers also closed universities and even stopped regional <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-64964035">broadcasts</a> by the BBC. 
In a historic development for the British labour movement, workers covered by the Royal College of Nurses (RCN) union have been striking since December—the RCN had <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/nov/05/nurses-across-uk-vote-to-strike-in-first-ever-national-action">never before</a> called for walk-offs since its founding in 1916. 
Today, more than 1 million workers in Britain have a mandate to strike, with actions planned across schools and universities, in the civil service from local councils to the British Museum and in health from the ambulances to physiotherapy suites. Strikes continue in transport and communications. The momentum clearly hasn’t been lost, but there are troubling signs that union leaders are once again preparing to waste it.
A huge blow to the movement was delivered by the rail union leaders’ decision to settle with Network Rail. The deal provides 4.5 percent wage increases for 2023 and 2024 – a massive pay cut for rail workers when retail price inflation <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/consumerpriceinflation/march2023">still runs</a> at 13.5 percent. Though some rail strikes will continue at smaller private transport companies, the Network Rail deal sets a dangerous new benchmark for what union leaders are willing to accept. 
The union’s general secretary, Mick Lynch, for a time was an intransigent <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/mick-lynch-calls-for-nationwide-pay-rise-rmt-union-strikes_uk_62d1705fe4b0c842cf56d695">public spokesperson</a> for above-inflation pay increases. His retreat signals to other unions that substandard pay deals to end the strikes are both possible and desirable. 
Unions entered this fray in order to reassert themselves as important social institutions, and to regain some legitimacy with workers after decades of traitorous inaction in the face of government cuts. Those aims have now largely been achieved, with union leaders regularly interviewed on the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/23/mick-lynch-media-star-labour-rmt-leader-union-boss">nightly news</a> and tens of thousands of British workers <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/50000-rise-in-neu-teachers-union_uk_5f496bf4c5b64f17e13d9401">joining their unions</a> for the first time. For the Mick Lynches of the world, it’s time to wrap up the strikes and get back to a comfortable social peace on a slightly stronger footing.
Outside of the railways, days of action are being called off quite regularly as union officials seek more time to negotiate in back rooms with bosses and governments. The RCN called off major strikes at the beginning of March to enter new talks with the government, emerging from the negotiations with an insulting 5 percent <a href="https://rcni.com/nursing-standard/newsroom/news/nurses-urged-to-vote-for-new-5-pay-offer-194271">pay offer</a> for nurses. RCN union leaders recommended that members vote to accept the deal. 
Nurses knew better. Last week it was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/apr/14/nurses-will-strike-again-in-england-after-voting-to-reject-government-pay-deal">announced</a> that RCN members had rejected the pay offer and are now gearing up for new strikes. This heroic “no” vote by nurses should be an inspiration to every worker feeling demoralised by their leaders’ weak and compromising stance. But it didn’t come out of nowhere—for months, nurses have been organising through the campaign <a href="https://nhsworkerssayno.org/">“NHS Workers Say No”</a>, discussing ways to win solidarity for their strikes and drawing attention to the systemic crisis in health funding. 
When details of the 5 percent offer and the RCN’s recommendation were released, this rank-and-file group <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/mar/19/health-union-members-ramp-up-campaign-to-reject-paltry-pay-deal">launched</a> straight into a “vote no” campaign. They leafleted hundreds of hospitals with information about the attempted sell-out and held meetings with nurses and socialists from other industries who could offer a political analysis of the officials’ actions. 
The RCN responded by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/apr/03/royal-college-of-nursing-asks-police-to-investigate-some-of-its-members">calling in the police</a> to investigate accusations of “fraud” against NHS Workers Say No members. That nurses were willing to reject the pay offer, against a campaign of intimidation from their own union leaders, is testament to how effective rank-and-file campaigns can be when they are well organised and militant. It is the latest “historic” moment in a year of historic turning points for the British labour movement. 
Elsewhere, the same tensions between union leaders and the rank and file are playing out as officials try to push through shoddy deals or end strikes. In the University and College Union (UCU), leaders have persistently tried to call off strike action, but a strong socialist bloc in the union’s Higher Education Committee has <a href="https://socialistworker.co.uk/news/mass-meetings-challenge-jo-gradys-move-to-shut-down-university-strikes/">defeated</a> them every time. UCU members are now engaged in an assessments and marking boycott and are looking to escalate industrial action. 
Members of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), so far engaged in a ten-month battle against Royal Mail, are simmering with rage at leaders’ attempts to pause strikes and keep <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/apr/15/royal-mail-and-communication-workers-union-reach-deal-on-pay">details</a> of negotiations secret. One anonymous postie interviewed by <a href="https://socialistworker.co.uk/news/royal-mail-workers-say-escalating-strikes-is-our-only-leverage/">Socialist Worker</a> articulated the anger: “They’re chucking the strength of the union down the bloody drain ... Look back at the rally we had in London. Look at the big ballot for strikes we had ... Why are they wasting that momentum?”
The question now is whether postal workers will follow the nurses’ lead and organise on the ground. Only a coordinated network of militant union members would be able to confront the CWU’s well-oiled bureaucracy in any future fights to reject a deal or stage further strikes. Building rank-and-file organisation in every union is an urgent task today as officials seek to wind up disputes. 
In Australia, we should take heart from the struggles of British workers. They have shown us what is possible when one section of the class gives a lead. The revival of the labour movement in this country is no longer a fantasy or nostalgic daydream about the past. It is possible, after decades of dwindling union membership and suffocating silence from union leaders in a Western capitalist country, to break the trajectory of decline. If they can do it over there, we can do it over here. The first step is to get organised.
PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Eason (Flickr)

Britain’s historic strike wave

Chants of “Victory to the RMT” echo through Britain’s major cities as 40,000 rail workers continue their resolute campaign for better pay. Their actions have ignited the confidence of a working class facing wide-ranging assaults on living standards. Headline <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/03/inflation-will-soar-to-astronomical-levels-over-next-year-thinktank-warns">inflation</a> is running at 9.4 percent in the UK, and ordinary workers are being hit hardest. Housing, water and fuel costs have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/20/uk-inflation-rise-petrol-diesel-prices">risen</a> by 19.6 percent since June 2021, and real wages are falling at the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-26/liz-truss-vs-rishi-sunak-next-uk-prime-minister-faces-strike-threats-over-pay">fastest rate</a> in two decades. 
Since the magnificent three-day rail strike in June, more and more workplaces are being rocked by industrial action. 40,000 British Telecom workers walked off in early August following a second round of rail strikes, and 115,000 postal workers are expected to go out in September. As Red Flag goes to press, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jul/28/dockers-at-uk-felixstowe-suffolk-port-vote-to-strike-in-august?CMP=twt_gu&amp;utm_source=Twitter&amp;utm_medium">dockers</a> are gearing up for disputes at Britain’s major ports, and ballots are under way across the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/8dac1948-dd32-4603-9ec2-eea9b6c5f7c3">public service</a>. What began as a potentially isolated battle on the railways has turned into a torrent of class struggle, with rail workers giving the lead.
Unjum Mirza is a train driver and union activist on the London Underground, where 6,000 drivers from the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen have joined Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) members in strikes across the transport system. Unjum tells Red Flag the RMT’s large, coordinated actions have generated “a gravitational pull that draws in far wider layers of our class, irrespective of union, irrespective of sector”. 
The eruption hasn’t come out of nowhere. Britain has seen a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/apr/02/strikes-in-uk-at-highest-in-five-years-as-pay-is-hit-by-inflation">modest uptick</a> in strikes over the past two years. Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, bosses and government have insisted on wage suppression as a necessary sacrifice. Despite <a href="https://www.unitetheunion.org/news-events/news/2022/june/new-unite-investigation-exposes-how-corporate-profiteering-is-driving-inflation-not-workers-wages/#:~:text=UK%20wide%20company%20profits%20fuel%20inflation&amp;text=This%20jump%20in%20UK%20wide,8.3%25%20due%20to%20labour%20costs.">growing profits</a>, Unjum says, “We’ve had workers doing their third year without a pay rise at all. So there was a general thrust towards disputes and ballots anyway”.
The turning point came in late June, when rail workers launched national rolling strikes over pay. “What we’re starting to see out of a number of local disputes”, Unjum says, “with the rail disputes and indeed with BT [formerly British Telecom] and possibly the postal workers dispute, we’re starting to see the first national confrontations between capital and labour”.
This momentum has led both sides of politics to speak of a “summer of discontent” in British industrial relations, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/20/stuff-your-5-is-the-uk-facing-a-summer-of-discontent-and-what-can-we-learn-from-the-winter-of-1979">a reference to the</a> “winter of discontent” in 1978-79, when similar inflationary wage pressures triggered major cross-sectional union battles. Many hope the current strike wave could mark the beginnings of an equally historic moment for British workers.
The labour movement has certainly embarked on a series of substantial political and industrial fights over summer, and the RMT’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/23/mick-lynch-rail-union-bruiser-whos-more-than-a-match-for-the-media">unapologetic stance</a> has shattered the deafening silence emanating from most trade union leaders over decades of neoliberalism, falling wages and skyrocketing profits. 
But these years of quiescence mean that workers today are starting from historic lows in terms of strike experience, union membership and pay and conditions at work. <a href="https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/press-releases/low-levels-of-worker-power-holding-down-wages-by-almost-100-a-week/">According</a> to the Resolution Foundation, only 23 percent of workers in the UK were members of their trade union in 2021. Membership rates in the private sector sit as low as 10 percent. In 1980, by contrast, at least 53 percent of the British workforce were organised in trade unions. Many were engaged in robust rank-and-file networks capable of sustaining <a href="https://libcom.org/article/1978-1979-winter-discontent">prolonged wildcat actions</a> over the winter of discontent.
Today, it’s the degradation of working-class living standards and union power that provides fuel for the industrial upsurge. Unjum tells me he often invokes the words of writer Oscar Wilde at union meetings: “If you’re in the gutter and you look down, all you’ll see is shit. So look up, you know, and unite our struggles. And it’s quite easy to unite those struggles, because we are literally all in the same shit”. In this context, the RMT’s basic call for wages to keep up with inflation offers a unifying demand that workers can put forward across the board. 
Workers in Britain face a long road ahead in rebuilding their industrial strength. The return of major and defiant strike action is the first, crucial step along this path. “There’s definitely been a shift in the mood since the strikes in June”, says Unjum. “There’s a greater confidence to fight, to join a union, have pride in the union, to go on strike and join a picket line.” 
Rank-and-file activists are jumping on the combative mood to link up struggles across workplaces. Since early June, Unjum and a group of militant rail workers have been visiting <a href="https://www.counterfire.org/news/23320-st-georges-hospital-workers-aren-t-backing-down-news-from-the-frontline">striking cleaners</a> at London’s St George’s Hospital. “The cleaners, hospital staff and other key workers were essential to saving lives in the pandemic”, he says. “They’ve been rewarded with a pay cut.” 
On the last Saturday of rail strikes in June, the cleaners organised a demonstration at the hospital. “Myself and a couple of RMT members went down to show some solidarity at their picket line in South London”, Unjum recalls. “And then we got the entire strike and the entire protest onto the London Underground! Onto the Northern Line, continued the protest on the Northern Line and up to King’s Cross. We took over Euston Road, and we joined—very noisily—joined the RMT picket and the mass rally there. It just showed you a glimpse of the potential in our class ... The dynamic, how it can generalise so quickly ... It was just electric.” With <a href="https://www.counterfire.org/articles/analysis/23374-how-to-turn-a-strike-wave-into-a-tsunami">significant ballots</a> on the way in the National Health Service, in the postal service and across private industry, this generalisation is unfolding in real time.
Political factors are further escalating the situation. A crisis at the top of the ruling Conservative Party has already led prospective leaders to raise the spectre of Thatcherism in response to the strikes. Leadership contender Liz Truss’ imitation of the hated former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is disturbingly accurate, while rival Rishi Sunak, for his part, has been <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/07/20/will-heir-margaret-thatcher/">unambiguous</a>: “My values are Thatcherite ... I am running as a Thatcherite and I will govern as a Thatcherite”. Both candidates are promising <a href="https://www.counterfire.org/articles/opinion/23360-sunak-and-truss-whoever-wins-we-lose-counterblast">all-out attacks</a> on the workers’ movement in an attempt to win back the confidence of British capital at large. 
The government’s uncompromising stance has prompted <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/unions-general-strike-industrial-action-ban-b2132802.html">some union leaders</a> to table the possibility of a general strike. Unjum says this sort of offensive action is exactly what workers need:
“My own preference would be joint dates between all three [rail] unions ... This government simply couldn’t sustain an all-out strike on the railways. You know, we prise open the fractures among the ruling circles, we go out and we don’t tell them when we’re coming back. That’s how we’re going to win.” 
But peak union bodies are yet to deliver anything close to this level of coordination and resolve. Among the official representatives of the labour movement, trouble is brewing. Opposition frontbencher Sam Tarry was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-62325842">sacked</a> last month for appearing on RMT picket lines, and Labour leader Keir Starmer has promised he will fight the next general election on a platform of “economic growth” involving public sector wage caps. A growing number of union officials have <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-62329521">slammed</a> Labour’s positioning around the strikes, many signalling they may pull funds and affiliation from the party. Whether these threats are made in earnest is yet to be seen, but Starmer is unlikely to experience smooth sailing on the way to Labour’s national conference in September. 
What’s clear to workers like Unjum is that parliamentary politics offers no way out of the present crisis. “Frankly speaking, most people know. Everybody hates the Tories, of course, but no one’s got any illusions or holding any reliance on the Labour Party.” 
“Politics”, Unjum explains, “is about power. And here you’ve got on one side the arrangements of power on a parliamentary level. I think the key issue is, how do we now organise, demonstrate and mobilise an alternative power? That has to be extra-parliamentary, and it’s got to be in terms of the trade union rank-and-file”.
Reflecting on the tasks to come, Unjum says the situation is still highly unpredictable. “There’re all sorts of dangers ahead in terms of strategies in taking this fight forward, in terms of what [the union leaders] negotiate and settle on, and in terms of the bigger political fight.” 
But the next few months in Britain will be rife with opportunity. Beyond the <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/when-are-the-next-rmt-aslef-union-train-strikes-in-2022-transport-companies-london-overground-b1013399.html">next round</a> of rail strikes in August, unions will be engaged in fights well into the autumn. On the political front, a new prime minister will be installed on 5 September, and will likely bring with them a raft of <a href="https://tribunemag.co.uk/2022/07/liz-truss-trade-union-laws-conservative-party-leadership">anti-worker legislation</a> demanding a clear response from the labour movement. Simmering tensions inside the traditional party of the trade unions could erupt, raising new possibilities that may serve equally to dampen or to inflame workers’ confidence. 
“In terms of how this crisis unfolds, we’ll see”, Unjum says. “We don’t have a crystal ball on that, but we can try and shape the trajectory of where this goes. We are amidst a crisis which is global ... one thing that we can do, and that we must do, is organise the balance of forces in our favour.”
British workers have shown us that solidarity, strikes and class struggle are back on the agenda in the developed capitalist world. Even where unions are relatively weak and their parliamentary organisations hopelessly bankrupt, the working class still hold immense power. Let’s hope they can turn this summer of discontent into a boiling hot autumn.

Britain’s summer of industrial discontent

The revelations about the series of “lockdown parties” held at 10 Downing Street (the office and residence of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson) and elsewhere in the centres of government in London have exposed a deep decay at the heart of the ruling Conservatives. The true extent of Tory elitism and disregard for human life—things they work very hard to keep under wraps—has once again been thrust into the spotlight, and Johnson’s position as leader is under serious threat.
Throughout a pandemic that has claimed more than 155,000 lives in the UK, Tory ministers and staffers <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2022/jan/14/how-no-10s-alleged-parties-took-place-as-uk-covid-death-toll-rose-interactive">repeatedly congregated</a> to sing along to ABBA, eat cake and drink suitcases’ worth of wine. The fact that many of these events were held in direct breach of the government’s own COVID-19 restrictions only confirms that the Tories view themselves as a special breed, subject to different rules from the rest of the population.
Johnson’s nonchalant response to the “partygate” affair, the widespread public anger it has provoked,and the accompanying steep fall in <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/government-approval">the government’s popularity</a> have precipitated a crisis inside the Tory party. Johnson initially denied any knowledge of the parties, but was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-59965074">forced to apologise</a> last month after images of him in attendance at some functions were leaked to the press. Still, he tried to deflect blame by claiming he wasn’t aware that these were non-work events that violated lockdown rules. Given, however, that police now have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/04/police-have-photo-of-boris-johnson-with-beer-at-lockdown-party-say-reports">photographs</a> of Johnson nursing a beer at his own birthday celebration—held in direct contravention to rules limiting in-person gatherings—the claim that he didn’t know he was at a party is unlikely to stand up in a criminal investigation.
The prime minister has less to fear from law enforcement, however, than from mutiny in his own ranks. Fifteen Tory MPs have <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/boris-johnson-mps-uk-parliament-prime-minister-charles-walker-b2008347.html">publicly called</a> for Johnson to resign, and it’s rumoured that the threshold for a vote of no confidence could be reached at any time. Of course, none of the Conservatives speaking out against Johnson are doing so because they believe it was wrong for him to party in the midst of a deadly pandemic. Rather, they are using the scandal as an opportunity to topple a leader they see as having outlived his purpose and become an electoral liability for the party as a whole.
Before the pandemic hit two years ago, Johnson’s leadership was already more precarious than it may have appeared. The British state was still reeling from the result of the 2016 “Brexit” referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union. The referendum had been initiated by the Tory leadership with a view to stifling eurosceptic sentiment within the party. Almost the entire British ruling class, including the mainstream of the Tory government under David Cameron, campaigned for the UK to remain in the EU. British capital—heavily financialised and reliant on access to European markets—felt that leaving Europe <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/5352">would be a disaster</a>.
The fact that a majority of the British population voted to leave largely reflected a <a href="http://isj.org.uk/why-did-britain-vote-leave/">deep resentment</a> of the neoliberal establishment—especially after the austerity years that followed the eurozone crisis in 2011. The Tories, traditionally the ruling class’s preferred representatives, were left bitterly divided and discredited in the eyes of big business.
Even after the British ruling class had largely reconciled itself to the reality of Brexit, it seemed negotiations would drag on forever and that a satisfactory trade deal with the EU would never be reached. Johnson, an opportunistic latecomer to the eurosceptic wing of the Tories, was elected party leader and appointed prime minister after Theresa May resigned in June 2019. He then led the Conservatives to a crushing victory against the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party in the December 2019 general election on the back of the slogan “Get Brexit done”. His strongly pro-Brexit stance, combined with a <a href="https://theconversation.com/end-of-austerity-dont-believe-conservative-claims-so-quickly-127404">vague promise</a> to do away with austerity, resonated with many traditional Labour voters, particularly in the de-industrialised north and the Midlands.
Johnson was remarkably successful, initially, in rejuvenating the Tories and carving out a new popular base. He was able to cohere warring factions around his leadership and skilfully outflank a far-right electoral challenge from the UK Independence Party. And he did in fact get Brexit done—with unexpected proficiency. Johnson <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-55486081">negotiated a deal</a> with the EU that allowed Britain to “set its own rules” on labour and environmental regulations while retaining its trade privileges in Europe. This had the effect of pacifying hard Brexiters in the Conservative ranks at the same time as reassuring British capital that its substantial international connections would be protected.
Despite some early wins, however, Brexit would persist as a destabilising factor for Johnson’s leadership. Before the ink was dry on the new EU trade deal, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/25/world/europe/brexit-uk-tories.html">cleavages were already opening</a> over the way forward for British capital after its exit from Europe. Johnson was caught between two poles. On the one hand he needed to limit immediate disruptions to business, such as those arising from new customs arrangements, while on the other he had to deliver on the long-term perspectives of eurosceptic Tories who had backed him as leader. This faction expects a transition to a deregulated, low-tax <a href="https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/global-britain-in-the-world-what-role-for-the-united-kingdom-in-the-asia-pacific-after-brexit/">“global Britain”</a> with independent trade relations in Asia and other emerging markets—more the die-hard fantasy of a fallen empire than a genuinely viable strategy for British capital.
As COVID-19 hit UK shores in January 2020, then, there were already some emerging threats to Johnson’s position. In this context, it’s little surprise he preferred to try to ignore the existence of the virus for as long as possible, insisting instead that natural <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/10/12/1045219737/the-u-k-s-early-approach-to-pandemic-cost-thousands-of-lives-a-new-report-says">“herd immunity”</a> would solve the problem. The pandemic confronted Johnson as an inconvenient disruption to his project of restabilising the Tory party and winning back the trust of big business.
As it became clear the pandemic wouldn’t pass quickly, further divisions arose. The Conservative hard right cohered around an anti-lockdown program, and quarrels escalated over the extent of state intervention into the economy. Johnson’s furlough scheme for workers and handouts to business propelled UK government debt to its <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/68804db6-11a1-4d6e-97b2-ba83cb476e43">highest point since World War Two</a>. This is intolerable to large swathes of Tory parliamentarians and donors who still subscribe to Thatcherite fiscal doctrine. Other so-called “tax and spend” Conservatives feel historically low interest rates and declining profitability <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/boriss-tax-hike-is-a-defining-moment-for-uk-conservatives/2021/09/12/3c28f23a-13a4-11ec-a019-cb193b28aa73_story.html">justify a more interventionist approach</a>. This is the dominant tendency within Johnson’s cabinet. But their vision is one of taxpayer-funded <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/30/uk-coronavirus-business-bailouts-have-already-cost-more-than-100bn">handouts for business</a>, not of state spending on public welfare.
The fallout from the “partygate” scandal, and the precarious state of Johnson’s leadership, can be understood only with these longer-term intra-party tensions in mind.
Whether Johnson stays or goes, however, 2022 is set to be another <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/feb/07/1m-uk-adults-go-entire-day-without-food-in-cost-of-living-crisis">nightmarish year</a> for workers and the poor in Britain<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/dd394dc1-076d-4d71-88dc-2a33132185c7">. Some economists predict</a> British households will be hit harder over the next twelve months than they were during the global financial crisis of 2008-09. The UK’s consumer prices index (a measure of inflation) rose by 5.4 percent in the year to December 2021—its <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/household-finances-rishi-sunak-holly-williams-government-b1995995.html">highest level</a> in 30 years. At the same time, wages increased by <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60035312">only 3.8 percent</a> on an annualised basis between September and November, meaning workers are forking out a higher portion of their income just to access basic goods and services.
Households also face a looming blowout in energy prices. Annual costs are expected to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/feb/03/uk-households-face-record-54-energy-bill-rise-as-price-cap-is-lifted">spiral by 54 percent</a>, or an additional £600 per year on average, when government regulators lift the rates ceiling in April. This comes in a context in which almost 10,000 excess deaths per year are already caused by fuel poverty, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/27/dying-cold-europe-fuel-poverty-energy-spending">according to research by National Energy Action</a>, an NGO. Changes to National Insurance taxes in the same month will <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/jan/28/middle-income-earners-hit-hardest-national-insurance-higher-percentage-uk-rishi-sunak">disproportionately affect</a> those on lower incomes, and a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/mar/04/extra-13m-people-in-uk-to-start-paying-income-tax-over-next-five-years">threshold freeze</a> means that if wages do rise they will, in many cases, be immediately offset by higher taxes.
The Tories and the mainstream press blame rising prices on the COVID-19 pandemic, and tax increases for workers are spun as a necessary sacrifice to save the National Health Service from collapse. In reality, this is the return of austerity by stealth. The <a href="https://neweconomics.org/2018/06/nhs-funding-gap-1">regressive taxation system</a> that funds the NHS, for example, is designed so that earnings under £50,000 per year are taxed at 12 percent, while earnings over that threshold attract only a 2 percent tax rate (meaning those on higher incomes pay a significantly lower rate overall). The pandemic should have forced governments to demand <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/money/billionaires-pandemic-uk-fortunes-b1851327.html">more from the rich</a>, but instead they’re pushing the burden further onto the poorest with a 1.25 percent tax increase across the board. <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/chart-of-the-day/2021/12/how-uk-wages-are-stagnating">Wage stagnation</a> means this is a real pay cut for many workers.
This cost of living crisis is far from a pandemic-induced inevitability; it’s a deliberate assault on the working class. The government could, for instance, have limited price rises in energy by enforcing price caps or providing rebates funded by taxes on the windfall profits of the fossil fuel industry. Shell and British Petroleum posted a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/05/40bn-profits-for-bp-and-shell-fuel-calls-for-windfall-tax-on-energy-firms">combined profit</a> of almost £40 billion last year. If there’s one thing the Tories are united on, however, it’s that a particularly ruthless pro-business approach has been essential in regaining the trust of Britain’s capitalists after Brexit, and they have no intention of changing that approach in the pandemic era.
<a name="move954930541" id="move954930541"></a><a name="move954931871" id="move954931871"></a>The problem for the Tories is that voters tend to resent governments that send living standards off a cliff, especially if the members of those governments were caught partying while people died in their thousands, and even more so if the prime minister was elected on a promise never to reintroduce austerity. Local elections will be held across England in May, less than a month after the changes to National Insurance and energy prices come into effect, and Johnson’s tainted image, combined with mounting anger over the cost of living, threatens them with a wipe-out at the polls.
Until recently, the received wisdom inside the party was that Johnson might be removed after the local elections, a poor result providing a legitimate excuse for an orderly changing of the guard. A post-election change of leader would, by providing a natural bookend to the Johnson era, win the Tories breathing space to continue pursuing the same reactionary agenda with a “fresh face”—relatively untainted by association with events of recent months. The “partygate” scandal has complicated this schedule. Were Johnson to step down unexpectedly or be removed by a vote of no confidence in advance of the elections, it could—by the greater impression of continuity given by the act of “changing horses mid-stream”—doom his successor, and by extension the party, to carry the much deteriorated public regard for the government through the elections and beyond.
There are significant potential dangers for the Tories, in short, both in letting Johnson continue as leader and in removing him. So for now he continues as prime minister—stumbling on from scandal to scandal, crisis to crisis, with no clear end in sight.
In a last-ditch attempt to pacify his most rabid critics on the right, Johnson has promised a complete end to COVID-19 restrictions (including <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/uk-pm-johnson-says-end-covid-self-isolation-requirement-this-month-2022-02-09/">isolation requirements for the infected</a>). There have already been more than 8,000 deaths from the virus in the UK since the start of the year. Johnson’s move will condemn thousands more to death. This, and all the similar decisions he has made in the course of the pandemic that have contributed to Britain’s horrific COVID-19 death toll, are a much greater crime than any amount of carousing in 10 Downing Street—and one that, given the normalisation of death on a massive scale around the world, he is unlikely ever to be held accountable for.
The response to the barbarism of Tory rule, whether it’s Johnson at the helm or one of his various potential successors, should be to rebuild resistance in the workplaces and on the streets. Significant concessions can often be won in moments of political crisis such as this. Now, with the Conservative government weak and divided, there has never been a more important time to fight.

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