<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”.

Ruby Healer

‘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.

Boris Johnson’s road to nowhere

“A car has kind of pulled up, then reversed ... then lined up the worker and ... run them over”—this was the <a href="https://www.3aw.com.au/nurse-mowed-down-in-collingwood-covid-19-testing-site-hit-run/">eyewitness account</a> broadcast on Melbourne radio station 3AW after a shocking attack on a COVID-19 testing site attendant last month. The hit-and-run left the worker hospitalised, and was <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/man-arrested-after-nurse-injured-in-collision-at-collingwood-covid-testing-site-20211130-p59di6.html">one of two</a> separate assaults on testing staff in Melbourne that day. These attacks alone should outrage anyone concerned with public health and workplace safety. Unfortunately however, they are far from isolated examples.
Recent weeks have seen a barrage of assaults on frontline workers, clearly motivated by hostility to public health measures. Workers have been <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10252439/Covid-19-Australia-Unvaccinated-Bunnings-customer-lashes-staff-refused-entry.html">harassed</a> and <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10261945/Female-shopper-SPITS-retail-worker-shocking-video-aggressive-Covid-rules-grows.html">attacked</a> for asking customers to comply with QR code rules, vaccination requirements and mask mandates. In <a href="https://www.heraldsun.com.au/truecrimeaustralia/police-courts-victoria/antimasker-pushes-retail-worker-down-escalator/news-story/366982cfa1ffe30c26b589a6069f91f4">one horrifying instance</a>, a staff member at a Melbourne Dymocks store was pushed down an escalator and knocked unconscious while checking vaccination certificates. <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-02/police-investigate-assault-on-dymocks-staff-member/100668260">Earlier that day</a> an employee at the same store had been shoved out of the way by a customer refusing to check in via QR code, another staff member had been slapped in the face, and only hours afterwards a <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/dymocks-melbourne-hires-security-after-jump-in-assaults-on-staff-20211126-p59cnh.html">fourth worker</a> was "tackled" by an indignant shopper. According to researchers at the Australian National University and the University of Sydney, a <a href="https://www.policyforum.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Pandemic-Pressures.pdf">majority of retail workers</a> have reported an increase in customer aggression since the beginning of the pandemic.
The threat extends well beyond the retail industry. Recently <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-29/covid-19-melbourne-cafe-vandalised-death-threat-left-on-door/100658404">a brick was thrown</a> through the window of a Melbourne cafe, accompanied by a note which read “do what Daniel Andrews says and we will burn your shop down and kill you”. Two days later, a <a href="https://www.9news.com.au/national/victorian-bus-driver-allegedly-attacked-by-passenger-in-kerang-after-asking-him-to-wear-a-mask/b8f475d5-a776-4ad8-a35d-5aa55df8be8d">bus driver</a> was attacked and hospitalised in regional Victoria after asking a passenger to wear a mask. In the regional Queensland city of Toowoomba, <a href="https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/australia/antivaccination-protesters-target-melbourne-salvation-army-store/news-story/f5eeb6ec55771c39d054582b31e6d6b8">threatening letters</a> have been left on the windscreens of hospital workers' cars, warning that medical professionals "who inject and uphold the narrative ... [of] the Covid hoax" will face the death penalty.
The attacks come in the context of a <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/new-far-right-movement-and-how-left-should-respond">mass right-wing street movement</a> that places individual “freedom” above public health. A small but highly active minority of Australians has <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-20/covid-anti-lockdown-vaccine-mandate-rallies-melbourne-sydney/100636714">mobilised consistently</a> in opposition to lockdowns, mandates and vaccine passes. In every state, the so-called “freedom” movement has brought together anti-vaxxers, fringe libertarians, representatives of the Liberal Party, One Nation and the United Australia Party, and open neo-Nazis. The movement has received encouragement from sections of the business community and mainstream media that have argued from the start of the pandemic that any restrictions on the normal functioning of capitalism for the sake of public health should be opposed.
Even when they’re not attacking individual workers, the “freedom” movement glorifies violence. Protesters have staged <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/vaccine-mandates-australia-protests-threats/2021/12/01/e4bd7b40-4ce9-11ec-a7b8-9ed28bf23929_story.html">mock executions</a> of politicians associated with the implementation of public health measures. In states like Victoria and Queensland where Labor Premiers have enforced various restrictions to minimise the spread of COVID-19, chants of “hang Dan” (referring to Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews) or “hang the bitch” (Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk) are familiar refrains at weekly demonstrations. When asked about such violent language, Prime Minister Scott Morrison effectively gave a wink and a nod to the protesters, saying “many people are feeling frustrated” and that it’s “time for governments to get out of people’s lives”.
It’s no surprise that a handful of individuals have taken this as a signal to turn the violent rhetoric and threats into reality. One protester was recently <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/far-right-protester-charged-by-counter-terror-police-amid-talk-of-killing-daniel-andrews-20211117-p599qx.html">charged with incitement</a> after encouraging Victorians to bring guns to a demonstration and assassinate Daniel Andrews. Western Australia’s Labor Premier Mark McGowan was forced to <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=3203710689946579">close his electorate office</a> after a constituent drove a British Army tank into the street outside and brandished a pickaxe. Participants in the “freedom” movement have <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/victorian-politicians-left-jittery-by-rise-in-threats-and-abuse-20211123-p59bcz.html">posted the home addresses</a> of Labor parliamentarians and public health officials on social media, while thousands of threats of physical and sexual violence have been leveled against <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/nov/19/its-not-what-melburnians-do-crossing-the-line-between-protest-and-threat">politicians</a>, <a href="https://7news.com.au/news/wa/mark-mcgowans-rockingham-office-staff-subjected-to-rape-threas-from-anti-vaxxers-c-4592260">their staffers</a> and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-01/michael-gunner-death-threat-covid-anti-vaxxers-nt-chief-minister/100666186">their families</a>.
The emboldened far right has also directed physical violence at individual progressive activists. The daughter of Victoria’s Animal Justice Party MP Andy Meddick was <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/daughter-of-crossbench-mp-attacked-amid-heated-pandemic-bill-debate-20211119-p59afg.html#:~:text=Mr%20Meddick%20disputed%20the%20police,debate%20surrounding%20the%20pandemic%20bill.">assaulted in the street</a> while spray-painting over anti-vax propaganda in Melbourne’s north. In another <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/dec/05/political-activist-paddy-gibson-allegedly-threatened-by-three-men-who-tried-to-break-into-his-sydney-home">troubling incident</a>, skinheads clad in Eureka flag t-shirts targeted the home of a prominent anti-racist activist in Sydney. The far right, it seems, are using the momentum created by the “freedom” movement to launch a broader campaign of intimidation against the left.
This sort of violent intimidation is typical of far-right movements. It emerges when a radicalising minority feels simultaneously emboldened and frustrated by the actions of the mainstream right.
On the one hand, traditional conservatives are feeding anti-vax sentiment. They <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/dec/11/conspiracy-covid-and-the-coalition-why-are-more-of-its-mps-appealing-to-the-alt-right">lend legitimacy</a> to large street mobilisations that generate a sense of righteousness among extremists. On the other hand, despite the occasional dog whistle to protesters from the likes of Scott Morrison, the Australian ruling class as a whole does generally <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/politics-vaccinations">support vaccination</a> as a means of dealing with the pandemic without the need for more lockdowns or other measures that might threaten their profits. On top of this, <a href="https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/8868-victorian-state-voting-approvals-vaccine-november-2021-202111240941">public support for health measures</a> remains strong. The far-right anti-vax movement feels more and more confident to impose its views on society, but remains marginalised in reality. This helps to explain why some “freedom fighters” are lashing out through individual acts of violence and intimidation.
This radicalising dynamic is of particular concern in a context where openly neo-Nazi individuals and organizations are playing such a prominent role. Known far-right activists like <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/11/australia-neo-nazis-covid-19-protests-uad">Andy Nolch</a>, <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/08/australia-covid-vaccine-anti-vax-protests-demonstrations-pandemic-restrictions-far-right-conspiracies">Blair Cottrell</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/26/where-freedom-meets-the-far-right-the-hate-messages-infiltrating-australian-anti-lockdown-protests">Harrison McLean</a> have intervened into the “freedom” movement in an attempt to recruit a hardened core to fascistic groups like the National Socialist Network (NSN) and the Proud Boys. These groups are notorious for advocating, and at times for carrying out, violent attacks. In May this year, members of the NSN and the European Australian Movement allegedly <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-27/australian-supremacist-neo-nazi-thomas-sewell-cathedral-ranges/100574050">assaulted a group of hikers</a> who stumbled upon their white supremacist retreat in a Victorian state park. Australian neo-Nazi groups have <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/us-neo-nazi-group-recruits-young-australians-secret-recordings-reveal-20210324-p57dqh.html">proven connections</a> to far-right terrorists worldwide, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-23/christchurch-shooting-accused-praised-blair-cottrell/10930632">including the perpetrator</a> of the horrific 2019 Christchurch mosque massacre.
All this reinforces the importance of building a broad, defiant movement in opposition to the far right. The “freedom” movement may decline in the short term as restrictions in NSW and other states are further lifted, but the coming months will be full of opportunities for them to build on existing gains. The introduction of <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-10/children-five-to-11-covid-vaccine-pfizer-information/100689940">childhood vaccination</a>, the looming Federal election, and the spread of the <a href="https://www.news.com.au/finance/small-business/small-business-pleads-with-government-amid-omicron-uncertainty/news-story/31d1e74c0dc3eac0a33339e0060fdd1f">Omicron</a> variant are all potential triggers for a resurgence of the “freedom” movement’s mobilisations.
Anti-fascists have already taken the first steps in challenging the new far-right threat. On 20 November, <a href="https://redflag.org.au/index.php/article/anti-fascists-are-getting-organised">rallies were held</a> in cities around Australia in opposition to the “freedom” movement and its supporters in parliament. Further demonstrations, speakouts, and public forums since have helped cohere a layer of progressives committed to rebuilding the anti-fascist left in Australia. Activists have also established a <a href="http://www.antivaxattacks.com">website</a> where frontline workers can report harassment they face from anti-vaxxers. The next major mobilisation by anti-fascists will take place on Saturday 22 January, to coincide with the “freedom” movement’s next global day of action.
Anti-fascist groups are active in <a href="https://www.facebook.com/campaignarf">Melbourne</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/carfsyd">Sydney</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/CARFBrisbane">Brisbane</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/adelaidecarf">Adelaide</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/UNITEDABR/">Perth</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/carfcbr/">Canberra</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TasmaniansAgainstFascism">Hobart</a>.

The rise of far-right violence in Australia

Fascism confronts us today, not just as a dark chapter in the history of the twentieth century, but as an emerging danger in our own times. It is a phenomenon that demands serious analysis.
But the dominant explanations of fascism offered by mainstream thinkers are deeply unsatisfactory. Flick through the conventional literature, and you will find an assortment of shallow formulas for explaining it. One of the most common is that fascism was a sort of mass “cult of the leader”, or that Hitler’s “charisma” was simply irresistible. Such theories tell us nothing about the underlying social tensions that can push large numbers of people to the right.
Fascist movements, capable of wide-scale political and physical repression, cannot be written off as the cunning scheme of a single demagogue able to command the support of mindless devotees.
Nor can they be explained as extreme manifestations of racism. The far right certainly can and does weaponise race in an immensely destructive way. But fascism is not reducible to racism, nor is extreme racism the preserve of fascists. Mainstream capitalist political parties routinely use racist fear mongering to generate support, without being fascist.
The Australian Labor Party, for example, was forged around a nationalist perspective that sought to reconcile the interests of Australian workers with those of their bosses, and to stoke hostility towards migrant labour. But it is in no way a fascist party. The Liberal Party has overseen the murder and torture of refugees in its detention camps, yet remains the mainstream respectable representative of the Australian business class.
History tells us more about why racism can’t be at the core of our definition of fascism. There are many examples of fascist movements that have not employed race as a central mobilising tool. Indeed, racist rhetoric was relatively absent from the “classical” Italian form. In Italy, Spain and even in Australia during the 1930s, the main enemy that fascism identified for itself was the socialist left, not any purported ethnic threat.
This is not to discount the horrific crimes perpetrated in the name of anti-Semitism by the Nazis, nor to underplay how the modern far right uses Islamophobia to galvanise support. It is simply to say that racism need not be an essential feature of fascist movements.
Fascism historically has played on sentiments as diverse and contradictory as monarchism, corporatism, libertarianism, economic protectionism and aggressive militarism. As British Marxist Colin Sparks commented in 1974, “fascism shuffles together every myth and lie that the rotten history of capitalism has ever produced like a pack of greasy cards and then deals them out to whoever it thinks they will win”.
If particular ideological arguments aren’t universal to fascist movements, then is it possible to have a general theory of fascism at all? Marxists argue it is, but it requires going beyond the superficialities of such movements. It requires an understanding of the capitalist societies in which fascism emerges, the crises these societies produce and the class tensions that are endemic to them.
The first attempts to compare Mussolini’s Italy with German Nazism were made by Marxists. In a speech as early as 1925, Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci argued that fascism “is not a purely Italian phenomenon ... it is a European and world phenomenon, of great importance in understanding the general postwar crisis”.
By the early 1930s, socialists were able to draw on their experiences of fighting fascism in Germany, Italy, Spain and France to produce a general outline of its essential characteristics. For these activists, fascism had a few consistent features that endured across every one of its manifestations.
First, fascism has an identifiable class basis. Trotsky argued that, everywhere, the “main army of fascism ... consists of the petty bourgeoisie and the new middle class, the small artisans and shopkeepers of the cities”. These layers have interests distinct from the two major classes of capitalism, the working class and the capitalists.
The middle classes are caught between two hostile poles. On the one hand, capitalism’s tendency to concentrate production in large firms can threaten the existence of small business. As the chaos of a profit-driven economy inevitably produces periods of boom alongside acute contractions and crises, the middle classes feel buffeted by forces outside their control. They can become hostile to the major political representatives of capital, whose taxation policies and bailout packages tend to favour big business.
At the same time, small proprietors feel particularly vulnerable in the face of working-class organisation. Without the backing of large investors, their bottom line can be critically impacted by small wage increases or improvements to health and safety. Even those middle-class elements who are not direct employers can share this fear of working-class activity. Intellectuals, petty officials and state bureaucrats are all dependent on the smooth functioning of capitalism and the legitimacy of its political structures. Any workers’ movement that destabilises capital is a threat to their privileged position.
The middle classes at certain times can be driven to such depths of desperation and frenzy that they abandon their support for traditional elites and attempt to build their own political organisations. Such organisations aim to use the power of the state to crush the workers’ movement and sections of capital that threaten the middle class’s interests, a classic fascist program.
Fascism’s petty-bourgeois character doesn’t mean other social layers aren’t involved. As it grows, fascism can draw support from those who see no other solution to the misery brought about by capitalism. Returned soldiers brutalised by war, the desperate ranks of the unemployed and others disenchanted with the status quo can be dragged along by the middle classes. German revolutionary Clara Zetkin recognised how fascism had become “a refuge for the politically homeless, for the socially uprooted, the destitute and the disillusioned”.
Fascism’s capacity to present itself as a radical alternative to capitalism was another feature noted by interwar socialists. The denunciation of big banks, globalisation and elites are all constant refrains of fascist movements. Fascism can employ anti-capitalist rhetoric, but the solutions it provides are thoroughly reactionary.
Trotsky observed that the unifying goal of fascism is “the uprooting of all elements of proletarian democracy within bourgeois society”. Fascists seek to “demolish all the defensive bulwarks of the proletariat, and to uproot whatever has been achieved during three-quarters of a century by social democracy and the trade unions”.
Fascism’s goal is the violent suppression of the working class, not some radical re-ordering of social relations. The petty-bourgeois dream of the steady exploitation of workers, unfettered by the inconvenient farce of liberal democracy.
Because of their shared hatred for the working class, representatives of big capital often directly fund and support fascist movements. Hitler’s activities were financed from early on by the coal baron Emil Kirdof and the steel magnate Fritz Thyssen. In Britain, the media mogul Lord Rothermere donated to and provided publicity for Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts. In extreme cases, fascism is welcomed by existing rulers where traditional methods of coercion and consent have been unable to restore capitalist stability. Neither Hitler nor Mussolini seized power through insurrection; they were invited to rule by kings, presidents and army generals.
Fascism is not revolutionary, but Marxists understand that it is a special type of mass movement. It grows as a relatively independent force with a committed petty-bourgeois base, not as the direct instrument of capital.
The Nazis and the Italian Fascisti adopted various strategies for building their parties before being welcomed into power. Mussolini’s strike-smashing machinery was perfected through years of political terror in the Italian countryside before moving against the industrial centres of working-class strength.
The Nazi Party endured five years of relative insignificance on the fringes of German politics following a failed armed uprising in 1923. It became clear that straightforward political violence could not defeat the organised working class in southern Germany. Hitler announced that “instead of working to achieve power by armed conspiracy, we shall have to hold our noses and enter the Reichstag against the Catholic and Marxist deputies”. This electoral work allowed the Nazis to build up a committed and highly active membership that could be deployed as street-fighting cadre towards the end of the decade. Mass demonstrations are important for fascist movements because, as Hitler noted, they “burn into the little man’s soul the proud conviction that, though a little worm, he is nevertheless part of a great dragon”.
Fascist movements perform myriad twists and turns in their rhetoric and organisational forms. They can also play a reactionary role even where they are not installed into government. In February 1934, fascist gangs initiated an abortive coup against the National Assembly in Paris. While they were unsuccessful at storming parliament, the French ruling class used the riots as an excuse to overthrow the democratically elected government and appoint the conservative Prime Minister Gaston <a>Doumergue</a>. By 1940, French capitalists were welcoming the Nazi invasion from Germany and establishing a collaborationist regime headed by the anti-Semite Philippe Pétain.
A similar story emerges on a smaller scale in Australia. In 1932, the fascist New Guard hatched a plot to depose the supposedly “socialist” New South Wales Labor government under Jack Lang. The New Guard had spent years terrorising the left and smashing workers’ organisations in street brawls. In the end, the state’s governor sacked Lang before the fascists could organise their coup, and the New Guard was reabsorbed into the respectable machinery of Australian conservatism. But significant damage had been inflicted on the left, and a new far-right tendency had entered mainstream politics.
These examples from the 1930s illustrate that fascism can have a complex relationship to other right-wing forces. At times, fascist movements can operate as shock troops for more traditional conservative parties. They can emerge from and re-enter mainstream electoral formations as the political context changes. Gramsci characterised fascism as “a spontaneous swarm of reactionary energies that coalesce, dissolve and then reassemble”. Always and everywhere, though, fascism is fed by the social tensions that capitalism produces.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created an opening for far-right and fascist forces to grow. The weakness of the workers’ movement, and the conservative social stability that engenders, puts a limit on how much support they can attract from big capital and mainstream political figures today. Nevertheless, the numbers they are able to rally should be cause for concern and motivation to act.
To be successful, we need an analysis that builds on the important insights of socialists who have fought fascism before us. Crucially, we need to start from a fundamental critique of the structure of capitalist society, the tensions it creates and the political ideas it spawns. As the German leftist Max Horkheimer insisted in 1939, “whoever is not willing to talk about capitalism should also remain silent about fascism”.

The many faces of fascism

In the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, locals pride themselves on their reputation for progressive thinking and sustainable living. Before the pandemic, this meant that residents could avail themselves of whale-song healing sessions, and specialists were available to perform reiki on ailing trees. Alternative medicine posed no serious risk to the community at large: only its purchasers might experience non-fatal overdoses of “detoxifying” frog poison or waste money on fraudulent “cures” for serious illnesses. But things have taken a more sinister turn since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. NSW’s regional counterculture capitals have experienced a political awakening, emerging as some of country’s most concentrated and stubborn anti-vaccine communities.
In Byron Bay, Nimbin and similar towns, vaccination rates remain well below the national average. Anti-vaccine leaflets and posters are promoted by local businesses, some of which have refused service to vaccinated customers. It’s an international trend. The organic farming and alternative-education communities have become a base of anti-vaccine sentiment in the Taconic-Berkshires area of New York state, according to Eoin Higgins in the Atlantic. Earlier this year in the UK, a “freedom rally” in mystical Glastonbury was graced with an opening ceremony led by the local shaman.
Bohemian bug-outs off the beaten track have become nerve centres for COVID denialism. It’s easy to see why: these are places where amethysts and ashwaganda are accepted as well-documented cures for illnesses both physical and spiritual.
But it’s not just in these secluded settlements that we can see the overlap between “counterculture” and anti-vaccine politics. In Brisbane the enigmatic People’s Revolution is inspiring dreadlocked dissenters to march for “freedom” alongside far-right agitators. In Melbourne, more than 60 students, staff and family members associated with the deceptively named Fitzroy Community School were infected with COVID in September when the school (which charges around $18,000 a year for a unique program based on “learning webs”) reopened to all students because “the evidence on children getting sick from COVID is pretty much non-existent”. The COVID denialism of the “alternative lifestyle” scene is putting everyone at risk and opening new inroads for the anti-vax far right to exploit.
For some liberal journalists, these developments are a shock. In an opinion piece for the Guardian, Greg Monbiot meditates on the apparent contradictions of our times: “I hear right-on people mouthing the claims of white supremacists, apparently in total ignorance of their origins. I encounter hippies who once sought to build communities sharing the memes of extreme individualism. Something has gone badly wrong in parts of the alternative scene”. But for socialists, this shouldn’t be a surprise.
The kind of “alternative” and “sustainable” living that characterises these communities is not a form of collective solidarity; it’s business-oriented individualism. There’s nothing left wing about taking sanctuary in a community that grows its own organic produce and sells “alternative” health products while the world is racked with famine and climate disaster. It’s no different from the more mainstream business-oriented “solutions” to social problems like selling branded Keep Cups. Even the understandable hostility to big pharma that pervades these circles isn’t progressive. The alternative scene hates pharmaceutical companies, not because they are parasites generating immense wealth from a rampant viral illness, but because they leave little space for “holistic medicine” cranks to cash in on the same crisis.
Throughout the COVID pandemic, herbal medicine pedlars, naturopaths and even yoga studios have made a mint by tapping into the “wellness community” and its focus on “natural immunity”. They have their own branded, for-profit medicines, and they want to sell them despite the lack of effectiveness; their hostility to mainstream medicine is just a marketing gimmick to carve out a space for their product. Dr Isaac Golden, a homeopath operating out of Gisborne, Victoria, claims that “pharmaceutical drug cartels have convinced many politicians that only drugs and vaccines have any effectiveness compared to natural therapies, when often the reverse is true”. His alternative technique is called “homoeoprophylaxis”, taking tiny amounts of the coronavirus and introducing it into the bloodstream, a treatment that is fortunately banned until further notice by Australian medical authorities. As part of his regular service, Golden offers a 30-minute “immunisation consultation” at which clients can discuss their concerns about AstraZeneca and Pfizer for only $60 a pop. A similar approach has been taken by the Peninsula Hot Springs resort, which maintains that “healthy lifestyle practices ... are not only the most effective prevention for viral illness, they are currently also the best treatment”. The prices here are a little steeper, with a facial plus geothermal mineral bathing session setting you back $285.
In some remarkable cases, ecologically minded individualists become full-blown far right race-baiters. In March this year, environmentalists across Europe were shocked when celebrity vegan chef Attila Hildmann began spewing anti-Semitic bile across his substantial social media platforms. Hildmann garnered around 1,500 positive responses to his snap poll: “Do you think Jews are a) human beings or b) lying parasites?”. Our own Pete Evans has drifted in a similar direction, drawing consternation after sharing an overt neo-Nazi meme with connections to the Christchurch massacre.
The far right have long been interested in irrationalist, mystical versions of health care and ecological politics. The esoteric principles of 19th century “anthroposophy” were adopted by the Nazi party as a means to connect the “cosmic significance of racial attributes” with Lebensreform practices of “communal living and non-traditional schooling, whole foods, natural healing ... [and] vegetarianism”. In Dachau and Ravensbrück, Jewish internees tended biodynamic farms supervised by the SS Office of Race and Settlement. In the 1970s, the Italian New Right organised “Hobbit Camps” inspired by J.R.R Tolkien’s racialised romanticism, attracting busloads of hippies to “debates about issues like ecology, health and housing shortages”, Tobias Hof writes in an article for the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right. More recently, “deep ecology” proponents have lined up with eco-fascists to push for bans on immigration.
The development of anti-vax politics in these so-called "progressive" circles shouldn't come as a shock. These scenes have long been characterised by individualism, mystical thinking and an eye for a profit. Hippie quacks have always taken advantage of people's justified scepticism about governments and big Pharma. We should oppose them on the same basis that we oppose any unethical and dishonest businesses: they line their pockets with the proceeds of human suffering.

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