More than half of parents and nearly two-thirds of grandparents believe life is more difficult and stressful now than when they were children, citing money issues, house prices, the climate crisis and emotional anxiety linked to school and social media, according to the charity Action for Children.

Mental illness continued to register as a major worry for children, with 42% believing their own mental health to be an issue, compared with 29% when the question was asked in the previous Action for Children childhood survey in 2019.

 In 2019, 17% of parents and 9% of grandparents recognised mental health as a concern. By 2021 this had increased to 45% of parents and 30% of grandparents.

 A third of children believe their parents enjoyed a better childhood than theirs. Many cite increasing worries around mental health, school stress and family finances, with those from poorer backgrounds much more likely to be pessimistic.

38% of children from low-income households (up to £20,000 a year) were more likely to say their childhoods were worse, this fell to 26% of children from households with an income of £70,000 or more. Similarly, 64% of poorer parents thought children’s lives were worse, compared with 48% from richer households.

Half of the children from low-income households are worried about family finances, for example, compared with 14% of children from wealthier families. Children from poorer families are far less confident they will get the job they want, and twice as likely to believe they will not get to university.

Childhoods have got worse in Britain, survey reveals | Children | The Guardian

The Socialist Party will be standing two candidates in the local elections in England on 5 May.

One in the Clapham East ward of the London Borough of Lambeth and the other in the Pantiles & St. Marks ward of Tunbridge Wells Borough Council in Kent.

The nomination papers for our candidate in Lambeth — Danny Lambert — were handed in and accepted today. So the campaign there is off.

Here is the election address:

End Capitalism

The other candidates in this election don’t want change. Instead, they will be wittering on about how they propose to fix the faulty system we live under – capitalism – so it’s maybe a tiny bit better for you and yours. But every politician says this. In every party. In every election. And they never really fix anything.

The reason they can’t fix capitalism’s problems is because capitalism IS the problem.

Why? Because it only works for the tiny minority who own most of the wealth. Capitalism has revolutionised our science and technology so that we can now produce enough for everybody worldwide. That means we could make everything free if we take the world back from the rich and run it collectively as a communally owned resource.

What’s causing poverty, inequality, wars and global warming is that we have a 21st-century planet being trashed by an obsolete 19th-century economic system that puts profits before meeting needs.

The natural and industrial resources of our planet Earth are the common heritage of all humans.

Universal free access would be simpler, faster, and smarter. And it’s an upgrade the world badly needs, so show your support by voting for the Socialist Party (World Socialist Movement) candidate, Danny Lambert.

 нет войне

Once again European cities are being bombed.

Once again displaced persons are on the move. This has never ceased to be the fate of people in Africa and Asia but one of the claims of Western capitalism was that it had at least established peace and prosperity in Europe.

Once again full-scale war has returned to Europe.

Once again the illusion that permanent peace and prosperity is possible under capitalism has been shattered.

Once again the socialist assertion that nationalism can never serve the interests of the working class is being attested to daily amidst the horrors of the war in Ukraine.

The simple fact is that worker is butchering worker – for the privilege of rearranging capitalist state borders. Needless to say, in this as in all wars it is the working class who suffer most. They do the fighting and the dying and it is their lives and homes that count for most of the “collateral damage” whether or not they swallow the nationalist filth of their leaders.  This war is not the result of ancient hatreds or peculiar Slavic mentality, they are the result of capitalism and can therefore happen anywhere in the world, even here. Even by the barbaric standards of contemporary capitalism, the situation in Ukraine is dire. 

We in the Socialist Party place on record our complete abhorrence with regard to the plight of our class brothers and sisters in Ukraine and have no equivocation in denouncing the murderous gangsters who have blood on their hands. The Russian missile strikes on Ukraine are aimed not just at direct military targets but at the industrial infrastructure of power stations, fuel depots, factories, chemical plants, roads, railways and bridges which serve civilian purposes as well as supplying the Ukrainian military machine. All this represents the destruction of useful wealth. As socialists have always said, war means social regression.

Wars are inevitable under capitalism because of the economic competition between states that is built in to it, but is normally only a last resort when a state’s “vital interest” is involved. Governments are little more than the executives of their respective master classes and in the cut-throat world of capitalist competition they must be seen to be promoting their profit-oriented interests, and to hell with the cost of life. In other words, this war is no different from any of the wars that have taken place in modern times. It’s a business war.

 Capitalism is driven by the competitive struggle for profits between corporations and states. Conflict, economic, political and, as a last resort, the military is built-in to capitalism over sources of raw materials, investment outlets, markets, trade routes, and strategic points to control and protect these. When a state judges that its “vital interest” is threatened – e.g. needing to secure access to a key raw material, trade route or military outpost-it goes to war. The USA and the UK did this when they invaded Iraq in 2003 and Russia is doing this now by invading Ukraine.

Capitalism breeds war, though most people would prefer to live in peace. Consequently, massive propaganda exercises are employed by the state to stoke their fears and anxieties that stem from material poverty and insecurity. Invariably they also endeavour to present it as being in some way humanitarian. This is because people have a healthy horror of war. They know war means death and destruction. Death not only of the soldiers on both sides, but also of women, children and old people as “collateral damage” – who make up many of the casualties of modern war – and destruction not only of military installations and hardware but also of bridges, roads, power stations, ports, hospitals and other socially-useful installations.

Many people’s gut reaction is simply that war is crazy. Socialists share this anti-war sentiment. It is one of the reasons why we are real socialists, advocates of a united world community without frontiers based on all the Earth’s resources, natural and industrial, becoming the common heritage of all humanity and being used to satisfy people’s needs instead of for profit. We have concluded that capitalism means war and that therefore to get rid of wars and the threat of wars and the constant preparation for war represented by maintaining armed forces-you have got to get rid of capitalism.

That voices are raised against the war, millions of voices shows that there is hope. That workers – whose experience of life stems from using their energies and talents to cooperatively solve problems and achieve goals; who realise the potential for mutual dependence and support; who enjoy some security of life won through the class struggle – are determined to oppose the war shows that opposition to war has its basis in material reality rather than mere moral condemnation.

War is completely unnecessary. We are living in a world that has enough resources to provide plenty for all, eliminate world poverty, ignorance and disease, to provide adequate and comfortable life for everyone on the planet. Yet under capitalism resources are squandered on armaments, of the individual as well as of mass destruction, and, as now, in actual war. Even in times of peace-as the armed truce between wars is called capitalism’s pursuit of profit pollutes and plunders the planet and upsets the balance of nature with potentially devastating consequences. The economic law “no profit, no production” applies implacably, resulting in millions dying of hunger and related diseases every year simply because it is not profitable to produce the food to feed them and, in fact, often while the food that could feed them is destroyed so as to maintain prices and profits.

As we have announced several times in the past, if we are to prevent the 21st century from becoming a more violent re-run of the 20th, that witnessed two world wars, the first use of nuclear weapons and many hundreds of smaller conflicts—all in the name of profit—it is essential we, the victims, the cannon fodder, the class that has the biggest price to pay to satisfy the whims of the mighty, begin to organise now, not tomorrow and nor in years to come when the air-raid sirens are screaming. We as a class have suffered too much and have too much to lose to leave decisions regarding the future of our planet in the hands of a group of arrogant, conceited and profit-crazed individuals. Let’s really organise to take their power away, before it is too late.

 For climate campaigners, fossil fuel energy is a key driver of war and needs to be phased out and replaced by renewable energy.  

“More investment and reliance on fossil fuels is music to the ears of despots and warmongers all over the world who recognize this is an energy system that benefits them,” said Global Witness Murray Worthy. “If Europe truly wants to get off Russian gas, the only real option it has is phasing out gas altogether.”

“We have the unique historical chance and obligation to choose now for a radical shift of the way we generate and consume energy,” said Andy Gheorghiu, a Germany-based anti-gas and -fracking campaigner. “But the solution our trans-Atlantic governments presented was nothing but business as usual.”

 The EU has turned to the US for an alternative gas supply. An extra 15 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas (LNG) — sourced largely from hydraulic fracking wells that have mushroomed across the United States will now arrive in  Europe this year. Concerns are also growing about the immediate climate impacts of LNG fracked from shale deposits deep under the ground. Though fracking is banned across much of Europe due to its environmental impact, including the use of chemicals that contaminate groundwater, the EU is happy to source fracked gas from the US.

“The agreement puts the EU and the US on a misguided and dangerous path by fast-tracking new infrastructure to import fossil gas into Europe,” said Murray Worthy, gas campaign leader at the environment NGO Global Witness. “Building new import terminals would mean locking in fossil gas imports for years to come, long after the EU needs to quit this climate-wrecking fuel for good.”

It has severe climate implications because of LNG’s high methane emissions. In Texas, for example, high emissions from so-called methane flaring often go unregulated, allowing leakage from the tens of thousands of wells in the Permian Basin, which stretches into New Mexico — its gas reserves have been labelled “some of the dirtiest in the world.”

Indeed, a 2019 study attributed a decade of growth in global atmospheric methane emissions to the fracking boom in the United States. It concluded that shale-gas production in North America may be responsible for “over half of all of the increased emissions from fossil fuels globally” in the previous decade.

Researchers Amanda Levin and Christina Swanson, from the US-based Natural Resources Defense Council, have concluded that US attempts to ramp up LNG production and exports could scupper any chance of limiting global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F).

They describe the “rapidly expanding” export of LNG as a “bridge” to the clean-energy transition — gas emissions are about 50% lower than coal — will “lock in fossil fuel dependence, making the transition to actual low-carbon and no-carbon energy even more difficult.”

The climate impact of LNG will double when extraction, transport, liquefaction and re-gasification are added to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of gas burning, the researchers note.

The 130 to 213 million metric tons (143-235 short tons) of new GHG emissions in the US generated by a tripling of exports between 2020 and 2030 will be like putting up to 45 million more fossil fuel-powered cars on the road annually — it will also reverse the 1% annual GHG decline achieved in the past decade, according to the authors. 

The European Union’s imported LNG is also being used as a feedstock for plastics and fertilizers. With import contracts often locked in for up to 20 years, such fossil fuel availability will be a disincentive to decarbonize these high emission raw material sectors. 

However, necessary infrastructure such as terminals will take two to three years to construct, making the European Union’s goal of cutting Russian gas imports by two-thirds by year’s end unlikely. 

The true cost of fracked US ′freedom gas′ | Environment | All topics from climate change to conservation | DW | 28.03.2022

  600 million people, or 50 percent of Middle East and North Africa (MENA)  population, may be exposed to “super-extreme” weather events by 2100 at current projections, raising questions about “human survivability” in some areas.

At current projections, some areas in MENA could see temperatures potentially reaching 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit) or higher in the coming decades, rendering them uninhabitable. 

Severe water and food scarcity and the mass movement of “climate refugees” have been forecast.

‘Grave threat to life’: UN climate chief issues warning for MENA | Climate Crisis News | Al Jazeera

 International nurses working for NHS trusts and private care homes are being trapped in their jobs by clauses in their contracts that require them to pay thousands of pounds if they try to leave.

In extreme cases, nurses are tied to their roles for up to five years and face fees as steep as £14,000 if they want to change jobs or return home early.

Parosha Chandran, a barrister and UN expert on human trafficking who helped shape the UK’s modern slavery laws, likened the clauses to “debt bondage” and called for them to be reviewed at the highest level. “This gives rise to very serious concerns about exploitation,” she said.

Designed to retain staff and recoup recruitment costs, they often cover hiring expenses such as flights to the UK, visas and the fee for taking language and competency exams. In many cases, they also include the costs of mandatory training, which workers hired in the UK are not routinely required to pay.

Nurses affected by the repayment terms, many of whom served on the frontline at the height of the pandemic, said they had been pushed into debt or locked into long-term payment agreements after leaving roles, even in cases of bullying or family emergencies. Others stay in jobs despite illness or poor working conditions as they fear they will be unable to repay, charities and unions said.

Patricia Marquis, director for England at the Royal College of Nursing, said she was “very concerned” by a practice which flourished “in a climate of chronic understaffing”. The RCN was aware of some employers using punitive clauses which could result in workers being forced to pay thousands of pounds.

“We have also heard of cases in which employers try to frighten and intimidate staff with threats of deportation should they choose to work elsewhere,” Marquis said.

Susan Cueva, a trustee of the charity Kanlungan, which supports Filipino migrants, said: “They are taking advantage of these workers who have no clue about the rules in the UK,” she said. “They end up thinking, ‘I better sit tight, even though I’m suffering,’ because they can’t afford to pay it back.”

It costs between £10,000 and £12,000 to recruit an overseas nurse, but employers can save £18,500 in agency nurse costs in the first year alone, according to one estimate. By comparison, it takes three years to train a nurse in the UK and costs about £50,000 to £70,000.

Overseas nurses in the UK forced to pay out thousands if they want to quit jobs | Nursing | The Guardian

 Thousands of people, mostly Russian nationals, protested in the Czech capital against Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Demonstrators also called on Putin to release political prisoners

 Organizers said it was important to show that Russian expatriates are not secret Putin supporters. Russians in Prague are “not Putinists, they are Europeans.”

Protester and former soldier, Oleg Golopyatov, said: “Just because we are Russians doesn’t mean we are automatically for the war.”

Ukraine: Russians living in Prague stage anti-war rally | News | DW | 26.03.2022

 There is no such thing as an ideal foreign policy. In international politics, there is no policy that will suit all times and all circumstances. There is none that can be carried out to give a guarantee of enduring peace. After every outbreak of war historians and journalists look back to this or that turning point, and say that if only a certain government had acted differently, with more foresight, the war would not have happened. This kind of reasoning rests on assumptions that are not justified. It assumes that a government is a free agent, able to follow any policy that the international situation may seem to call for. It ignores the forces behind the government which determine the government’s attitude and limit its freedom of action; the electorates that have to be considered, but more important commercial, industrial and financial groups whose demands on foreign policy are coloured by their trading and other interests, such as the so-called “isolationists” versus the “interventionists”.

The view taken by the “wise-after-the-event” historians assumes, too, that if one government gave a certain lead in international affairs other governments would react in a simple practicable way, determined either by fear of opposing a strong group of super-powers or by the mutual desire to maintain world peace.

 Another problem is also that political leaders all too often ignore their own intelligence reports when they don’t fit with their political goals. Those goals reflect ideological and electoral concerns such as the need to appear to be acting in strong and determined ways – to be more assertive protectors of “freedom” than their competitors in the opposition party. This works to make presidents and prime ministers prone to opportunism and short-sightedness.

Capitalism forces all governments to compete in the world market and to strive for aims that cannot be satisfied. In order to solve the insoluble problems of its own industries and financial organisations every nation, great or small, is demanding something which the other nations cannot afford to yield. And the whole problem is complicated by the sectional interests within each country, each trying to influence foreign policy. Alongside all this is the fact that the propertied class in all countries fears “subversive” influences and leans towards other governments which look like firm bulwarks for the defence of property.

The  Socialist Party has the clearest and most positive attitude to war. We are opposed to all wars, whether they be major and worldwide, or minor and localised. Our opposition to all war has been consistent from the time of our origin.

 Our opposition to war is an opposition distinct from all others. It is not an opposition based upon religious beliefs; and although we are opposed to war on social and humanitarian grounds, our opposition is not limited to a humanitarian approach – it goes much further.

The socialist opposition to war results from our analysis and opposition to capitalism; the realisation that this system is the cause of war; further, that the working class are living under a system that can never be made to operate in their interests; and that war is inevitable under capitalism, and that the two go hand in hand and should be completely opposed by the workers at all times until they are both finally eliminated, one with the other.

The  Socialist Party’s answer is that we can uproot the cause of war by organising to uproot the capitalist system.

 Workers have more than the necessary numbers to vote capitalism out and socialism in, as proposed by the  Socialist Party. This new social system, the working people alone can bring into being, thus forever putting an end to wars, and establishing the society of human solidarity based on freedom, peace and abundance.

To conclude: Sentiment and emotion for a fine cause are laudable. But without a sound premise and defined goal, they can only end in failure and despair. The crying need of our time is not marches and demonstrations for limited and impossible to attain objectives, but determined, unrelenting action to awaken the working class to the imperative need for a socialist reconstruction of society, and to enlighten them on the principles and program for accomplishing that social change in a peaceful manner.

To quote scripture, Isaiah saw in prophetic vision a time when nations should war no more—when swords should be transformed into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks. The fulfilment of the prophecy only awaits socialism and the solution to the economic problems we all face. All else is futile and hopeless.

IT IS THE SAME IN EVERY WAR

The bloody butchery of world capitalism had been unleashed in Ukraine. Working people in their masses were being sacrificed as human offerings to the insatiable god of Mammon. The recruiting sergeants pour forth the propaganda of nationalism. Those who once waved the red flag in peacetime and carry their national flags in war. It is easy to favour peace when there is no war. But, because they adhere to the ideology of capitalism and do not recognise it as a world system based upon a clear class division between capitalists and workers, the phoney socialists abandoned the internationalism of the working class in favour of the interest of capitalist nations. We have been asked to support “wars for democracy” and “wars of national liberation” and “wars for self-determination”. 

In every case the World Socialist Movement has refused to support the view that the workers’ interest can be advanced in any way by means of capitalist war. It is not only in peace that we have spoken of peace, but in war too, even though the consequences for our members have not been easy or comfortable. War has only one cause, so it has only one possible solution: world socialism.

We hold that the working class must march to its emancipation from wage-slavery and the domination of the capitalist class, by the conquest of political power. In the Britain the means  to accomplish this are already in the hands of the workers, the workers have the overwhelming majority of the votes at their disposal when an election takes place. Hence the great, immediate, and pressing work requiring to be done is the education of the working class to an understanding of socialism to a realisation of their slavery and the method of their emancipation.

The working class are slaves to the capitalist class. While the workers produce all existing wealth by applying their labour-power to the materials provided by Nature, this wealth, and the instruments necessary for its production, along with the great storehouse of Nature’s materials -the earth- are owned and controlled by the master class under a system of private ownership that necessitates the selling of the bulk of the products upon the markets. But while powers of production increase by leaps and bounds, the markets grow but slowly. Hence the struggles between the various groups of capitalists for the control of these markets and the routes thereto so that they may dispose of the commodities the wage-slaves have produced. Practically all the wars of the last three centuries, from the struggle against the Dutch and Portuguese in India to the present carnage have had their essential causes rooted in the demands of the various groups of capitalists to control these markets and routes.

The workers’ share of these conflicts has been to slaughter each other in their masters’ interests, to find a grave if killed, or be offered the degrading and comfortless shelter of the workhouse if disabled or maimed. The hardship, misery, want, and suffering following these wars fall always upon the working class.

No matter which group of the masters win the struggle, the workers remain enslaved. The division of interests is not between the peoples of the world, but between the classes – the master class and the working class. Not, therefore, in their fellow Workers abroad, but in the master class at home and abroad, are the working-class enemies found.

What interest have the workers, then, in either starting or carrying on war for their masters? Absolutely none.

Every socialist must, therefore, wish to see peace established at once to save further maiming and slaughter of our fellow workers. All those who on any pretext, or for any supposed reason, wish the war to continue, at once stamp themselves as anti-socialist, anti-working class, and pro-capitalist.

Moreover, where the working class have the necessary means – the franchise – for their emancipation within their grasp it is clearly an anti-socialist and treacherous act to urge them to use those means for the purpose of placing political power in the hands of the masters. The flimsy excuses so often used to cover up such acts of treachery to the working class merely add evidence to support the truth of this statement.

Applying these tests of real understanding of socialist principle and correct action to the organisations in this country claiming to be socialist, we find all of them except the Socialist Party failing to stand that test. The so-called  Labour Party is ready at all times to make political bargains with the capitalists and to urge the workers to place power in the hands of the masters.

THE SOCIALIST PARTY alone takes up the socialist position. THE SOCIALIST PARTY places on record its abhorrence of this latest manifestation of the callous, sordid and mercenary nature of the international capitalist class, and declaring that no interests are at stake justifying the shedding of a single drop of working-class blood, enters its emphatic protest against the brutal and bloody butchery of our brothers of this and other lands, who are being used as food for cannon abroad while suffering and starvation are the lot of their fellows at home. Having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow workers of all lands the expression of our goodwill and socialist fraternity.

We declare that there was nothing in the conditions of any country which justified socialists voluntarily supporting either side in the war, and record our condemnation of such action as a betrayal of socialist principles arising from lack of political knowledge and unsound political organisation.

So, with our own hands clean and our every action in accord with the CLASS struggle and the solidarity of the interest of the working class the world over, we bring before the international proletariat our DEMAND FOR PEACE without any change of attitude or re-adjustment of policy. We stand for PEACE without reference to terms, since the fruits of capitalist war are the masters’, and only the pains and penalties of the Workers’.

To the socialists of other countries we extend our fraternal greetings. As soon as conditions will permit us to do so we shall endeavour to join forces with our comrades for the purpose of establishing a global socialist movement  where socialist policies shall be decided, where mis–leaders and tricksters who use the name and fame of socialism will be exposed and denounced, where the message of socialism will be sent forth to the toilers of all countries in clear and unmistakable terms, where the gage of battle against the capitalist class will be thrown down to the clarion call:

“WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS; YOU HAVE A WORLD TO WIN.”

Negotiate Not Escalate

Almost 10 million Ukrainians were driven from their homes. Nearly 6.5 million people have been forcibly displaced within Ukraine and almost 3.4 million have fled across international borders. 

They add to the number of people displaced by war, persecution, general violence, or human-rights violations worldwide, a staggering 84 million in 2021, according to UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency. 

If they formed their own country, it would be the 17th largest on earth, slightly bigger than Iran or Germany. 

Add in those driven across borders by economic desperation and the number balloons past one billion, making it one of the three largest nations on Earth.

Up to 60 million people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, and Yemenhave been displaced by the war on terror, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project. 

“People want to do anything they can to help,” said Christina Kaesshoefer, a co-founder of JobAidUkraine, a new website that helps Ukrainian refugees find work.

Don’t bother looking on the web for JobAidSyria or JobAidSomalia.

For almost a decade, much of Europe has been content to turn its back on desperate refugees put to flight by the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; the Ethiopian, Eritrean, Somali, Sudanese, and other migrants imprisoned and tortured in Libyan detention centers; and the countless others.

At least 18,600 between 2014 and 2021 drowned attempting to cross from North Africa to Italy.  

“It’s like this: you stay in the detention center for years. No resettlement. No evacuation. You try the sea. You get intercepted or you die. Only a small percentage reach their destiny.” People want to risk dying at sea rather than stay in detention centers.

At the moment, there is great concern for 10 million Ukrainians tragically displaced by the Russian war, but that leaves another 84 million displaced people in dire straits and desperate need. In a world of callous governments, awful aid agencies, sealed borders, and heartless policies that criminalize humanity’s most ancient response to danger—flight—we’re nonetheless more connected than ever. 

Opinion | Before Ukraine, A Massive Refugee Crisis Ignored and Largely Created by the West | Nick Turse (commondreams.org)