The British establishment is yet again positing that the British military needs more cannon fodder, and quickly, if it comes to a war with the Russian Bear.

The British working class, along with the Russian working class and any other in the countries whose ruling classes seem intent on provoking a conflict which could cause destruction of the planet and all upon it, should make it abundantly clear that the exploited majority have no intention of fighting the exploiting minorities rapacious wars for them any longer. A socialist consciousness will lead to the end of such madness and to the end of the destructive social system that is capitalism.

It’s long past the time for the lions to have told the donkeys to go do one.

‘In case of an actual conflict, the UK would run out of soldiers in six months to a year, the British Ministry of Defence official in charge of personnel, Alistair Carns, has said.

Carns is the under-secretary of State for veterans and people in the country’s defence ministry. He raised concerns about the size of the British Army during an event at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank.

“In a war of scale – not a limited intervention, but one similar to Ukraine — our army, for example, on the current casualty rates would be expended — as part of a broader multinational coalition — in six months to a year,” Carns said.

He based this calculation on questionable Ukrainian claims that Russia was taking 1,500 casualties every day, which Moscow has described as closer to Kiev’s actual losses.

While this doesn’t mean the UK needs a bigger army, “it does mean you need to generate depth and mass rapidly in the event of a crisis,” he added. “The reserves are critical, absolutely central, to that process.”

Publicly available information has put the size of the British Army at 109,245 people as of October 1, which includes 25,814 volunteer reservists. Carns argued that the UK has a lot of catching up to do with other NATO members when it came to reserves.

His comments come just days after Britain’s Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff Rob Magowan insisted that the army would “fight tonight” if ordered.

In late October, however, British secretary of defence John Healey told Politico that the army, navy and the air force had been “hollowed out” and “underfunded” during the 14 years of Conservative Party rule. Labour had expected things to be bad, “but the state of the finances, the state of the forces, was far worse than we thought,” he added.

“The UK, in keeping with many other nations, has essentially become very skilled and ready to conduct military operations. What we have not been ready to do is to fight,” Healey said at the time.

The US government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has claimed, citing anonymous sources, that the UK and France were discussing deploying their troops to Ukraine.’

As of July, the British Army had just over 73,000 active-duty soldiers, the lowest number since 1823. The UK’s overall population was around 20 million then, and has since grown to 67 million.’

A reader of SOYMB has pointed out an omission to the post, Auto Maker sneezing; Workers catching Pneumonia. Here is an update to that post.

Vauxhall

‘The owner of Vauxhall has announced that it plans to close its van factory at Luton, in a decision that will put 1,100 jobs at risk of being cut or moving location despite the UK government preparing to relax rules on electric cars.

Stellantis said it would shift van production from Luton, Bedfordshire, to another factory at Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, blaming the UK’s economic conditions and the government’s zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate.

The news was announced on the same day that the government said it would consult on changes to the mandate as it tried to head off carmakers’ complaints that its electric car sales targets were too difficult amid slumping demand.

The closure will spell the end of vehicle manufacturing in Luton after nearly 120 years. The Unite union, which represents many of the workers, called for the government to oppose the closure.

A spokesperson for Unite said it was “a complete slap in the face for our members in Luton”. They added: “Whatever the positive benefits this plan may have for Ellesmere Port, that is not acceptable.”’.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy8n3n62wq4o

‘The closure of the Vauxhall plant in Luton will cost the town a total of about 3,700 jobs and have a £310m impact on the local area’s economy, a council leader told BBC Politics East.

On Tuesday, Stellantis, the owner of Vauxhall, announced plans to close its Bedfordshire van-making factory, putting about 1,100 jobs at the plant at risk.

Hazel Simmons, the Labour leader of Luton Borough Council, said this was “devastating news” for the area and that she had talked to trade unions and was planning talks with Stellantis.

The Department for Business and Trade said it was a “concerning time for the families of employees at Luton”‘.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxv1kdyp7jo

Forty Years On

Forty years on from the colliers’ last stand,

When the Blues were so determined to break

Workers’ solidarity: what to make

Of it now? Was it no more than a grand

Gesture, final knockings of working class

Militancy, an end of defiance

Before a general, grudging compliance

With capitals’ world order coming to pass?

The Greens, who supported the miners then,

Would now surely campaign to close the mines,

While Red influence continues to decline

And reform proves a busted flush again.

Hope refracted through politics’ prism

Needs refocusing on socialism.

D. A.

How much longer is the majority working class class going to allow this madness to go on before Mutually Assured Destruction sees the end of us all?

The SOYMB post, Has the Doomsday Clock just jumped forward? noted that Swedish and Norwegians had been ‘receiving copies of a pamphlet advising the population how to prepare and cope in the event of war or another unexpected crisis.’

Now Germans are being ‘encouraged to convert their own basements into fortified bunkers.’

‘The German government is drawing up a list of public buildings to use as bunkers in the event of a major war with Russia breaking out, an Interior Ministry spokesman has said.

Among the structures being considered are metro stations, underground car parks, and some other state buildings. Citizens will also be encouraged to convert their own basements and garages into shelters.

Once the list is compiled, Germans will be able to use an app to locate their nearest bunker.

While the spokesman did not mention the Ukraine conflict during his briefing, German tabloid Bild claimed that the decision to expand Germany’s bunker network was made in light of the perceived threat of war with Russia.

Germany emerged from the Cold War with more than 2,000 such bunkers, although around three quarters of these have since been decommissioned. Germany’s current network of 579 bunkers has space to accommodate around 480,000 people, a fraction of the country’s population of 84 million, Reuters reported.

The so-called “bunker plan” was agreed in June. However, the press conference came just after the US and France both confirmed that they gave Ukraine permission to use ATACMS and SCALP-EG missiles to conduct long-range strikes on internationally-recognized Russian territory.’

Seeing ‘Enoch’ trending on X (Twitter) one’s first reaction was, if that’s Aynuk where’s Ayli? Imagine the disappointment to find that it wasn’t one part of a mythical comic partnership from within the Black Country that was being referenced,  but John Enoch Powell, known as Enoch Powell. He was a politician for thirty seven years, Firstly as a Conservative then latterly as an Ulster Unionist. He is famous, more likely infamous, for an anti-immigration speech made in 1968 known as the Rivers of Blood speech. Here is an Obit from the Socialist Standard March 1998.

‘No sooner had the nation recovered from its hysteria over Princess Diana than it was rocked by the death of a man reputed to have one of the most powerful and rational brains ever to invade the House of Commons, but who was politically a pathetic failure. We refer, of course, to Enoch Powell and we know about that famous brain because of all those politicians who told us about it. “ . . . magnetic,” crooned Margaret Thatcher, “listening to his speeches was an unforgettable privilege.” “ . . . one of the greatest orators and foremost parliamentarians of his generation,” clucked William Hague. “One of the greatest figures of 20th century British politics, with a brilliant mind,” gushed Tony Blair, during a short break from gushing about the Spice Girls and Bill Clinton.

Well Powell was not a crooner nor a clucker nor a gusher but he obviously had a pretty high opinion of himself, which he liked to express in a number of eccentricities. In the late 1940s for example, when he was working at Tory Headquarters, he would travel to work on the Tube at an hour early enough for him to buy a cheap “workman’s” ticket, dressed in hunting clothes. However hot the weather he always wore a heavy three-piece, no nonsense, suit. He left exact instructions about his funeral, including that he should be buried in his old brigadier’s uniform. Finally, his very name was eccentric; what are we to expect of someone in the public eye who insists on being known as Enoch when his first name was John?

Intellect

This leads us to the all-important question of what is the basis of Enoch’s reputation for having one of the world’s most rational and incisive intellects? Well it was not consistency. This was a man who pioneered the Tories’ opposition to state planning—an idea which flourished under Thatcher, but who as a minister had supported state intervention in education, health and social services and who, according to his friend and colleague Iain McLeod, produced “ . . . the two longest-term social plans in this country, the ten-year plan for hospitals, and for local welfare services”. This was the man who resigned from the government in 1958 because he thought government spending was too high at £6,524 million but who accepted office as a minister in 1960 although it had continued to rise—by 1961 to £8,134 million. Having got the taste for resignation he did it again—or something like it—a couple of years later when he refused to be a minister in Douglas Home’s government. But whatever objection he had to Douglas Home as a boss had been assuaged by 1964, when he felt able to join the Shadow Cabinet under that same dozy, amiable Scottish aristocrat.

In spite of this Powell could still gain public attention when, in April 1968, he produced the most notorious example of his vigorous intellect with his “foreboding” about the effects of non-white immigration. Among the “evidence” he produced to justify his pessimism was a bit which might kindly be described as anecdotal. A woman in Northumberland, he said, had told him about an elderly woman in Wolverhampton—about 200 miles away—who was “ . . . afraid to go out. Windows are broken. She finds excreta pushed through the letterbox”. The implication was clear—immigrants were terrorising this poor woman, white British people never behave in this way. The problem for Powell was that he was not able to identify this woman and all efforts to find her were unsuccessful.

Scared

But the problem for other people was rather different because Powell’s speech had an instant, unexpectedly disturbing effect. Suddenly he was transformed from an aloof and fastidious man into someone who represented popular opinion:

“Powell had become a rallying point for most of the hostility and rage we encountered, a shorthand for hatred and contempt ‘I’m with Enoch/they said, or ‘they should let Enoch sort you lot out’ and that was enough’’ (Mike Phillips, Guardian, 9 February).

A woman, now a mother of three, remembers “I was 18 at the time and I was really scared because so many people suddenly became openly hostile. They all thought we ate Kit-E-Kat so I stopped buying tinned food for the cat.”

It really was like that and the dominant mood was represented by those London dockers who marched in support of Powell. At that time the unions in the docks were extremely powerful, always ready to exert their power through strikes and other forms of disruption. How much did the marching dockers know about Powell’s views on the usefulness of their unions—” . . . [the remuneration of labour] is rarely affected appreciably, upwards or downwards, by combination; and then the effect is more or less temporary and purchased at the cost of the general public, including other workers”? How many of them knew about his callous views on people—they are always workers—who have to wait for treatment in hospital:

“. . . if people are on a waiting list long enough, they will die—usually from some cause other than that for which they joined the queue. Short of dying, however, they frequently get bored or better, and vanish.”

And how many of them knew that this man who ranted about the alleged devastation the immigrants were bringing to beauty spots like Wolverhampton had done his utmost to encourage immigration to this country when, as Minister of Health, he had organised a drive to recruit workers for the National Health Service from the West Indies?

Callous

Most of the obituaries for Powell went out of their way to be kind to him. On TV Simon Heffer, his biographer, denied that he was a racist—because he was fond of India, he said. So what, we might ask if Powell was not a racist, why did he do nothing when he saw the effect of his “foaming with blood” speech? Was this another example of the bottomless confusion of this supposedly brilliant mind? Or was it a calculated attempt, after all those years of being denied even a hope of leading his party, to leapfrog his rivals, whom Powell held mostly in contempt, with one dangerous, resounding speech?

Whatever the truth of this, one thing needs to be said about this man. He stood for a society of class division, of riches and poverty, of racism, of fear and disunity.  The only thing unusual in him was the recklessly callous way he did this. And as for his supposedly brilliant intellect—is this really the best capitalism can offer us?’

Ivan

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2022/05/greasy-pole-death-of-dangerous-man-1998.html

When profits are threatened capitalism’s reaction is to punish the exploited workers who make its profits for it in the first place. The actions of these companies, and there will no doubt be many more contemplating similar actions, affect not only the workers directly employed, but also workers in companies that provide other services to car manufacturers.

There is, of course, a much better solution, to these ‘problems’.

No prizes for guessing what it is.

Bosch

‘German auto parts supplier Robert Bosch has announced plans to trim its global workforce by 5,500 jobs in the next several years, citing stagnating global auto sales, Deutsche Welle has reported.

According to the company’s spokeswoman, cited by the outlet, some 3,800 of the job cuts will be made in Germany. The exact number of lay-offs will be negotiated in talks with workers’ representatives, she said on Friday.

The group would cut 3,500 employees in its car software division by 2027, with about half the job losses coming in Germany.

Bosch said it also planned to slash up to 1,300 positions between 2027 and 2030 at its steering division based in Schwaebisch Gmuend, southwestern Germany.

The company said in a statement, cited by the outlet, that weak demand for electric vehicles had a “direct impact” on the number of orders placed by manufacturers with Bosch.’

FORD

‘US car manufacturer Ford has said it will lay off 4,000 of its workforce in Europe, becoming the latest auto maker to try to cut costs amid weak electric vehicle (EV) sales and competition from China.  

The job cuts represent about 14% of Ford’s 28,000 workforce in Europe and around 2.3% of its total workforce of 174,000, and will be completed by the end of 2027, the company said on Wednesday. The bulk of the layoffs will take place in Germany, where 2,900 positions are under threat, and in Britain, with an expected 800 jobs to be cut.  

The US carmaker will be the latest after Nissan, Stellantis, and GM to resort to the drastic step in a bid to cut costs as the automotive sector faces challenges, including weak EV sales. Ford announced massive layoffs last year as part of an austerity plan, saying it will cut jobs as it shifts to EV production, which requires less personnel.’

VOLKSWAGEN

‘Volkswagen’s German workforce is preparing for widespread strikes in December after negotiations between labour leaders and management over cost-cutting measures reached an impasse.

At the heart of the dispute is Volkswagen’s plan to close three German factories and cut thousands of jobs to address slumping demand for electric vehicles and rising operational costs. Labour leaders have fiercely opposed these measures, arguing they would devastate the workforce and regional economies dependent on the auto maker.’

The below is from the Socialist Standard January 1965

‘Here, it was obvious, was what they call a great man. Propped up, glassy eyed, at the window, flapping his hand at the crowd outside. Oozing in his senility, like the old Disraeli with his corsets and lacquered hair. Famous visitors came and went. An enormous cake was carried in, with sacks full of cards and telegrams. The flashlights popped and the television cameras whirred. Winston Churchill was ninety years old.

Most people were agreed that this was a remarkable achievement. Perhaps it was, in a way. An impressive feature of the many newspaper reminiscences of the old man in his hey day was the amount of hard liquor which he has put down. One article said that when he was Prime Minister, he drank champagne and brandy with every meal and sipped at tumblers of whisky and soda all through the day. A man of lesser constitution would almost certainly have been killed by such a deluge of alcohol.

Churchill’s consumption of drink is typical of the gusto with which he has lived his life, and it is this gusto which has been the subject of much recent hypocrisy. First, the business of those ninety years. It is too obvious that to be born into a family like the Churchills gives a person a built in advantage in their prospects of longevity because, everything else being equal, they are going to get the best of everything. The best food. A secure and comfortable home. The best education and, if they want it, an interesting job.

It is a different matter for the people who were cheering so enthusiastically outside Churchill’s window on his birthday and it is worthwhile to take a look at how they live. Their lives may be summed up in one word poverty, although it is a different kind from the poverty their parents knew, in the days when Churchill was a young man. They are, first of all, the people who make the wealth of the world. They design the factories where it is made, they plan its production and they work on the benches and assembly lines where the wealth comes rolling off. They transport the wealth all over the world. Some of them sit in offices, adding up how much profit their employers have made and how much they can hope to make in the future. Without these people, capitalist society would collapse.

But that is not likely to happen. Because not only do those people make the world’s wealth but they do their best to make sure that their employers get the profit which comes from production. Almost all of them are fervent protectors of property rights and readily join up, and if necessary die, to protect the property of one set of employers against the intrusions of another. Patiently, willingly, they trudge through their meagre lives bearing the burden of a parasite class which lives off their labours. They keep this class in luxury, so that one of its members can be a burbling old man at a window—yet rich beyond any dreams of the people outside.

These producing, organising, protecting, patient people are the working class and it is sadly typical of them that they should be so enthusiastic about the birthday of a man who has never entirely hidden his contempt for them.

It is no exaggeration to say that working class life is itself a health hazard. Inferior, constricted housing and sub-standard food is a health hazard. So are typical working conditions—the remorseless assembly line, the endless flow of paper across a harrassed desk. So is the essential insecurity of employment—the fact that a worker’s livelihood depends upon his holding down a job. The strains of working class existence are very real, but they are unknown to a Churchill. Randolph Churchill, in an illuminating passage in his autobiography, shows what a Churchill conceives as poverty by claiming that his family was “poor but honest’’—although they could afford to send him to Eton.

There is a lot of evidence to show that illness or lack of it —is not entirely a matter of chance but one of social background. The Registrar General’s Decennial 1958 Supplement pointed out that the places in this country where the average person stood the greatest chance of an early death were Salford, Liverpool, Manchester and Wigan. It is no coincidence that these are areas of dense population and that the death rates are largely caused by the high incidence of bronchitis. A few years after, in September 1963. Dr. Ian Richardson, of the school of social medicine at Aberdeen, said that among the people of North East Scotland chronic bronchitis was four times more prevalent in what he called the “lower” social classes than in the “ upper.”

What this means is that if we are born rich we have a better chance of staying healthy and living longer than if we are born poor. Churchill, ninety years old, was born rich.

Next, the business of the great man. It is a long time since the Second World War started, but there is no need for distance to lend enchantment to the part which Churchill is supposed to have played in the Allied victory. In the organs of capitalist opinion no praise is too lavish, no phrase too extravagant, to describe his period as wartime Prime Minister. Only a few small voices are to be heard trying to balance this picture, to point out the misjudgments which Churchill made and those of the men in whom he put his confidence. The late Lord Cherwell was one of these men and he made many mistakes. He was hopelessly wrong in his estimate of the effect of the allied bomber offensive. A recent book The Battle of the V. Weapons reveals that there was plenty of evidence that the Germans were preparing to launch rockets against this country, but Cherwell refused to believe it until it was too late. Yet Cherwell stayed in Churchill’s favour, and was still there after the war.

Such evidence puts Churchill into perspective as a less than infallible man. who came into the Premiership with the customary history of mistakes. His name has always been linked with the massive, bloody muddle of Gallipoli. Randolph Churchill tells how a schoolmate refused to be his chum because his father had been killed at the Dardanelles, for which he blamed Winston Churchill. The periods which Churchill spent in posts like Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary were not outstanding for their brilliance he did the jobs in much the same way, and with much the same futility, as any other politician.

For only one thing did he stand out. Between the wars he became the spokesman of the group which saw German capitalism as the greater threat to the established European powers. To stifle this threat Churchill was prepared to do a deal with any other country—even the Soviet Union, which he so quickly turned against after the war. An unforeseen twist to events between the wars might have made Churchill wrong, but in fact he tuned out to be right: Germany was a bigger threat than Russia. This was what gave him the job of Prime Minister at the crucial time, and subsequently loaded him with the myth that he beat German capitalism almost on his own.

The Allied victory did not end Churchill’s miscalculations and indiscretions. In 1945, British capitalism needed a political party which was prepared to push through a big programme of nationalisation, a State health scheme and the like. It needed a continuation of government control over things like building and direction of labour. It needed a party with an image of freshness, one which might repair the morale of a war weary working class by giving the impression of a determination to get on with the job of rebuilding Britain.

The Labour Party seemed to fill these needs pretty well and so they rode to power. Against this impressive tide of events, Churchill offered only an appeal to working class sentiment and his attempt to frighten everyone with his ruinously unwise “Gestapo” speech. When the votes were counted, the great man theory had once more been put in its place. The British working class had faithfully decided that the needs of British capitalism should take precedence over the ambitions of one man.



As the newspapers were anxious to point out, the 1945 election result did not mean that the voters had lost their respect for Churchill. Everywhere he went he was feted. They all loved his funny bowler, his cigar, his V sign. With his jaw clamped, he epitomised the outraged nostalgia of every patriotic slum dweller for the days when the map was covered in pink and a British gunboat was enough to put any number of natives in their place. Good Old Winnie, they cried, in an ecstasy of admiration.



What did they have to thank Churchill for? Did they thank him for always being so militant in defence of the interests of the British ruling class? Did they thank him for urging them on to the battlefields of the world—on to the dusty fly blown slopes at Gallipoli, or into the icy death of an Artic convoy ? Did they thank him for the slaughter of Dresden? For managing the British Gazette during the General Strike ? For always, in fact, fighting the working class tooth and nail whenever they tried to stand out for their own interests ?



A sardonic opinion, perhaps, bred by years of hammering against the solid brick wall of working class ignorance, is that the workers actually enjoy absorbing punishment. Treat them mean, a Tory minister once said, and keep them keen. Churchill has never treated the working class other than meanly; he has never disguised his contempt for them, be has never relaxed in his demands that they should accept whatever burdens and terrors capitalism has imposed on than. And the workers have kept keen. Now Churchill has reached ninety, and presumably has not much longer to live, they are actually grateful to him for all that be has done to them.

Could gratitude, or devotion, or plain damned stupidity, go farther than that ?

Ivan

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2018/03/churchills-birthday-1965.html

Extract from Socialist Standard November 2012

‘Orton satirises Britain’s ‘popular’ wartime leader Churchill who died in 1965. In 1967, Hochhuth’s play Soldiers implicated Churchill in the 1943 Sikorski crash. This member of the capitalist class is also responsible for miners killed in Tonypandy, anarchists burned to death in Sidney Street, 150,000 war deaths in Gallipoli, millions of deaths in the Bengal Famine of 1943, half a million deaths in Allied bombing of German cities, threats to machine gun strikers in the 1926 General Strike and the gassing of Kurdish rebels in Iraq in 1920 In the 1960s the Lord Chamberlain would not allow Churchill’s phallus at the end of the play, so it was replaced with his cigar.’

Steve Clayton

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2019/08/what-joe-orton-saw-2012.html

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