Amid devastating floods in Spain, activists rally against Shell’s record profits

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead

2 November, 2024

LEFT FOOT FORWARD 

‘It’s time for Shell to pay up’


Devastating floods in the Valencia region of Spain have claimed at least 155 lives this week. Scientists are pointing to climate change as a major factor exacerbating the disaster.

“No doubt about it, these explosive downpours were intensified by climate change,” said Dr Friederike Otto from Imperial College London, who leads an international group of scientists who try to understand the role that global warming plays in these type of events.

Amid harrowing images of the flooding in Spain, news broke of Shell’s $6 billion profits for the third quarter, surpassing forecasts by 12 percent.

On October 31, activists gathered outside Shell’s headquarters in London in protest of the fuel giant’s quarterly profit announcement. Armed with banners reading ‘Make polluters pay,’ and ‘Shell stop sucking the life out of us,” a range of speakers addressed the crowd, including Mitzi Jonelle Tan, a high-profile climate justice activist from the Philippines.

The campaigners are calling on Shell to pay up for what they describe as the “devastation caused to communities by their oil extraction and operations,” and are urging for funding for a “rapid, just transition away from fossil fuels.”

Joanna Warrington, spokesperson for Fossil Free London, which organised the event, said they are “seriously scared of the destruction Shell is causing.”

“From the communities in the Niger Delta whose water has been poisoned by Shell’s operations, to flash floods in Spain which are happening right now due to climate change, it’s time for Shell to pay up.”

The protest ended the ‘Make Polluters Pay’ week of action, which included climate workshops and a campaign on social media highlighting Shell’s excessive profits. Activists encouraged the public to contact their MPs, pushing for a government commitment to levy taxes on polluters to fund a loss and damage fund.

“The climate crisis is here. Spain is flooding and people are dying whilst Shell makes £4.6 billion in profits. How is this fair? The fossil fuel industry needs to pay up for the damage they have caused,” the activists posted on X.

Image credit – X screen grab Make Polluters Pay

Behind the huge loss of life in Valencia

The death toll from floods in Spain has now risen to over 150 people. Scientists observe that the climate crisis is making rainstorms of this kind more extreme and more frequent, and Greenpeace Spain are demanding that fossil fuel companies should pay for the damage wrought. However, the loss of life suffered in the eastern region of Valencia may also be the product of short-term posturing by right wing politicians. Sue Lukes reports.

All eyes are on Valencia, the Spanish region where over 150 people have died in the flash flooding on 29th October 2024. Were they killed by the floods? Or by corrupt governments, climate denial and the far right? 

Valencia has been plagued by corruption for decades. For over 20 years, the Partido Popular was in power, and Valencia was the focus of many corruption investigations and trials: the Gurtel plot, the Brigal, Terra Mitica, Valmor, Imelsa cases among others.

Almost all the region’s PP presidents were named or charged in them. Some 130 PP officials faced court proceedings.  In 2018 the electorate had enough and a new regional government formed by PSOE, the Spanish Socialist Party, and Compromis, took office, facing debts of €5,400m caused by waste on megaprojects, some associated with the corruption. 

But in May 2023, the PP got back into power in Valencia, this time in alliance with VOX, the far right party, known for its policies and statements demonising migrants, feminists, LGBT people, and its hostility to government expenditure on welfare and infrastructure and those in favour of devolution or autonomy within the Spanish state. It dismisses action on climate change as “the green religion” and voted against the Spanish law on it in 2021.

Four months after taking power, the new Valencia regional PP/Vox government passed an emergency decree closing down the Valencia Emergencies Unit that had been created by the PSOE government before it to ensure a rapid regional response to emergencies. On November 29th 2023, the Valencian PP tweeted proudly that it was the “first organisation created by Ximo Puig (former PSOE president) closed down by Carlos Mazon (current PP president).” 

The PP and Vox had demanded the Unit be shut down before it was even set up, calling it a “chiringuito” (a beach bar, so a vanity project) of the Socialist government. Once they got into government, Vox was given the post of Minister of Justice, and so the fate of the Unit, which was within that ministry, was sealed. 

The Spanish weather service issued a red alert at 7:04 on October 29th, saying the danger from floods was such that people should only travel if strictly necessary. But with no coordinated regional response to the emergency, the Valencian government activated its flood emergency plan only at 19:30, after the River Magro had already burst its banks and several towns were already flooded and people trapped.

Local employers also ignored the weather report and insisted that people stay in their workplace, which ensured that many were travelling home as the worst floods hit.  The Valencia government sent out a general alert via mobile phones to the whole population only at 20:12, by which time many were already trapped, and, as we now know, scores of people died in the floods. 

Sue Lukes was an Islington Labour Councillor from 2018 to 2022 and is a writer and consultant on migration issues.

Image: Cars lay scattered and piled on top of each other after a mudslide in Valencia today. (APpic)     

https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/world/2024/10/30/flooding-kills-51-in-spains-valencia-region/ Licence: Attribution 4.0 International CC BY 4.0

REST IN POWER

John Rose: an inspiration for revolutionaries

John’s greatest contributions to the struggle were to the fight for a free Palestine

John Rose

By Ken Muller
Saturday 02 November 2024

SOCIALIST WORKER Issue
Obituaries

John Rose’s death this week is a huge and cruel loss to his family, friends, comrades and all who hope and struggle for a better world. But his life—and the outstanding contributions he made to understanding the obstacles to winning such a world and how to overcome them—are an inspiration.

John was born into a Jewish family in Harrogate and grew up as a Zionist. In 1966 he started at the London School of Economics (LSE) and joined the LSE Socialist Society. Shortly afterwards, he met Tony Cliff, the Jewish revolutionary and founder of the International Socialist tradition

After hearing Cliff and the South African revolutionary Ronnie Kasrils speak at a teach-in on Israel’s Six Day War, John learned a profound lesson. “During those six days I learned that Zionism and Jewish humanism were incompatible. I never looked back,” he later recalled.

It took great courage to withstand the pressure of family ideology and break with Zionism. After intense discussions with Cliff, John joined the predecessor of the Socialist Workers Party, the International Socialists (IS).

John played a leading role in the battles fought out at the LSE against the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa and Zimbabwe, then known as Rhodesia.

Kasrils had recruited John, along with other LSE IS students and some Communist Party worker members, to go to South Africa. He put his life and liberty in jeopardy when he went to South Africa on behalf of the African National Congress (ANC). He carried leaflets against the apartheid regime and explosives which would scatter the leaflets far and wide in public places.

If caught, John would have got ten years in jail. His immense modesty is witnessed by the fact that for decades he never told even his closest friends. Indeed, during the ten years we shared a flat together in Kentish Town in the 1980s, he never once mentioned it to me.

After leaving the LSE, John became west London IS organiser. He was later central to organising against the fascist National Front (NF) following the racist killing of Gurdip Singh Chagger in the summer of 1976 and the police murder of Blair Peach in Southall 1979.

John joined Socialist Worker as a journalist in 1978. Two years later, he succeeded Cliff as editor and was elected to the Central Committee, the national leadership of the SWP. In 1982 he left full-time work for the SWP.

He went on to work for many years at Southwark College organising strikes and on several occasions walkouts against the 2003 Iraq war.

John’s greatest contributions to the struggle were to the fight for a free Palestine and the Jewish question. Sadly, in the last part of his life, he had to follow this from his bed in a care home following a stroke early in 2022.

His 1986 pamphlet, Israel: the Hijack State named Israel a terrorist state and pointed to Egypt’s working class as key to a socialist revolution across the region. His unconditional defence of the Palestinians’ right to resist played a key role in winning a generation of Egyptian activists to socialist politics.

It helped to sow the seeds for the foundation of a new revolutionary socialist movement in Egypt in the 1990s. John’s arguments also reached wider audiences in the Arab world through translations of some of his key works, such as The Myths of Zionism.

John was a pioneer when it came to the issue of Zionism and the Jewish question. Like most post-war Jewish students, he’d been brought up to believe Israel was a necessary haven if Jews were to avoid another Holocaust. But he quickly took on board Cliff’s rejection of Zionism as the remedy for antisemitism.

He was also an innovator when it came to the broader question of identifying who were the Jewish people. Were they a race, a religion, or, in revolutionary Abram Leon’s words, a “people-class”? How could one account for their survival from ancient times to the modern world? Wasn’t socialism the real answer to antisemitism, as the brief heroic experience of workers’ democracy in the Russian Revolution demonstrated?

John remained passionately committed to the struggle for workers’ power throughout his life and continued to break new intellectual ground until a few years before his death. His last major writing was his forthcoming book. It analyses the successes and failures of independent workers’ movements in the struggles to overthrow tyrannies in Poland, South Africa, Iran and Brazil. Like all his work, it was resonant with the voices of ordinary people fighting to change the world.

As Jim Nichol reflected yesterday, “John was his own man. There was no telling him what to do or think. He queried and interrogated political ideas and strategy wherever they came from. He was thoughtful. He would voice his opinions.”

Like all his family and close friends and comrades, I’m going to miss John enormously.

But he will have expected us to continue the struggle—to mourn, maybe, but then to organise. Our love, solidarity and best wishes go to John’s partner and comrade, Elaheh and the rest of their family.

Thank you to other comrades who have contributed to this obituary.

Debates in the Palestine movement over the US presidential election

Three Palestine activists spoke to Thomas Foster about the US presidential election on Tuesday

A Palestine protest at Columbia university earlier this year (Picture: Columbia SJP)

Monday 04 November 2024

 SOCIALIST WORKER Issue

The Democrats’ support for Israel’s genocide has pushed hundreds of thousands of voters away from the party in the United States presidential election.

“I can’t stand the genocide in Gaza and can’t vote for either candidate,” Annon, a campaigner in Portland in Oregon, told Socialist Worker.

“Both seem to have no sympathies for Palestinians or admit it’s a genocide. Where does that leave someone who wants peace and to end US imperialism?

“I have friends who say that, if we don’t vote for Kamala Harris, we will lose our rights. But what about the Palestinians?”

Annon says he will vote for Green party candidate Jill Stein “because at least they propose peace”. “If the Green party got 5 percent of the vote, it would entitle them to government funding and make them more viable,” he said.

The leadership of the uncommitted movement, which mobilised more than 700,000 to vote “uncommitted” in Democratic party primaries, announced it won’t endorse Harris.

But the leadership went on to say that they’re “not recommending a third-party vote in the presidential election”. Instead, they “urge uncommitted voters to register anti-Trump votes and vote up and down the ballot”.

“Our focus remains on building this anti-war coalition, both inside and outside the Democratic party,” they said.

But many activists argue the focus should be on grassroots organising.

Nathaniel, a student at a community college in Arizona, was involved in the Palestine encampments. He said the encampments “were a good start” as they were “a militant movement in the fight against universities being complicit with Israel’s project”.

“Many student activists have argued to not vote for the Democrats and instead fight,” he told Socialist Worker.

Annon is wary about the Democratic leadership pacifying that fight back. “When Barack Obama came in, he said he was going to end wars,” he argued. “He didn’t, but the peace movement virtually disappeared under the guise of you can’t embarrass Obama.

“If Harris wins, there will be pressure on the Palestine movement to stop.”

That’s why Mike, a teacher in Michigan, said it’s “important to keep up the pressure” whoever wins. “It was great there were protests at the Democratic convention,” he told Socialist Worker. “We should have protests whenever Harris or her proxies speak.”

He thought it was necessary to “remind people that we have not gone away or will forget the Democrats’ support for genocide in Palestine”.

Nathaniel criticises sections of the Palestine movement that have “submitted to the Democratic party, which leads to a downgrading of radical aims and that’s a problem”. “Some have put out a statement saying they can’t endorse Harris because she’s perpetuating genocide but we can’t let Trump win either,” he said.

“It’s surely implying a vote for Harris. But we need more people to be militantly against both.

“Some adopt the strategy of voting Democrats in the here and now and creating a left wing alternative after the election. But that only gives more power to the two party system—it’s a flawed strategy.”

Mike thought that “there is a difference between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump”. “It’s a mistake to say there’s none,” he said. “But there’s no fundamental difference in terms of what class interest they represent—they are both pro-war and pro-corporate candidates.”

He argues, “The left shouldn’t call for a vote for Harris. But in the absence of a viable left alternative, it shouldn’t make a big thing out of not voting for her”.

“Overall, Trump’s political project is authoritarian and a dream of minimal protections for workers and the environment”. And he said Trump’s policies are “a shopping list of fantasies of the far right”.

Mike also argued that “whoever wins the election, we need to mobilise”. “If Harris wins, we need to push over Palestine,” he said. “If Trump wins, we need to organise resistance. It will be activists that are key to this.”

He saw hope in the uncommitted movement, which “got significant votes and organised around specific issues”. “It was a genuine left challenge to the Democrats,” he said. “I think the holy grail of a viable left is more likely to come out of the uncommitted movement than the labour movement, which is very top down.”

Nathaniel argued for an alternative focused on struggles outside of elections, saying, “Political power is found in social struggles, not just the ballot box.

“We need to completely break with the Democrats. We need a party that unites the labour, student and social movements together and builds on the fight of workers.”

We are publishing articles every day in the run up to the US presidential election. Stay up to date at US elections 2024

August Nimtz on the US election, picket lines and barricades

August Nimtz, Professor of Political Science and African American and African Studies at the University of Minnesota, spoke to Judy Cox

Saturday 02 November 2024

SOCIALIST WORKER Issue

August Nimtz

What was your first experience of voting?

It was the 1964 presidential election was between Republican Barry Goldwater and Democrat Lyndon B Johnson. It was my first opportunity to vote. I had just turned 21 which was the voting age then. I was at grad school in Washington DC, but I went back to New Orleans, where my family was.

I tried to register to vote. It was seen as so important because everyone said that if Goldwater became president, he would start a nuclear war. The Civil Rights movement suspended their protests.

Back in high school in 1955-56, I helped my teachers register black people to vote. I knew all about the ways they tried to stop people who look like me from voting. So I had attended workshops, I had registered, I filled in the long and arduous form and I turned it over to the “Good Old Boy”.

Well, he looked me up and down, and he looked at my form. And he said, “You didn’t fill this part in.” I said, “It’s not relevant to me,” and he said, “But you have to draw a line through it. Take it away, draw the line and come back in two weeks.”

I had to go back to college, so I never did get to vote. But that was the first “Vote for Lesser Evil” election I remember. Four years later, in 1968 I was able to vote. What was the difference between 1964 and 1968? The people had been out on the streets. I was able to vote because a mass mobilisation on the streets made it possible.

There’s an election coming next week. What are your thoughts on the choice of Donald Trump or Kamala Harris?

The most important vote taking place in the next few days is the vote of the Boeing strikers on whether to accept a new offer. That vote could have enormous consequences for the labour movement.

A prominent union like that winning a strike could have a domino effect. The labour movement has been on the move for the last few years, with more people trying to form unions and get organised.

On the presidential election, many of my students have lots of anxiety. There is the temptation, the constant enticement, to vote for the lesser of two evils. I understand that. I tell them, you are in good company. In 1849, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels argued for a vote for the lesser of two evils. They thought the workers’ movement wasn’t strong enough to stand its own candidates. They argued to vote for the liberals.

A year later they rethought their position. They had to go through the experience. They thought the liberals would bring in a republic, but they were too cowardly. In March 1850, Marx and Engels published an address in which they criticised their earlier position.

They said it was a mistake to suspend the Communist League and merge with the liberals. In elections, you have to stand your own candidates, even if you have no chance of winning. The advantages in standing are that you can put forward your ideas, educate people and recruit them. And you can test the strength of your support. The disadvantages are that you can split the vote. But the advantages are more important.

What I tell my liberal friends is that we can’t keep kicking the can down the road. That can’t be our legacy. It is not too late. Can we build a working class party that takes a stand on key issues like immigration?

What do you say to those who feel they have to vote for Harris?

Did the election of Barack Obama qualitatively advance the interests of the working class in all its skin colours?

The Democrat appeal is falling so they resort to scare stories about how horrible Trump is. But lesser evilism is all about what we don’t want, not what we do want.

The lesson of my life is that mass movements bring change—and that’s the lesson of history. Real change doesn’t come at the ballot box—it comes on the streets, on the picket lines, on the barricades and sometimes on the battlefields.


US activists debate whether to vote Democrat

In 1857, they tried to settle the slavery question with a court ruling. In 1860, the side that lost the election ceded from the US itself. In 1861, at his inauguration, president Abraham Lincoln tried a constitutional settlement. But the slave owners fired on Fort Sumter. Lincoln even offered to compensate the slave owners. But the only way they settled slavery was on the battlefield.

Now we have to talk about ending that other form of slavery—wage slavery. And we will only end that on the streets, on the picket lines, on the barricades. Working class people will have to take political power to settle that question.

“We have more opportunities now than ever before. We are far more integrated now, in ways those who went before us could only have dreamed of. There is a deep crisis in capitalism coming. The Federal Reserve is just delaying that crisis. And crisis brings radicalisation in the working class.

But workers can radicalise to the right as well as the left. I am optimistic, but we need to get our act together.

UK
Protesters rage at Labour’s denial of Israel’s genocide

The national demonstration marched on the US embassy in south London on Saturday

People staged a die-in outside Downing Street on the London Palestine march

 (Picture: Guy Smallman)

By Thomas Foster
Saturday 02 November 2024    

SOCIALIST WORKER Issue

Around 100,000 Palestine protesters marched on the United States embassy in south London on Saturday.

The national demonstration marked the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration of 1917. It saw British imperialism formally back Zionist colonists who wanted to found a Jewish state on Palestinian land.

Jim, who travelled from Bedfordshire to protest, said that the Palestine movement of the last year “has opened people’s eyes to the history of Palestine”. “I’ve learnt how severe the colonialism of Israel is and how extreme the settlers are,” he told Socialist Worker.

“They will do anything to get their way, including murder and ethnic cleansing. Israel wants to destroy anyone who it sees as an enemy and drag the US into the conflict.

“I think they want to take over all of Palestine and destroy Gaza. The ultimate aim is to use force and war to achieve domination of the region.”

Mary, a lawyer who specialises in international law, told Socialist Worker, “Israel doesn’t want peace. The Zionist “dream is for an enlarged Israel that includes parts of Lebanon and other neighbouring countries”, she said.

She defended the Palestinian right to resist under law, saying, “When your land is stolen, you have the right to defend it and take it back.”

“That’s clear in international law,” she explained. “The Palestinians were there before, they are the indigenous people.

“The Israelis have stolen their land and Palestinians are justified to fight to get back their land and homes. They should resist however they want to. They are losing everything otherwise.”

Many marchers were furious with Labour foreign secretary David Lammy who denied Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in the House of Commons last week.

Quincy from east London attacked prime minister Keir Starmer for “saying there’s no money to fix our broken public services but increasing military spending as one of his first acts”.

“Keir Starmer seems practically the same as the Tories and he won’t bring sweeping reform,” he told Socialist Worker. “He’s just as bad as the rest of them.”

Lisa, from Worcester, slammed the Democratic administration in the US. “The US could stop it today—all the US has to do is say no more weapons,” she told Socialist Worker.

“The US arms industry doesn’t want it to stop because it makes money from the arms deals”.

Lisa added that the source of hope “is us, the people” as in “many cities around the world people are standing with Palestine”. She said that change will come through “the people pushing up, not it trickling down”.

“It’s ordinary people that will make the difference. Time and time again it’s the same story.”

After more than 12 months of Israeli’s genocide, the mass march showed the resilience of the Palestine movement.

Jehan was carrying a Boycott, Divestment and Sanction banner on the demonstration. “Palestinians are calling on us to boycott Israel as a colonial outpost of the West and a genocidal state,” she told Socialist Worker.

“I think BDS can make an impact on Israel’s economy. Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu described it as a strategic threat. Israel knows it impacts them. If Israel doesn’t have the funds or backing to commit genocide, then it wouldn’t happen.”

Jehan argued that activists must “fight for companies and pension funds to divest”. “We have to isolate Israel on the global stage. We need to make companies realise it won’t pay to be associated with Israel,” she said.

Protesters marched from Whitehall along the Thames River to the US embassy. Ben Jamal, Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) director, said, “The anniversary of the Balfour declaration reminds us of the depths and length of British complicity with these rights violations.

“Every Palestinian knows who Balfour was and every Palestinian knows of the guilt of Keir Starmer’s government in aiding and abetting the current genocide against them.”

In Britain, we need to build a movement that forces the British state to break its links with Israel—and, as a first step, stop all arms sales.

“If we are rose up here, we could make a difference,” said Quincy. “We need to bring social unrest and economic upheaval.”

The workplace day of action on Thursday 28 November is an opportunity to deepen the movement and build resistance under Starmer’s government. Go to Stop The War for more on the day of action

Baku—centre of fossil fuel capitalism and revolution

The history of the Cop29 climate talks’ host city shows the power to bring real change.

The Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku in 1920 brought together revolutionaries from across the Global South (pic: Wikimedia commons).

By Martin Empson
Monday 04 November 2024   

SOCIALIST WORKER Issue


Many will despair as yet another round of Cop29 climate talks take place in a centre of oil and gas production, Baku in Azerbaijan.

But Baku has another history—one of struggle against colonialism, imperialism and capitalism itself.

Oil has been produced here from ancient times. At around 1300, Marco Polo wrote about oil “in such abundance that a hundred ships” could load simultaneously. He said, “This oil is not good to eat, but it is good for burning.”

Baku became a birthplace of fossil fuel capitalism. By 1901 Baku and the surrounding region supplied more than half the world’s crude oil.

Azerbaijan’s oil profits massively enriched a small handful of capitalists. But the oil couldn’t be extracted without workers. In December 1904 a citywide general strike shut the oil industry. Mass workers’ strikes spilled over into revolution in 1905.

Despite the defeat of this revolution, Baku’s oil workers remained strong. Revolutionaries from Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik party were central to these struggles.

The Bolsheviks fought to overcome differences between groups of workers from different ethnic backgrounds and religions.

Baku became a powerhouse of the 1917 Russian Revolution. But the divisions between ethnic and religious groups fostered under the Russian Empire meant that there was also vicious violence.

The revolution’s eventual victory saw the nationalisation of the oil industry.

Companies such as Royal Dutch Shell, Standard Oil and Anglo-Persian Oil—later BP—lost everything. In May 1918 Azerbaijan declared independence, freeing itself from what Lenin called “the prison house of nations”.

To regain the oil, and stop their enemies getting it, 40,000 British troops invaded Azerbaijan in 1918.

One British soldier wrote home, “We are not here to put down Bolshevism, but to guard British capital sunk in the oil fields.”

By 1920 the British withdrew and their puppet government collapsed, bringing the region back under the control of the revolution. The oil wealth was back in the hands of the people.

In November 1922, Arseny Avraamov’s Symphony of Factory Sirens—which used factory sirens, ship horns, train whistles and an enormous choir—was performed in Baku.

In September 1920 an event took place in Baku that should inspire us today.

The Bolsheviks called The Congress of the Peoples of the East to bring together anti-colonial activists and representatives of the newly-founded Communist International. The Bolsheviks hoped that workers’ revolution would inspire anti-colonial movements worldwide.

Almost 2,000 people gathered from across the Caucasus, the Middle East and Europe, with delegations coming from as far away as Korea and India.

There were hundreds of representatives of smaller national groups, such as the Uzbeks, Bashkirs and Abkhazians. The closing “appeal” called on workers in the West to revolt.

“Workers of Britain, America, France, Italy, Japan, Germany and other countries! Listen to the voice of the representatives of the millions of the peoples of the East in revolt, who are telling you of their oath to rise up and help you in your fight.”

The Congress was a sharp retort to those Western socialists who considered these to be “backwards” countries that would need to go through capitalist development before a socialist revolution. The people of the East were leading the struggle.

Cop29 will again be filled with delegates aligned to fossil fuel corporations. The Cop talks won’t break from a capitalist system that puts profits first.

When we protest during Cop29 for a sustainable world, we should remember the region’s rich tradition of revolutionary struggle.

8 damning polling stats that show the new Tory leader won’t be able to revive the party

Chris Jarvis 

1 November, 2024 

LEFT FOOT FORWARD

The public haven't warmed to the Tories
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At the time of writing, we don’t know whether Robert Jenrick or Kemi Badenoch will be the next leader of the Conservative Party. But we do know they’ve got a mighty uphill struggle to turn around the party’s fortunes after its worst ever general election defeat.

New polling has firmly driven this home. The headline figures from YouGov’s latest poll on the Tory leadership election will make grim reading in Tory circles.

Here are the 8 key stats you need to know from the poll:

Keir Starmer has a 7 point lead over Kemi Badenoch on who would make the best prime minister. 27% of the public say Starmer, compared to 20% who say Badenoch.

Those figures are marginally worse for Robert Jenrick. 29% of the public say Starmer would be the better PM, compared to 21% wo say Jenrick.

Robert Jenrick has a -27% favourability rating. Just 13% of the public say they have a favourable opinion of him, compared to 40% who say they have an unfavourable one.

Kemi Badenoch’s favourability is worse, at -33%. Just 12% of the public say they have a favourable rating of her, compared to 45% who say they have a unfavourable one.

Just 16% of the public think Kemi Badenoch would make a good Conservative Party leader. That’s less than half of those who think she’d make a bad leader – 35%.

Robert Jenrick doesn’t get a ringing endorsement either, with only 17% of the public thinking he would make a good Conservative Party leader. 31% say he’d make a bad leader.

In spite of all this, it turns out the public don’t really care who wins. Just 19% of the public say they care a great deal or a fair amount about whether Robert Jenrick or Kemi Badenoch become the next Conservative Party leader. A whopping 71% of people say they don’t care very much or at all.

And the public think the Tories are irrelevant. Over half (51%) of the public say the Tories are not relevant to British politics at the moment, compared to just 35% who think they are relevant.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

Tory leadership race: what does Kemi Badenoch’s victory show?

The Tory leadership race has pulled the party further to the right

Kemi Badenoch

By Camilla Royle
Saturday 02 November 2024    

 SOCIALIST WORKER Issue

Kemi Badenoch—a hard right “culture war” warrior—won the Tory leadership race with 53,806 votes compared to Robert Jenrick’s 41,388.

Badenoch has called for a defence of “British values” and a crack down on migration. She said, “We cannot be naive and assume immigrants will automatically abandon ancestral ethnic hostilities at the border, or that all cultures are equally valid. They are not.”

She wants to change the Equality Act to ban transgender women from “women and girls’ spaces”. And she has attacked transgender children, saying that she “fundamentally disagrees” that under 18 year olds can be trans.

Earlier this year Badenoch was forced to backtrack after suggesting that maternity pay is “excessive” and threatens small businesses. Her comments were part of a wider attack on regulations for the bosses.

The Tories are crowing that they have a black leader, unlike any of the other major parties. But this is no victory for black people.

When she was equalities minister Badenoch said it was against the law for schools to teach what she calls “Critical Race Theory”. She supported the Sewell report, which denied the existence of institutional racism in Britain.

Badenoch’s media strategy has involved keeping relatively quiet and allowing her rival to dig himself into a hole.

Jenrick has waded into the realm of far right politics earlier this week. He said he was “seriously concerned that facts may have been withheld” when the Southport murders suspect was charged with terror offences.

He talked about a “cover-up” by “liberal elites”—language usually associated with fascists and the right.

In the final round of Conservative Party leadership contests, the party membership gets to vote for the winner.

This is a small and dwindling rump of some of the worst people in British society. The party had around 172,000 members in 2022. In this leadership election they stated that there were 131,680 eligible voters.

Over 60 percent of Tory members in 2022 were over 55. This is true of just 26 percent of the general population. Some 97 percent of them classified themselves as White British and they tend to be richer than the average.

One study found that 77 percent of Tory members think that young people need to have more respect for British values. Over half support the death penalty in some cases. And 42 percent want censorship of films and magazines to uphold “moral standards”.


Badenoch and Braverman—what’s behind the rise of black reactionaries?
Read More


But, more than the views of the Tory membership, Badenoch’s victory is a symptom of the influence of the far right on mainstream politics.

The general election was a devastating defeat for the Tories. Reform UK got more than four million votes and came second in 98 seats—in many places beating the Conservative Party.

Since then, the Tory leadership candidates lurched rightwards in an effort to court racist voters. This is why, in a short and opaque victory speech, Badenoch alluded to a need to “reset our politics and our thinking” and to bring voters back to the party.

But the politics on offer from both candidates seems to be leaving most people cold. A YouGov poll published yesterday found that 40 percent of British people have an unfavourable view of Jenrick and 45 percent have an unfavourable view of Badenoch.

Only 13 percent and 12 percent of people said they like the respective candidates. Everyone else did not know. Conservative voters viewed both candidates more favourably. But the disapproval ratings were still 29 for Jenrick and 26 percent for Badenoch.

Even some Tories were disappointed with the embarrassing choice. Former Scottish Conservatives leader Ruth Davison said that both Jenrick and Badenoch were unsuited to be leader of the opposition because of their “personality types”. She expects more turmoil and potentially another leadership election in a couple of years.

It is tempting to think this leadership result will put the Tory party one step closer to the dustbin of history.

But the same YouGov poll showed a whopping 63 percent of people disapproved of Labour’s Keir Starmer.

The Tories think they can take on a weak Labour government. But we don’t have to be spectators to the mainstream parties’ crisis. We need to build the movement against racism—whether it comes from Reform, the Tories or Labour—and an alternative to pro-boss, anti-worker policies.

UK

A century of sensationalism and misinformation: The legacy of the Daily Mail

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead 

2 November, 2024

LEFT FOOT FORWARD


For its devoted readers, the Mail serves as a bastion of traditional British values. For its critics, the Daily Fail or the Daily Wail as it’s known, presents the worse curtain-twitching paranoia

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As the right-wing media uproar continues over the first Labour budget in 14 years, it’s a timely moment to reflect on how a century ago, the first-ever Labour government was toppled with the help of a forged letter sensationalised by the press.

What we now recognise as ‘fake news’ effectively originated on October 29, 1924, when the Daily Mail published the Zinoviev letter. The document, allegedly from the head of the Communist International in Moscow, purported to extend support to the Labour Party, triggering a political crisis that would change the course of history.

Ramsay MacDonald had led a minority Labour government for just nine months, proving that his party could be a responsible and formidable left-wing force. Yet, his Conservative opponents and their allies in the right-wing press sought to paint the Labour government as a dire threat to civilisation, alleging ties to the Soviet Union.

The closing stages of the general election 100 years ago was dominated by one of the most controversial letters of all time.

A history of misinformation

The infamous Zinoviev Letter, addressed to the British Communist Party’s central committee, was leaked to and sensationalised by the Daily Mail. Allegedly signed by Grigori Zinoviev, a prominent Bolshevik, the letter urged British and Irish communists to intensify their revolutionary activities, claiming that the Labour Party’s rise would strengthen relations with the Soviet Union. It suggested that a Labour government would radicalise the working class, positioning the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) favourably for a Bolshevik-style revolution.

On October 25, just four days before the election, the Mail plastered its front page with a headline, claiming: Civil War Plot by Socialists’ Masters: Moscow Orders to Our Reds; Great Plot Disclosed.

The sensationalism proved effective, as Labour suffered a crushing defeat.

The headlines surrounding the Zinoviev Letter were the climax of `a relentless onslaught of inflammatory articles targeting the Labour government throughout the 1924 election campaign. Readers were led to believe that MacDonald’s government intended “to use British taxpayer’s credit and cash for the purpose of financing a gang of thieves and murderers who have usurped power in Russia [and] wish to destroy the British empire and our civilised system of credit.”

No accusation was too outrageous. One article even claimed that six cabinet ministers had been persuaded to accept Russian jewels hidden in chocolates.

Each day, the newspaper featured “an outstanding Conservative campaign poster released today from that party’s headquarters.”

But it was Zinoviev letter scandal that delivered the decisive blow to the Labour Party, creating one of the greatest sensations in the history of British election campaigns. Known as the “Red Letter,” it became the centre of intense speculation and controversy for years to come.

In 1999, new light was shed on the scandal, when an official report claimed that the letter was forged by an MI6 agent’s source and almost certainly leaked by MI6 or MI5 officers to the Conservative Party. The study by Gill Bennett, chief historian at the Foreign Office, and commissioned by Robin Cook, points the finger at Desmond Morton, an MI6 officer and close friend of Churchill who appointed him personal assistant during the second world war, and at Major Joseph Ball, an MI5 officer who joined Conservative Central Office in 1926.

The exact route of the forged letter to the Daily Mail will never be known, Bennett said, adding “in electoral terms, the impact of the Zinoviev letter on Labour was more psychological than measurable.”

Its route aside, the infamous letter paved the way for the Mail’s deplorable antics in the 1930s, another era of extreme political intervention by the newspaper.

Hurrah for the blackshirts

The Daily Mail was founded in 1896 by Harold Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere, and his brother Alfred. The Harmsworth family has a long history of supporting right-wing political parties, including the fascists in the 1930s.

In January 1934, the newspaper published what became one of its most infamous articles. Entitled ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts’, the article celebrated Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. The piece was penned by Lord Rothermere. In it, he praised Mosley and the Blackshirts, seeing them as the correct party to “take over responsibility for [British] national affairs.”

Harold Harmsworth had met and admired both Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and encouraged positive depictions of their regimes in the Mail and the Daily Mirror, of which he was a major shareholder.

A move to ‘distinguished discrimination’

The Mail may have changed its editorial line and moved away from explicitly supporting fascists and their regimes, but, as Global Justice Now notes in an op-ed about the Horrible history of the Daily Mail, the “racism and xenophobia remained a key part of their ‘journalism’ and has continued through to this day.”

During this summer’s far-right riots in Britain, the Mail was accused of hypocrisy for criticising Tommy Robinson, given the newspaper’s long history of sowing division and hatred. Images of past anti-migrant frontpages resurfaced online. Among them was an article from 2013, when the Daily Mail led with a story headlined “4,000 foreign criminals including murdered and rapists we can’t throw out… and, yes, you can blame human rights again.’ The article claimed that nearly 4,000 foreign murderers, rapists, and other criminals were roaming the streets, free to commit new crimes.

Another was from 2022, when the newspaper faced criticism from the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), which accused it of exacerbating hatred by attacking Conservative leadership hopeful Penny Mordaunt for meeting the MCB’s secretary general, Zara Mohammed. The MCB accused the paper of peddling negative stereotypes against Muslims.

Hasan Patel, a strategic communications expert and former journalist, criticised the Daily Mail’s “Summer of Discontent” frontpage. He argued that the paper has significantly contributed to the climate of hate that fuelled the recent riots. “You have the @DailyMailUK acting like the #FarRight #FarageRiots was due to the Labour government, yet they as a media under Dacre have a lot to answer for in the way they have whipped up hate,” Patel wrote on X.

In 2016, the Daily Mail, together with the Sun, were singled out in a report on “hate speech” and discrimination in the UK. The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) specifically criticised some UK media outlets, particularly tabloid newspapers, for “offensive, discriminatory and provocative terminology.”

Its report said hate speech was a serious problem, including against Roma, gypsies and travellers, as well as “unscrupulous press reporting” targeting the LGBT community.

The Mail’s long history of campaigning against the interests of the working people while claiming to be for them, also remains at play today. One example of this is how the paper’s current owner, Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere, has the tax-avoiding ‘non-dom’ status and owns his media businesses through a complex structure of offshore holdings and trusts.

In 2015, the newspaper ran a smear campaign against Ed Miliband, in a bid to destroy his chances of becoming prime minister. Miliband had promised to remove non-domicile tax status. Little surprise there then.

The newspaper’s role as a propagandist for the Conservatives is even recognised abroad. In 2012, the New Yorker, wrote that the Daily Mail is more than just a newspaper, it is a “middlebrow juggernaut capable of slaying knights and swaying prime ministers.”

Representative of Britain’s deep sociopolitical divide

While its readership has declined from the two million copies sold in the 2000s, the Daily Mail still manages to sell approximately 800,000 copies per day . The MailOnline meanwhile attracts around 22 million unique browsers every month, making it the biggest and most engaged English-language newspaper website in the world.

It could be argued that opinions on the paper reflect the deep sociopolitical divide in Britain. For its devoted readers, it serves as a bastion of traditional British values, effectively voicing their concerns about issues such as the EU, immigration, and ‘benefit cheats.’

For its critics, the Daily Fail or the Daily Wail as it’s known, presents the worse curtain-twitching paranoia. ‘Pure xenophobia’ was how it was described in response to its outlandish outrage about England daring to appoint a foreign manager for the men’s football team

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Throughout its 128-year history, the Mail has established itself at the centre of Britain’s political landscape. But its reputation has been marred by a legacy of sensationalism and misinformation, with its most notorious episode occurring a century ago when it played a crucial role in undermining the Labour Party during a fiercely contested general election.

Today, many recognise the newspaper for what it truly represents, and its influence has waned compared to 1924. The relationship between any newspaper and its readership is complex, yet millions of ‘ordinary’ people still read it, doubtless finding that it shares and amplifies their concerns more effectively than other newspapers. Perhaps most alarming is the sway the Mail still holds over politicians. Many ministers find themselves asking, “What would the Mail say?” when contemplating any ‘liberal’ policy that might provoke backlash from the paper.

Former Labour MP David Blunkett summed the threat of media power well when writing about the budget in the Guardian this week, “[the Zinoviev letter] did enormous damage at the time, and is a reminder of just how fragile our democracy can be.”

Right-wing media watch – the budget under siege

I got a new laptop this week, and to my dismay, the default homepage was MSN, complete with a relentless promotion of right-wing articles.

All week, I’ve been bombarded with hysterical headlines about the autumn budget, with right-wing sources hogging the spotlight. It felt less like a news feed and more like a right-wing propaganda machine.

The Daily Mail took centre stage on the news carousel on the eve of the budget with the headline: “Backlash over budget plan to take national minimum wage past £12ph.”

The Express had a top spot too: “Labour slammed for ‘threatening British holidays’ with latest proposed stealth tax.” It’s quite the stretch to frame tax discussions as a holiday crisis, even for the Express

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But it was perhaps City AM that won the absurdity prize, declaring, “London jobs market hit hard due to ‘frenzy budget speculation.’” Ironically, their own sensationalism seemed to mirror the very panic they were criticising.

With such alarming headlines vying for users’ attention every time they log on, it’s no wonder that Keir Starmer’s approval rating has reportedly hit a “shocking record low,” as trumpeted by the Express.

I wasn’t alone in my contempt of the Tory media’s budget attacks. The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee highlighted some gems, like the Telegraph’s claim that “Starmer has put the final nail in the coffin for British aspiration,” and the Daily Mail’s assertion of a “class war” against “middle Britain.”

Toynbee aptly noted that this is the same right-wing press that misled the Tories into picking another ‘small state’ and with zero self-reflection on their party’s worst ever defeat, ignores the curious fact that a majority of Sun, Express, Mail, Telegraph and Times readers voted Labour rather than Tory.

And on the contentious issue of national insurance contributions, the chastising Tory press conveniently neglected to mention a YouGov poll showing that a small majority oppose such tax increases.

As I navigated this landscape of sensationalism, I couldn’t help but question whether the true concern lay in the budget itself or in the media circus that surrounded it.

Either way, I hastily changed my default news feed, it now features a healthier mix of left-wing sources, providing a welcome escape from the right-wing clangour. As for Reeves’ budget, regardless of its content, the Tory press would have portrayed it as if Britain were on the brink of an apocalyptic abyss.

Smear of the Week – Tory press in a tizzy as Reeves ditches Nigel Lawson

In a week filled with media scrutiny aimed at the chancellor, it was no surprise that Rachel Reeves made the headlines for replacing the portrait of Nigel Lawson in No. 11. Margaret Thatcher’s chancellor was taken down and Ellen Wilkinson, a notable Labour politician and one of the first women to serve as a Labour MP, took his place.

This media outrage bore familiarity to the earlier backlash Keir Starmer faced for removing a portrait of Thatcher herself from No. 10.

The Telegraph reacted strongly, with a headline labelling Wilkinson as one of the founding members of the Communist Party of Great Britain without referencing the fact that she resigned from the Party in 1924 because of its rejection of a parliamentary route to socialism.

The Daily Mail, which, as we know, has of history of linking Labour to Soviet sympathies, derisively dubbed Reeves “Red Rachel,” criticising her decision to replace “tax-cutting Tory Nigel Lawson” with an “image of ex-Communist education minister from 1940s.”

Wilkinson, who represented Middlesbrough East and later Jarrow, was a pioneering advocate for trade unionism, social justice, women’s rights, and educational reform. In her all too brief time as education minister in the post-war Labour government, (she died aged 55, her poor health aggravated by unremitting hard work) she raised the school leaving age to 15, established the Emergency Training Colleges to train more teachers, improved grants for further education, and introduced school meals and free milk.

She also contributed to the establishment of UNESCO, and was instrumental in organising the ‘Jarrow Crusade,’ a march from Jarrow to London in protest of the economic hardships faced by the North East community.

Despite these notable achievements, the Tory press jumped on the chance to undermine Reeves, by framing her choice as a nod to communism, as Wilkinson was briefly communist.

Surely, for Britain’s first female chancellor, the choice reflects her commitment to replacing all the portraits in No. 11 with pictures either of a woman or by a woman. Why on earth would Reeves want Nigel Lawson staring down at her, who was hung there by Rishi Sunak during his time at No. 11, especially as his famous tax cutting budget also triggered a sharp rise in inflation just as the Thatcher government seemed to have got it under control?

Perhaps the right-wing media could use a refresher on girl power. Why let a male tax-cutting Tory overshadow her vision for a more inclusive future? Which brings us to another point. As I write this, we don’t know who will win the Tory leadership contest, but even if Kemi Badenoch wins, it’s hard to see her promoting feminism. As the late Jill Tweedie, a respected feminist writer said about Margaret Thatcher, “She might be a woman, but she ain’t no sister.”



Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch

IAQ; INDOOR AIR QUALITY

UK rates of school absence due to damp-related illnesses 80% higher than European average

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead 

3 November, 2024 

LEFT FOOT FORWARD


‘The government, Ofgem, the energy sector and industry bodies must work collaboratively to make energy more affordable for all.’

Over 4.4 million children in Britain are currently growing up in poverty, according to recent data from the Institute of Health Equity (IHE).

It is estimated that approximately 1.7 million school days are lost across Europe each year due to illnesses linked to dampness and mould. The rate of school absences among children in the UK is 80 percent higher than the European average.

The UK has the oldest and least efficient housing stock in Europe. Since 2013, installation rates of energy saving measures and insulation have plummeted by 90 percent, the IHE informs.

A separate report by Fuel Bank Foundation highlights the dire impact of cold, damp homes on children living in poverty, who often attend school feeling tired, hungry, and in dirty clothing. Such an environment condemns them to a cycle of poverty that’s difficult to escape.

The Fuel Bank Foundation is dedicated to providing emergency assistance to those unable to top up their prepayment energy meters. The charity contends that children’s lives are severely affected by fuel poverty. Many families lack the necessary energy for heating, cooking, lighting, or cleaning their homes.

According to their annual Fuel Crisis Report, entitled “Time for change. Time for a fairer Future,” nearly half (45 percent) of those supported by the foundation in the past year had children at home, with young families (aged 18-35) being the most vulnerable to fuel poverty.

15 percent of the young families surveyed reported running out of money to top up their meters on a daily basis, while 26 percent were already disconnected from their energy supply when they sought emergency fuel vouchers from the Foundation.

Matthew Cole, head of the Fuel Bank Foundation, said that we might think of fuel poverty as something that mainly affects the elderly, but it’s a “blight on the lives of people of all ages, from young children to pensioners.”

“Our latest research shows that by ignoring the issue of cold homes, we are preventing children from achieving their potential and consequently trapping them into lifelong poverty.

“Absenteeism from school is a big issue. As well as being off sick due to damp and mould related illnesses, children are refusing to go to school because they are being bullied, shunned or shamed because their clothes smell or they haven’t been able to have a bath or shower. Without good health or a good education, what chance have these children got of pulling themselves out of poverty when they grow up?”

The foundation says it welcomes the government’s decision to reduce the amount that can be taken from Universal Credit repayments to repay debt from 25 percent to 15 percent from April next year. But it says more need to be done to “address the root causes of fuel crisis and to provide the strategic and tactical mitigation that’s needed.”

“The government, Ofgem, the energy sector and industry bodies must work collaboratively to make energy more affordable for all, provide more financial support and better protection for people who prepay, especially those who use alternative fuels, and upgrade the UK’s housing stock so that everyone has a good quality home that is inexpensive to heat,” said the charity in a statement following the autumn budget.