Nothing will change until the political system is freed from the clutches of corporations and the super-rich

Prem Sikka 

Yesterday
Left Foot Forward

The law is being used to enforce existing power structures for the benefit of the few

We are all brought up to value ‘the rule of law’ as it provides stability, predictability, accountability and protection of human and property rights. We are frequently told that no one is above the law and all persons have access to courts. However, all is not well.

The traditional explanations of ‘the rule of law’ assume that the state is an umpire who receives inputs from citizens. These are processed and the output is laws. This is silent on how class, money, bribery, corruption, power shapes laws, or even prevents issues from being considered. The law is being used to enforce existing power structures for the benefit of the few. Occasionally, a few crumbs are thrown to pacify the masses but these concessions and can be withdrawn, as shown by the government’s push to cut disability benefits.

It is hard to recall any public petitions, marches or protests demanding unchecked profiteering, austerity, poverty, poor housing, homelessness, low wages and pensions, long queues for hospital appointments, sewage in rivers, cuts in education spending, gender pay gap, or closure of thousands of libraries and community centres. These are imposed because the rich and powerful demand laws to protect their wealth. The poorest 20% pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes than the richest 20%. Corporations and the rich fund political parties, hand consultancies to legislators and control means of production to colonise the legal system. The countervailing power of the low and middle class income households is weak, trade unions have been emasculated and protests are made difficult. For example, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 empowers the police to ban noisy protests, and radicalism amongst the young has been squeezed out by £267bn of student debt.

Governments amplify the agenda of corporations and the rich. They tell workers that wage rises are inflationary but remain silent on ever increasing executive pay, dividends and share buybacks. Wages are taxed at marginal rates of 20% – 45% plus national insurance contributions (NIC). The returns on investment of wealth are taxed at lower rates. Capital gains are taxed at marginal rates of 18% to 32%, and no NIC is payable. Dividends are taxed at marginal rates of 8.75% to 39.35% and no NIC is levied.

Firing workers and rehiring at lower pay and inferior working conditions has become a widespread practice. P&O Ferries knowingly violated UK employment law and fired nearly 800 workers without notice and replaced them with cheaper agency workers to boost profits. No government department prosecuted the company. Delivery firm DPD has sacked drivers who criticised pay cuts. Grand Theft Auto maker Rockstar Games has been accused by a trade union of sacking staff to stop them from unionising. The Employment Rights Bill, soon to become law, will not end these practices. There is a huge inequity between the rights of workers and employers. Workers must have a ballot to withdraw labour; employers do not need one to withdraw capital and close operations. Secondary picketing is unlawful but secondary production is permitted.

Governments bend laws to transfer vast amount of wealth to corporations and their controllers. The Private Finance Initiative (PFI) is one such example. Under PFI, the government contracts with the private sector to design, build, finance and maintain long-life public assets, such as schools, hospitals, roads, prisons, office buildings bridges and tunnels. Since its inception in 1992, around £60bn of private money has gone into 700 PFI projects. In return, the government will pay £306bn. The government has revived PFI and now calls it Public-Private Partnership (PPP).

Corporate funded think-tanks, with easy access to policymakers, urge governments to cut benefits, pensions, free schools meals, education spending, and charge fees for seeing family doctors, but oppose tax rises on the rich. Such think-tanks have shaped laws to secure vast subsidies or free cash for corporations. Recipients include auto, steel, film, shipbuilding, oil, gas, biomass, semiconductor and internet companies. No equity stake is taken by the government. Full details are not published as the contracts are considered to be ‘commercially sensitive’ which prevents public and parliamentary scrutiny.

Despite public concern, laws have been enacted to privatise public services and boost corporate profits. Water, energy and other companies have skinned customers for years. Prison services are outsourced, enabling companies to make vast profits. The NHS doles out contracts to private sector cataract clinics with profit margins of 32%-43%. Local authorities spend around 61% of their budgets on social care, which is mostly controlled by the private sector. Profitability among the largest care home chains ranges from 11% to 42% of revenues. 15 largest children’s home providers made average annual profit of 23% per year. Companies providing residential care to children have pre-tax profit margins of 19%-25%. On 18th November 2024, the government said “We will crack down on care providers making excessive profit … put a limit on the profit providers can make”. A year later, nothing more has been heard. Instead, the government enacted laws to continue with the two-child benefit cap, impose disability benefit cuts and snoop on benefit claimants’ bank accounts.

Laws are enacted to make tax concessions to assets managers of private equity. The top marginal rate of tax for them will be 34.1%, instead of 45%. The NHS drugs prices could be increased by 25% to appease companies. Banks welcomed public bailouts but oppose accompanying regulation. Obedient governments have reversed the post-2008 crash laws. The cap on bankers’ bonuses has been removed. Capital adequacy requirements for banks are being watered down. The regulators’ duty of customer or public protection in almost all sectors has been diluted. Now they must balance their duty of customer protection with the goal of promoting economic growth. Chancellor Rachel Reeves sought to protect bank profits by overriding the Supreme Court hearing case against banks for mis-selling car loans. The Chancellor said that she was “considering overruling the Supreme Court’s decision with retrospective legislation, in order to help save lenders billions of pounds, in the event that it ruled in favour of consumers”. The same concern is not shown for victims of bank scandals. For example, the Financial Conduct Authority, the Serious Fraud Office and corporate-funded City of London Police have been unwilling to investigate HBOS frauds dating back to 2003. They have been content for Lloyds Bank (owner of HBOS since January 2009) to investigate. It promised a report, the Dobbs Review, in 2018. However, no report has been published, and Ministers fob-off parliamentary questions .

The poor are denied financial privacy. The Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill assumes that all recipients of universal credit; employment and support allowance; and state pension credit are likely to commit fraud. The state is taking powers to snoop on their bank accounts without any court order or right of appeal. Money for assumed frauds can be removed directly from their bank accounts. The government estimates that this will recover up to £1.5bn in the next five years.

No equivalent power is taken to monitor human traffickers, narcotics smugglers, directors of bankrupt businesses, banks selling dud products, or the tax avoidance industry. In 2023-24, HMRC failed to collect £46.8bn of taxes due to error, avoidance, evasion and fraud, which is around £500bn since 2010. The National Audit Office concluded that wealthy elites are dodging more tax than had been estimated by HMRC. In 2023-24, HMRC issued 456 penalties to wealthy individuals (individuals earning more than £200,000 a year, or with assets over £2 million, in any of the last three years) totalling £5.8 million, compared to 2,153 penalties totalling £16.2 million in 2018-19. The number of wealthy individuals prosecuted following HMRC’s criminal investigations was 30 in 2019-20, 5 in 2021-22, and 25 in 2023-24. The same benevolence is applied to accountants, lawyers, bankers and finance experts enabling tax abuse. Just five prosecutions were brought in 2023-2024, down from 16 in 2018-2019.

The low/middle income families can’t easily get legal advice or hire lawyers. Legal-aid is scarce. Even if they can cobble something together they won’t get a timely hearing. There is a backlog of 78,329 Crown Court and 361,027 Magistrates’ courts cases. The courts deliver interpretation of law, not justice. People have been in prison for over 20 years for stealing a phone. There are 8,493 ‘unreleased’ prisoners serving indeterminate sentences, often for petty crime. The law becomes blinkered when dealing with the well-off. The Post Office scandal shows that with the aid of corporations and lawyers, hundreds of innocent postmasters were convicted of fraud and forced to hand millions of pounds to the Post Office. After 26 years and despite tons of evidence, no beneficiary from the scandal has been forced to compensate the victims or charged for false criminal prosecutions. The treatment of people affected by Grenfell, Windrush, cladding, mortgage prisoners, infected blood, Hillsborough and other scandals, shows how selective the rule of law is.

Nothing will change until the political system is freed from the clutches of corporations and the super-rich.

Prem Sikka is an Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex and the University of Sheffield, a Labour member of the House of Lords, and Contributing Editor at Left Foot Forward.

How we can fight back against the right-wing coup

Prem Sikka

8 August, 2025

Left Foot Forward

For a better future the power of corporations and wealthy elites must be curbed and reversed

What ails Britain is a recurring question.

The evidence of ailment is all around us. The gross domestic product, considered by many to be an indicator of wealth generation, barely grew by an average of 1.5% between 2009 and 2023. Successive governments expect the private sector to investment in new and emerging industries, but that hasn’t happened. Despite recent record low rates of interest, inflation and corporation tax, the UK has languished at the bottom of the G7 league for investment in productive assets in 24 out of last 30 years. It ranks 28th among 31 OECD countries.

A large proportion of the population lacks the financial strength to buy goods and services necessary for a vibrant economy. The average real wage has declined to the 2008 level, leaving 16m Britons, including 5.2m children, to live in poverty. 24m people, 36% of the population, live below socially acceptable living standards. The state pension is less than 50% of the minimum wage. One in every 200 households in the UK is experiencing homelessness, and the homelessness rate is the highest in OECD countries. The poorest 20% of households in Slovenia and Malta are better off than the equivalent in the UK. Meanwhile, the rich have got richer. The UK’s 50 richest families hold more wealth than 50% of the population.

The above isn’t an accident. It is the planned outcome of the right-wing coup that began in the late 1970s and continues to accelerate. The ultra-rich and corporations didn’t accept the post-war social settlement of a mixed economy, rising living standards, worker and consumer rights. They undermined the social settlement through obedient media, think-tanks, subservient politicians and academics. Trade unions and working class bought into the narrative of rising living standards, worker and consumer rights and rarely mounted an effective challenge to the rising power of corporate elites.

A major aim of the ongoing coup is to restructure the state to empower corporations and wealthy elites, and discipline the working class so that it would not challenge the new regime.

After the Second World War, the state rebuilt society by directly investing in essential industries such as water and energy, and emerging new industries such as biotechnology, information technology and aerospace. The coup stripped the state of its entrepreneurial role and transformed it into a guarantor of corporate profits. Privatisation of publicly-owned industries, outsourcing of public functions and private finance initiative (PFI) were early signs of the transformation.

Welfare of capital has become the overriding function of the state. Almost everything ranging from oil, gas, energy, shipbuilding steel, water, rail and telecommunications has been privatised at knockdown prices. Despite privatisation, vast cash subsidies continue to be handed to oil, gas, biomass, auto, shipbuilding, steel, rail, internet, semiconductor and other industries. This is accompanied by 1,180 tax reliefs, mainly to corporations and the rich. The full cost of subsidies and tax reliefs is not known. At the same time, successive governments have declared war on social security benefits for the poor.

Abuses and failures by big businesses are covered-up. The Post Office scandal and the Grenfell Towers fire are reminders of how the state shields corporations. Despite over 1,135 criminal convictions no water company has had its licence to operate withdrawn. Since 2020, twenty of the largest energy companies have racked up operating profits of over £514bn, directly leading to higher rates of inflation and poverty, and destruction of energy intensive businesses. Despite the 2007-08 crash and numerous scandals, the finance industry has been deregulated. Regulators in every industry are required to promote growth and competitiveness of industry. In the race-to-the-bottom consumer protection is diluted.

To increase corporate control of society, the state is dismantling vital public services. Large parts of the National Health Service (NHS) have been privatised. The NHS increasingly functions as a shell outsourcing contracts to the private sector. One study estimated that privately owned cataract surgeries had profit margins of between 32% and 43%. Children’s care has long been privatised since the 1980s. Now over 83% of children’s care homes are controlled by corporations, raking in average profits of 23% a year. The public purse cost ballooned from £3.1bn in 2009-10 to £7bn in 2022-23. In 2023-24, local authorities spent £32bn on adult social care, mostly provided by private sector with profit margins of up to 42%. The quest for profits pays little regard to the quality of service. 804 of the 816 adult care homes forcibly closed by the regulators during the period 2011 to 2023 were owned by for-profit organisations. 48 of the 53 children’s homes forcibly closed by the regulator during the period 2014 to 2023 were operated by corporations. Despite the failings, the state promotes privatisations and remains guarantor of corporate profits.

The second major strand of the coup has been to weaken workers and working class solidarity in the belief that insecure and impoverished people won’t challenge the social order. The Thatcher government legislated to weaken trade unions. It imposed stringent strikes ballots, banned secondary picketing and imposed financial penalties for taking strike action. The same didn’t apply to corporations for withdrawal of capital or secondary production. Workers increasingly faced insecure employment through ‘fire and rehire’ on inferior working conditions, and zero-hour contracts. Real wage cuts and freezes became the norm and the real average wage has hardly risen 2008. The Employment Rights Bill 2025 individualises worker rights and does not restore sectoral collective bargaining. Individuals are in no position to challenge the might of corporations. This was typified by P&O Ferries which knowingly illegally sacked 800 workers, but faced no action from the state.

The poorest 20% of households pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes compared to the richest 20%. Wages are taxed at marginal rates of 20% to 45%; compared to capital gains at marginal rates of 18% to 32%, and dividends at the rates of 8.75% to 39.35%. In opposition, Chancellor Rachel Reeves promised to tax private equity bosses’ remuneration as income instead of capital gains. As some of the wealthiest people, they would have faced a marginal income tax rate of 45%. But when in office she agreed to tax their remuneration as capital gains and an upper limit of 32%. Most Britons can’t fund political parties, hand consultancies and freebies to legislators, and cannot secure access to policymakers to have their voice heard.

People can take their anger to the streets but will face the might of the repressive apparatus of the state. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 criminalises protests on the grounds that they are ‘too noisy’ and inconvenience others. The Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021 enables the government to authorise state and non-state actors to commit murder, torture, rape and phone-tapping with complete immunity from prosecution and without any court order because it is “in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom”. The Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill currently going through parliament gives the state powers to snoop on benefit claimants’ banks accounts without any court order, if fraud is suspected. There is no right of appeal and the state can directly remove money from the bank accounts. None of this applies to tax evaders, money launderers, disqualified company directors or legislators claiming false expenses.

The dissent in public spaces is suppressed. Most media outlets are controlled by corporations and wealthy elites sympathetic to the coup. The word ‘socialism’ is increasingly confined to negative spaces. When the Labour party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn sought to develop an alternative path built on equitable distribution of wealth, mixed economy, public ownership of utilities and limits on industry-military complex, there was orchestrated media hostility. A military general threatened mutiny. After securing leadership of the Labour Party with radical promises, Sir Keir Starmer expelled Jeremy Corbyn from the party, and abandoned most of the promises. Purging the left has been one of his major aims. He removed the party whip from seven MPs for opposing the two-child benefit cap. Another four MPs were suspended for tabling amendments to a Bill cutting disability benefits.

The coup has not been bloodless. Some 300,000 people a year die whilst waiting for a hospital appointment in England. A study reported that between 2012 and 2019, government imposed austerity caused 335,000 excess deaths in England and Scotland i.e. nearly 48,000 a year. Around 128,000 people, including 110,000 pensioners, a year die in fuel poverty.

The right-wing coup is a major cause of stagnant economy and social tensions. For a better future the power of corporations and wealthy elites must be curbed and reversed. A sustainable economy and just society cannot be built without a counter revolution based on humanity, compassion, justice and equitable distribution of income and wealth. Against all the odds our predecessors challenged dominant discourses and secured a modicum of rights by building communities and solidarity with oratory, pamphlets, music, street theatre, plays, songs, poetry, oral histories of the marginalised, protest marches and resistance strategies. Can we not do the same or more?

Taming corporations is the key issue of our times

Prem Sikka 

11 July, 2025 
Left Foot Forward

To appease corporations, people may raze mountains, divert rivers, clear forests, cover countryside in tarmac and shower subsidies upon them, but they have no loyalty to any place, people or product.

There is a crisis of democracy. People can vote for whichever political party they want, but corporations always win as they fund the parties and legislators; control media and almost everything else. Their interests are promoted by obedient governments. People may elect a party that promises greater investment in education, healthcare and the environment or promises of redistribution of income and wealth but they are soon disciplined by threats of economic turbulence caused by flight of capital.

Taming the corporations is a key issue of our times. They wield enormous power over our lives, but people have little or no say in their affairs. The state gives birth to corporations and nurtures them through legal frameworks, social infrastructure, property rights, subsidies, tax perks and limited liability which enable privatisation of profits and socialisation of losses. The supposed bargain is that corporations will serve society, but that is not the case.

To appease corporations, people may raze mountains, divert rivers, clear forests, cover countryside in tarmac and shower subsidies upon them, but they have no loyalty to any place, people or product. Dodging taxes, abusing customers, exploiting workers, violating human rights and environmental damage are all normalised. Corporations remain the private fiefdom of executives.

At every stage of life, we are abused. Companies like Nestlé and Danone dominate 85% of the baby formula market and hike prices at will to boost profits and dividends. 15 largest children’s home providers make an average 23% profit per year, leaving little for front line services. Supermarkets profiteer from high food and fuel prices. Big pharmaceutical companies have made over £12bn excess profit from just 10 NHS drugs, which had profit mark-ups of up to 23,000%.

Instead of competing corporations such as Barratt Redrow, Bellway, Berkeley Group, Bloor Homes, Persimmon, Taylor Wimpey and Vistry exchanged details about house sales including pricing, number of property viewings and incentives to disadvantage customers. Companies such as Brown and Mason, Cantillon, Clifford Devlin, DSM, Erith, JF Hunt, Keltbray, McGee, Scudder and Squibb colluded to rig bids for demolition and asbestos removal contracts. In 2017, faulty cladding killed 72 people in the Grenfell Tower fire. No one has been charged and thousands of people are stuck with faulty cladding and unsaleable houses.

For most people, earning a decent living is a struggle whilst company execs collect up to 575 times the median employee pay. The case of P&O Ferries illegally sacking 800 workers shows that companies have no qualms about violating laws because governments don’t inconvenience large corporations. The average real wage is unchanged since 2008. Between 2016 and 2023, some 3m workers were denied the minimum wage. Culprits are rarely prosecuted. Trade unions can help but their members are targeted. Balfour Beatty, Carillion, Costain, Kier, Laing O’Rourke, Sir Robert McAlpine, Skanska UK and VINCI PLC collaborated to secretly blacklist trade unionists and deprive them of employment. Abused employees are silenced and bullied into agreeing out of court settlements and signing non-disclosure agreements.

A cost of living crisis is caused by unchecked profiteering. Since the pandemic, electricity and gas supply companies have increased their profit margins by a whopping 363%. Since 2020, big energy companies have made operating profits of £514bn, a major cause of poverty and destruction of industries. Since privatisation in 1989, water companies have levied inflation-busting charges on customers, but haven’t built a single new reservoir. Instead, they paid nearly £85bn in dividends. They dump raw sewage in rivers and flout laws to boost profits. Despite over 1,135 criminal convictions they remain in control of a vital resource.

Thalidomide, mad cow, cancers and obesity epidemic caused by food high in fat, salt, sugar and chemical additives, are some examples of diseases and disabilities manufactured in corporate boardrooms by wealthy executives living in leafy suburbs. Companies don’t bear the social cost of irresponsibility.

The finance industry is riddled with frauds and fiddles. Numerous financial products, including pensions, endowment mortgages, precipice bonds, mini-bonds, split capital investment trusts, interest-rate swaps, car loans and payment protection insurance have been missold, leaving millions in misery. JPMorgan, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank and Bank of New York Mellon have defied money laundering crackdowns by moving staggering sums of illicit cash for shadowy characters and criminal networks. Puny fines are ineffective.

40% of the world’s dirty money is routed through the UK and its offshore satellites. Governments can check it by taking out Unexplained Wealth Orders (UWO) and prosecuting the beneficiaries. Since 2018 only seven UWOs have been issued to recover just £22m. No one has been prosecuted. No government has sought to cleanse the finance industry. Instead of strengthening public interest protection duties of regulators, the UK government now requires regulators to promote growth of the finance industry.

Auditors, the self-appointed police force of capitalism, are mired in scandals. None noticed that the Post Office didn’t keep proper accounting records and prosecuted innocent postmasters. The audit quality reports show that major accounting firms still don’t meet the feather-duster UK standards. Malpractices only come to light after scandals. For example, PwC programmed its audit partner to spend just two hours on the audit of BHS. KPMG submitted false information and documents to the regulator investigating audit failures at Carillion.

Pandora Papers, Paradise Papers, Bahamas Leaks, LuxLeaks, Swiss Leaks and Panama Papers are some of the episodes that shed light on the destructive tax abuse and illicit financial flows industry dominated by accounting and law firms and banks. They face little retribution. In 2023-24, fewer than five criminal cases were brought against those who aid tax dodgers. The Criminal Finances Act 2017 gave government powers to prosecute companies for tax evasion. Since its introduction, there have been no prosecutions or convictions of corporations”.

The privatisation of healthcare created new exploitative opportunities for corporations. Newmedica, Optegra, SpaMedica, CHEC and ACES are major beneficiaries as the NHS doles out cataract surgery contracts to the private sector. In 2023-24, they made a profit of £169m on the back of profit margins of 32%-43%. Care services for senior citizens are dominated by corporations. Some £1.5bn a year is taken out of the care sector in the form of shareholder returns, leaving less for front line services.

Death is the last chance for corporations to exploit people and they don’t miss it. Regulators complain that funeral directors don’t clarify the prices and bereaved relatives can’t easily haggle.

The above examples are a tiny glimpse of corporate power and abuses. Governments do little to make corporations accountable to the people. Companies such as Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, ExxonMobil, Microsoft, Nvidia, Shell, Walmart and others employ thousands of workers and their revenues exceed the gross domestic product (GDP) of many a nation state. This gives them enormous clout to discipline elected governments by withholding investment, shifting production and tax dodges through complex structure. Corporate hunger for profits knows no limits. In the 1930s Giant corporations and banks collaborated with Nazi Germany as it was profitable. US corporation IBM directly supplied the Nazis with technology which was used to transport millions of people to their deaths in the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Treblinka. In the1950s Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, now part of BP helped to overthrow the government of Iran. Any government resisting corporations can always be toppled. Elon Musk, the controller of Tesla Corporation, is willing to fund Reform UK to advance his ideological project and erode remnants of democracy in the UK.

We have a choice. We can have either democracy and public accountability or rampant corporate power with enormous wealth and power concentrated in the hands of a few business executives, but not both. Corporations must be brought under democratic control. Yet the political system is unable or unwilling to call them to account. Political parties, governments and pressure groups are bought off. Unaccountable corporate power is damaging the fabric of society, the structure of families, the quality of life and the very future of the planet.

A proportional representation voting system has a better chance of enabling people to speak. This must be accompanied by a total ban on receiving and giving of political donations to parties and spurious corporate consultancies for legislators. No one should be allowed to own more than one media outlet. All large corporations must have worker elected directors on their boards and employees must vote on executive pay. Directors must be made personally liable for abuses. Essential industries must be in public ownership with workers and consumer elected directors on boards. Section 172 of the Companies Act 2006 must be reformed so that directors advance the welfare of stakeholders, not just shareholders. Giant corporations must be broken-up to increase competition and reduce their threat to the people. The libel laws need to be changed to favour the citizen rather than powerful corporations. Companies should not be able to conceal any information that could prevent injury, disease and harm to people. The public’s ‘right to know’ should take priority over concerns about corporate secrecy and confidentiality.

The above suggestions are not a panacea but provide a modest start to build a democratic society.

Prem Sikka is an Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex and the University of Sheffield, a Labour member of the House of Lords, and Contributing Editor at Left Foot Forward.

How the global shipping industry has grown over the years

05:40

BUSINESS © FRANCE 24


Issued on: 09/06/2025 - 

As France hosts a UN conference on protecting the ocean, NGOs have denounced the fact that large shipping companies are sponsoring the event, calling them some of the biggest polluters. The maritime transport sector accounts for 3 percent of global CO2 emissions, as dry cargo shipments have more than doubled since 2000. Plus, the US and China have started a new round trade talks in London, with Beijing's export control of rare earths firmly in focus. 

By:

Yuka ROYERFollow

Caroline BAUM

Sails, batteries and AI: What a green revolution in maritime transport might look like

Analysis


The maritime transport sector emits as much greenhouse gas as the aviation industry, which is why the world’s major private maritime players now face the challenge of creating their own green transition plan. As the UN Ocean Conference gets under way in Nice, FRANCE 24 takes a look at where the sector currently stands and what options are on the table for a greener future at sea.


Issued on: 09/06/2025 - 
FRAJCE24
By: Cyrielle CABOT

The world's first self-propelled, electric container ship MV Yara Birkeland is moored at Langkaia in Oslo, on November 19, 2021. © Torstein Boe, NTB, AFP/ File picture


Over the weekend, it was time for the key players of the maritime industry – ship owners, port authorities and others – to meet in Monaco for the Blue Economy and Finance Forum, one of the many special events held on the sidelines of the June 9-13 United Nations Ocean Conference. The key goal of the meeting was to come up with a plan on how to decarbonise maritime transport. Because while the UN summit focuses on protecting the oceans, the many ships that cross them are also a big part of the problem.

Today, the shipping sector accounts for around 3 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions – almost the same amount as the aviation industry. In Europe, it is even worse, and accounts for 14.2 percent of transport-related greenhouse gases, and about 4 percent of all emissions. The reason for this is that most ships are powered by heavy fuel oil, a dirty by-product of oil refining and one of the worst offenders when it comes to pollution and greenhouse gases.

Although international measures have helped reduce emissions for individual ships in the past few years, the growing number of freight vessels – the biggest polluters – means that total emissions still continue to climb.

Net-zero by 2050: a huge challenge


To come to terms with this, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has set an ambitious target for the shipping industry of net-zero emissions by 2050.

It is a huge challenge. “Shipping is one of the most difficult sectors to decarbonise,” said Pierre Marty, a maritime transport expert and lecturer at the French engineering school Centrale Nantes. “For cars, the solution came quickly with the development of electric vehicles and batteries. For planes, the industry immediately went for synthetic kerosene. But it’s harder for the shipping sector because there is no one-size-fits-all solution,” he said.

Read more Will travelling by plane ever be carbon neutral? Researchers have their doubts

From leisure yachts to bulk carriers and container ships, they all have different needs depending on their size, the distance they travel and how many port stops they do. “What works for one ship might be useless for another,” Marty said, but noted they all have one common challenge: “to meet high energy demands in the often limited space on board”.

To make a real difference, he said, the focus needs to be on larger vessels. Although they only make up 25 percent of the global fleet, container ships, bulk carriers, LNG and chemical tankers account for around 80 percent of maritime CO2 emissions. They also often travel longer distances and use more energy.

Electric ships?


Among the many solutions that have been studied in recent years, electrification is one of the most promising so far. As with cars, it would involve equipping a ship with a battery that would be recharged when docked in port.

“This solution has already been adopted by some leisure boats and smaller container ships,” Fanny Pointet, head of maritime transport at the NGO Transport and Environment, said. “But it’s not at all adapted to long-distance vessels. You can’t recharge batteries in the middle of the ocean,” she said.

“An intermediary and alternative solution would be to use the batteries just for moving in and out of ports,” she suggested. “This would not only help reduce emissions, but also lower air pollution.” British-owned P&O Ferries is one of the companies that has already announced it is equipping its Dover-Calais ferries with hybrid engines for this purpose.

Biofuels, LNG and synthetic fuels

Another option is for vessels to switch to alternative fuels like biomethanol. In September, Danish shipping giant Maersk surprised the industry by presenting a 32,000-ton container ship (capable of carrying 2,100 containers) powered by biomethanol from forestry and agricultural waste.

“But again, this isn’t scalable in the long term because we don’t have enough biomass to meet global demand,” Pointet remarked.

Some civilian actors have instead turned to liquefied natural gas (LNG), but that, too, has its consequences. LNG is mostly made up of methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas, and the European Environment Agency and the European Maritime Safety Agency have both warned of the rise in methane emissions because of the sector’s increased use of LNG.

“That leaves green hydrogen and synthetic fuels, which are widely seen as the most sustainable solutions,” Pointet said. But, Marty added, “these [technologies] are in between development and commercialisation at the moment. They are not mature enough yet, and therefore very expensive.”

Shapes, speed and AI


Aside from turning to greener fuels, another key lever is to make ships more energy efficient in and of themselves.

This is where ship design would come in, with designers potentially equipping vessels with sails, propulsion-enhanced propellers and optimising their hull shapes.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can also help make the industry greener.

“With AI, it is possible to plot routes that would require the least energy by taking winds and currents into account,” Pointet said.

Another point of discussion is reducing engine power and speed limits. One recent study showed that by just lowering average global speeds by 10 percent, CO2 emissions would be reduced by 13 percent. It would also halve the risk of whale collisions and slash underwater noise by 42 percent.

“In the end, the ship of the future will most likely combine a bit of everything; hybrid engines, better hull designs and alternative fuels – all adapted to the specific needs of each vessel,” Pointet said.

And if the ships advance, so will the ports that host them. “The priority here is electrification in ports,” Pointet said. “Because even when ships are docked, many of them, like passenger ships, often need to keep their engines running to maintain services onboard.”

The massive cost of going green


But, both experts concluded, massive investments – to the tune of between $8 billion and $28 billion (€7.5 billion and €26 billion) a year – are needed until 2050 to embark on this green maritime revolution . And that is without counting the infrastructure that would be needed to make and distribute green fuels.

To anticipate these massive costs, some 100 delegations brought together by the IMO in April agreed to create a global carbon pricing mechanism. According to the plan, all ships will as of 2028 have to meet CO2 emissions quotas by using cleaner fuels. Those who exceed the limits will be fined hundreds of euros per ton of CO2 emitted.

According to researchers working at the shipping and ocean transport department at the University College of London, this measure alone could generate between $30-40 billion in revenues by 2030.

But, Pointet warned, exemptions of various kinds could undermine the measure's impact. “And there are still many other questions pending, especially [regarding] what kind of fuels will qualify as clean energy.”

Before going into effect, the carbon pricing mechanism must be approved in a second IMO vote scheduled for October. That means that the industry heavyweights and oil-rich nations opposing the plan still have time to try to sink the deal.

This article was adapted from the original in French by Louise Nordstrom.

UK

5 times Eddie Dempsey has torn apart right-wing, anti-worker arguments

NEWLY ELECTED RMT UNION GNERAL SECRETARY

Olivia Barber 

Yesterday
Left Foot Forward


Dempsey has shut down questions on whether striking workers are "greedy" and false claims about union pay with skill and poise

Today, Eddie Dempsey will take over as RMT’s general secretary following the retirement of the legendary Mick Lynch. As he steps into the role, we look back at some of his most powerful takedowns of right-wing, anti-worker rhetoric – of which there are many.

It’s no surprise, then, that the right-wing press is getting worried about his appointment.

The Telegraph published an article yesterday describing Dempsey as “a longstanding ideologue of the hard-Left” and stating that critics fear he will push the agenda of the RMT “into further strikes – and even into more broader anti-government action across the trade union movement”.
“When are we going to ask if they [corporations] are being greedy?”

During the rail strikes in the summer of 2022, a reporter on the Jeremy Vine on 5 show posed a textbook right-wing question to Dempsey, asking whether rail workers were being “greedy” for striking for higher pay.

He said: “It’s a bit of a cheek having a programme asking trade unions if they’re being greedy for asking for a pay rise.”

“The FTSE 350 top companies in this country – their profits have gone up 73 per cent since 2019. When are we going to ask if they are being greedy?”.

The reporter then argued that the strike would impact “everyday people going to work, at the start of the Commonwealth Games.”

Dempsey shot back: “Listen, people will find it hard on a strike day but people will find it hard when it’s not a strike day because there’s people in this country spending 18% of their income travelling on trains when we’ve got the highest fares in Europe because profiteers have been robbing this country blind for years.”
“You only care about workers when they can’t get to work”

In another interview on Jeremy Vine on 5 in July 2022, Vine himself said rail passengers might have to factor in that for two or three days a month, when there might be no train service.

Daily Express columnist Carole Malone chimed in: “What I don’t get, Eddie, is why your right to strike is more important than other people’s right to get to work.”

Dempsey said: “Well Carole, I’ve got to say, you only seem interested in workers when they can’t get to work and we’re on strike. I’m more interested about what happens to workers when they get there.”

He stressed that his concern extends beyond workers on their way to work, highlighting that they have seen their living standards decline over the past 30 years, and stated, “Workers in this country need a pay rise.”
The Tories have delivered “Pain, lower wages, a fall in living standards”

Reflecting on the Tories’ legacy in government and what they have done for workers, Dempsey told Politics Joe: “Pain, lower wages, higher costs, a fall in living standards, insecurity at work, restrictive laws preventing them from striking, restrictive laws preventing them from protesting.”

He added: “They’ve done an awful lot for workers, and all of it has been negative, all of it has been very bad.”

Dempsey, speaking outside Parliament, explained that the RMT was protesting P&O Ferries’ shocking decision to fire 800 shipping staff in March 2022 via Zoom, while some were dragged off their vessels by private security guards.

He said the RMT was demanding that “bare minimum legal protections” for domestic workers be extended to seafarers, calling the situation “a national scandal”.
“They’re all up for their mates in the banks getting pay rises”

In an interview on TalkTV Julia Hartley-Brewer, also in 2022, grilled Dempsey on why the RMT had not been able to make a pay deal with Network Rail. Dempsey explained: “You have to appreciate Julia, everywhere where we’re not dealing with a company controlled by the Department for Transport, we’ve got a deal.”

Hartley-Brewer asked whether the government was not giving RMT an inflation-busting pay rise because it would lead to other public sector workers striking, adding “as a country we can’t afford to have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands ultimately across the public sector, millions, getting those sorts of pay rises”.

Dempsey fired back: “Well I tell you what Julia they soon stop worrying about pay rises when it’s their mates in the banks with their bonuses.

He continued: “They’ve very worried about us getting a pay rise but they’re all up for their mates in the banks getting them and the private companies making profits.”
Dempsey slams Jeremy Kyle’s false claims about Mick Lynch’s salary

Not only does Dempsey deliver strong arguments in defense of workers, but he’s also had to dismantle misleading claims about union pay put forward by the right-wing press.

In a June 2022 interview with Jeremy Kyle on TalkTV, Dempsey slammed Bank of England boss Andrew Bailey, who hypocritically called for pay restraint in annual wage increases despite earning £575,000 himself.

Jeremy Kyle used the comments to wrongly claim that Mick Lynch was on £124,000 a year, saying “why doesn’t he give £80,000 of his money to his trade union comrades”.

Dempsey clarified, “That’s what the Daily Mail says, but it’s not true,” and explained the right-wing press had included employer National Insurance contributions in their calculation. “That’s not how you work out someone’s pay, it’s just to get a soundbite,” he said.

“He doesn’t earn more than the prime minister, […] he doesn’t have a company car, he doesn’t live in a mansion, […] he’s just a former railway worker like myself who has been elected by his peers to represent them because he’s a good trade unionist,” Dempsey said.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

Whatever happened to the ‘rule of law’ in the UK?

Opinion

Prem Sikka 

Yesterday
Left Foot Forward


Even if people can get access to the courts, at best they will get an interpretation of law, not justice

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Whatever happened to the ‘rule of law’ in the UK? We all value the rule of law. It is the foundation stone of democratic, open and peaceful societies. It helps to protect rights, provides stability, accountability, and enables people to flourish. When applied correctly it can limit the arbitrary powers of the state and wealthy elites.

However, all is not well. It is often claimed that everyone is equal before the law. The assumption is that everyone can access timely legal advice and ultimately go to the courts to adjudicate on disputes. Following the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 people can’t get legal-aid for many family, employment, housing and debt problems. The number of legal aid cases to help people get the early advice they needed dropped from almost a million in 2009/10 to just 130,000 in 2021/22. The number of advice agencies and law centres doing this important work has fallen by 59%. It is estimated that the number of people helped by legal aid in that period dropped by 4.5 million. Over the same period the number of people having to go to court without representation trebled.

Even if you beg, borrow and sell your possessions, most people can’t get timely access to the courts. There is a backlog of 370,700 cases for magistrates’ courts. The backlog in crown courts, which try the most serious criminal offences, is 71,000. Of course, the rich and powerful can jump the queue and hire lawyers to lie and prosecute innocent people as vividly shown by the Post Office scandal. In this case a giant corporation, with the aid of compliant lawyers, secured criminal convictions of hundreds of innocent postmasters. There can be no equality before the law unless there is equality in access to the law.

In folklore, laws apply equally to all natural and legal persons, but some are more equal than others. The Duchy of Cornwall, an archaic residue of bygone times, enjoys exemptions from paying inheritance tax. It is also exempt from paying corporation tax and capital gains tax even though it trades. This seriously disadvantages its competitors who are required to pay all such taxes. The Duchy of Lancaster also enjoys similar privileges, which are not available to other businesses or citizens.

Even if people can get access to the courts, at best they will get an interpretation of law, not justice. The ‘rule of law’ and justice are not synonymous. Justice is a higher order concept and is concerned with fairness, equity, and respect for others, freedom, equality, human rights, sanctity of life and more. Such concerns are increasingly missing from law-making.

It is hard to recall any mass street marches, petitions or demonstrations urging the government to inflict social harms, but they have. Laws have been enacted to implement austerity, cuts in real wages, benefits, and public services to hand tax cuts for the rich. The result is that over 16m people, including 5.2m children, 9.2m working-age adults and 1.5m pension-age adults live in poverty. Some 6.34 million people in England are waiting for 7.57m hospital appointments. 2.8m people are chronically ill. Around 300,000 people a year die awaiting hospital appointments. A report published earlier this year noted that in the decade after 2011 more than one million people in England died prematurely due to poverty, austerity, and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. A recent study reported that 111,000 Britons died last year in poverty; 128,000 people died in fuel poverty, including 111,000 pensioners; and due to laws increasing the state pension age 15,000 died before accessing the state pension.

Hungry children and shivering pensioners are the product of the contemporary rule of law. The two-child benefit cap is the biggest cause of child poverty. The government has withdrawn winter fuel payments from thousands of pensioners living below the poverty line.

Legislators are silenced by the party machine and parliament cannot be relied upon to enact laws beneficial to the masses. Against a background of political populism the Criminal Justice Act 2003 introduced imprisonment for public protection (IPP) or indeterminate prison sentences for minor offences. A person spent 12 years in prison for stealing a mobile phone. A 20 year-old was given eight-month prison sentence for waving an imitation gun, but 18 years later is still in prison. Between 2005 and 2012, the courts imposed 8,711 IPP sentences. As of 31 March 2024, there were 1,180 unreleased IPP prisoners in custody in England and Wales. In addition to these unreleased IPP prisoners, there were 1,616 recalled IPP prisoners in custody on 31 March 2024, bringing the total number of IPP prisoners to 2,796. Over 700 have served more than 10 years longer than their minimum tariff. Such laws are the outcome of political populism which has little regard for the human consequences, and a political system where legislators are pressurised to follow the diktats of the party machine. The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 abolished IPP sentences but the abolition did not apply retrospectively to people who had already received such a sentence.

People expect the rule of law to be impartial and fair, but that is not the case. Thousands of unpaid carers looking after disabled, frail or ill relatives are being forced to repay huge sums to the government and threatened with criminal prosecution after unwittingly breaching earnings rules by just a few pounds a week. The same fervour does not apply to corporations and the rich. Since 2010, HMRC admits that it failed to collect over £500bn in taxes though others say it is closer to around £1,400bn. To soothe public anxieties, the government introduced the Criminal Finance Act 2017 and target corporate tax evasion. To date, there hasn’t even been any prosecution. Big accounting firms are the epicentre of a global tax abuse industry. They receive plenty of government contracts, but despite strong court judgments none have been investigated, fined or prosecuted.

In 2022, P&O Ferries sacked 800 staff without any regard for the employment laws, and replaced them with cheaper agency staff. Its chief executive told a parliamentary committee that the company knowingly broke the law. The then Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: “P&O plainly aren’t going to get away with it.” However, the company faced no sanctions from the government.

Regulators act as judges, juries and quasi-courts but their sympathies are with the industry rather than its victims. Just this week, a 350 page report by the All Party Parliament Group on Investment, Fraud and Fairer Financial Services stated that despite mounting evidence the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) failed to investigate frauds. And it is not the first time. Frauds by HBOS go back to 2002, but are yet to be investigated. The FCA considers £1bn frauds to be a private matter for Lloyds Bank (it acquired HBOS in 2008). Lloyds promised to publish a report in 2018, but no report has been published. The UK state has a long history of covering up banking frauds. For example, in 2012 HSBC was fined $1.9bn in the US after pleading guilty to “criminal conduct” and laundering money. The then Chancellor George Osborne secretly wrote to the US authorities and urged them not to prosecute HSBC as the bank was somehow too big to fail. To this day, there has been no UK investigation, and no statement has been made to parliament.

The insolvency laws protect finance industry and penalise traders, employees and unsecured creditors. The pecking order for distribution of the assets of a bankrupt business is that secured creditors, usually banks, private equity and hedge funds must be paid first. That leaves almost nothing for the remaining creditors. Employee pension schemes rank as an unsecured creditor and people lose their pension rights. Thousands of SMEs and traders are destroyed by the inability to recover anything from a bankrupt client. There is no equity, equality or justice in insolvency laws, and no political party is inclined to challenge the power of finance capital.

The UK has a particular kind of ‘rule of law’. It denies people access to legal advice and access to the courts. Major political parties rarely, if ever, talk about justice, equity, equality or the human cost of the skewed laws. People look to parliament, but parliament is disconnected from the people as the political system primarily serves corporations and the rich, with few crumbs occasionally thrown to the masses.

Parliament plays a complex dual role. The tendency is first to exclude and silence people. For example, women’s demand for vote was denied. Some had to resort to violence to make their case and eventually parliament relented. People have long highlighted the evils of gender and racial discrimination before parliament could be persuaded to act. Similar patterns can be found in the emergence of employment and environmental laws.

To create possibilities of emancipatory change we need to ask questions about whose rule it is, whose law it is and who actually benefits and suffers from it.

Prem Sikka is an Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex and the University of Sheffield, a Labour member of the House of Lords, and Contributing Editor at Left Foot Forward.

UK

Keir Starmer Will Always Side With Capital Against Workers

A recent controversy involving DP World showed how keen Keir Starmer’s government is to prostrate itself before firms that trample over workers’ rights. 

Starmer’s economic agenda relies heavily on “de-risking” private investment with public money.

By Jonny Jones

November 1, 2024

Source: Jacobin


Keir Starmer, as Leader of the Opposition of the United Kingdom during the: Repowering the World Session at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2023 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, 19 January.

When Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won office in July of this year, there was precious little in the party manifesto that offered hope that things were going to get better. Two promises that stood out amidst nearly 150 pages of vague platitudes were a commitment to rebuild Britain’s “crumbling” infrastructure and a range of reforms to workers’ rights.

Both pledges were thrust onto center stage in early October as Labour unveiled its “Make Work Pay” legislation. At the same time, Starmer prepared for an investment summit at which DP World, which describes itself as “a leading provider of smart logistics solutions,” was due to announce a £1 billion investment in its London Gateway port in Essex.

On October 9, Transport Secretary Louise Haigh denounced DP World’s subsidiary company P&O Ferries as a “rogue operator” for illegally firing 786 staff in 2022 and replacing them with agency workers on lower pay. Within days, DP World had decided to shelve the London Gateway announcement, leading to a flurry of corrections from government sources.

“Louise Haigh’s comments were her own personal view and don’t represent the view of the government,” was the comment from an official in Starmer’s office, while Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told the BBC, “No, that is not the government’s position.” Starmer himself made a statement to that effect, leading DP World to issue the following statement:


Following constructive and positive discussions with the government, we have been given the clarity we need. We look forward to participating in Monday’s international investment summit.
Public Risk, Private Gain

Behind this rather farcical display of grandstanding and backtracking lies a serious contradiction. Labour has pegged its approach to the social crisis facing Britain to achieving higher levels of economic growth. They hope to do so through an expansion of infrastructural investment, ripping up current planning rules, and boosting labor productivity, which has stagnated since the economic crash of 2008.

Labour has announced a new National Wealth Fund to drive infrastructural investment. Yet the main source of investment will be the private sector. Instead of building nationalized infrastructure, the fund aims to attract £3 of private investment for every £1 of public money, with public funds de-risking the private investment. The economist Daniela Gabor has likened this approach to getting investment giant Blackrock to rebuild Britain, privatizing “housing, education, health, nature and green energy — with our taxpayer money as sweetener.”

At the same time, Labour claims to be committed to a major improvement in workers’ rights. Its case for labor market reform, according to Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves, draws upon “a mountain of economic evidence that fair pay and in-work security are crucial, not only to fairness and dignity but to our productivity too.” However, many of Labour’s pledges on this front have already been watered down, delayed, or subject to consultation with business before implementation.

Labour’s response to DP World’s bluff is indicative of which way the party will jump in government when faced with a clash between workers and big business. This is important because DP World has form as a “rogue operator” with regards to workers’ rights long predating the P&O debacle. The firm has nevertheless enjoyed state support because its infrastructural investments have been central to the growth plans of successive governments.
“A Massive Vote of Confidence”

While there is a widespread view that Britain has a “light touch” approach to the regulation of its privatized port system, in fact, the state intervened multiple times to assist the establishment of the London Gateway port. It received planning permission in May 2007, just over a year after DP World acquired P&O. The proposed port was a major element of New Labour’s Thames Gateway Regeneration Initiative. Then transport minister Gillian Merron hyped “the significant impacts that this major development will have in the growth area.”

One key area of concern when the port was announced was the potential traffic stress it would cause on junction 30 of the M25, the major motorway that forms a ring around London. Planning was granted on the condition that London Gateway’s owners would fund an upgrade to the roads that was expected to cost somewhere in the area of £100 million.

After DP World was exposed to the fallout of the 2008–9 economic crash, the company announced that the London Gateway development was “under review” and told the British government that it should provide approximately £100 million of investment required to improve roads as it was a matter “of national importance.” Regional public bodies tasked with ensuring growth in the Thames Gateway area lobbied the government to deliver the improvements. DP World subsequently negotiated an agreement that allowed the firm to fund a minor upgrade to the road instead, costing around £10 million.

Later in 2009, the East of England Regional Assembly and East of England Development Board secured a £12.7 million grant from the European Union toward the cost of dredging the Thames estuary. This was meant to increase the depth of channels and accommodate the large container ships London Gateway was hoping to attract.

A loan of £300 million from the European Investment Bank finally assured the project could go ahead. As building began, Labour prime minister Gordon Brown hailed London Gateway as


a massive vote of confidence in the UK’s economic recovery and in this region. UK Trade & Investment and other Government departments have worked closely with DP World over a number of years to make this project possible.

While the state had bent over backward to ensure the port could be opened, DP World was far less accommodating to the interests of dockworkers seeking to exercise their rights to union recognition when the port opened.
Choke Points

From the Great Dock Strike of 1889 to the unofficial action by rank-and-file trade unionists that secured the release of the Pentonville 5, dockworkers have a long history of union organization in Britain. In 1989, Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government targeted the dock workforce, and the subsequent strike was defeated. This resulted in the loss of over 80 percent of the dock labor force, and almost all of the trade union activists. It took years of organizing to rebuild a solid union presence on the docks.

When the London Gateway port opened in 2013, the trade union Unite, which represents most port workers in Britain, had hoped to reach an agreement with DP World to gain similar recognition status as prevailed in other ports. However, DP World gave them short shrift, saying that they would only recognize the union if staff decided to set up a union themselves, while refusing Unite access to the workers onsite. One logistics industry publication reported that the company wanted to employ dockers who were “untainted by bad practices at existing ports.”

Unite ran a long “leverage campaign” against DP World, protesting noisily outside the offices of DP World and its supply chain customers in the hope of pressuring them to accept recognition. By the time London Gateway welcomed its first ship in November 2013, there was no agreement in place. It took the intervention of rank-and-file dockers blockading the ship at its first port of call at Algeciras in Portugal to force DP World to allow Unite into the port.

Even after DP World formally granted access, Unite found their progress frustrated by union avoidance tactics. While I was researching their organizing drive, London Gateway workers told me that the firm resisted union recruitment on site, emailing and speaking to dockworkers to dissuade them from joining the union. They used “propaganda,” which included showing footage of union activists from other ports jumping on a car carrying Boris Johnson, who was then the mayor of London, while they were protesting the company’s anti-union stance.

Although the union eventually reached the legal threshold for recognition, the company still refused to deal with them. Unite had to apply to the independent statutory authority responsible for adjudicating union recognition to overcome DP World’s objections.

In 2018, frustrated by DP World’s failure to address several areas of concern the union had, dockers decided to take action one weekend by targeting “choke points” in the supply chain — slowing down the operation of the giant cranes that lifted containers from ships. As one union member at the port told me:


On that Monday, the ball started rolling with management. Suddenly they wanted to listen and talk to us. It literally changed the next day.

In the ten years since, the Unite branch at London Gateway has grown in strength and depth. They have spread organization to several other departments at the port, including outsourced dockworkers employed by a contractor on lesser terms and conditions than the core workforce.
“Difficult to Discern”

In the wake of Britain’s departure from the European Union, Boris Johnson’s Conservative government announced that it would create several freeports across the country. These freeports, modeled on special economic zones (SEZs), are spaces where the authorities suspend normal tax and customs rules in the interests of boosting growth and creating jobs.

DP World enthusiastically promotes its involvement in SEZs. Yet even the World Bank has reported that such zones are places where union rights are often “legally constrained or de facto discouraged.” DP World is owned by the Dubai government, and trade union organization is illegal in Dubai and across the United Arab Emirates.

DP World London Gateway is a major partner in the Thames Freeport, which will receive “up to £25 million seed funding from government and potentially hundreds of millions in locally retained business rates.” In late October, Starmer declared the government would expand the scheme, making five already designated freeports fully operational for tax and customs breaks. He also confirmed it would push ahead with an “investment zone” in the East Midlands previously announced by the Tory government. This is a region where much of Britain’s logistics infrastructure is concentrated as part of the so-called “Golden Triangle.”

While Starmer claims the expansion of the scheme is based on “Labour’s laser focus on growth,” the evidence for this is extremely weak. The Office for Budget Responsibility suggested in 2021 that tax breaks associated with the already existing freeports in England would cost the government £50 million every year, in return for such a small impact on GDP from the freeports that it would be “difficult to discern.” These freeports, subsidized by public money, will merely “shuffle jobs and activity around,” as James Meadway points out, rather than create new opportunities for working-class people.
Rogue Operators

Freeports are a symptom of a much wider malaise in global capitalism. The state’s retreat from public provision has led to a big increase in the role of capital in providing critical infrastructure, increasing its political power and sway. Indeed, as Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson suggest, capital increasingly operates as a political actor, working with and through the state to produce territories such as SEZs and freeports “of its own accord.”

Two interconnected processes over the last half century have accompanied dramatic changes to global production and capitalist planning. The logistics revolution has greatly increased cargo mobility, while offshoring from the Global North to the Global South has led to a new international division of labor that relies on complex, dispersed production networks. Increasingly, infrastructural investment in the Global North is based on logistics — ports, distribution centers, roads, trains — to keep the flow of products moving through territories where manufacturing has diminished.

It is this shift that underpins the efforts of successive British governments to placate DP World’s demands, as the company’s big investment in logistics brings jobs and infrastructure. However, behind the summits and headline announcements, logistics firms are all too often “rogue operators,” as Haigh put it, when it comes to workers’ rights. Amazon is another prime example of union-busting tactics in the logistics sector.

In part, this stance is motivated by fear of how effectively workers could exercise power in the sector. Kim Moody has argued that supply chains rely on millions of workers to keep the wheels of profit turning, giving those workers tremendous potential structural power. As Katy Fox-Hodess has shown, to exercise such power, workers need to find ways of organizing effectively, building in the workplace as well as forming alliances with wider social movements.

Such alliances also strengthen movements. The global movement against Israel’s genocide in Gaza has sought to block infrastructural targets, such as train stations and factories. Recently, dockworkers in the Greek port of Piraeus refused to move ammunition bound for Israel. Activists could learn from the Block the Boat campaigns in Oakland how best to strategically target the Israeli war machine in collaboration with organized logistics workers.

Labour’s commitment to a new deal for workers rings hollow as the Starmer government rolls out the red carpet for private finance to reap the profits of new infrastructure. But the lesson from workers at London Gateway is that strategic thinking and tenacious organizing can win big gains, even in the face of multinational logistics corporations.