Movement for Justice

Now scientists must speak the plain truth about the climate crisis to the people of America and the world.

Joint statement by the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration & Immigrant Rights, and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (US) and Movement for Justice By Any Means Necessary (UK), released at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference December 2022

13.12.2022

▶ Build a mass, integrated, independent environmental movement

▶ Turn to the youth, minority communities, immigrants & refugees, workers, poor & oppressed – the chief victims of the climate crisis

▶ Take over the oil, gas & coal industries and their wealth in order to shut them down and reconstruct the economy

Over the last two months the University of California has been shaken by the mass unionization and unprecedented strike action of tens of thousands of graduate student instructors and student & academic researchers on every one of its ten campuses. Two of the four unions involved are still on strike this week. A large proportion of the striking students are scientists, many of them climate scientists.

These young students/workers are responsible for a great part of the teaching and ground-breaking research at UC. They are fighting for fair and just treatment and recognition of their vital role in maintaining the prestigious UC system. They have challenged an established management with close ties to the state’s political and economic establishment.

They are also part of something wider, a diverse movement of younger people,
women, workers, immigrants, poor and oppressed people around the world
against the self-serving pillars of authority (political, economic, religious – and even scientific) who have imposed decades of austerity and mounting authoritarianism, allowed the uncontrolled spread of the preventable COVID-19 pandemic, and failed utterly to avert the existential threat of a run-away climate crisis.

Whether or not the movements are directly taking up the fight to stop global
heating, whether they are in the USA, China, or Iran, their progress is a source of hope for the future, because science itself, by its very nature, is a challenge to established authorities and ideas. Science is most effective when it is in rebellion. From Copernicus to Galileo to Darwin and the climate scientists who have faced slander and abuse, heroic scientists who challenged authority have been the real beacons of progress.
The scientific community – the people who know best how urgent the situation is – must face up to that responsibility now.

The climate crisis and the failure of the Climate-Crisis Conference (COP) process

The scientific evidence for the scale of the climate crisis and the speed at which it is developing is stronger than ever. The disastrous impacts of global heating are happening now, before global average temperatures have even reached the supposedly ‘safe’ figure of 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial level. Not only the small island states and the people of Pakistan, Africa, Central America etc, but the populations of California, Kentucky, New York, Colorado, Florida, and British Columbia can testify that we are already living with ‘dangerous climate change.’

Outright denial of anthropogenic (human-caused) global heating has consequently become unfashionable; for now, at least, it has been relegated to a minor cult in Far-Right circles. The market for the “Merchants of Doubt” is facing a recession. That might be regarded as a victory for climate science –except that it has not been translated into any greater urgency in practice. The scientific consensus is that last year’s Glasgow conference (COP26) achieved nothing; its promises were watered down during the conference and came to nothing afterwards.

President Biden made a speech about the urgency of the situation and a few days later he conducted the largest ever auction of oil and gas drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico, selling 80 million acres to the oil industry.

This year, COP27 in Egypt did not even agree on a promise for future action on
global heating. It raised a white flag of surrender to rising greenhouse gas emis‐
sions, and its promise of support for the worst affected countries avoided any hard details or mechanisms. The sheer pointlessness of COP27 was best characterized by the rhetoric of the speech that President Biden gave during a short stop-over in Egypt – empty and boastful at the same time.

In practice, if not explicitly, this conference sounded the death knell of the 1.5
limit. The whole UN inter-governmental process is now in crisis.

The process of neoliberal containment

COP27 was the outcome of the process that gathered steam in the 1980s & ‘90s,
during the heady days of the Montreal, Toronto, Rio and Kyoto conferences. That period proved to be a false spring. To some extent those conferences were a battleground between two very unequal sides. On the one hand, there were the poorer countries that used their majority in the UN General Assembly to set up the Brundtland Commission in 1983, and the scientists who had set up a series of climate science conferences that ran parallel to Brundtland. On the other hand, there were the governments of the richest and most powerful countries, the corporate business interests, fossil fuel industries, and their many, highly paid lobbyists. This was obviously an unequal battle.

Step by step, the richest countries and corporations asserted their power and
increasingly side-lined climate science, swamping the scientists with hordes of
politicians and lobbyists, and blocking any effective and timely action to slash
greenhouse gas emissions.

The only positive outcomes, mainly from the Montreal Conference, were that
the deadly hole in the Ozone layer was patched up (with other greenhouse gasses, unfortunately) and that acid rain was restricted, at least in Europe and North America. The first simply involved a change of materials by refrigerator manufacturers and the second was a relatively straightforward mechanical task. And both those achievements came relatively cheap. Those were really the limit of international, inter-governmental cooperation to end pollution.

However, global heating cannot be stopped by a quick fix in a limited section
of the economy, and it cannot come cheap for the corporations, the banks and the governments.

If that was ever a possibility, it could not have been in the political and economic conditions of the last four decades. It is no accident that this process began at the same time as the rise of what is usually referred to as neo-liberal economics. The underlying story of the Montreal to Kyoto conferences was the war between science and the neo-liberal project. The neo-liberal role has been to ‘manage’ the response to a growing climate crisis in order to prevent any serious action that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and to maintain the dependence of the global economy on fossil fuels. It became as central to the neo-liberal project as the extreme ‘free trade’ policies, financial deregulation, privatization, and restrictions on labor rights.

That led straight to the betrayal and deceit at the Copenhagen conference in 2009, where all the limited concessions to climate science and poor countries were ripped up. That triumph for the neo-liberal corporate forces was led and achieved by President Barack Obama.

The market v. science

Throughout this process, the world’s richest and most powerful elites have
behaved as though the laws of the market, the investment cycles and global trade – and therefore the interests of rival national elites – are more powerful than the laws of physics, chemistry and biology. They promised that the wonders of the market could resolve the climate crisis, so we got cap-and-trade, catastrophe bonds, off-setting, etc. – one scam after another, one
source of corruption after another, while the laws of science continued to push up global average temperatures and their “green” market economy becomes sicker and less attractive with every passing year.

At the same time, governments and corporations have constantly blocked any
effective response to the dangers to humanity that have been revealed by scientists. Consequently, global heating is rapidly progressing towards a decisive ‘point of no return,’ at which the heating of the earth becomes irreversible and escalates the earth’s temperature to a super-hot condition that, if reached, will result in the extermination of humankind.

For the most part the governments of major powers don’t deny that anymore.
President Biden’s speechwriters made sure he alluded to it at Sharm-el-Sheikh. Biden, and other cynical political leaders who spoke in the same vein, seem to imagine that if they speak about the coming catastrophe with sufficient ‘passion’ the general public will think they are going to do something to save the world.

There, and in Glasgow a year earlier, Biden attempted to sound ‘scientific’ by
focusing on the need to limit emissions of methane which, as he pointed out, is 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. Of course, it is essential to limit methane emissions, but nothing has been done to achieve that since the Glasgow speech. Moreover, a major factor behind the growing level of methane in the atmosphere is the melting of frozen soils in the Arctic tundra because of global heating; that will continue if CO2 emissions continue to rise, or even remain at their present level.

In his opening speech at COP27, the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, declared that “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.” Indeed, it would seem that like the legendary Dr. Faustus, the governments, bankers and corporate leaders of all the major economies have made a pact with the Devil – just a few more decades of profit before they go to Hell. Until recently, they thought they would be safe, living in countries with a temperate climate. That illusion has already been destroyed, but they continue to act as though their wealth and power will allow them to escape the jaws of Hell, while the flames devour the world’s poor and oppressed and the peoples of Africa, southern Asia, Latin America and the small island states.

After four decades of conferences leading to this year’s effective collapse, it
should be crystal clear that the market economy is not only unable to solve the climate crisis, it is actually responsible for the crisis.

The politics of the climate crisis

We must recognize, however, that the politicians and capitalist corporations
could not have imposed their agenda for so long and with so much success (if rapidly rising emissions can be called a ‘success’) without the collaboration of the climate scientists. The scientists have been under a great deal of pressure. The institutions where they work and the research they carry out are largely funded by governments and other public authorities, and to some extent by corporations, but nevertheless they carry out their work thoroughly and report their findings accurately and publicly. Yes, sometimes scientists modify their advice to make it more acceptable to the politicians (to be ‘taken seriously’) but on the whole governments need the information to be reasonably accurate and open, in order to maintain some level of public credibility.

At least they have needed that so far. The real ‘collaboration’ is the common
and unremarkable acceptance of the notion that change can only be brought
about by the ‘powers-that-be,’ the governments and the rich and powerful. This is generally expressed through the notion that ‘scientists advise, governments decide.’ It is the same principle that has led to the terrible, and entirely preventable, suffering and death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic, and acceptance of the need for austerity since the financial & economic crisis of 2008/9 – the principle that business comes first, that the profit motive is the only possible motive for human society to function.

There is nothing remotely ‘democratic’ about that; it is driving the rise of authoritarianism around the world. Moreover, the whole conception is simply wrong. No major, substantial advance for human progress and freedom has ever happened without massive struggles that went beyond the bounds of
business as usual. Our own history is proof of that: the Revolutionary War, the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement. And overcoming the threat to human society posed by the climate and environmental crises must rank at least as demanding as any of those.

In January 2011, little more than a year after the Copenhagen conference, Britain’s leading scientific body, the Royal Society, published an article entitled Beyond ‘dangerous’ climate change: emission scenarios for a new world, by two eminent British climate scientists, Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows. It presented a thorough analysis demonstrating that by then (11 years ago) there was ‘little to no chance’ of keeping within the generally agreed limit of 2 Celsius above the pre-industrial average – and that temperature would actually be ‘the threshold between dangerous and extremely dangerous climate change.’

In their conclusion they state, quite correctly, that:
… Despite the evident logic for revising the 2ºC threshold, there is little political
appetite and limited academic support for such a revision…Put bluntly, while
the rhetoric of policy is to reduce emissions in line with avoiding dangerous climate change, most policy advice is to accept a high probability of extremely dangerous climate change rather than propose radical and immediate emission
reductions.

In a footnote to that passage, the authors raise the suggestion “If the impacts
are to remain the principal determinant of what constitutes dangerous, [which of course they should] then would it be more reasonable to characterize ‘1◦C as the new 2◦C’?” But in arguing against economists and scientists who insist business growth must come before the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (and therefore play down the dangers) they propose that:

… Extremely dangerous climate change can only be avoided if economic growth is exchanged, at least temporarily, for a period of planned austerity within [the richer] nations and a rapid transition away from fossil-fueled development within [poorer] nations.

In essence, a planned economic contraction to bring about the almost immediate and radical reductions necessary to avoid the 2◦C characterization of dangerous climate change whilst allowing time for the almost complete penetration of all economic sectors with zero or very low carbon technologies.

And that was written in the aftermath of the biggest financial crash for 50 years, when severe austerity was already being imposed on millions of poor and exploited people around the world. The authors’ proposal is political, not scientific. It is just as much bound by the laws of the capitalist market and the
doctrine of neoliberalism as the scientists and economists they criticize.

Faced with the break-down of the established UN process and the new growth
of struggles against authoritarianism, austerity, the market economy and the
threat of global heating, it is necessary for the scientific community to make new political choices.

Take over the oil, gas, and coal industries and their wealth in order to shut them down and reconstruct the economy

To stop the overheating of the climate, it is necessary to eliminate the global emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses. That is obviously only possible if oil, gas and coal are eliminated as sources of fuel and energy. Those industries still have massive investments, powerful stockholders and show no signs of going out of business – in fact they are currently raking in record profits, and that wealth gives the owners and shareholders huge political influence. The logic is unavoidable. Those companies must be taken into public ownership without compensation, expropriated – much as slavery could not be abolished without expropriating the slave owners. And just as new slaves could not be bought after abolition, new investment in fossil fuels must be made a criminal offence.

Expropriation has a dual purpose: both to shut down the fossil fuel industries, as well as to finance the production of clean energy and the equipment that will run on clean energy as a fuel source. Expropriation should require the confiscation of all material and financial assets of the fossil fuel industries by the national government, the conversion of those assets into public utilities, and the rapid reallocation of those assets to rebuild the energy infrastructure on a clean basis. It is important to note that the great bulk of the accumulated wealth of those industries exists in the form of finance capital and is controlled by investors and bankers—expropriation must also be applied to those titan financiers. The program for the fossil fuel industries should be straightforward: expropriate, reallocate, eliminate.

We will be told that expropriation is an extremist measure. We reply that it is
actually a very moderate measure compared with the alternative – the extinction of humanity and countless other life forms.

We must build a mass, independent & integrated environmentalist movement fighting to win

More than a decade ago, environmentalists watched with hopeful enthusiasm as former Vice-President Al Gore and other celebrity reformers sought to persuade world leaders and corporate executives of the need to address the climate crisis. Under today’s political conditions and worsening climate, that
hopeful period looks naively utopian in hindsight. The celebrity reformers, along with their method of appealing to the rich and powerful using the handy tools of rational arguments and moral persuasion, achieved nothing. Or, insofar as the planet can report, less than nothing.

The corporations would only embrace environmentalism as part of a public image for themselves, as an advertising gimmick, and as a means of avoiding scrutiny for their crimes. All the worst polluters began promoting themselves as environmentally friendly, with the eager assistance from many environmentalists who were overjoyed to have friends in high places. Through this process, just as the official leaders of the environmentalist movement
seemed to be ascending to the top of society and gaining influence, they were actually descending into corruption and becoming part of the problem that they
had purported to solve.

The lessons of the old movement are painfully clear: environmentalists must
not step into the trap of adapting to the corporate “allies” or their political mouthpieces. New leaders must step forward to carry the movement beyond its old shortcomings. Independence from corporate interests, independence from the politicians and political parties who rely on corporate funding, is imperative for the movement to be able to speak with its own voice and assert its own demands. Otherwise, the movement will only continue ineffectually seeking progress through the same kinds of market-based measures that have not worked and will not work. The leaders of the movement must speak the plain truth: the oil, gas, and coal industries must be shut down.

Our potential allies are abundant. Just look around—look at the trail of human
destruction that has been wrought by this crisis, and you will find along that trail millions of people, bloodied but not broken, who want to survive and are looking for leadership. Look to the new generation of youth, who are not willing to accept that the end of the world must arrive before their own lives have barely begun. Look to the freedom fighters who are trying to save their democratic rights from the tyranny of oil oligarchs in authoritarian governments. Look to the poor and oppressed who have no stake in monopoly capital and no businesses from which to profit. And look to the millions of immigrants and refugees, fleeing from the hottest parts of the world and searching desperately for freedom, for a home. These are the real friends of the
environmentalist movement; these are the real allies. From that trail will emerge the greatest and most committed leaders that the movement has ever known. And from those friendships, may we all find new reasons why life is worth living, and why humankind is worth saving.

13.12.2022

The Governments, Capitalist Corporations & Banks will NEVER stop Global Heating and Environmental Destruction

MARCH! STRIKE! OCCUPY! Our power is on the streets and in our communities, schools, colleges & workplaces.

Build an integrated, world-wide movement of youth, workers, the poor & oppressed, the refugees, students & scientists fighting to win BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.

MAKE THE POLLUTERS & EXPLOITERS PAY!

• Open the Books of ALL Coal, Oil & Natural Gas corporations – Take them over in order to SHUT THEM DOWN
• NO COMPENSATION FOR THE BOSSES – Use the Corporations’ vast wealth to build a sustainable energy system, support & retrain their workers, and aid the victims of global heating
• Take the banks into public ownership – Make new investment in fossil fuels a CRIMINAL OFFENCE
• Take over the Water and Energy Companies in order to protect our Environment and Health
• Cancel the Debts of Impoverished Countries – Defend Free Movement of People
• Open the Borders of Britain, Europe and the USA

Defend the  Climate Crisis activists – Free the Climate Crisis prisoners

BRING DOWN THIS RACIST, ANTI-WORKING CLASS GOVERNMENT!

Last year’s COP26 in Glasgow was an over-sized, two-week political circus. Promises made there have proved as empty as those made at the previous 25 – and all the way back to the 1988 Toronto conference, when governments & corporations took the climate crisis out of the hands of scientists, the 1992 ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio de Janeiro, when they brought in the United Nations as political cover, and the so-called ‘binding’ targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions agreed at the Kyoto conference in 1997. The climate and environmental crises – which are one and the same thing with the same cause – have got worse, and got worse faster with every passing year. 

The  current talk of a ‘last chance’ at COP 27 in Cairo is more empty words, designed to cast an image of ‘seriousness,’ over the latest pantomime. In reality, global society is being prepared for an admission that the 1.5 degree limit on the rise in global average temperatures will be missed. The politicians and corporations will blame the war in Ukraine and  economic problems. They always have something to blame. 

From Toronto to Cairo the world has been subjected to a 44 year experiment to see whether the laws of the capitalist market are stronger than the laws of physics and chemistry, whether capitalism is capable putting human lives before the accumulation of profits, and whether politicians keep their promises. The results are in and they are negative, but the powers-that-be ignore them: they would rather contemplate the end of life on Earth than the end of the system that makes them rich.  

Too many scientists, especially senior scientists, are ignoring the scientific evidence on the behaviour of capitalists and politicians, because they are often too tied to the system to see any alternative.

The alternative is the growing movements for change, not only the movement against the fossil fuel economy, but the movements against poverty & austerity, the movements to defend democracy against the growth of dictatorship & fascism, the still growing strike-wave against falling pay and job cuts, the movement against racism and the detention and deportation of refugees, and the movement of refugees, large numbers of whom are forced to move by the direct & indirect effects of global heating & environmental destruction.

We all know that our struggles and our material interests are closely connected, that we are all fighting the same system; we must now take every opportunity to unite our struggles and demands in action. In reality there are no more ‘single issues.’ In the advanced stage of the climate crisis, only the demands above can prevent a greater disaster, but no government will be willing to implement them. Those measures (and most of the demands of the various struggles) will have to be imposed by the power and independent action of a united movement, fighting to win and fighting to bring down the government, By Any Means Necessary.

12.11.2022

Unite & coordinate our strikes – Unite the strikes with community struggles

To fight poverty we must fight racism, anti-immigrant prejudice & fascism

Build elected rank & file action committees

For automatic pay, pensions & benefit rises linked the rate of inflation

Stop job loss – Share the work on a full week’s pay

Make polluters pay to stop global heating, expropriate & shut down oil, gas & coal

1^st October 2022

The past 12 months have witnessed an inspiring resurgence of trade unionism. Trade union membership has grown steadily over the last few years, and this year’s strike-wave is the biggest rise in working class struggle since the 1980s. The spirit of these strikes is as impressive as the number; time after time we are seeing strike votes of over 90%, on turnouts of 90% and more. Many of this year’s strikers have never taken industrial action before, many are young, and we are all part of a workforce that is more diverse and integrated than ever before. We are all fighting to win. The Movement for Justice is confident that together we can win.

The current strike movement is a response to declining real pay, an increasing cost of living, cuts in jobs and working conditions – and to broken promises or a racist, bullying or abusing manager. At the same time it is a response to a government and ruling elite that embody the arrogant privilege of wealth with all its cruelty and corruption.

We have government ministers who think and act as though they are above the law, while they trash our legal protections. They have trashed workers’ rights, immigrant rights and human rights. They have trashed public services and turned them into financial assets for their friends and supporters. At every stage in the Covid pandemic they have put private profit above the safety of the people, with the result that Britain has the worst Covid death-rate in Europe.

Throughout all this, the government that “Got Brexit done” has relied on whipping up the racism and immigrant bashing that was central to getting Brexit done, only to find that the majority of people in Britain are opposed to its mistreatment of refugees and its plan to deport cross-Channel refugees to Rwanda.

The truth is that the resurgence of trade unionism and the inspiring strike wave are as much a political struggle as they are economic. This is a movement against a hated government. That is why we are taking to the streets of Britain on the first day of this year’s Tory conference. Our spirit of resistance has been reinforced by Kwasi Kwarteng’s recent budget that takes from the poor and gives to the rich on an unprecedented scale, like Robin Hood in reverse.

We can’t live with this government any more than we can live with the poverty, the growing insecurity and the destruction of public services it is responsible for. It’s the view of Movement for Justice that our aim must beto Bring Down the Government – and bring it down as soon as possible. We can’t wait for an election in two years’ time, while the government and the employers continue their attacks through the coming winter and a deepening recession. We can’t wait while people are starving, freezing, dying and losing their homes, and while thousands are condemned to destitution because they have no legal immigration status and ‘No access to public funds.’ We can’t wait while the government continues to detain & deport thousands of men & women, or dumps them in Rwanda, and while the police have licence to harass, brutalise & murder black, Asian & Muslim people.

The rise of the Far-Right depends on the collusion of ‘democratic’ politicians

The election of Boris Johnson as Tory leader and Prime Minister confirmed that the Conservative Party had become a Far-Right party. A few months later, Johnson’s general election victory in December 2019, with an influx of more pro-Brexit MPs, consolidated a Far-Right government. It was a victory for the forces that won the Brexit referendum in 2016.

Brexit was always a project to use racism, xenophobia and the scapegoating of immigrants as the means to complete the destruction of the democratic and social gains of the working class and the black & Asian communities. Not surprisingly, the main backers of the Far-Right project have been the most ruthless and parasitic capitalists – the private wealth funds, financial speculators, and privatisers, like the chief executive of Serco who described the Covid pandemic as an opportunity to insert the private sector into the public services.

From the referendum campaign onwards, the biggest advantage of the Far-Right was not its own strength or the depth of racist sentiment among white people. It was and remains the weakness and cowardice of ALL the main parties, and especially their leaders. They all understand the methods and aims of the Far-Right Brexiters, but they consistently refuse to expose and challenge those methods and aims.

Most of all those parties and leaders refuse to speak the plain truth about racism, because that racism is fundamental to their political and economic system. Through their complicity and cowardice they have ‘normalised’ the Far Right. That is the approach of the present Labour leadership under Keir Starmer.

From Far-Right to Fascism – the lesson of Italy

To call a government ‘Far-Right’ is not just a description of its extreme opinions. A Far-Right government has concluded that traditional forms of democracy are no longer compatible with capitalism’s ability to maintain and increase the wealth of the rich and powerful. The basis of the democracy that developed in the world’s richest countries from the second half of the 19^th century rested on an implicit deal between the capitalist ruling class and the working class & lower middle class. The capitalists continue to make huge profits through the exploitation of the workers, not only at home but in colonies & neo-colonies; they and their political and professional allies (MPs, bureaucrats, judges etc) control the state. In return the working class gets the right to vote, the right to organise and strike, and a series of welfare benefits (pensions, sick pay, health insurance etc).

A Far-Right government is a crisis government. It sets out to end and destroy that deal and establish a far more authoritarian form of government. That is what Johnson and his allies have been doing for two & a half years, and what Truss, Kwarteng etc are attempting to take even further. If any rationale can be discerned in Kwarteng’s ‘mini-budget’ it is this: through huge tax cuts and the need to repay the loans, the government stops funding the services that the poor and oppressed rely on for their survival, effectively starving those services and destroying them.

To go through with that plan would mean a transition to fascism or a close alliance with it. Any Far-Right government is effectively a kind of transitional stage to fascism.

In Italy, over the last few decades, the traditional parties of the working class and the Left – along with the leaders of the main trade union organisations – have betrayed and demoralised their own supporters with unceasing concessions to the big corporations and international financial institutions. As in Britain, they scapegoated immigrants and refugees and introduced a series of racist laws and decrees. The betrayals, disillusion and racism led to the rise of reactionary Far-Right parties – and to an election this week that has put a fascist party (the ‘Brothers of Italy’) in power, as the dominant group in a Far-Right coalition.

The supposed defenders of democracy fear our inspiring strike movement and the power of the working class and the poor far more than they fear the Far-Right government. They fear a working class uprising more than they fear fascism.

We see that fear of working class struggle and appeasement of the Far Right every time Keir Starmer wraps himself in the Union Jack, sings God Save the King, sacks MPs who try to speak out against racism, expels Jewish members who criticise Israel and Zionism, expels left-wing delegates before they could take their place at this week’s Labour Party Conference, and orders MPs not to join picket lines or support strikes. It is a lesson that the Left in the Labour Party must learn if they hope to play any progressive role in history.

The instability of the Far Right

The biggest defeat that the poor and oppressed have so far inflicted on this Far-Right government was the resignation of the Home Secretary, Priti Patel. She was driven out of office by the action of tens of thousands of refugees who have continued to cross the Channel in small boats to seek asylum in Britain, despite knowing about Patel’s new Borders Act and the deal to deport cross-Channel refugees to Rwanda. They kept coming and opening the borders of the UK in order to resolve the real, material problems in their lives. And Patel couldn’t prevent communities, friends & neighbours stopping immigration raids and arrests. She jumped before she was pushed, because she knew she would be the scapegoat for the failure of the government’s inhuman anti-asylum, anti-immigration policies.

The cross-Channel refugees, everyone seeking asylum in Britain, and immigrants with or without papers are our brothers & sisters in the fight against Britain’s racist, imperialist ruling class. Open the Borders is in reality the only alternative to the world of tyranny, barbarism and fascism that our Far-Right government and the similar governments around the world are creating.

The determination shown by the cross-Channel refugees should be our aim, as the only realistic response to the threats and suffering that are all this government has to offer. And we need to understand the weakness of this government and the emptiness of its threats, just as the cross-Channel refugees have done.

Because a Far-Right government like the one that was led by Boris Johnson and is now led by Liz Truss is a crisis government, aiming to destroy an old order and potentially transitioning to fascism, it is inherently unstable, with contradictory elements, and relying on the cover provided by the treacherous ‘champions’ of democracy. Keir Starmer is playing that role when he claims that the Labour Party is now the centre ground of British politics. The ‘centre ground’ is actually a swamp that will ultimately swallow him up.

Meanwhile divisions are already appearing in the 3-week old government of Truss and Kwarteng, while the Tory Brexiters are tearing their party apart.

Workers, and poor people generally, can see that there is a serious crisis among the people ‘at the top,’ that the politicians and the ruling class are divided, uncertain and devoid of any plan to resolve the problems people are facing. They don’t deserve respect, they look weak, and so growing numbers of workers believe that the bosses and the government can be defeated. That mood has proved highly infectious. It is the basis for a movement of action that is able to Bring Down this Racist, Anti-Working-Class Government.

The way forward – unite the strikes, mobilise our communities

The importance of today’s nationwide strikes and marches is that they enable an emerging movement not only to be seen, but to see itself, feel its own power, and encourage the wide range of workers who are about to join us and already balloting for strike action.

As this movement grows it will have to respond to new and bigger challenges, because the economic crisis will inevitably deepen. The British economy has been in recession for six months and that will get worse, whatever happens to Kwasi Kwarteng’s plans and whatever policy the Bank of England adopts, because the economic crisis is global. The working class, wide sections of the middle class, renters, the sick and elderly etc will face higher inflation and/or higher interest rates, job loss and evictions, a health crisis. The need to bring down the government will be more urgent.

To meet these challenges we will have to go beyond the ‘guerrilla war’ tactics of repeated, short strikes in different sectors of the economy at separate times. As a start we should bring the strikes together – united strikes by workers in all the different sectors and unions at the same time, and for more prolonged periods – everyone out at once and on the streets!

Those strikes should be used creatively to build closer connections with the wide population in our communities, through demonstrations, marches, rallies, local conferences, community tribunals etc., and organising solidarity action to defend the poor and needy, joining community action to stop immigration raids etc. Our unions, our strikes, and our fight to bring down the government will be many times stronger if, at all levels, they become champions of all the poor and oppressed.

In many ways we will be reviving a tradition rather than inventing something new. In the past the local trade union organisations have been at the centre of their communities and there have been many examples of unions taking action to defend people in their communities, against evictions for example, or fascists attacks, as well as solidarity action with workers in other sectors, like the industrial workers who went on strike and marched to support striking health workers in 1980s. In the present political & economic context, reviving and extending those traditions are a vital part of bringing down the most dangerous government in modern British history.

Fighting inflation and poverty – Fighting unemployment

The working class, and the growing strike movement in particularly, are already facing the increased cost of living because of inflation. The recession will increasingly threaten us with unemployment. It is essential that this movement is able to put forward and fight for a plan to counter these twin evils, and a plan that meets the essential needs of the poor and oppressed.

Inflation is at the highest level since the 1970s, but wages, though under attack, were higher then and the trade union had more to get wages rises. Now, inflation was set to rise to higher levels even before Kwarteng’s ‘mini-budget’ sent the value of the pound tumbling to the lowest level ever and pushed prices to even higher levels. Since the biggest prices rises are affecting food and energy, inflation is hitting the poorest people hardest of all.

Almost every wage rise that workers have got this year is really a wage cut, because the cost of living is rising faster and higher. It is simply not possible for new pay claims and strikes to keep up with this rising inflation. So far, the talk of ‘inflation proof’ wages is just empty words.

The only way we can actually inflation proof wages is by securing automatic increases tied to the rate of inflation in the cost of food, energy, housing and transport. That should be decided independently of the employers and the government and agreed with the unions and workers. Adjustments should take monthly, or weekly if inflation increases at a faster level.

The same system of automatic adjustments must be applied to all pensions and benefits (Universal Benefit etc). Without that arrangement millions of people will be driven to destitution, starvation, ill-health and death.

A prolonged recession will inevitably mean that employers try to defend their profits by laying off workers, in a situation where new jobs are becoming more and more scarce. The jobless workers and their dependents will face destitution. That is unacceptable. We must fight for job-sharing on full pay – the available work should be shared out between the workers, while they continue to receive what they would have got for a full week or month. The workers did not create this crisis. It was the capitalists who created it and they must pay for it.

Fighting the causes of global heating must be a workers’ struggle – Make the Polluters Pay

At the same time we are demonstrating, striking and picketting today, thousands of climate crisis activists from the Just Stop Oil coalition are marching through London from many different directions, holding speak-outs, and converging on Parliament, where they intend to start continuing ‘Shut Down Westminster’ events. They are marching on this particular day for the same reason we are – because it is the first day of the Tory conference and because they know they are in a political fight with this government.

Prime Minister Truss plans to re-start fracking in Britain and open up new oil fields in the North Sea. The Secretary for Business, the very rich super-snob Jacob Rees-Mogg, has announced that he wants to see “Every cubic inch of gas” got out of the North Sea (a cubic centimetre would be an even smaller amount, but that would be too ‘European’ for this arch-Brexiter). This dangerous government would rather let the planet burn than see the capitalists lose a penny of profit. On that issue it only speaks for a tiny minority of the British population.

Our movement and the wider trade union movement must take up this existential fight. We must take the same approach as inflation, wages and unemployment – the people responsible for the climate crisis, the people who are blocking any effective measures to resolve it, must be held responsible. We must make the polluters pay!    

We must fight for the expropriation of the oil, gas and coal companies – they must be taken into public ownership in order to shut them down. Their vast wealth must be used to fund a rapid transition to sustainable energy, repair as far as possible the damage that has already been done, and to support and retrain the workers in those industries. Further investment in fossil fuels should be made a criminal offence.

We will be told that the proposals on dealing with inflation and unemployment are unrealistic, just as we will be told that Opening the Borders is unrealistic, and we will certainly be told that expropriating and shutting down the fossil fuel industries is unrealistic. In fact these are the only realistic solutions to the present crises that we face. They are ‘unrealistic’ only if we live and think by the rules of a morally and politically bankrupt system – parasitic, ‘neo-liberal’ capitalism.

It is necessary to build a rank-and-file workers’ movement

To move forward on any of these struggles we must raise our level of struggle and organisation to remove the most immediate obstacle, the Far-Right government, whoever is leading it next month or next year. To achieve that, it is essential that the rank-and-file of the strike movement organises and asserts its authority and builds its own leadership. We need to create strike committees, workplace committees or action committees in all sectors, which should be inter-union bodies wherever that is appropriate. In every city or locality there should be inter-union committee strike committees to coordinate action and build community links.

The development of this movement needs a secure base and it cannot be left to ‘Head Office’ or to ‘Regional Office,’ or to outstanding national leaders, however skilful their organising abilities or however powerful their speeches.

The fact is that as the fight becomes more intense there will inevitably be points where the full-time leaders and officials become too cautious – where they are afraid of some legal issue, or being fined for ‘unofficial’ strike action, when they want to cool things down because they think it will help with some negotiations, or in some cases, because they don’t want to damage their relations with the Labour Party.   

The rank-and-file must be strong enough and confident enough to correct those mistakes or to act independently, and that will only be possible if elected rank-and-file leaders are already working together and have the confidence of their members.

The road ahead – building the political power of the working class

If the mass movement succeeds in bringing down the government there will inevitably be a general election, but it will be in the context of a victory for mass working class action. A new government will be confronted with the power of the poor and oppressed. There will almost certainly be a Labour government or a Labour-led coalition, and there will probably be a section of more left-wing Labour MPs who, from the start, put pressure on Starmer or come out publicly against his right-wing policies.

On the other hand it is possible, though perhaps unlikely, that the present government simply collapses in the near future. If that happens there will be a general election that will most likely lead to a Labour government. Starmer will Prime Minister.

Neither outcome will end the crisis, and either way it becomes Labour’s crisis. Either way the fight to build the movement remains on the order of the day, and in many ways it will be more urgent. Either way we will still face the threats of greater poverty, accelerating global heating and fascism.

The task facing the movement will be to create a new power structure. The movement and the rank-and-file organisations must grow stronger and become more representative of the broad layers of the working class, impoverished middle class and all the oppressed. They will assert that power over and against whatever crisis-ridden government is presiding over a broken political system and trying to defend capitalist profits.

Then the working class will be in a position to create an economy that meets the needs of everyone on a basis of equality.

Movement for Justice by any means necessary

No Justice! No peace! Stop the criminal Rwanda deal – By Any Means Necessary

Seeking Asylum is not a crime

This Far Right government is guilty of crimes against humanity – Stop its slide into fascism

Organise community/refugee defence against immigration arrests & raids – Build resistance in detention hotels, camps & detention centres – Establish effective sanctuary communities, cities, campuses, etc. – Take action to Keep the Home Office out of education, local councils & the NHS – No co-operation with the Home Office

Organise sanctuary for cross-Channel refugees arriving in Britain

Bring Down this racist, anti-immigrant, anti-working-class Government

Open the Borders of Britain & Europe

05.09.2022

Resistance to Britain’s corrupt, racist, anti-working-class government is growing on many fronts: community mobilisations stopping immigration raids and reversing arrests; militant action against government complicity in global climate heating; student action against racist school managements; the most significant wave of strikes against wage and job cuts since the 1980s; angry protests against the cost of living crisis – and thousands of refugees defying the Borders Act and crossing the Channel in small boats or the back of a lorry.

Those forces are taking militant action because circumstances are driving them to it – but also because they have a correct sense that, for all its power-grabbing bluster, this government is fundamentally weak and unstable, and regarded with widespread anger and contempt. The anger aroused by the inhuman plan to dump refugees in Rwanda is part of that.

The Movement for Justice believes that defeating the Rwanda plan will strike a huge blow to the government’s most important political weapon: its racist ‘divide-and-conquer’ policies and practices – scapegoating immigrants and demonising refugees. It will be an inspiring victory for all those fighting this Far Right government.

There are urgent reasons for defeating that plan. If it goes ahead, the government won’t stop there; there will be worse to follow. It will be closer to eliminating all asylum rights, and it will be further down the road to fascism.

The main purpose of the Rwanda policy is, in fact, to look ‘tough’ and consolidate its base among its most racist, Far-Right, Brexit diehards: the former members of UKIP, the Brexit Party, BNP & EDL; the angry racists who defend the statues of slave-traders and imperialist war-mongers; the people who demand censorship of teaching when an educator or academic tells the plain truth about the cruelty of British colonial rule.

A racist crime against humanity

The Rwanda plan is a by-product of the Nationality and Borders Act that came out of Boris Johnson’s 2019, ‘Get Brexit Done,’ election campaign. Together they form the most brutal, racist policy adopted by any modern British government. The new Act makes it illegal for refugees to come to Britain if they do not have a visa. Of course, the vast majority of refugees don’t come with visas. If you are escaping from your country, the process of getting a visa from a British embassy may well expose you to greater danger, and you most likely don’t have the time or money anyway. Nevertheless, having made refugees without visas ‘illegal,’ the government has given Home Office officials the power to pick out individual arrivals and put them on a list for dumping in Rwanda.

The refugees the government wants to dump in Rwanda will have to apply to the Rwandan government for asylum there – in one of the world’s poorest countries, run by a dictator with the worst human rights record in Africa.

The government’s action is a crime against humanity – breaching the most basic human rights (as well as international law) to further its racist scapegoating and persecution of refugees.

Open the Borders – the alternative to a world of tyranny & barbarism

The agreement between Britain and Rwanda has the full backing of the racist right-wing press – The Daily Mail, Express, Sun, Telegraph and Times. The government is treating refugees like the toxic waste that rich countries dump on poor countries in Africa and elsewhere for a small fee. This is the horrific outcome of four decades of escalating anti-immigrant policies, and the uncontrolled capitalist exploitation that western imperialist governments have forced on the world.

For over twenty years, millions of people have been leaving their homes in the world’s poorest regions, risking their lives because there is no other escape from constant warfare, political, religious or ethnic persecution, famine, drought, floods and environmental destruction, mounting attacks on women and LGBT+ people, etc.

This mass migration is a symptom of a world in crisis. It is a global rebellion against poverty and inequality. It has become a life & death struggle against imperialism. The governments of Europe and the USA have militarised their frontiers and condemned thousands of refugees to drown at sea or die crossing deserts. There is a battle between humanity and barbarism at every border. Refugees are posing a central demand for human progress in our age – Open the Borders – and opening the borders is what they are doing to resolve real threats to their existence.

Movement for Justice believes that the demand of some organisations for ‘Safe Legal Routes’ for refugees is a dangerous illusion. It would leave the power in the hands of the political systems that make the laws and control the borders. It accepts their right to decide who is a ‘genuine’ refugee or a ‘good’ immigrant and who is not. No current political system should have that power, not in Europe, North America, or in Britain.

The alternative to open borders is a world of tyranny and barbarism.

The danger of relying on the courts under this Far Right government

This week’s Judicial Review of the Rwanda plan has been brought by the PCS union (which represents civil servants, including those in the Home Office and Border Force), by Care for Calais, and by other organisations and individual refugees. Movement for Justice supports their action. We must assert the legal rights that the government is ripping up. Being able to get judicial reviews of government decisions is fundamental to democracy.

However, we should have no illusions in the legal system and its relationship to the political system, or for that matter the relationship of both those systems to the media. The Rwanda judicial review is being heard by High Court judge, Justice Swift, a former lawyer in the Government Legal Department. He has already given negative decisions in challenges to the legality of the Rwanda deal.

The courts have been under attack since the Brexit referendum, especially over judicial review cases (remember the Daily Mail’s “Enemies of the People” headline). Those attacks have intensified since Johnson became prime minister and that has made judges, from the Supreme Court down, more cautious and conservative in human rights and civil rights cases. A clear signal of that shift is last year’s Supreme Court decision in the case of Shamima Begum, when it supported the government’s decision to take away her British citizenship (leaving her stateless in Syria) and deny her the right to come to Britain to defend herself.

It is no wonder that Robert Buckland, a former Justice Secretary in Boris Johnson’s government, declared in February that, “…the current Supreme Court, under Lord Reed’s leadership, has in the last year demonstrated the appropriate degree of restraint. It is essential that this continues and that we remain blessed with sensible judges like Lord Reed” (the president of the UK Supreme Court).

Since Buckland made that comment, the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court both refused to stop the planned mass deportation of refugees to Rwanda on 14^th June. This week’s judicial review is only happening because of a late-night application to the European Court of Human Rights. The government now plans to leave the ECHR.

Build a movement of resistance – Create real, effective sanctuaries – Bring down the Government

Britain is in an acute economic, social and political crisis, with fast rising inflation and a looming recession that’s forecast to last all next year, creating higher unemployment and shutting down thousands of small businesses. A humanitarian crisis threatens millions of people this winter because the level of poverty & insecurity is already so high, and the damage to the NHS and other public services is already so great.  

The government and its backers are unwilling and incapable of resolving any aspects of this crisis. Their response will be in line with their political character and material interests. It will inevitably involve even more repression, even harsher laws and a lot more racist scapegoating.

The Rwanda plan will be defeated as part of a wider movement against the governments racist policies. The basis for this movement already exists. We can build on the methods that have proved effective against Immigration Enforcement raids: community organising and independent collective actions, large and small. We must recognise refugees and undocumented immigrants as an active force and as leaders in this fight. We can learn from the Movement for Justice experience of collective organising and action by refugees and immigrants in detention centres. That undermined the authority of the Home Office and exposed its abuses. Those struggles led to a sharp fall in the use of detention and the closure of more than half the detention centres between 2015 and 2019.  

We need to create sanctuary cities, boroughs and neighbourhoods, and sanctuary schools and colleges, that are real sanctuaries because they are enforced by communities, immigrants, workers and students who will be the ears and eyes and defence guards of a movement. We need to create sanctuaries from the Home Office for cross-Channel refugees, to stop deportation flights to Rwanda – and to stop all deportation charter flights (Patel recently signed an agreement with the Pakistan government to accept such charter flights).

This struggle is a head-to-head conflict with the Home Office and its agents. It will also be a conflict with authorities such as council leaders, headteachers and hospital managers, who may disagree with the government’s racist policies but are not prepared to take action. That is why the struggle must be based in communities, workplaces and schools, especially in black, Asian, Muslim, Latin American and immigrant communities.

With such a base it will be possible to link the struggle with wider sections of the working class and the poor and oppressed, and thus with struggles against poverty in general.

To be clear, the level of struggle we need to build is incompatible with the existence of the present government. Our aim has to be to Bring Down this racist, anti-working-class government. It is not an exaggeration to say that really killing off the Rwanda plan means we have to bring down the government.