Tag: military-industrial-complex

The European Union is an Imperialist Bosses Club

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly Comment Column in the daily Plymouth Herald (13.10.2026), reacting off-the-cuff to Monday’s Prime Ministerial announcement of forthcoming talks with the European Union. I have no doubt its all about rearmament, but at the same time the wily Burnham is using the angst of the middle class voters to blame Austerity on Brexit, rebuilding the liberal vote for the Labour Party. The idea that Brexit is behind the current economic crisis appears almost hegemonic. Of course it didn’t help, but it’s not the source of the cost-of-living crisis nor much to do with the enormous shift of wealth from the poor to the super-rich everywhere. We really have to call out the disinformation and political sleight-of-hand.

The unedited version below (not my headline – I don’t do first-person!). Please scroll down to the bottom of the page for the subscribe button on the right-hand side! 

Those of us on “The Left” who voted to “Leave” are not about to be cowed into submission. Burnham’s ploy of uniting the middle class vote behind Labour in pursuit of a fresh “Remain” campaign is cynical in the extreme. There is nothing benign or at all socialist about the European Union. Europe has never been a friend of the working class. 

It is worth remembering. Some 52 percent opted for exit, on a turnout of 72 percent, higher than almost any general election. They did so in the face of opposition from three quarters of MPs, the leadership of all three of the biggest parliamentary parties — the Conservatives, Labour and the Scottish National Party — the overwhelming bulk of British industry and almost every major capitalist institution, from the Bank of England to the International Monetary Fund. 

Why? Europe is, and was formed as, a Bosses Club. The European Parliament was created as the frontpiece, the cover, just as are national parliaments, for promotion of regional competition on the world stage – the advantage of Capitalist corporations in competition with Russia and China for the plunder of resources from Africa and India and South America. Sometimes in league with the USA, sometimes independently.

The European Union is a neoliberal organisation acting in the interests of European capital. It has forced the Greek people and then most of the rest into the economic stranglehold and poverty of austerity, cutting social welfare provision and pay rates in pursuit of free trade agreements to raise the rate of profit accumulated by the big corporations sitting inside its borders. 

Britain would have been no better off staying inside the European Market. Oh, perhaps a few of the larger UK based companies would have benefited, but not us workers. Just look at the protests on the streets of Paris and Berlin and Madrid. In 2026 our working class youth are suffering irrespective of national borders. Youth unemployment, wages too low to live on, a raging housing crisis caused by rapacious landlords, cuts to all social provision from health and social care through to pensions. The experience of the economic crisis in Britain is precisely the same in both cause and conditions across Europe and beyond – heightened exploitation in pursuit of private profit. All the wealth we produce gets sucked-up through inflated salaries of the management and into the offshore bank accounts of the big investors and corporate executives.

At the time of the vote back in 2016, Europe was viciously enforcing neoliberalism across the continent, breaking democracy and sovereign States like Greece, and it hasn’t let-up since. In Britain the vote was, above all else, a rebellion by working class people who feel they have had their lives torn apart by the ruling elite. Two-thirds of those classified as skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers voted to leave, compared to just 43 percent among those in “intermediate” or “higher” managerial, professional or administrative roles. 

And it wasn’t as simple as a vote for racism. A third of Asian and a quarter of black voters chose Leave. Large, ethnically diverse cities in the north of England voted for exit — including Sheffield, Birmingham and Bradford. Racism was obvious on the Leave side, where anti-immigrant arguments from the UK Independence Party (now Reform UK) and Conservative politicians played a prominent role, especially in the final weeks of campaigning. 

In the final weeks of the Brexit campaign, xenophobia and scapegoating spewed out by the press and politicians to deflect from anger over austerity and privatisation. Many principled people voted Remain with good anti-racist reasoning. It was never a clean or clear-cut poll between opposites.

Class consciousness played a core role in the Brexit vote. This was not about the vacuous superficiality of European travel or buying a second home in the Algarve – the freedom of the wealthy few. The vote was about the pain of Austerity imposed by the collapse of the corrupt banking system in 2008-9. Wage labourers were hurting bad back then, and still are. 

It’s all happening again! This time, as the world economy dives into fresh chaos, the ruling class are using racism and the threat of war as tools to suppress our discontent. Sections of the British Ruling Class were hurt badly by Brexit. The moves to “rejoin” Europe are precepts for emergency rearmament, the military-industrial complex seeking cross-border cooperation to maximise market penetration and profit. Burnham is arguing for Britain’s pride of place in the coming wars against Russia and China. And he’s using the sham of rejoining Europe to fool us all. 

Instead, socialists should combine struggles against racism with struggles against the wider attacks on the working class – a major uprising against the cost-of-living crisis. Join with the mass strikes across Europe for international working class unity, not the European Union of Capitalist Profiteers! End Austerity!  

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“Stock Up” Warnings Worth Heeding

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly Comment Column in the daily Plymouth Herald (15.9.26), emphasising the drive to war but without exaggeration. The piece underplays my personal distress at the sheer absence of any serious organised outcry against the rearmament and militarism encouraged by this, a Labour Government. I’m unsurprised given the role of Blair’s government in the illegal war against Iraq, but at least then we had a single-day demonstration of 2 million people including trade unions demanding “Stop the War!” Today, nothing. Governments in the pockets of the military-industrial complex taking billions from the taxpayer for their private profit. We’re being instructed to “prepare”. I agree – the working class needs to act for Peace before it’s too late. 

The unedited version below, or expand the picture (or buy the Herald) to read the published version: 

“Stock Up” warnings Worth Heeding

It’s the final countdown. “Britain will be at war with Russia by 2030”, warns Badenoch. You may take it with a pinch of salt – she’s a Tory! But when the hard-nosed Jonathan Powell, UK National Security adviser to government warns that Europe must be ready to endure “real hardship” this winter we should take note.

Immediately the question comes, what can we do? The Defence Secretary, Wes Streeting, issued an urgent warning last Friday, for households to stock-up especially with canned foods and water, and to put together an “emergency kit” of survival items. 

The UK government is hurriedly producing the “Prepare Campaign”, a multi-media public information message similar to the “Protect & Survive” booklet that went through every letterbox fifty years ago, telling people how to survive a nuclear attack. Pardon me?

Citing the threats from war and extreme weather induced by climate change which together are creating food and energy shortages, this warning of rationing is of historic importance. Yet day-to-day life continues with such a sense of “business-as-usual” as to defy both warnings and material reality.

The “carry on” brigade are championed by capitalist billionaires who need consumers to keep consuming and workers to keep working to maintain the status quo which creates their corporate profits. But the government warnings are a political recognition that social chaos is around the corner. Its an “arse-covering” exercise for politicians to say “we told you but you didn’t listen – you’re on your own” when the s**t hits.

Some capitalists are fast-funding the far-Right to ensure an authoritarian government that will protect their businesses during the deepening crisis. The rush to cryptocurrencies and Artificial Intelligence Data Centres represent the panic response of short-term speculators seeking the accumulation of wealth as quickly as possible before The Big Crash that is likely to dwarf 2008-9.

The military-industrial complex are rubbing their hands with glee – war makes money for the arms manufacturers. The rest of the ruling class, transnational corporations and nation states alike, are buying gold in the recognition of the potential for wheelbarrows full of Deutschmarks. The price of gold has increased by 145% and is accelerating whilst the real and hidden levels of inflation is devaluing our currency daily. Cash is soon likely to be worthless. Hoard your jewellery!

Today, the Trades Union Congress meets at our annual conference in Brighton, representing over 6 million paying members, an with some considerable recognition of the perilous state of things for the working class. With fewer than 70,000 UK millionaires able to protect themselves, the bottom seventy percent of the UK population are devoid of any personal wealth that could fund us through a crisis. 

Most are already unprotected from social upheaval, the 12 million elderly, 11 million under 18, some 17 million with a health disability, and the 5 million low-paid in work but requiring top-ups from State benefits, all face serious cuts to social support as the economy is turned towards war. Over 8 million of us are reliant on Universal Credit because wages are so low and RPI inflation which includes housing costs is rising above 5% per year. But instead of fighting for higher wages the unaffordable cost of welfare is the live debate, not the ludicrous and inhuman cost of rapid rearmament.

A vital proposition from the education trade union, UCU, is detailing the political demand for “Welfare not Warfare!” Housing, Health and Education are each already in crisis ahead of inevitable economic tremors this Winter and massive spending cuts next Spring. 

Socialists want to build on our current trade unions policy of social investment in people before profits, and peace not war. The trade unions with members in the arms industries will vote for jobs, their short-termism of “jam today” placing the funding of war preparations into competition with the many more jobs in the service sectors now at risk. This will be a fierce debate but a crucial vote. Will the unions fall-in with a war economy and military governance?

For the working class, the only power we have is collective. The question at our conference is why have the union leaders done so little to explain, agitate and organise for mass action against poverty as well as war. 

It is always the working class that pay for war. From the start of war we will be on our own – stock up now!Governments won’t protect us, but we are not alone while we have each other. We will need food sharing, neighbour-checking and community organisation, but most of all, right now we need collective trade union organisation and mass action to demand peace with social justice!

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Defence Investment Will Cost Us Elsewhere

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly Comment Column in the daily Plymouth Herald (30.06.26), having to address the mythology and lies of the government’s Defence Implementation Plan published the same day. It’s a huge document offered and fast military rearmament and the effective militarisation of society. I focus on the government lie in suggesting a doubling of military spending can relate the economy. Whilst not wanting to rely on outdated (to the point of equally mythological) Keynesianism, the very fact, across all sectors, finance investment in any sector other than armaments and soldiery creates and sustains more jobs, is a single point that demolishes the entire document. There is, of course, far more to say, such as the capitalist crisis driving war. But I’m simply answering the government foil of a headline. War doesn’t produce growth!

The unedited version below, or stretch the pic of the published article to read:

Here comes yet another dip in our welfare funding. Who said Austerity was over?

The DIP – the Defence Investment Plan, published this week – has been delayed by in-fighting between competing UK government departments and the heads of the armed forces. Tensions represent the politics of speedy rearmament versus social refurbishment. 

The Generals, Admirals and Corporate Executives of the western military-industrial complex have besieged UK governments with demands to quadruple, or more, arms spending as a proportion of the wealth Britain produces each year. Strict fiscal controls mean that money has to be found by cutting government spending elsewhere. Cutting our Welfare.

The argument, aside from warmonger’s thrust for ever more war, is that rearmament produces jobs and reflates the economy. This so-called “defence Dividend” is a complete myth. Cutting investments in civilian employment in order to fund a larger military budget harms growth. And in this climate crisis, the absence of funding for fast adaptation collapses our nations security.

Military procurement creates fewer jobs than the equivalent funding for transport, health, education, social care and even libraries and museums (congrats to The Box btw!). Spending £1million on military procurement, by government’s own figures, creates 9.4 jobs. The same £1m produces 12 jobs on the railways, 13 in healthcare, 15 in education, 20 in social care and 25 when invested in cultural activities! The jobs required to adapt to new climate and extreme weather dwarf these figures, if the investment should ever be agreed.

Military spending is capital intensive, with a shrinking workforce. Jobs in the military industry have plummeted since the 1980’s despite comparatively higher spending in real terms. Much of the tax cash investment goes to overseas firms and profits for the private arms companies. The billions do not trickle down into the general economy.

There is no defence dividend! Today’s DIP will mean another £15 billion for deadly weapons of war, paid for by cuts to critical public services and investment in action to halt climate breakdown. The new Prime Minister Burnham looks set to increase military spending even higher.

Why? In part it’s the political ideology of nationalism. Some bizarre drive to “Restore Britain” as the colonial military Empire of the 19th Century. Britain is directly engaged in warfare right now, billions in armaments going to Ukraine to attack Russia, and billions more spent in support of weapons for Israel’s devastation of Palestine, Lebanon and the US war with Iran. 

Ahead of next week’s NATO meeting, the UK Establishment want to show its power. There is competition for such rearmament across a fast-militarising Europe. Germany wants to be the primary military power in Europe. The US F35 jets delivered to France represent more power and influence to the French. The German rearmament is very serious, reflecting a far-Right section of the ruling class actively wanting military conflict with Russia – even arguing for the “righting the wrongs” of the outcome of the Second World War.

2026 has seen the highest amount of global conflict since the Second World War. Nuclear weapons clearly do not prevent war – they actually increase conflict. Yet the UK is investing heavily in nuclear weapons – unusable unless the intention is to destroy all human society. 

Truth is, the UK’s status in NATO relies upon nuclear weapons. The value is not in weaponry but in a seat at the big boys table: the P5 dedicated diplomatic forum where the five permanent UN Security Council members meet to discuss strategic stability and nuclear doctrines. UK consequently also sits on the NATO Nuclear Planning Group (NPG), dependent upon State alignment with US military policy. Nuclear War is the sum total of the “special relationship” with the United States of America.

The illegal Iran War has cost the global economy dear. The UN calculates that at least 32million people will be plunged into poverty as a result of the war, largely through its impact on energy and fertiliser supplies. We will suffer the consequences of shortages and price hikes this Autumn and Winter. 

Thankfully, the majority of the UK population do not want a war. But what does that mean? To stop war we need a show of demand for peace and against rearmament across the country.

It is clear that the warmongers are in power. We have to build a mass anti-war movement, challenging rearmament and militarism now, and placing our social welfare and climate security first and foremost!

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