Nick Chaffey, Socialist Party national committee
The enormous anger at the sacking of 800 P&O seafarers has put Boris Johnson’s Tory government under massive pressure to act.
This latest crisis exposes his ‘levelling-up’ agenda. Alongside the bosses’ widespread use of ‘fire and rehire’ to drive down wages, the rising pressure of inflation, as bills, food and fuel prices rocket, is seeing growing criticism of Sunak’s failure to provide economic answers.
In the wake of the 2019 general election, Johnson promised a new employment bill that would improve workers’ rights after Brexit. Unsurprisingly, that bill has now been shelved.
Workers will welcome news of a criminal investigation into P&O, but what confidence can we have in the legal system that has failed to find justice for Hillsborough families, miners at Orgreave, or the families of those who died at Grenfell?
The failure to act decisively to restore the P&O jobs has seen transport minister Grant Shapps proposing new minimum wage legislation for ferries. While this would be a step forward, it cannot be on the basis of cutting the current pay and conditions of seafarers at P&O and elsewhere.
Privatised Ports
The government had called on the privatised port authorities themselves to police the proposed measures. The trade body UK Major Ports Group said it would not be doing so. Not a surprise, it represents the major port operators including P&O owner DP World!
Faced with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Johnson took measures to impound the super-yachts and assets of Russian oligarchs. Why not take action against the ruthless P&O oligarchs who brazenly admitted to breaking the law and declared they would do it again? The fact that two P&O ships have been detained due to failed safety inspections shows the government does have powers to act now.
While seafarers and their trade unions were demanding action, Labour leader Keir Starmer offered no alternative. A bold call for the nationalisation of P&O could have forced the Johnson government to act.
The events at P&O show the brutal steps the capitalists are prepared to take to defend their interests and maximise their profits in the face of a new and deepening economic crisis. They show that, despite Johnson’s rhetoric about levelling up the economy in the face of massive and widening inequality, the Tories serve their capitalist masters interests first and last. As P&O seafarers are abandoned, news of government subsidies to DP World as part of the Freeport plan shows the reality of the capitalist agenda.
Workers can only have confidence in themselves to fight in their own interests, by building powerful, independent, militant trade unions with a strategy of action to force employers and their political representatives to retreat from their vicious plans. As seafarers chanted: “Seize the ships!” it has become clear that workers will need a political vehicle of our own, a new mass workers’ party, to voice the demand for nationalisation. Only public ownership under democratic workers’ control and management can lay the basis for the protection of jobs, pay, working conditions, safety and reliable services.
