The Socialist 28 June 2017

Tories out - Corbyn in

Step up the fight to kick out Tories and Blairites

After Grenfell - fight for safe homes

Camden evacuation - residents expose risks - Blairites duck responsibility

Grenfell fire compounded by overcrowding: build more council homes now

Reports: organising to fight for safe homes after Grenfell

Council union responds to Grenfell

Police accused of killing cover-up

NHS secret cuts plans exposed

Barclays finally charged for having hands in till

Students 'skirt' school uniform issue!

Homelessness - Corbyn offers housing revolution

Benefit cap defeat for government

Tories may have broken election laws... again

What We Saw

Liverpool's 1983-87 socialist council

Trump and the fossil fuel corporations - a lethal combination for the planet

Jobstown Not Guilty - verdict imminent

Trade unions must organise to kick out the Tories

Unison conference: confident delegates take control, give Corbyn 'rapturous' welcome

Refuse workers strike against bullying bosses

"What do we want? Pay parity.

Organise the 'youthquake'! Young Socialists - Generation Socialist

Cardiff: unity in solidarity with Grenfell

Corbyn inspires thousands at Glastonbury

To join the struggle to save the NHS

From Militant to the Socialist Party - what you thought

Pentrich Rebellion 200 years on

PO Box 1398, Enfield EN1 9GT

020 8988 8777

[email protected]

Link to this page: https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/954/25738

Search the site	Printable version

Home | The Socialist 28 June 2017 | Join the Socialist Party

Subscribe | Donate | Audio | PDF | ebook

Barclays finally charged for having their hands in the till

photo Gideon Bernarl/CC (Click to enlarge)

Neil Stonelake, Caerphilly Socialist Party

After an investigation of six years, and over nine years following the events concerned, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has finally decided to bring charges against Barclays bank.

Four of its former senior managers face prosecution for serious breaches of financial regulations during the banking crisis of 2008.

The allegations centre on loans taken from Qatari investors - and subsequently hidden in the books. Apparently these were used to prop up the bank when it was threatened with part-nationalisation at the same time as Lloyds TSB and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

The executives don't even think they have done anything wrong.

Readers of the Socialist will not be surprised to learn that senior officers in banking have acted in ways alleged to be systematically and blatantly corrupt. Any crackdown is to be welcomed, even at this late stage.

Nevertheless, it all comes too little and too late. The SFO has always been the sort of watchdog that big business likes: slow and ponderous with very few teeth.

The fact is that even throwing some of the executives into prison would do no more than paper over the cracks in the fundamentally exploitative system of capitalism.

Gordon Brown took action to save the banks in 2008-09. He nationalised the debt instead of the whole banks - and, we would add, missed out the commanding heights of the economy too.

Now everybody owes as a result of the bankers' incompetence and greed.

What Barclays is alleged to have run is a money carousel. Capitalists in Qatar fund the banks to stay privately owned, while they get a return on their investment after the state has sorted out capitalism's latest mess at massive public expense.

And the whole affair probably wouldn't have come to light if Qatar hadn't blotted its copy book with the other petrodollar merchants.

Advocates of creating a 'national investment bank' without taking the other major finance institutions into public ownership should reflect on how easy Barclays' actions were to commit.

In this issue

What we think

Step up the fight to kick out Tories and Blairites