#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #ITALY #ANARCHISM #LIBRARY #News #Journal #Update - (en) #Italy, UCADI #166: Disunited Kingdom: A strike a day keeps the government away (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The United Kingdom, according to economic analysts is hurtling towards a

recession that will last at least two years . This can be seen from the inflation
which has now reached more than 11% and which will reduce living standards by 7%
in 2023 and 2024. Only in 2027-28 will the income of British citizens return to
the levels of 2021-22, but they will still remain below pre-pandemic levels. The
GDP will progressively deteriorate until reaching 4 percent in 2026, the most
accentuated decline in the whole of Europe, with a loss of 100 billion deriving
from the decrease in trade which will produce 40 billion in unpaid taxes to the
exchequer by the end of the decade. In the immediate future, the country records
unemployment of 3.8%, but at the same time
worse growth than all OECD countries and the G20.
Prime Minister Sunak's government and the conservatives identify the causes of
this situation in the war in Ukraine, Covid, inflation and the energy crisis,
neglecting the main cause which lies in Brexit. Having abandoned the largest and
closest collective single market in the world, that of the EU, has generated
profound dysfunctions in the British economy, especially in times of crisis such
as the last few years; the small and medium-sized companies that export - or used
to export - to Europe suffer the most: for them it is a disaster.
Ai calculates that the bilateral trade agreements that were supposed to replace
relations with the EU.
they will produce only +0.08% of GDP by 2035, that with Australia and 0.07% with
Japan within the same period. The trade agreement with the USA is experiencing
serious difficulties and is yet to come, as is the one with India. On the other
hand, trade relations with Northern Ireland are mired in a dangerous stalemate
around the Brexit Protocol which splits the United Kingdom in two, imposing
controls between Belfast
and Great Britain. Furthermore, the elections won last May by Sinn Féin, the
former political arm of the IRA, have triggered a boycott by Irish unionists who
feel abandoned by Great Britain.

Strike

Despite strict no-strike laws introduced by Thatcher and left in place by Labour,
unions and workers have decided to administer one strike a day to the Government
during what has been dubbed the "winter of discontent." Certainly the most
sensational strike was that of male and female nurses, the first in the 106-year
history of the Royal College of Nursing (Rcn) union, which totally immobilized
the British public health "Nhs", one of the oldest in the world, today
overwhelmed by a serious crisis, due to lack of personnel, poorly spent funds and
with long waiting lists after the Covid emergency. The strike has led to
persistent unrest by workers in hospitals and emergency rooms where working
conditions have changed for the worse and are now unsustainable for many workers.
of the nurses' strike there is a common cause of all other unrest: low wages in
the face of galloping inflation, which has reached its highest level in 41 years,
in the face of grueling working conditions.
For all these reasons, public health workers ask for an average of 17% more wages
in their paychecks, also because there are many who declare, in the face of
insufficient canteen services, that they even ration food during the lunch break
to get to end of the month as their wages, net of inflation, have practically
returned to 2008 levels. If the demands are not met, the strike will go ahead
involving thousands of male and female workers, who have scheduled the 15th and
20 December to abstain from work, on crucial days for hospitals, given the
holidays and the Christmas holidays.
The strike affects a collapsing healthcare structure if one considers that, for
example, as regards ambulances, one in four calls to the 999 emergency number was
lost in the last month, according to data from the NHS itself, and at least 5,000
patients have suffered "serious consequences" for being treated late.
In the last week of November, 235,000 workers went on strike. First, teachers and
workers at 150 universities fought to demand higher wages and better pensions,
70,000 in all, in what was the largest higher education unrest in the country,
followed by another on 30 November.
of 50,000 teachers in Scotland who have folded their arms for the first time in
40 years. Then 115,000 postmen and postal workers slowed down the arrival of
Black Friday gifts and purchases, if they could ever console the British, and are
continuing with strikes in fits and starts.
Meanwhile, the railway workers of the Rmt union (National Union of Rail, Maritime
and Transport Workers) are preparing. Their secretary Mike Lynch announced an
8-day strike between the end of the year holidays: December 13, 14, 16, 17 and
January 3, 4, 6 and 7. Already now the strikes on the railways have caused 120
million euro of losses in the company's coffers and this could lead to new staff
cuts, in addition to the 10,000 already announced. And, to return to the postmen,
the trade association "Communication Workers Union", after refusing a 9% pay
rise, considered insufficient, promised more unrest in December, for the days of
9, 11, 14, 15, 23 and 24, which could ruin the delivery of Christmas gifts in the
country with bloody losses for the trade sector.
The situation is so maddening that even employees and bureaucrats from ministries
such as Transport, Border Force and the Home Office will go on strike in
December. Underground stations, such as Southwark and Lancaster Gate in London,
have been closed for days due to "lack of staff", even though there are no
strikes in progress. The only consolation is that it is still far from the strike
levels of the 1970s and 1980s in England. If in August 2022 356 thousand days of
work were lost due to strikes, according to the Office for National Statistics,
there were 11.7 million days in September 1979 and 3.1 million in October 1984,
to make reference to the peaks of those years. And Sunak who is a pragmatist,
compared to her predecessor Liz Truss who thought she was the new Margaret
Thatcher, seems to be preparing for compromise.

Is Brexit dead?

The economic crisis bites, Europe is back in fashion and Brexiters (Brexit
supporters) are alarmed: the United Kingdom is facing another crossroads. After
definitively abandoning the EU in 2020 and six years after the referendum, the
wound of leaving Europe seems to have suddenly reopened. And everyone, even the
BBC, has once again called it into question, while there are still many who
persist in
defending it but with less and less convincing arguments.
A "reverse" would be sensational and would overwhelm not only the Conservatives,
but also many Labor members who strongly supported it; however, the poor economic
and financial situation in the United Kingdom leads us to reflect, so much so
that - having taken note of the estimates of the government body Office for
Budget Responsibility - the government has candidly admitted, through the mouth
of Jeremy Hunt - the chancellor of the Exchequer, aka minister Finance Minister -
that Brexit has had and is having negative consequences for British trade.
Therefore, the possibility of establishing an association relationship with the
EU is being studied, on the model of the one existing between the Union and
Switzerland, which has access to the single market through individual bilateral
agreements. In return it must
accept a more sustained immigration from the EU, contribute to the EU budget and
submit to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, which means that EU
law prevails over national law: exactly what Brexit would have wanted to avoid.
And this even if the Despite still being shocked by how Brexit has torn the party
to pieces in recent years, Labor reiterates that there is no going back to the EU
single market and indeed professes to be very tough on "cheap" immigration from
abroad, so that the British can work" even in the menial tasks "and wages go up".
Another utopia that has so far proved unrealizable.
On the other hand, the situation is dramatic and Hunt has to make the country
swallow blood and tears to remedy the financial disaster left by Truss: 30
billion in welfare cuts and 25 billion in extra taxes: a total hole of 55
billion, so much has the Truss government cost to Great Britain, Ma Hunt, between
the lines, added two things that are there for all to see: "We need more
immigration" - given that the vacant jobs across the Channel fluctuate between 1,
3 million and 1 and a half million - and above all "trade relations with the EU
must be "with less friction" given what is happening on the border with Ireland.
Many British politicians, even conservatives, warn the danger of the Irish and
Scottish situation degenerating which would lead the country to divide into three
sections.
But Sunak, a pragmatic early Brexiter, had to backtrack to reassure the
Eurosceptics who have kept the Tories and their leaders in check in recent years:
"We will not realign ourselves with EU rules, we will continue on our way, for
example with the "free ports", we will return to growth soon".
However, doubts are growing in economic and financial circles that the country
can simultaneously face the economic crisis, the dramatic collapse of the
national health system, the devastating effects of the energy crisis and the
growing costs of war, allowing itself to sustain a de facto aggression against
the interests of the The EU, on the other hand, when it needs to re-establish
relations if it does not want the dangers for
national cohesion to grow in a country by now balkanized by its various ethnic
components while the identity nationalisms of Ireland and Scotland are reborn.

A triune country

The scenario that is being prepared is not reassuring and to be tackled would
require calling into question both by the Conservatives, but also by the Labor
Party, who have certainly been quiescent and accomplices with respect to the
anti-European choices, paying the electoral and political price. Therefore it is
better for the EU to wait because, in some cases, time is a gentleman, and to let
the situation precipitate to the point of dissolving what is by now an anomaly: a
single country for the British Isles, where it is evident that while the
populations of 'Ireland are moving towards the reunification of the island, whose
interests are inextricably linked to the EU, Scotland has divergent interests
from those of the rest of the country. The Scottish question is ancient and
complex and if you look at the growth of independence supporters you understand
that the time has come for the country to finally choose its destiny. Only then
will the three branches of Great Britain be able to mend their mutual relations
within Europe, no more and no less than what happened in the Balkans with the
countries that made up the former Yugoslavia, an evolution to which the British
have greatly contributed . Sometimes history repeats itself and who of separatism
strikes of separatism perishes!
The death of Elizabeth II marks the sunset of an era, the end - historically
inevitable - of a nation that lived and prospered on the "racing war",
assaulting, plundering and conquering, building on the exploitation of one of the
greatest empires of the world a state with a liberal democracy, with an
"advanced" civil society, but with very high rates of inequality, partly spared
the residents of the British Isles, but imposed on the peoples of the empire,
with brutality, ruthlessness, violence and cynicism.
The time has come for British politicians to come to terms with the consequences
of the last flicker of imperial policy: the one started with Brexsit which is not
only a recipe in the economic, institutional and social fields, but also of
imperial policy, which has brought with it the destabilization of the economic
and political balances of Europe, not only through the British secession, but
also and above all through a policy of
division and fragmentation of the countries of Europe which has passed through
the creation of a privileged axis of Great Britain with the individual countries
of Northern Europe,[1]with support for a policy of rapid EU enlargement in order
to hinder the progressive and gradual formation of the Community aequis and of
the constitutional and juridical homogeneity of the EU and, lastly, with the
support of an oligarchic and illiberal government, the Ukrainian one, (and not
with this that the Russian one is different), for the purpose to drag Europe into
a war and sever the political axis that connected it to Asia in a Eurasian vision
of a Europe from the Pyrenees to the Urals. All this in the name of a blind and
narrow-minded, unrealistic, timeless nationalism, dreaming of the restoration of
the empire!
It is therefore right that Great Britain pays, if possible, its ancillary
relationship, all built on the common Anglo-Saxon matrix with the United States,
with the desired and desirable end of the United Kingdom, so that the peoples of
the British Isles can rediscover in brotherhood with the peoples of Europe a
common future of freedom, prosperity and peace.
One thing is certain: the specter of the shattering of the country's unity will
be one of the problems of the next election campaign, even in the unlikely event
of the natural end of the legislature in 2024. Then the election campaign will
take place when the country is at the peak of the crisis announced economic
situation - unless it is decided for early elections that would take place in the
same climate.
In view of this deadline, it is good for Labor to prepare to discuss and face a
radical and profound revision of the country's international and internal
politics if one does not want populist and sovereignist thrusts and political
movements to prevail which would accentuate the economic degeneration of the
country and of the same institutions and that warlike and warmongering
governments are succeeded by authoritarian and illiberal governments.
At risk are the institutions of liberal and "bourgeois" democracy - as one would
once have said.

Gianni Cimbalo

http://www.ucadi.org/2023/01/02/regno-disunito-uno-sciopero-al-giorno-toglie-il-governo-di-torno/
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