Workers' Fight workplace bulletin editorials, 23 June 2008

Last Sunday, on BBC1, the bankers' Darling called for miserly 2% pay rises, in line with his inflation target. He added that this "restraint" should apply "from the boardroom to the shopfloor"!

Well, yes, directors and shareholders can afford a cut in their purchasing power, with all the cash they piled up over the years, thanks to the record profits that companies made from our labour.

But, for the rest of us, with retail price inflation running at 4.3% a year, according to official figures - and much more, judging from our own bills - only a significant wage increase will do. In fact, a minimum £50/week rise would be just about enough for low wages to catch up with the loss of purchasing power due to the price hikes of the past year and the real wage freeze of the previous years.

This may seem a tall order given the ridiculously low wage offers being made by the bosses. But compared to the hundreds of thousands of pounds in salary increases that directors award themselves year in and year out, or the 15-25% annual return on capital that big shareholders earn without moving a finger, a £50/w increase is just peanuts!

To justify his "unofficial" pay freeze (private bosses are free to do as they please), Darling raises the spectre of "inflation". The old scarecrow is out, to lead us into believing that demanding decent wages is putting the economy at risk!

But who put the economy at risk, if not those pillars of capital - the banks - by starting and fuelling a housing speculative bubble? Who made this bubble possible, if not politicians who, from Labour to the Tories, are bent on cutting state spending on decent rented homes, thereby forcing workers into buying unaffordable houses? Who made a packet out of this bubble, if not capitalists, whose only concern is money, no matter the cost for society? And today, who is driving prices through the roof by speculating on oil and food, if not the same capitalists again - no matter how much Brown denies it, as he did again last week?

So, if anyone is to blame for inflation, it is the bosses and big shareholders, not workers demanding decent wages!

Last week, the contractors who drive Shell's tankers across the country won a 2-year deal, worth 9% on the 1st year and 5% on the 2nd. But they would never have won anything if it was not for their strike. Because there is only one language that the bosses and their politicians understand - that of the class struggle. And it is only by using it, with all the collective strength we can muster, that we will make the capitalists pay for their crisis.

Mugabe's regime is a dictatorship and the arrests, beatings and torture it inflicts on political opponents are intolerable. But is this the real reason why Brown condemns Mugabe so furiously today?

It should be recalled that for 20 years, British governments found little to object to in Mugabe's regime. Yet it was a dictatorship, which had already shown its true stripes by repressing the supporters of a political rival, killing thousands.

It was only in April 2000, that Mugabe became a target for London, when he threatened the very rich white farmers who had controlled most of agriculture since independence, with expropriation. Never mind the fact that, as a result of the white monopoly over the most fertile land, millions of poor Zimbabweans were barely surviving!

Two years later, the era of Western "sanctions" began. The international loans on which Zimbabwe, like all other poor countries, depended, dried up.

One can only be shocked by the impact of these "sanctions" on the population, with an astronomical inflation which paralyses most of the economy. Even for the minority in paid jobs, wages are worthless hours after being paid. Eating depends on finding something to barter against food. It is a hand-to-mouth existence in which the lives of most verge on starvation. Yet, despite this, Brown dares to threaten even more "sanctions" which, like the previous ones, will affect the population far more than the ruling clique around Mugabe.

By a cynical irony, it is, once again, in the name of "democracy" that Brown proposes to starve the population of Zimbabwe. In Iraq, for the victims of the West's bombs, this "democracy" was that of the cemeteries. In Zimbabwe, bombs will not be necessary: hunger and disease will do the job!

In Iraq, Brown's "democratic" claims only conceal the greed of oil majors BP and Shell. Will anyone be surprised if, in Zimbabwe, Brown's "democratic" aims turn out to be a smokescreen for British mining groups, hoping to grab the country's huge resources in platinum and other metals?