It's a week since Putin sent his army into Ukraine.  Bombs and shelling and so-called "targeted" strikes are already killing and maiming the population and pulverising the infrastructure.  Yet Putin's real adversaries, behind this indefensible death and destruction which he has instigated against the Ukrainian people - who're treated as proxy cannon-fodder - are Nato's imperialist leaders, Jens Stoltenberg, Biden and Johnson, first and foremost.

    Today they're actually congratulating themselves for having been "right" all along, about Putin's intentions.  But theirs is a macabre and self-fulfilling prophecy.  All the while they refused to engage in talks over reducing NATO's threat against Russia as Putin demanded - whether deranged or not (and if he's irrational, it's all the more cynical).  They knew, better than anyone else, what the price of their refusal was.  But despite this, Biden cancelled proposed talks, meant to take place last Thursday.

    Biden's excuse? That Putin had already sent soldiers into Donetsk and Luhansk in East Ukraine, recognising them as "independent republics".  But this was also entirely predictable.  For 8 years, there has been fighting in the Donbas, between Russia-supporting rebels and Ukrainian nationalists.  Protocols agreed in Minsk in 2014/15, which were meant to organise referenda on self-government, were never implemented by the Ukrainian parliament.

    Now there is a state of terrible war for everyone in Ukraine.  European leaders, Johnson and Biden, dare to praise the heroism of the Ukrainians who're standing up (with Molotov cocktails and little else!) to Putin's huge, but maybe even reluctant army, as they wait for more so-called "lethal aid" from the West. Across the political board, Western politicians - including Starmer's Labour - raise their own reactionary nationalist fists, like Johnson, saying "glory to Ukraine".  As if there was "glory" in this catastrophe, which they no doubt hope will weaken Putin, one way or another.

    But as Ukraine's refugees pour across Ukraine's borders, they are not even allowed free passage into Britain!  Of course not.  Proof in itself, if needed, of the utter hypocrisy of Johnson's government.

    There is probably a lot worse to come in this war.  But worse is also to come for the working classes here and elsewhere - albeit on a wholly different level - as Johnson and his fellows hide behind war and the post-Covid crisis of their own making, to try to get workers to take the ever-escalating government and bosses' attacks, lying down.

Over 10,000 tube workers in the RMT union (only!) are on strike this Tuesday and Thursday; most station staff, fleet and engineering, signallers, service controllers and some drivers... 

    Their employer, London Underground Limited (LUL) says "modernisation" is needed.  "Modernisation" which translates as cuts to pensions and working conditions, as well as 600 job cuts, amounting to 10% of current station staff!  This isn't the first time LUL has "modernised".  In 2013, a so-called "Fit for the Future" plan cut more than 1,000 station jobs!

    LUL says it "must" find £1bn of savings by March 2023, after using up (the inadequate) emergency funding it got during the pandemic.  But it only needed this because it was relying on fares to fund day-to-day running thanks to the abolition of Transport for London's government grant in 2018 - political choices made above workers' heads.  So now tube workers are targeted to pay the bill, with jobs, conditions and above all, pensions!?

    No. They are right to strike against this attack.  In fact it needs a concerted all-out fight. So one might well ask why the night tube drivers are waging a separate fight against cuts in their jobs and conditions?  Or why Aslef, the drivers' union and TSSA, the white collar rail union, aren't part of today's action?  Or why other workers like teachers, and university staff, also on strike this week, facing similar attacks, don't all come together and face these attacks collectively?!

    In Coventry, bin lorry drivers, all-out for higher pay since 31 January, are also left to strike alone by their Unite union leaders.  Spreading their strike to other sections, let alone the rest of Coventry refuse workers(!), isn't even on Unite leaders' agenda.

    In fact, not one of the union leaderships can, nor will, overcome their own sectionalism, whether it's the RMT, Aslef, or of course, Unite, which recently refused to organise different contractors and BMW workers, in the same workplace, to fight together, when they were simultaneously demanding higher pay!

    Yet the only way for the working class to beat the bosses who've sectionalised it into so many tiers, "subcontracts", temps and permanents, is to ignore these false divisions and fight back as one.  For that to happen, however, union leaderships whose self-serving focus prevents this, will have to be bypassed.