Counterfire

Nursing student Steven McWilliam writes to encourage his classmates to join solidarity action against proposed staff cuts at GCU

Hello Classmates,

As you may know GCU staff are facing cuts to a number of programmes and wider student support services, with currently a hundred jobs under threat. This has led to different unions that represent the staff holding votes on strike action. The University and College Union (UCU) passed a vote on two days of strike action on the 3rd and 4th of June. 

University executives drive to downsize

Some of the communication about the strike from the university appears to be blaming staff for the disruption they are causing to services, but these are the roles and therefore services that will be permanently affected by the downsizing efforts of the executive committee, many of whom are earning over £100,000. In the midst of this, they have hired a new deputy vice-chancellor, Craig Gaskell, who has a track record of butchering the staffing levels at the university of Derby  

Why is this happening?

These decisions seem crazy given that GCU has one of the worst staff to student ratios in the UK. Honestly, we should consider ourselves lucky that our cohort is small and we are able to get the attention of our programme coordinators so easily. Further to the ratio, the university is not short of funds. In fact, it has around £90m in cash reserves. 

So if the goal isn’t to improve services, nor is it because the university is running out of money, then the question should be why this is happening? 

A nationwide attack on higher education reduces chances for working class young people

I believe it’s a coordinated attack by the state on higher education as part of deepening austerity in order to pay for rearmament and war. We can see this attack on many universities from Dundee to Edinburgh to loads of unis down south. This sort of downsizing will lead to fewer places on courses and ultimately more competition.

That competition will become an uphill battle for working class young people who attend underfunded state schools where it will be harder for them to achieve the same outcomes as their more affluent, privately educated peers. In turn, the lack of access to higher education will restrict expected income levels, thus widening the gap between the working class and the ownership class, allowing for the continued gatekeeping of higher education by the ownership class.

This is frustrating to me because Scotland has a long and proud history of excellent universities. St Andrews dates back to 1413. Our educational institutions are world famous and attract many foreign students. These students are preferred by universities that wish to exploit them by charging exorbitant fees. To me, this is another example of money perverting something that should be purer. We should want foreign students because they add life and vibrancy to Scotland, not because we can rinse them for cash. 

Recruitment to the military of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET)

I mentioned the drive towards a war economy and I think this is part of it. Recently, the government released data for 16-24 year olds who are not in education, employment or training (NEET). This is at its highest level in 12 years. Following this the Labour government put out guidance suggesting that the unemployed should find work with the army. 

A policy that further exploits a generation of the poorest young people

This feels twisted: the idea that successive governments have pushed austerity and cuts that lead to a degradation of living standards, have defanged the trade union movement and oppress legitimate protest against wars and genocide, then have the audacity to suggest that people sign up to die for a country that has done nothing for them. Honestly think about the life of someone who was born in 2001/2. They were freshly born after 9-11, grew up as a child during the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, lived through the 2008 financial crash and the austerity that followed it and the resulting housing crisis we are still struggling with, saw the destruction of Libya in 2011, weren’t able to vote in the independent or Brexit referendum which failed to deliver any of its promises, then  locked in during covid when they were 18/19 years old. 

Now the government wants the poorest of these people who have been most exploited to lay down their lives in imperial wars of aggression.

Refuse this call to arms and join in solidarity with the strikes

We must refuse this call to arms. We need welfare not warfare! We need bairns not bombs. We need to build schools and universities and hospitals, not the weapons that destroy these institutions overseas.

So, when the next strike is called, I would strongly encourage each of you to join me in solidarity with staff at the picket line come rain or shine.

Best,

Steven

Before you go

The ongoing genocide in Gaza, Starmer’s austerity and the danger of a resurgent far right demonstrate the urgent need for socialist organisation and ideas. Counterfire has been central to the Palestine revolt and we are committed to building mass, united movements of resistance. Become a member today and join the fightback.

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The Russia war: Inching to an end? Or into the abyss? | Counterfire
Counterfire

Nato is spreading the war in Ukraine across Europe, argues Robert Dale. It is a piece of unspeakable barbarism, committed in our name, on our doorstep

The war in Ukraine has now dragged on longer than the First World War (and trench gangrene is back). While the situation on the ground is murky and the conflict has dropped down the ‘news agenda’, two current developments stand out.

These are increasing interference with Russian shipping and intensifying drone and missile strikes deep into Russia itself. Both moves are clearly driven by Ukraine’s Nato masters and both bear the risk of serious escalation.

It has become hard to keep up with the direct attacks on Russian merchant vessels. The many incidents in the Black Sea are pretty self evidently Ukrainian, but the ‘naval theatre’ is much wider.

In the Mediterranean, ‘somebody’ wrecked a Russian gas tanker off Libya earlier this year, and a series of explosions sunk the Ursa Major in very mysterious circumstances in late 2024. Recently, an explosive-packed Ukrainian sea drone washed up on a Greek island. In the Baltic, ‘somebody’ has been placing limpet mines on tankers heading for the Russian port of Ust-Luga.

When it comes to seizing Russian tankers, the perpetrators can’t brag enough about their deeds. Nato navies have boarded and/or seized Russian vessels in the Baltic, the Gulf of Finland, the North Sea, the English Channel, the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean. There was even an incident with the US Navy in the Indian Ocean.

Russian responses include avoiding the Mediterranean where possible and sending warships to escort convoys through the English Channel. You’d think that the proprietors of a declining, trade-dependent power like Britain would think twice before reviving piracy on the high seas. Reap what you sow and and all that.

But, isn’t the Russian shadow fleet under international sanctions? As you probably know this anyway, that’s just imperialist piffle-paffle. ‘Shadow fleet’ may sound dodgy, but is simply propaganda shorthand for vessels run and insured outside the reach of Lloyds of London. The ‘international sanctions’ are simply economic warfare by the Western bloc. Nobody else wants them, nobody else wants to observe them. The United Nations certainly never approved them.

So far, the Russians have reacted with moderation to interference with their shipping, as they haveto the deep missile and drone strikes on their territory. However, there is no guarantee that it will stay that way on either count.

Deep strikes have been going on for some years. It seems there was a decision in November 2024 to expand their intensity, with the first use of American ATACMS and Franco-British Storm Shadow missiles for strikes inside Russia. In recent months, there have been hundreds of drone strikes on oil facilities and major cities.

Make no mistake, these are Nato attacks in all but name. The targeting data is supplied by Nato members (hence the recent fuss over a near-collision between a Russian fighter and a British spy plane over the Black Sea). Many of the flight paths have been through Nato airspace, to avoid Russian air defences. The missiles and drones are largely manufactured in Nato countries (sometimes with a fig-leaf of final assembly in Ukraine).

And even if they weren’t, the Ukrainian war-fighting state is only kept afloat by massive injections of cash, these days pretty much all from Britain and the European Union. Something like half a trillion pounds over the first four years.

The Russian government knows its conflict is with the Nato powers (with or without the Americans), and sees that there is apparently no red line its adversaries will not cross. In a very dangerous game of nuclear chicken, ‘the Ukrainians’ attacked Russia’s nuclear early warning radars (May 2024) and its strategic nuclear bombers (June 2025).

What if the Russian rulers decided to strike back against the ultimate source of these attacks, the command centres and arms plants across Europe? The Storm Shadow plants in Stevenage and Beith (Scotland), or the Ukrainian drone factory in Mildenhall? This doesn’t bear thinking about: our rulers are playing with matches in a firework factory.

Paying the price

We don’t need to know all the details of what exactly Nato’s special forces have been up to in the shadows (though the Russians probably do). It’s enough to know that the war is spreading its tentacles all over Europe.

The whole killing game can only continue because our rulers keep pouring our money into it. Nato boss Mark Rutte recently said ‘we’ should all be paying more to keep the Ukrainian state afloat.

Total British military spending is now over 2 per cent of GDP – that’s upwards of two thousand pounds a year for every worker.

Our rulers have nailed their colours to the mast of the HMS Ukraine – and look set to go down with the ship (if not before). Their war is a piece of unspeakable barbarism, committed in our name, on our doorstep. Long since time to do something about it.

Robert Dale lives in the Berlin region, where he has been active in socialist politics since the 1980s.

Before you go

The ongoing genocide in Gaza, Starmer’s austerity and the danger of a resurgent far right demonstrate the urgent need for socialist organisation and ideas. Counterfire has been central to the Palestine revolt and we are committed to building mass, united movements of resistance. Become a member today and join the fightback.

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Where have all the voters gone? | Counterfire
Counterfire

Following the recent local elections that saw relatively high turnouts,  Robert Dale examines the long term decline seen in electorate turnout

An election result is a bit like a thermometer. It tells us the temperature – but not which way the wind is blowing. And the ins and outs of first-past-the-post mean that we see everything through a rather murky pane.

One thing that strikes me about elections these days is the lack of voters. Overall turnout has fallen from over 70 per cent in the 1980s and 1990s to just under 60 per cent at the 2024 general election.

Turnout at UK general elections since 1974

YearTurnout (%) 
1974 Feb78.8 
1974 Oct72.8 
197976.0Thatcher
198372.7 
198775.3 
199277.7 
199771.3Blair
200159.4 
200561.4 
201065.1 
201566.4 
201768.8Corbyn
201967.3 
202459.7Starmer

If I look a little closer, I see enthusiasm for Tony Blair’s Labour already building by 1997 – and slumping straight away in 2001. (The total vote actually fell in 1997 as Tory voters stayed at home.) An increase in the late 2010s with a little more motivation around the Brexit wars and the Jeremy Corbyn project. And then Keir Starmer’s ‘historic landslide’, won entirely through miserably low participation. I’ll come back to the Labour vote later, let’s stick with turnout for the moment.

In the most heavily working class constituencies turnout has fallen to around 50 per cent. Sunderland, Hartlepool, Grimsby; East Ham, Ilford, Dagenham; Thanet; Merthyr and the Rhondda; Wolverhampton, Coventry, Stoke-on-Trent; Rotherham and Doncaster, Oldham and Rochdale. Take a look at the full list at the end.

In fact, the scale of the passive boycott is understated, as many people aren’t even on the electoral roll. Some eight million, the Electoral Commission estimated a couple of years ago. That’s 12,000 per constituency! And workers are twice as likely to be missing as bosses and managers.

You might wonder whether turnout has always been so low in those seats. Or maybe people don’t bother voting because they are mostly safe labour seats (or at least they were until recently). Well, they were solid Labour 30 years ago, with significantly higher turnout (between 10 and 20 percentage points). And the list certainly includes hotly contested seats (both Thurrock constituencies for instance).

In fact, one of the things I found most intriguing as I poked around in the figures was the combination of political excitement and voter apathy that often showed up. The recent Gorton and Denton by-election, for example. Everything to play for, the press and pundits agreed. And exactly half the registered voters felt it was worth the walk to a polling station.

The same can be said of several of the seats won by pro-Palestine independents at the 2024 general election, where both sides felt the stakes were high: Birmingham Perry Barr (turnout 49%), Blackburn (53%), and Dewsbury and Batley (53%). Birmingham Yardley, where Jody McIntyre came close to unseating Jess Phillips – 50 per cent. In Birmingham Ladywood, just 44 per cent turned out for the Shabana Mahmood v Akhmed Yakoob grudge match.

The low-turnout list also includes many constituencies with large BAME populations: Barking, East Ham, West Ham, Smethwick, West Bromwich, Walsall, Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley, Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North, Wolverhampton South, Leicester East, Bradford East, Bradford West, Gorton and Denton, Oldham West, Manchester Rusholme, Rochdale.

What did get people fired up was the two referendums, IndyRef and Brexit. The Scottish independence vote in 2014 saw 85 per cent turnout. The figure for the Brexit/Remain vote was lower – 72 percent – but still higher than for any other election in the same period (or the election system referendum in 2011, where just 42 per cent could be bothered). Perhaps there was a sense that these were issues that would really put the cat among the pigeons?

The Labour vote

While we’re at it, let’s have a look at the total Labour vote nationwide, over the years.

Total Labour vote at general elections since 1974

YearLabour vote 
197411,645,616 
197411,457,079 
197911,532,218Thatcher elected
19838,456,934 
198710,029,807 
199211,557,062 
199713,518,167Blair elected
200110,724,953 
20059,552,376 
20108,609,517 
20159,347,324 
201712,877,918the Corbyn surge
201910,269,051 
20249,708,716Starmer. Oh dear…

Tony Blair’s victory in 1997 stands out. ‘Things can only get better.’ Oh happy days. But they didn’t of course. I was intrigued to see that the big drop in Labour’s vote came in the June 2001 election – before the 2003 Iraq war, before his war crimes, even before 9/11. Before the wheels came off.

If I get out my very broad brush again, I’d say it looks like many workers were already disappointed by Blair’s first term, switched off from parliamentary politics, and never really came back. Except when there was something on the ballot that would put the fear of god into ‘them up there’, something that the Waitrose-shoppers of ‘polite society’ found unthinkable, unspeakable: Scottish independence, Brexit. Boris Johnson in 2019, arguably, to ‘get Brexit done’. And now Reform.

And what about Corbyn in 2017? Labour came close. Turnout was up. The total Labour vote was impressive, surpassed only by 1997 (though it must be said, the electorate had also grown in the intervening two decades, from 43 to 48 million). So where was the Corbyn surge stronger, where was it weaker?

The following table shows the number of additional votes Labour gained in 2017 in a selection of Labour seats. It provides an angle on the extra votes attracted by Corbyn’s campaign.

The Corbyn effect in selected constituencies

ConstituencyLabour votes added 2015–2017
Hull East3,200
Wolverhampton North East3,600
Great Grimsby4,000
Sunderland Central4,100
Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney4,800
Doncaster North5,000
Rhondda5,100
Dagenham and Rainham5,100
Wigan6,000
Oldham West and Royton6,200
East Ham6,500
Hartlepool6,900
Barking8,000
Oldham East and Saddleworth8,100
Rochdale8,100
Exeter9,300
Leeds North East10,300
Cambridge10,400
Hampstead and Kilburn10,400
Manchester Withington11,600
Hackney South and Shoreditch13,300
Birmingham Hall Green14,000
Bristol West24,300

It seems like the Corbyn project polled particularly well in student and graduate-heavy constituencies. Those also happen to be the places where the Greens did best in the recent council elections.

Apparently, workers weren’t as readily convinced by a plan for popular reforms without any visible means to push them through. It was no secret that many of Corbyn’s own MPs were actively sabotaging the campaign. Of course Brexit was a complicating factor at the time, but I think the observation stands. Like it or not, Corbyn went down better at Glastonbury than he did in Grimsby.

This article is part of a loose series trying to make sense of the collapse of the established parties, the rise of the ‘far right’, and the ‘progressive’ surge. So far I have looked at the great dispossession of the past five decades and what Germany can tell us about voting and class. I also found the following especially pertinent: John Westmoreland’s analysis of the 2026 local elections, his piece with Mike Wayne on leafleting in Doncaster, his report on the Lindsey oil refinery closure, and Jim Nightingale’s article on politics in former pit villages in South Yorkshire.

Robert Dale lives in the Berlin region, where he has been active in socialist politics since the 1980s.

Constituencies with turnout under 55 per cent. 2024 general election

Under 45%: Manchester Rusholme, Leeds South, Kingston upon Hull East, Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney, Tipton and Wednesbury, Wolverhampton South East, Blackley and Middleton South, Birmingham Ladywood, Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North, Birmingham Erdington, Doncaster North, Leeds Central and Headingley, Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough

Under 50%: Liverpool Riverside, Chorley, Blackpool South, Barking, Middlesbrough and Thornaby East, West Ham and Beckton, Barnsley South, Bolton South and Walkden, Bradford South, Manchester Central, Glasgow North East, Wolverhampton North East, Barnsley North, Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare, Nottingham North and Kimberley, Salford, Bradford West, Leicester West, Gorton and Denton, Stoke-on-Trent Central, East Ham, Swansea West, Normanton and Hemsworth, Rhondda and Ogmore, Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes, Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley, Smethwick, Sheffield South East, Rotherham, Brent East, Coventry East, Croydon West, Rawmarsh and Conisbrough, Birmingham Perry Barr, Aberafan Maesteg, West Bromwich, Birmingham Yardley, Easington, Bradford East, Walsall and Bloxwich, Luton South and South Bedfordshire, Hartlepool, Torfaen, Ashton-under-Lyne

Under 51%: Knowsley, Newport East, Wythenshawe and Sale East, Feltham and Heston, Heywood and Middleton North, Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton, Queen’s Park and Maida Vale, Birmingham Selly Oak, Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham, Doncaster Central, Dagenham and Rainham, Ilford South, Birmingham Northfield, Dudley

Under 52%: Houghton and Sunderland South, Glenrothes and Mid Fife, Nottingham South, Thurrock, Poplar and Limehouse, Derby South, Erith and Thamesmead, Glasgow East, Glasgow North, Leigh and Atherton, Hayes and Harlington, Stalybridge and Hyde, Huddersfield, Preston, Leeds East, Brent West, Stoke-on-Trent North, Luton North, Glasgow South West, Pontypridd, Sittingbourne and Sheppey, Halifax

Under 53%: Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice, Birmingham Edgbaston, Washington and Gateshead South, Foyle, Strangford, Airdrie and Shotts, Jarrow and Gateshead East, Dundee Central, Sheffield Heeley, Nottingham East, Sunderland Central, Sheffield Central, Neath and Swansea East, Caerphilly, Hackney North and Stoke Newington, Blyth and Ashington, Wigan, Belfast West, Portsmouth South, Scunthorpe, Tottenham,

Under 54%: Burnley Blackburn, Dewsbury and Batley, St Helens South and Whiston, Liverpool Walton, Bootle, Slough, Stockton North, Hackney South and Shoreditch, Coatbridge and Bellshill, Boston and Skegness, Cities of London and Westminster, St Helens North, Cardiff South and Penarth, Cardiff East, Peckham, Stratford and Bow, Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West, South Shields, Vauxhall and Camberwell Green

Under 55%: Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley, Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, Worsley and Eccles, Bermondsey and Old Southwark, East Antrim, Holborn and St Pancras, Edmonton and Winchmore Hill, Wakefield and Rothwell, Hyndburn, Bolton North East, Kensington and Bayswater, Widnes and Halewood, Liverpool West Derby, Motherwell, Wishaw and Carluke, Chatham and Aylesford, Redcar, South Basildon and East Thurrock, York Central, Belfast North, Aberdeenshire North and Moray East, East Londonderry, Oldham East and Saddleworth, Southampton Test, Rochdale, Oxford East, North East Cambridgeshire, Basildon and Billericay, Leeds West and Pudsey

Before you go

The ongoing genocide in Gaza, Starmer’s austerity and the danger of a resurgent far right demonstrate the urgent need for socialist organisation and ideas. Counterfire has been central to the Palestine revolt and we are committed to building mass, united movements of resistance. Become a member today and join the fightback.

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Trump stands firm behind neoliberal rule in Bolivia | Counterfire
Counterfire

Bolivia’s strike movement deserves solidarity from the international left, argues Jonathan Maunders. The threat to democracy is not the people in the streets. It is a government, backed by the United States as part of a wider effort to reassert right-wing, neoliberal rule across Latin America

The Trump administration has intervened in Bolivia’s crisis, backing President Rodrigo Paz Pereira as his government faces a growing strike movement against austerity, fuel shortages and rising living costs.

The US message is clear. It is not neutral. It is not defending democracy. It is backing a friendly right-wing government against workers, peasants and Indigenous communities resisting disastrous neoliberal policies.

Washington brands the protests a ‘coup d’état

Officials in Washington have slammed what they call attempts to “destabilise” Bolivia’s elected government. Secretary of State Marco Rubio then doubled down, saying the US “stands squarely” behind Paz’s government and linking the unrest to “criminals”. His deputy, Christopher Landau, went even further, describing the protests as a “coup d’état”.

Such framing is beyond parody. Bolivia is not facing a coup from below. It is facing a mass movement against a right-wing government trying to impose austerity on people already suffering fuel shortages, inflation and collapsing living standards.

The strikes began with rural and peasant organisations marching to defend land rights. It has since grown into a broader confrontation involving miners, teachers, transport workers, labour unions and rural groups. Roadblocks have disrupted the cities of La Paz and El Alto, as protesters demand an end to austerity and Paz’s resignation.

The government has already been forced to retreat once, repealing the land law that first sparked this crisis. But the anger has not disappeared because this is much deeper than one policy.

Paz deploys police and military to ‘restore order’

Bolivia is facing its worst economic crisis in decades, driven by declining gas production, inflation and external pressure to restore confidence among international lenders.

For ordinary Bolivians, this means higher prices, shortages of diesel, food and medicine, and wages that cannot keep up. For Paz, Washington and the markets, the answer is austerity, foreign investment and repression dressed up as restoring order.

That may now intensify. Paz’s government has deployed police and soldiers, opened so-called humanitarian corridors through blockades, and taken steps that could make it easier to declare a state of emergency. In that context, US talk of a “coup” is not just words. They help prepare the ground for further repression.

Trump and US imperialism give Paz political cover for repression

This is why the Trump administration’s intervention matters. By branding protests as a coup, Washington is giving Paz political cover to move against the movement. It is the familiar script of US imperialism in Latin America: right-wing governments are “constitutional”, even when they attack the poor. Meanwhile, we are told that mass movements are “destabilising” when they threaten market interests

‘Destabilization’ is from the US playbook when it suits their interests

It’s rank hypocrisy. The United States has spent generations backing coups, dictatorships and right-wing destabilisation across Latin America. From Guatemala and Chile to Bolivia itself, Washington has never hesitated to undermine democracy when elected governments threatened US interests, nationalised resources or empowered workers.

Yet when Bolivians block roads against austerity, suddenly the US finds concern for constitutional order.

Ordinary people should not pay for a crisis created by neoliberal politics

The international left must reject this. The movement in Bolivia contains different forces, including miners, teachers, unions, rural organisations, and supporters of ex-president Evo Morales.

However, its central demand is clear: ordinary people should not be made to pay for a crisis created by economic dependency, failed elites and the return of neoliberal politics.

Trump’s intervention shows what is at stake. Paz’s government is not simply trying to survive a domestic crisis. It is being backed by Washington as part of a wider effort to reassert right-wing, neoliberal rule across Latin America.

Bolivia’s strike movement deserves solidarity. The real threat to democracy is not the people in the streets. It is a government, backed by the United States, preparing to impose austerity by force.

Before you go

The ongoing genocide in Gaza, Starmer’s austerity and the danger of a resurgent far right demonstrate the urgent need for socialist organisation and ideas. Counterfire has been central to the Palestine revolt and we are committed to building mass, united movements of resistance. Become a member today and join the fightback.

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Education on the line: Fire and rehire | Counterfire
Counterfire

Pete Webster calls for solidarity with striking educationists and describes government attacks on education and the health and social care systems as part of the ruthless neoliberal drive to warfare not welfare. There is an urgent need to build solidarity networks both locally and internationally to challenge government priorities at home and abroad.

Teaching Assistants at Woodfields School in Brent returned to the picket line on Tuesday morning in a continuation of their longstanding dispute. Talks at the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service ( ACAS) failed to make progress when the management offered a policy of ‘fire and rehire’ on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis. The union decided to ‘leave it’, despite the threat of dismissal for those who would not accept the offer, and has announced another 23 days of strike action until the end of term in July. There will be further pickets this week on Thursday and Friday from 7.30 am. See our Events page for future dates.

The school specialises in Special educational needs and disabilities (Send) provision for children with a wide range of special needs. The highly skilled teaching assistants are passionate about their work and have close working relationships with their pupils, who benefit from a consistent approach.

Instead of seeing sense, and negotiating a just settlement, management have organised a scab labour force to run a play scheme for a limited number of pupils during the action. This attempt at strikebreaking is being legally challenged by the NEU.

Education under attack

Woodfields is just one of many schools embroiled in industrial action at the moment over pay and conditions, including Brick Lane School in Tower Hamlets. The Great Ormond Street Hospital School is also on strike and has called a march and rally for 4pm this Thursday in Camden. It would be good to get along. There was a commitment from the Woodfield picket to send a delegation in solidarity and to make links with other educationists in dispute.

These are just a few examples, and although the issues at each one are unique, this belies what is effectively a widespread assault on our education system. There is a general push to drive down wages, enact redundancies, increase class sizes and make arbitrary changes to shift patterns. This isn’t coincidental but stems from a choice by central government to starve the sector of funding. In particular there  seems to be a pattern of targeting schools that excel in Send provision as Teaching Assistants are grossly undervalued by local authority and academy run schools and are seen as an easy option to reduce costs.

This attack is reflected in the paltry – and unfunded – three-year pay deal of 6.5% with a 2% uplift this year. This is way below the real inflation rate on the high street and constitutes a pay cut. The National Education Union (NEU) has announced a campaign to deliver a massive rejection of the offer when a ballot opens in the autumn. It is vitally important that reps raise this now to ensure the largest vote possible.

The attack on education isn’t solely confined to the primary and secondary sectors. The University sector is having to undergo massive restructuring. Income has reduced considerably since changes in charges for overseas students has seen them apply for degrees in other countries. More than fifty universities are cited to close in the next year, with a devastating impact on jobs, students and local communities.

Recently the bosses at Goldsmiths University suspended the contracts of 147 lecturers who were engaged in an exam marking and assessment boycott, effectively locking them out. In response the University and College Union (UCU) have called an indefinite strike, to commence Monday 8 June.

A ruthless government drive to warfare not welfare

None of these issues have come about by accident. They are being driven by a ruthless government determined to push through more and more austerity measures. Not only is education under fire but so is our health and social care system, with social security payments and the state pension under threat. Meanwhile utility companies are allowed to make huge profits and deliver poor services. Rents are astronomical. Youth unemployment now stands at more than a million.

There is, however, money aplenty for the military and the armaments industry. The share of GDP towards military and allied sectors will increase year-on-year for the foreseeable future with its consequential impact on further austerity measures. Conscription to the armed forces has been reintroduced in a number of European countries and is being mooted here too. A future that sees Britain as ‘war ready’ is a future that is devoid of hope for us and our children. At the end of the day it is a political choice.

Building solidarity networks both locally and internationally

There is an urgent need to challenge the government’s priorities. That will not come from a change of prime minister who will be replaced by another neo-liberal supporting politician.

It must come from building solidarity networks wherever we can, including amongst teaching staff and the communities they serve. All the more reason to join the rally in Camden on Thursday.

The situation here is being played out across Europe. The same race to rearm, the same race to make workers pay the cost for a crisis not of our making. That’s why the forthcoming International Anti-War Conference on 20 June is vitally important to start to build an effective continental opposition to the political elites who offer nothing for working people except further hardship.

Please send messages of solidarity to Brent NEU joint secretaries [email protected] and [email protected]

Before you go

The ongoing genocide in Gaza, Starmer’s austerity and the danger of a resurgent far right demonstrate the urgent need for socialist organisation and ideas. Counterfire has been central to the Palestine revolt and we are committed to building mass, united movements of resistance. Become a member today and join the fightback.

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Ebola and imperialism | Counterfire
Counterfire

The outbreak of Ebola in the DRC is not merely an act of nature but a result of healthcare privatisation and a range of processes produced by imperialism, argues John Clarke

In responding to a lethal Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Western media outlets have stressed local factors that are impeding the work of containing the outbreak. These considerations are not irrelevant, but an understanding of the proliferation of infectious diseases in Africa and the vulnerability of populations to it requires that the legacy of colonialism and the present nature of global imperialism be properly considered.

The BBC ran an article on 27 May headlined ‘Ebola-hit DR Congo faces “catastrophic collision” of disease and conflict, WHO warns.’ It quoted the organisation’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, as saying that it was impossible to ‘build community trust or isolate the sick while bombs are falling.’ He was pointing to the fact that the Ituri region, where the outbreak has been centred, has been under military rule since 2021 and is the site of major conflicts.

An article in the Guardian also stressed the issue of behaviour within the local population that stood in the way of effective measures. It points out that, during a visit to the DRC, Ghebreyesus stated that: ‘We can stop this Ebola and anyone who has it can also recover. But the rule … is this thing is everybody’s business and every citizen should be involved.’

The WHO director-general was referring to protests that have been taken up against public-health measures that include ‘restrictions on handling victims’ bodies [that] violate local burial rites. He also stressed that, while there is no vaccine for the ‘Bundibugyo virus, the strain behind the current outbreak,’ it is survivable if treatment is begun rapidly after symptoms develop.

There is no doubt that the present outbreak is an enormously dangerous development. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CRC) notes that there have already been 42 confirmed deaths in the DRC, with 282 confirmed and a further 220 suspected cases. Nine more cases and an additional death are also reported in neighbouring Uganda.

These lethal developments and the very real risk that the situation could get much worse are enormously concerning, but they raise questions about the emergence of the Ebola threat and why it has taken place in Sub-Saharan Africa that go well beyond the attitudes of the local population.

Vulnerability factors

The WHO issued a fact sheet last April that explained that Ebola has an average fatality rate of 50%, with ‘early intensive support care’ able to increase the prospects for survival significantly. However, it needs to be stressed that such medical intervention is, of course, much less readily available in Africa than in Western countries.

Ebola first emerged in 1976, in two separate outbreaks in what is now South Sudan and the DRC. It is now understood that the ‘virus can get into the human population when people have close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals’ but, once it has spread into a human population, it can be transferred by person-to-person contact.  

Any serious examination of the vulnerability factors at work leads to a rejection of the notion that unenlightened attitudes and ‘cultural practices’ are the chief culprit when it comes to the proliferation of Ebola and the repeated outbreaks that have occurred in several African countries.

In 2021, the National Library of Medicine in the US issued a report on ‘A Snapshot of Poverty, Diseases and War – the Democratic Republic of the Congo.’ It noted that ‘DRC’s fight with the EVD (Ebola Virus Disease) was just settling when WHO declared COVID-19 to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on March 12, 2020. DRC’s economic growth decelerated from its pre-COVID level of 4.4% in 2019 to an estimated 0.8% in 2020. This has caused concomitant setbacks in the treatment and control of major health issues like HIV, tuberculosis, measles, rift valley fever and malaria in the country.’

The report paid considerable attention to the great inadequacies of the public healthcare system in the DRC. It bemoaned a very serious lack of resources that were available for medical treatment, disease containment, preventative measures and public education on health threats. It issued a rather futile call for the strengthening and scaling up of existing public health systems, and suggested that helping countries ‘respond to public health threats quickly and effectively within their borders is critical to preventing the spread of diseases regionally, and around the world.’

In 2024, The Peoples’ Health Movement took a rather more candid look at some of these same considerations on a global scale. It noted that the WHO Constitution declares that the ‘enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.’

However, despite these noble sentiments, the report drew the conclusion that ‘the right to health is breached on a daily basis for many millions, perhaps billions, of people today.’ It backed up this assertion with a detailed exploration of eight ‘ways in which capitalism and imperialism drive health inequity.’ These include such factors as austerity, privatisation of healthcare, food systems designed to maximise corporate profits and war and conflict.

Healthcare financialisation

Given that the capacity of local healthcare systems is such a critical question in a situation like the present Ebola outbreak in the DRC, it is worth paying attention to a paper that was written in 2024 by Julia Ngozi Chukwuma, María José Romero and Elisa Van Waeyenberge that explores ‘the role of the World Bank Group in promoting public-private partnerships [PPPs] in health in Africa.’

The paper finds that the World Bank has been a ‘lead actor’ in promoting PPPs, and that these initiatives ‘act as vehicles of healthcare financialisation, posing significant threats to equitable healthcare delivery.’ Moreover, ‘PPPs (including in health) often draw on public (domestic and international) resources to support the transformation of public services into private assets … This occurs to the detriment of alternative practices and notions of strengthening public social service delivery systems framed by the imperatives of access and quality for all.’

If degraded and grossly inadequate public healthcare opens the way for infectious diseases, the organisation of global production under the imperialist system also plays a decisive role in generating them in the first place. In an effort to survive, impoverished people are pushing ever deeper into forested areas, often to produce crops that major Western companies require.

In 2014, The Conversation looked at the spread of Ebola in Africa that was occurring at that time and noted that it ‘is poverty that drives villagers to encroach further into the forest, where they become infected with the virus when hunting and butchering wildlife, or through contact with body fluids from bats.’

The article shows how ‘deep-cutting into forests for agricultural development has breached natural barriers to the evolution and spread of specific pathogens.’ It is not surprising that we find the same players at work in driving this process that are accelerating the privatisation of healthcare systems in the Global South.

With regard to the emergence of such forms of agricultural development in Guinea, we find that it is ‘identified by the World Bank as [having] the highest investment potential for industrial agriculture.’ In this situation, ‘farmers with small land holdings are faced with a choice: either sell off or scale up to meet the competition. Forests are one of the first casualties.’

To simply attribute the lethal spread of Ebola to unenlightened attitudes among the threatened population is both inaccurate and deeply offensive. It plays into longstanding and thoroughly racist assumptions that can be used to conceal the real driving forces that are at work.

The spread of disease and the threat of pandemics are being generated by a system of global capitalism that displays an unsustainable disregard for the natural world and for the human populations that live within it. The link between yet another outbreak of Ebola in the DRC and the imperialist world order under which it occurs is undeniable, and meaningful solutions are impossible without acknowledging this and acting upon it.

Before you go

The ongoing genocide in Gaza, Starmer’s austerity and the danger of a resurgent far right demonstrate the urgent need for socialist organisation and ideas. Counterfire has been central to the Palestine revolt and we are committed to building mass, united movements of resistance. Become a member today and join the fightback.

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Will you be there? London’s historic conference | Counterfire
Counterfire

On Saturday 20 June, Stop the War is hosting a crucial international anti-war conference in London

Hundreds of activists from across Europe and beyond will be descending on London on 20 June for a historic conference to build resistance to the accelerating drive to war.

European governments are ramping up arms spending and cutting welfare. Societies are becoming more and more militarised as government after government introduces conscription.

In Britain, former generals are being wheeled out to lie about the dangers posed by Russia and China and to complain about military underspend and overgenerous welfare.

The amazing conference line-up includes Genoa dockers who have blocked military exports to Israel, German students leading school strikes against conscription, MPs from Podemos in Spain, the German Left Party, La France Insoumise and the Belgian Workers’ Party, as well as leading trade unionists from across the continent, Codepink’s Medea Benjamin from the US and Mustafa Barghouti from Palestine.

Twelve national unions have backed the conference, along with hosts of other organisations and union branches. Recently announced national speakers include Eddie Dempsey, Andrew Feinsten and Jo Grady. 

The aims are simple: to analyse the dangerous situation and coordinate action to roll back the tide of militarism that threatens to engulf us.

Don’t miss this opportunity. Book now and spread the word in the movement, in your trade union and at work.

Before you go

The ongoing genocide in Gaza, Starmer’s austerity and the danger of a resurgent far right demonstrate the urgent need for socialist organisation and ideas. Counterfire has been central to the Palestine revolt and we are committed to building mass, united movements of resistance. Become a member today and join the fightback.

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Israel is in shock | Counterfire
Counterfire

Chris Bambery looks at the current state of Israel and concludes that the real winner in the US-Israel war against Iran is Iran and international capitalism

Israel is in shock. On Wednesday, the Israeli newspaper and news outlet, Haaretz, carried the headline, “Israel’s capitulation to Trump in Lebanon exposes its complete reliance on the U.S.”

Now Haaretz is a liberal critic of Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, so you might say they would say that. But it is registering a growing sense of shock and despair in Israel. It’s not just that President Trump called Bibi “fucking crazy” and told him he’d be in jail if it were not for him. It’s when, in that phone call, with Trump demanding an end to Israel’s war in Lebanon to facilitate peace talks with Iran, he screamed, “Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”

This registers in Israel because they have taken the support they receive from the US and the West for granted. Now they cannot do that, especially in the US, where there is growing opposition to unconditionally supporting Israel, on a scale not dissimilar to that in Europe: nearly two-thirds of the country object to the misadventure in Iran and Americans now express greater sympathy for Palestinians than Israelis.

The Abraham Accords a dead letter. 

It comes with the realisation that hopes that the Abraham Accords would extend to Saudi Arabia and the remaining Gulf States are proving a dead letter because of Gaza and the wars with Iran and Hezbollah.

But first Israel has to pull back in Lebanon, or to call it what it is, retreat. And with Hezbollah already inflicting significant damage on the Israeli Defence Force and on Northern Israel, that is going to be tricky.

The List of failures to achieve intended goals 

There is already a growing chorus, not least within the IDF, asking what this war was about. If it was to destroy Hezbollah, it’s failed. If it was to establish a security zone south of the Litani River, it’s failed too because Hezbollah are still fighting there. If it was to stop drones and missiles hitting Northern Israel, it’s failed too because that’s continued throughout.

Flying the Israeli flag over the Crusader Beaufort Castle is a poor PR sop.

It joins a list of other failures. The failure to destroy Hamas in Gaza and, above all, the failure to destroy Iran as a sovereign state and to reduce it to a Libya, a Somalia or a Syria. Netanyahu even failed to destroy the Houthis.

Israel realises it is not invincible

It’s not just those failures but the realisation that not only could Israel not fight a war with Iran without the US, but when Iranian missiles hit Israel, the Iron Dome missile defence could not cope, leaving Israel dependent on the US firing Thaad missiles (dangerously depleting its stocks in the process).

Since its creation in 1948, Israel has relied on its ability not just to defeat any military threat but to intimidate anyone thinking along those lines. Suddenly Israelis are having to confront the fact they are not invincible.

Israel is going to have to live in a region with a confident and economically strengthened Iran, enjoying its ties to China and Russia, but also with Turkey, which resents Israeli expansion in Lebanon and Syria (although that has not stopped it selling oil to Tel Aviv) and with Pakistan, which is now enjoying a close relationship with Saudi Arabia, including giving it nuclear protection.

If you’re an Israeli sheltering from Hezbollah drones in Northern Israel or in southern Lebanon, suddenly that region seems a very dangerous place.

Netanyahu held responsible for forever wars by Israelis

And who is getting the blame for launching endless forever wars, why Netanyahu. He is being blamed not just for not winning those wars but for not realising, as one IDF commander pointed out, they’d need another five IDF units to win them. And he is being blamed for having no proper endgame, no clear strategic objective.

This takes place with a general election pending – the Knesset could vote to dissolve itself at any moment, prompting an election. Polls suggest Netanyahu would lose. The alternatives are no better, but if Bibi falls, it will increase a sense of Israeli vulnerability.

In immediate terms, it will not benefit Palestinians under siege in Gaza and the West Bank, but in the mid to long term the sense of unease in Israel will.

Meanwhile, in the USA, Trump and supporters were crowing over the defeat of Congressman Thomas Massie in a Republican primary in North Kentucky. But that defeat was secured by a huge injection of funds from pro-Israel groups like AIPAC, who then lauded their success.

Trump vulnerable amongst young MAGA supporters

But among many Republican and MAGA supporters, Massie was popular for standing up to Trump over Epstein. Sixty five percent of Republicans still support Israel, but that figure changes among younger members: a majority of Republicans aged 18 to 44 disapproved of Trump’s handling of the Iran War, and 70 per cent wanted the party’s next presidential nominee to take a different line on Israel.

Trump is not going to restart the war with Iran. He needs an off-ramp, and Netanyahu’s war in Lebanon was a roadblock to that. Thus, his phone call to the Israeli premier. His effective defeat in Iran is a blow to both him and the USA.

The thinking back in February was that a rapid US-Israel victory over Iran would allow Washington to focus on China, leaving Israel and the Gulf States to police the Persian Gulf. That’s gone up in smoke. Qatar and Oman have made their peace with Tehran, and even Saudi Arabia is following them. The United Arab Emirates has moved into a formal alliance with Israel, but that leaves it very exposed. This is all because the US could not deliver on its pledge to provide a security umbrella for those states.

The real winners are Iran and international capitalism 

The real winner is Iran, not least because it controls the Straits of Hormuz, which lie in the territorial waters of both Iran and Oman. They can charge a toll just like the one Turkey operates for access to the Dardanelles.

Final point. People often point to the supposed power of the Israel lobby in Washington, but the closure of the Straits of Hormuz prompted an intervention by a far more powerful lobby, international capitalism! This band of warring brothers and sisters saw the closure of the Straits presaged an economic disaster and intervened using the sort of arguments Trump understands.

Before you go

The ongoing genocide in Gaza, Starmer’s austerity and the danger of a resurgent far right demonstrate the urgent need for socialist organisation and ideas. Counterfire has been central to the Palestine revolt and we are committed to building mass, united movements of resistance. Become a member today and join the fightback.

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The Black Schooner: Rebellion on the Amistad, A Graphic Novel – book review | Counterfire
Counterfire

The Black Schooner is an informative and vivid telling of the famous story of a successful revolt on a slave ship in 1839, and will inspire readers to discover more, finds Graham Kirkwood

The way that slavery and its abolition were taught when I went to school in Scotland back in the 1970s was all about the great reformers like William Wilberforce. No mention was made of the struggles of the actual slaves themselves. One break in this was a TV series in the 1970s which everyone watched on Saturday night prime-time TV called Roots, based on the books of Alex Haley (who helped Malcolm X write his autobiography). It told the history from the perspective of an enslaved African called Kunta Kinte. Other than that, very little was made available in the mainstream about the true history of slavery and the rebellions against it by the enslaved.

This graphic novel The Black Schooner is important therefore in that it continues the tradition, as it says in the afterword, of ‘history from below’ pioneered by W.E.B. Du Bois and C.L.R. James, who as ‘preeminent scholar-activists converged on a central conclusion: Black people had, contrary to previous histories and popular expectations, fought for their freedom’ (p.117).

The book tells the true story of 53 West Africans (49 men and four children) who rose up and took over the slave ship Amistad in August 1839. They wanted to sail home to southern Sierra Leone but were betrayed by the remaining crew members, who sailed the ship north. They were captured by the US navy and taken on shore to stand trial for murder and piracy in a court in Connecticut; the captives had killed the captain of the ship in self-defence during the rebellion.

While on trial, they were befriended by abolitionists active in the movement against slavery who with the Africans built a campaign which ultimately led to their exoneration and freedom. They returned home.

Key individuals highlighted by the book include Cinqué, a warrior and rice planter from Mendeland in Sierra Leone, Grabeau, a Poro people’s leader and rice planter, and Margru, a ten-year-old girl also from Mendeland. For the abolitionists, the slaves were assisted by John Quincy Adams, attorney, who had been US president between 1825 and 1829, Roger S Baldwin, another Connecticut attorney and Lydia Maria Child, a writer and feminist.

The American abolitionists are driven by honourable human instincts, a revulsion at the reality of slavery and a desire to see the practice ended and the slaves to be freed. They also, as is shown in the book, have a desire to, in their eyes, ‘civilise’ the Africans. This is a problem for the Africans, grateful for the assistance but not happy to be simply folded into the abolitionist’s religious framework. In the book’s afterword, the authors recall the writer CLR James: ‘the saga of the Atlantic slave trade described so vividly in this book had its origins in Africa where, as James suggested, the life of peoples and nations before the slave trade had been less violent than in contemporary Europe, the status of the peasants equal if not better. The trade wreaked havoc on many African societies, resulting in millions of deaths. Historians conveniently forgot that civilization had, in so many ways, actually began in Africa’ (p.117).

Written in an accessible format, the illustrations convey movement and the turbulence of the events and along with the text, carry a great deal of historical knowledge. It is a good introduction and makes you want to understand more about this period in the history of early capitalism. This easy to read and informative little book would be an excellent addition to school libraries.

Before you go

The ongoing genocide in Gaza, Starmer’s austerity and the danger of a resurgent far right demonstrate the urgent need for socialist organisation and ideas. Counterfire has been central to the Palestine revolt and we are committed to building mass, united movements of resistance. Become a member today and join the fightback.

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Across Europe… We say wages not weapons – Counterfire freesheet June 2026 | Counterfire
Counterfire

Stopping the European drive to war, the assault on higher education, the far-right exploiting Henry Nowak’s murder, interview with an Italian socialist, the US’s chokehold on Cuba, 100 years of Marilyn Monroe and more in this month’s Counterfire freesheet

If you would like to receive physical copies for free, please email [email protected]

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Before you go

The ongoing genocide in Gaza, Starmer’s austerity and the danger of a resurgent far right demonstrate the urgent need for socialist organisation and ideas. Counterfire has been central to the Palestine revolt and we are committed to building mass, united movements of resistance. Become a member today and join the fightback.

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