ENERGY bills are set to rise to an eye-watering £3,000 a year which will undoubtedly plunge millions of families into fuel poverty, where they are forced to sit in the dark and cold, unable to cook or wash in hot water as they cannot afford to turn the gas or electricity on.
Citing the crisis in the Ukraine, Tory PM Boris Johnson on Thursday announced further sanctions on Russia adding: ‘And to that end we must also collectively cease the dependence on Russian oil and gas that for too long has given Putin his grip on western politics.’
However Europe is completely reliant on Russian gas, and UK and EU workers will have to pay the bill!
Germany has now announced that it has halted approval of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. This is a pipeline under the sea from Russia to Germany, an extraordinary feat of science and technology.
Even without the pipeline, German supply figures showed that in December 2021 Russian pipeline gas accounted for 32 per cent of the country’s entire supply.
Russia is the biggest producer of natural gas in the world, and supplies the EU with some 43 per cent of its natural gas. Gas is supplied by the nationalised Gazprom. Nationalised industry, energy, services and banks were some of the biggest gains of the Russian Revolution in 1917.
With this act of self harm, bankrupt European capitalism is signing up for the biggest oil price rises in history. In 2020, of the 167.7 billion cubic metres of natural gas Europe imported from Russia, Germany bought the most – 56.3 billion cubic metres.
Germany was followed by Italy, with 19.7 billion, and the Netherlands, with 11.2 billion cubic metres.
European capitalism has decided to unload colossal oil price rises onto the backs of European workers. This barrage of sanctions intended for ‘breaking Europe’s reliance on Russian gas’ is in reality the European capitalist class signing its own death sentence, that a furious European working class will have to carry out!
Meanwhile, Russia is already building a pipeline directly to China.
Energy prices across the EU and UK are surging, and these huge extra costs are now to be dumped onto EU and UK workers and their families.
It is to be a sanctions war on Russia abroad and a cost-of-living war against workers and their families at home. This is the war on two fronts that the European and UK ruling class are now getting ready to fight.
Massive energy hikes will bring the working class onto the streets in their millions. There will be mass strikes and a general strike to bring the Tories down, and bring down all the EU ruling class governments.
While the Tory government has handed millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money over to Ukrainian right-wingers, there has been a strike as far as money for hospitals and schools in this country is concerned.
Johnson thinks he is going to save himself from a Met police inquiry into his law breaking, by becoming the leader, with his new mate Keir Starmer, of the war on the working class and Russia.
Whatever happened to the police inquiry into Johnson and his lockdown party scandals? As far as the Labour leaders are concerned, he has gone from scoundrel to war hero in a single leap! Now, the Labour leaders and Johnson Tories are marching arm in arm to war against Russia and the working class at home.
The US, UK and EU spent eight months provoking war in the Ukraine, flooding weapons into the country and sending armed forces to neighbouring countries like Poland.
The Ukrainian armed forces have been shelling the people of the Donbass region in the Ukraine for the last eight years, and once they received a fresh tranche of weapons from the US, UK and EU they stepped up their shelling of residential areas hitting schools and homes.
Now the UK workers face massive price rises, triggered by the UK ruling class, that will bring a huge inflation at home, that will reduce their wages to slave labour pay, culminating in an economic crash.
The problem worldwide is crisis-ridden capitalism and bloodthirsty world imperialism. The only way to deal with the dictatorial rule of the US, EU and UK capitalist classes is to mobilise the working class of the world to carry out the world socialist revolution.
This is now rapidly emerging. In the UK we already see 68 universities involved in strike action, bin strikes all over the country, bus strikes, train strikes, tube strikes and student walk-outs. NHS workers are now living in poverty and are furious.
Huge energy bills will be the last straw.
Now is the time to build the WRP and the YS in the UK and to build the International Committee of the Fourth International throughout Europe, Asia and the Americas to lead the World Socialist Revolution to its victory!