YESTERDAY BALPA, the pilots’ union, sounded the alarm at the crisis of the major airlines.
This has been immeasurably sharpened by the eruption and continuing activity of the Icelandic Eyjafjallajoekull volcano, whose belching of sulphur-laden ash has turned Europe into a no-fly zone.
BALPA spelt out the situation stating that ‘A number of airlines are now staring bankruptcy in the face and if their aircraft are subsequently grounded tens of thousands of people will be marooned abroad.
‘The government needs to step in and show the same approach it took to keeping banks afloat; if it fails to act it will find that an equally important foundation of our economy is lost.’
BALPA’s general secretary, Jim McAuslin, concluded the union’s statement by calling for a ‘range of rescue packages to repatriate the travelling public and that there is targeted financial help to nurse the industry through this crisis.’
Of course, the government must commandeer ships, trains and coaches to bring marooned workers back to Britain, and guarantee that no one will lose their jobs or face lost wages because of this disaster.
Dealing with airlines on the brink of bankruptcy who are screaming for flights to be resumed at once, BALPA says ‘The decision as to when and how to reopen UK airspace needs to be taken by us all . . . It should not rest on any of Britain’s 12,000 airline pilots.’
It warned ‘The decision to reopen airspace needs to be done in an open and transparent way. If we feel this is not being done then we will be advising pilots of this.’
BALPA is worried that the drive for profits, which is already seeing airlines trying to dictate and impose new terms and conditions of service onto their staff and slash thousands of jobs, as BA and other airlines are seeking to do, will drive some airlines to try and force individual crews to take-off and take a chance with their own and their passengers’ lives.
BALPA is right about this question. On the issue of mounting the kind of rescue operation for the airlines that Brown mounted for the banks it is wrong.
Brown handed over £1.2 trillion to the banks in gifts, loans and guarantees, and left the bankers in charge, with the working class and the middle class left to pay for the doubling of the national debt and the growth of the budget deficit for 2010 to around £178bn.
A socialist would have nationalised the banks, and put them under workers control, putting an end to a banking class of swindlers running society for their own ends, and opening up the way to go forward to socialism.
For the last year BA has been seeking to impose savage cuts onto its cabin crew.
It has provoked two sets of strike action which cost the airline some £200 million. Now, after the eruption of the Icelandic volcano, BA claims that it is losing £15 million a day, while BALPA states that the airlines are ‘looking bankruptcy in the face’.
The answer is not to prop them up like the banks, building up an even greater indebtedness, and with it even more vicious attacks on the BA workers and the working class in general. The answer is to renationalise BA and the rest of the British aircraft industry, as a part of a nationalised and integrated road, rail and air transport system in the UK. This system will serve all of the needs of all workers, and will put their welfare and safety first.
It was announced yesterday that the UK’s emergency committee COBRA, made up of representatives of big business, the government and the capitalist state, met to discuss their options facing this crisis.
We can take it for granted that it will call for the bankrupt airlines to be rationalised, with slashed wages, jobs and conditions before there can be any financial aid for the bosses.
Historically, natural disasters, whether they be volcano eruptions, floods, plagues like the Black Death, or wars like World Wars 1 and 2, have sharpened the contradictions of the society at the time and driven forward revolutions.
The Icelandic eruption and its possible spread to its close neighbour, an even more powerful volcano, may well sharpen the explosive class contradictions that are emerging throughout western Europe, from Greece to the UK, to the point of revolutionary upheaval.
This is a prospect that must add real urgency to the struggle to build sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International throughout Europe.
