WHILE Trump and US Defence Secretary, General ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis were blowing hot and cold over whether they were going to attack Syria or not, UK MPs and the media were debating just how PM May was going to get the House of Commons – which in 2003 voted for a war on Iraq based on lies peddled by the PM of the day Tony Blair – to vote for a war on Syria based on even bigger lies.
However, it turns out that the real ‘Mad Dogs’ are PM May and President Macron of France. They contacted Trump and said that they were ready to go. May had no intention of risking her government falling after a parliamentary defeat on going to war with Syria. She preferred to launch a coup against parliamentary democracy, that would spell out that the capitalist state holds the power and parliament is just its front to do its bidding.
Macron is under siege by the French trade unions, who are supported by a massive student movement, and are determined to stop rail privatisation by any means necessary. For Macron, a foreign war against an ex-colony Syria is something of a welcome diversion to the class struggle at home. The May government is crisis-ridden. She supported ‘Remain’ and was appointed PM to stop a ‘Leaver’ becoming PM, after Cameron fell on his sword when he lost the Brexit referendum that he had called.
May then believing her own propaganda that Corbyn was a ‘no-hoper’, called a snap election, and was completely outfought, losing her majority, and undergoing the indignity of paying over £1bn to the DUP to vote with the Tories and keep them in office. All kinds of attacks have been made on Corbyn, the latest being that he is an anti-Semite – but after each attack launched with real venom, Corbyn has emerged stronger! What this expresses is that the UK working class has had enough of May, the Tories, and austerity, more austerity and yet more austerity.
However, May is planning more austerity to collect the cash for rearmament. Workers in the NHS and local government are to get below inflation wage rises, and hundreds of thousands of them will lose their annual pay rises, and instead face individual assessment to see if they deserve to go to a higher grade!
Meanwhile, food banks are booming, thousands sleep on the streets, children go to school hungry and staff have to supply them with not just food but clothing. The working class in the UK is being pauperised and has had enough of the Tories. It is determined to give Corbyn a chance and no ‘Hate Corbyn Campaign’ will shift them.
The ruling class fears a Corbyn government not because of the man but because of the revolutionary class forces that he will bring onto the scene. These will insist that since capitalism only works for the bosses and the bankers it must be expropriated. Faced with this threatening catastrophe, and with another banking collapse just around the corner, imperialism, and British imperialism is taking the necessary measures.
Foreign policy is an extension of home policy. Since attacking the workers at home is not providing an immediate solution to the capitalist crisis, imperialism and UK imperialism is moving rapidly towards war preparations and propaganda to resolve the UK capitalist crisis by returning Russia and China to the status of semi-colonies.
To aid this tactic UK imperialism has come up with a poisonous propaganda line that only it stands between the world and mass chemical warfare. May insists that bombing Syria is part of the crusade against chemical warfare. She now says that the Salisbury attempted murder of the Skripals was chemical warfare by Russia. Today she wants to bomb Syria, tomorrow she will seek to do the same to Russia. This why the British ruling class has turned the screws on the Russian oligarchs that they have welcomed to the UK and sold half of London to, to try and get them to fall out and denounce Putin.
If they can stir up trouble inside Russia, then they can move on with the scenario, and manufacture incidents that the Russian government is attacking its own people and something has to be done about it. In fact it is the May government that is launching deadly attacks on its own people every day of the week. Today in parliament, Labour must turn on the May government and demand a vote against the war and demand a general election!