IT’S BEEN a lightning courtship. PM May is to meet Trump on Friday.
May opposed the Brexit pre-referendum and was appointed PM by the 1922 Committee, after it decided that the Tories could not risk a leadership election in light of the Brexit result. She was amongst those who applauded the then President Obama when he came to the UK and warned that if the Brexiteers won, the UK would be the last one in a queue for a trade deal with the USA.
She damned his opponent for the presidency, Trump, as Obama required. Now she cannot wait to meet Trump this Friday in order to establish a ‘special relationship’ with the Republican rabble rouser, complete with an invitation to Trump to wine and dine with the Queen during a proposed opulent state visit to the UK this summer.
Trump’s aides are even saying that it is to be a political love affair just like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher all over again. Indeed, this suggestion is food for thought since Reagan who was elected president in 1981 almost immediately made the Patco Air Traffic controllers strike illegal and sent in the FBI to take away the union leaders in chains to prison.
This was the essence of Reagan’s home policy. It will be a model for Trump in dealing with the AFL-CIO. His foreign policy was to bomb Libya, and send American ‘peacekeeping forces’ into Beirut. They were however attacked on October 23rd, 1983 with a massive truck bomb killing 241 American servicemen and wounded more than 60.
The US forces then quit the country and on the way back on October 25th were ordered by Reagan to carry out a revenge attack on Grenada which had a left government and was a British colonial territory. He did not even bother to consult with Thatcher.
He had no need to since Thatcher was deeply in his debt. The US political leadership had wanted to back the Argentine when Thatcher invaded the Malvinas. Reagan responded to Thatcher’s pleas and even organised the resupply of the UK forces who were hard pressed when they sought to storm the island.
This is how the special relationship was formed, at the expense of the working people of the world! Thatcher went on to use the just discovered North Sea oil wealth to finance her own war with the miners’ trade union and then the printers before she was brought down by the Poll Tax rebellion.
The UK, and the US at that time were immeasurably stronger than they are today, since North Sea oil was worth billions, there was no trade challenge from China, and both Thatcher and Reagan understood that Gorbachev was a Stalinist leader that they could do business with. In fact in 1984-85 Gorbachev saw to it that Polish coal was used to break the miners’ strike before going on to ‘abolish’ the USSR in 1991.
Today’s attempt to rekindle the special relationship between the US and the UK comes out of weakness. The US under Trump wants a deal with Putin in order to tackle China, while the UK currently is seeking to get closer to the Chinese Stalinist bureaucracy and is maintaining its anti-Russian stance. Trump will want to sort this out.
He wants the UK to rearm, increase military expenditure and to demand that France and Germany does the same since the US is no longer prepared to ‘carry them’. He will want the UK to play its part in his campaign to clear the Chinese man-made islands in the South China Seas.
In return for a trade deal to keep the UK banks and bosses afloat the US will want to privatise the NHS and flood the UK with its genetically modified food. Bankrupt British capitalism has little option but to agree to an offer that it is not in a position to refuse.
Meanwhile, a new worldwide banking crisis is emerging, at the same time as the EU itself is being economically and politically blown apart. This is while the UK ruling class disintegrates into different factions.
In this crisis situation the only way forward is for the UK working class to defend all of its gains including the NHS by organising a general strike to bring down the May government and bring in a workers’ government.
This will nationalise the banks and the major industries under workers’ management, and make the call to the workers of Europe to overthrow the European Union to replace it with a Socialist United States of Europe!