BRITISH Gas’ owner Centrica has posted huge profits after oil and gas prices soared last year as the US and the UK stoked up the crisis in the Ukraine, backing the Ukrainian fascists, and pledging an unlimited arms supply to enable the fascists to fight Russia.
Meanwhile, Centrica has never had it so good. Its profits hit £3.3bn for 2022, more than triple the £948m it made in 2021.
The tactic however has produced hunger in many parts of the world and a huge price inflation worldwide, that destroyed workers’ living standards overnight in many countries.
British workers have been hit hard by the imperialist powers. They have had their wages slashed by continuing inflation, and have gone without food and heating, with their families bearing the brunt of the ‘new world order’ that the US and the UK ruling classes are determined to impose.
British Gas has distinguished itself in this rapacious struggle for huge profits. It has used debt agents to force-fit prepayment meters in the homes of large numbers of its vulnerable customers, who are suffering from a shortage of cash, food and heating in a very cold winter.
Even the likes of Paul Polman, former boss of consumer goods giant Unilever, told the BBC’s Today programme that recent profits at energy firms were ‘definitely hard to ignore’, demanding: ‘We have to think about the balance between short term greed and long term need.’
The release of Centrica’s profits, sparked criticism from trade unions, campaigners and opposition politicians.
The company has been heavily criticised after it was revealed that debt agents working for British Gas, the UK’s largest electricity and gas supplier, had broken into the homes of vulnerable people behind on bills to force-fit prepayment meters.
The outcry at the revelations resulted in Ofgem, the energy watchdog, asking all suppliers to suspend forced prepayment meter installations, telling firms to get their ‘house in order’.
Centrica said in its results update that it was ‘extremely disappointed by the allegations’ surrounding one of its contractors, Avarto Financial Solutions, and ‘their approach to prepayment customers’.
‘We immediately took action to address this and are completing a thorough independent investigation,’ it added.
There are more than four million UK households on prepayment meters. These require customers to pay for their energy use in advance, either through accounts or by adding credit to a card. It is a more expensive method of paying than by direct debit, but is often the only option for people in debt to suppliers or who struggle to pay bills.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said Centrica has been ‘coining it in from our massive energy bills while sending bailiffs to prey on vulnerable consumers the length and breadth of the country’.
Even the Labour shadow climate secretary Ed Miliband hit out at the government and promised that Labour would introduce a ‘proper’ windfall tax on energy companies to ‘pay their fair share’.
It is time for the masses of workers in the trade unions to take mass action to secure their jobs, wages and living standards as the crisis of capitalism worsens.
All over the world the working class is on the march against the huge rise in prices that the imperialist powers have imposed on the planet in order to put pressure on Russia.
The British trade unions must now be made to take action by their millions of members.
There must be an immediate recall of the TUC Congress to organise a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers’ government and socialism.
The capitalist economy must be nationalised and put under workers’ management, so that a planned socialist economy can be developed to satisfy all of the basic requirements of the working class.
Capitalism as a worldwide system is in complete breakdown. It must be replaced by worldwide socialism before it condemns workers to a new imperialist war to redivide the world.
Join the WRP! Forward to the victory of the world socialist revolution!