Bad news for Londoners

by New Worker correspondent

Putting fares up in London is a political choice – and it's the wrong one Fare Free London says.
On Sunday 1 March fares for tube, rail and DLR journeys in London will go up by six per cent and so will journeys by River Bus and the Docklands cable car across the Thames.
The Fare Free London  campaign rejects the logic of annual fare rises on public transport, which are presented as inevitable, rather than as the political choice made by the Mayor of London and the national government.
Certain public transport fares (TfL buses and National Rail fares) have been temporarily frozen, which give little comfort to public transport users – but also demonstrates that fare freezes can be implemented by the Mayor and Government at their will.
"This is a political choice. There is nothing inevitable about it", Pearl Ahrens of Fare Free London said. "And it's part of an agreement to keep pushing up fares by more than the rate of inflation. "The Mayor agreed with the government in June last year that fares in London will rise by one per cent more than the rate of inflation every year until 2030.
"This is going in completely the wrong direction. Increasing the proportion of income coming from fares has real costs for people who live in London, and it's not necessary. The transport systems in most of the world's big cities rely far less on fare income than London's does – more sustainable sources of funding can be drawn from elsewhere."
The burden of running the city's transport system is being pushed on to low-income Londoners – including the 26 per cent of households in London living below the poverty line.
Research by Fare Free London last year found that high tube fares mean that people are forced to take long journeys to work by bus, costing them more time, and they cannot take their children out at weekends.    
"The high cost of public transport has negative effects for London", Ahrens said. "Not only in depriving millions of people of leisure trips and quality time because they can't afford to make the journey, or spend too long getting home from work. Further, 62 per cent of respondents in our research said they worry about the cost of their journey 'often' or 'every time' they travel.
"Public transport in London relies more heavily on fare income than other global cities such as New York, Paris or Hong Kong. The most progressive cities are moving towards a zero-fares system, including several French cities and more than 100 municipalities in Brazil".
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and the Secretary of State for Transport, Heidi Alexander, have both said the fare increases are a necessary part of a funding package for TfL. The package also includes grants from the government to pay for new Piccadilly line trains and other capital investments.
However, the grants, averaging £550 million a year for five years, are only about five per cent of TfL's income. Passenger income is 51 per cent of the total – and will increase to 59 per cent by 2030. 
Pearl Ahrens said "there are many levers the Mayor could use to put the burden where it belongs, on businesses who benefit from London's transport system. A payroll levy on companies in the city, and coordinated parking charges, both used in Paris, would be a start.
"But the biggest change is needed at national government level. While high fares are adding to the soaring cost of living, billions are being committed to Gatwick Airport expansion, the Lower Thames Crossing and other transport projects that will exacerbate the climate crisis.
"Think of how bus services across the country could have benefited from the more than £100 billion in revenue lost as a result of fuel duty being frozen. Why are fares going up above the rate of inflation, while fuel duty has not increased for 15 years?
"An integrated approach to transport would shift subsidies away from roads and cars towards public transport and active travel," Ahrens said.  

End the blockade now!

by New Worker correspondent
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Good turnout at last weekend’s rally outside the Cuban Embassy in London calling for an end to the US blockade which Cuba has been subject to since gaining its freedom. Also an end to Western aggression and attacks against Venezuela, where it is nearly two months since President Maduro and his wife were kidnapped in a terrorist attack. All these actions were and are illegal – where is the outrage from the so-called international community?
There’s been nothing, except from the Axis of Resistance countries. But when you consider that most Western politicians have no problem with the ongoing genocide and crimes in Palestine, a couple of regime change operations won’t make them lose a moment’s sleep. 
Nor will Ukraine where, sadly, Britain plays a more prominent role as a driver for more war and losses and a force against a peace settlement. The Russian intervention was reluctantly undertaken in February 2022 because of the immediate threats against the people of the Donbas and the longer term threat of Ukraine becoming the forward line of NATO and the whole country turned into an imperialist military base.
The conflict could have ended in April 2022 but for Johnson’s visit to Ukraine to personally persuade Zelensky to continue an unwinnable conflict, in line with NATO’s goal of weakening Russia at the cost of Ukrainian lives. The longer this goes on, more Ukrainian lives and the conditions for the final settlement will be worse for Ukraine. Sadly all these people are dying for nothing except Western shareholders, corrupt Ukrainian politicians desperate to keep the money flowing, and the geo-strategic aims of NATO and American imperialism.

The shape of things to come

The Green victory in the Gorton & Denton by-election was a slap in the face for all the major parliamentary parties. Labour lost a seat it’s held for a hundred years. Reform came a poor second  and the Tories lost their deposit trailing behind just a few hundred votes above the Liberal Democrats, the Monster Raving Loonies and the other also-rans. 
Trumped by the Greens the Faragists put their failure down to the “Muslim vote” while the Starmer crowd blame left “extremists” for making the common course with the Greens that led to Labour’s downfall in Manchester. But at the end of the day Starmer & Co got the kicking they so richly deserved because voters were sick of the lies of the false prophets of all the mainstream bourgeois parties in Britain today.
Jeremy Corbyn, one of those “extremists” that Starmer doubtless had in mind, welcomed the Greens’ stunning victory and said his supporters “will work constructively with the Greens, because there is only one way we can bring about real change: together”.
On the other hand Richard Burgon, one of the few left social-democrats still in the Parliamentary Labour Party says the “blame for Labour’s defeat lies squarely with Keir Starmer and his clique”.
He says “they put factional interests over having the candidate best placed to win, Andy Burnham. If Labour is to be the “Stop Reform” party, then the leadership must stop treating progressive voters with contempt - and start appealing to them.
“That means a return to real Labour values - through policies like a Wealth Tax, public ownership of energy and water, and an ethical foreign policy that are all popular with the public. And it means ditching the approach of trying to ape Reform and kicking the left, that has alienated so many people who have voted Labour previously”.
We’ll see. The Greens deservedly got a massive protest vote this time round but their “eco-socialism” is only a rehash of the stale left social-democracy we see time and time again within the European Union that the Greens much admire. 
Angela Rayner and Andy Burnham wait in the wings to pick up the pieces when Starmer inevitably goes. They uphold the NHS. They talk about public ownership. They pay lip-service to the old Bennite social-democratic tradition. They support the union bureaucrats at the helm of the labour movement. But that’s as far as it goes – and as far as it will ever go as long as the careerists and time-servers remain in charge. We, as communists,  want real change. We have to put socialism back on the working-class agenda. 
We must keep up the fight against the whole capitalist system in Britain and throughout the world. The struggle for peace and socialism must begin anew – in the unions, amongst the rank and file and on the street. It must start now...