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OLIGARCH LEVY WILL HAND BRITAIN £3BN, SAYS LABOUR

Does capitalism rely on credit to function?

Ireland soar to third grand slam

n ECONOMY

n SIX NATIONS

IN THE latest Full Marx article, the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY highlights that credit is essential for the continuation of capitalism but also a major source of its instability.

Turn to page 10

IRELAND defeat England at Twickenham on St Patrick’s Day to cement their position as the No 2 side in world rugby.

Turn to page 14

LABOUR’S proposed “oligarch levy” to tax the secret off-shore purchases of property in Britain could generate more than £3 billion a year from “suspicious wealth” for the Treasury, the party said yesterday.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell announced it was “time to call an end to the use of our financial system and property market as a hiding place for rich foreign oligarchs” by enforcing unexplained wealth orders and extend-ing transparency of British-owned companies to known tax havens.

Mr McDonnell is also call-ing for the “politically exposed person” regime to be tightened

up and the introduction of a so-called “Magnitsky clause” to apply sanctions against human rights abusers. The clause is named after a whistleblowing accountant who died in jail in 2009.

Labour estimates that its “oligarch levy” could raise £3.5bn a year, pointing to the £4.4bn-worth of British prop-erties identified by Transpar-ency International as having been bought with “suspicious wealth.”

The “oligarch levy,” first fea-tured in its 2017 manifesto, would apply a 15 per cent surcharge on all purchases

of residential property by offshore companies, follow-ing similar levies in Toronto and Vancouver in Canada and those in Singapore and Hong Kong.

The party also points out that unexplained wealth orders, which allow authori-ties to confiscate the proceeds of crime where a person cannot account for the origin of their assets, have not been used since they came into force at the end of January.

Labour said it would provide an extra 10,000 police and ensure the National Crime Agency is properly resourced

to enforce the regime.Shadow cabinet office min-

ister Jon Trickett MP also weighed in following Boris Johnson’s appearance on the Andrew Marr Show where he admitted he did take part in a tennis match with the wife of a former Russian minister after she donated £160,000 to the Conservative party, said.

“The Tories have serious questions to answer about where their party gets its money,” he said.

“He admitted that some Russian oligarchs in the UK ‘may have obtained their money by corruption.’

“We know the Tories have taken more than £3 million in Russian-linked donations since 2010, including £800,000 under Theresa May’s leadership, but we don’t know the nature of all those funds.”

Mr McDonnell said Chancel-lor Philip Hammond “needs to introduce serious meas-ures that would strengthen the hand of the authorities” looking into imposing sanc-tions on individuals who may be involved in the chemical attack in Salisbury two weeks ago.

Turn to page 5Star comment: p8

by Sam Tobin McDonnell calls for new tax on ‘suspicious wealth’ gained from secret property purchases

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CAPITALISM and the rise of the far right were blamed for surging racism across Europe, protesters said as thousands marched at the weekend.

More than 20,000 joined ral-lies in London, Glasgow and Cardiff on Saturday as Britain sees the largest rise in hate crime since records began.

Protesters marched against the rise in racism, Islamopho-bia and anti-semitism and in support of refugee and migrant rights.

The March Against Racism, which marked UN interna-tional anti-racism day, joined other demonstrations across Europe.

In London, crowds marched to Whitehall under banners that read “Stop racist attacks” and “Migrants and refugees are welcome here”.

Speakers highlighted the success of nationalist parties across Europe and the greed of capitalism as a factor in rac-ism’s rise.

■ ANTI-RASCISM

BOOKSELLERS PUSHED TO

SHOW FASCISTS THE DOORby Sam Tobin

MAJOR booksellers are giving “vile authors the veneer of respectability” by selling viru-lent anti-semitic and neonazi hate material, campaigners and MPs said yesterday.

Anti-racism campaign Hope Not Hate is calling on Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles and WHSmith to stop selling extreme material after an inves-tigation revealed a huge amount of far-right hate and anti-semitic works available online.

The group found that infa-mous race war novel The Turner Diaries, an inspiration for both Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh and London nail bomber David Copeland, was sold by all four booksellers.

The neonazi fantasy was also owned by Pavolo Lapshyn, a Ukrainian neonazi who mur-dered 82-year-old Mohammed

Saleem in Birmingham in 2013.Maz Saleem, Mohammed’s

daughter, said: “Nazi ideas lead to racist murders on the street, but is also a threat to every democratic society in the world.

“People like Steve Bannon, Paul Golding, Richard Spencer and Jayda Fransen are trying to resurrect Hitler and Mussolini’s ideas.

“These books aid the legiti-macy of these ideas. They must be stopped.”

Her petition, calling on Ama-zon and Facebook to remove far-right thug Tommy Robin-son’s Islamophobic book from their websites, has already received more than 3,000 sig-natures.

Hope Not Hate also found that Waterstones, Foyles and Amazon all sold anti-semitic forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, origi-nally produced by the tsarist secret police and which has

been described as a “warrant for genocide.”

The works of prominent Holocaust deniers David Irv-ing, Nick Kollerstrom and one of the world’s most active deniers, the convicted criminal Germar Rudolf, are also avail-able online.

Labour MP Ruth Smeeth said: “Extremist, hate-fi lled books have no place on the websites of respected retailers like Water-stones or Foyles.

“No-one is saying we should ban these books, but why do these high street chains want to give these vile authors the veneer of respectability?”

Hope Not Hate’s senior researcher Joe Mulhall said: “It beggars belief that Ama-zon, Foyles, Waterstones and WHSmith would remain silent after the true nature of these works have been brought to their attention.”

[email protected]

PROPAGANDA: Hope Not Hate highlight big fi rms’ willingness to profi t from far-right lies

■ MANUFACTURING

Unite calls for GKN job assurances in Melrose buyoutby Peter Lazenby

OFFICIALS from the Unite union will corner Melrose bosses today on behalf of engi-neering workers to seek assur-ances over jobs followings the fi rm’s hostile takeover bid of top British manufacturer GKN.

GKN employs 6,000 workers in Britain and 32,000 world-wide and is facing a hostile takeover from investment fi rm Melrose, which has a reputa-tion as an asset-stripper.

The takeover would saddle GKN with an estimated debt of £1.4 billion.

The meeting follows warn-ings from the biggest GKN customer Airbus that it would be “practically impossible” for it to give GKN any new work should Melrose succeed with its takeover bid because of the uncertainty generated by its short-term approach.

Unite assistant general secre-tary for aerospace Steve Turner

said: “Melrose’s bosses have been far from clear about the detail of their true intentions for GKN beyond vague plati-tudes and sound bites.

“Question marks remain around the levels of debt Mel-rose will pile on the company and what it means for jobs, long-term investment and product development.

“GKN’s highly skilled UK workforce fear they will end up being sold off piecemeal, with their jobs either axed or shipped overseas to fund a debt-fuelled pay day if Melrose gets its way.

“If Airbus or other major customers take their business elsewhere, it would blow a hole in revenues and destroy jobs and innovation.”

GKN has two divisions. GKN Driveline supplies parts such as axles to the automotive indus-try while its aerospace division supplies the aero industry, including defence.

[email protected]

■ SCHOOLS

Tory breakfast clubs attacked as step back from promisesLABOUR has dismissed the gov-ernment’s “inadequate” plans to pump £26 million into school breakfast clubs across England.

According to the Department of Education today, more than 1,770 state schools will receive the cash, with money targeted at the most disadvantaged areas of the country.

Two charities, Family Action and Magic Breakfast, will be responsible for running the clubs, starting this spring.

The funding, raised by a gov-ernment’s levy on soft drinks, will cover both new and exist-ing school breakfast clubs.

But shadow education secre-tary Angela Rayner said: “The Tories are still shredding their manifesto one page at a time and they are trying to hide behind old policy announcements to do it.

“They abandoned their prom-ise of a breakfast for every pri-mary school child, slashed the healthy pupils fund by more than three-quarters and now they are reannouncing a six-month-old policy and hoping nobody will notice.”

Don’t miss our Walk Through Paris book extract on Wednesday

LISTED: The Turner Diaries purchase page on Amazon

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Morning Star Monday

March 19 2018news

ORGANISERS of the annual oration at Karl Marx’s grave hailed it as “fantastically successful event” yesterday as crowds marked the 200th year of his birth.

Cuban ambassador Ter-esita Vicente Sotolongo delivered the oration, join-ing a list of famous names including late Labour MP Tony Benn and Venezuelan ambassador Rocio Maneiro.

Communist Party of Britain general secretary Rob Grif-fiths told the Star the event attracted “probably the big-gest turnout in recent years.”

Mr Griffiths said delega-tions from the Cuban and Chinese embassies had laid wreaths at the site of Mr Marx’s grave, as had repre-sentatives of “communist and workers’ parties from around the world.”

Marx Memorial Library manager Meirian Jump said: “This was a fantastically successful event, very well attended despite the snow, highlighting continuing interest in Marx’s ideas 200 years after his birth.

n ANTI-RACISM

More than 20,000 rally against rise of racism in Europe

In the wake of the “Punish a Muslim” campaign, which tar-geted Muslim MPs and house-holds around the country and encourages a day of abuse on April 3, speakers demanded action from the government against Islamophobic hate crime.

They also pledged to stand up to Islamophobia on April 3.

Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, also president of event organisers Stand Up To Racism, called on listeners to “reject the hatred” of the “Punish a Muslim” campaign.

She said: “We stand in the tradition of the kindertrans-port which saved children from the nazis.

“It is a stain on our con-science that refugees are drowning in the Mediterranean and rotting in squalid camps. I say refugees welcome.

“I was horrified by the des-peration and misery I saw in Yarl’s Wood. No wonder I was stopped from visiting it for over a year.

“We must end indefinite detention and reject Theresa May’s hostile climate on immi-gration.”

In Scotland pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli demonstrators clashed, but police monitored the situation without major incident.

Speaking at the rally in George Square, Glasgow, Scot-

tish Labour leader Richard Leonard said: “In the fight to rid our society of racism, we cannot be moderate, we cannot be patient, we need to be impa-tient and angry in our pursuit of justice and equality.

“And that applies inside the Labour Party just as much as in wider society.”

Stand Up To Racism Scotland convener Talat Ahmed said: “All those that back our aims should join us. Let’s make the racists afraid again.

“Let’s welcome refugees and migrants and make sure that fascists we are seeing grow across Europe right now do not grow here.”

[email protected]

n MARXISM

Marx 200th anniversary oration ‘fantastic’

n HOMELESSNESS

Minister clueless on rough sleepingCAMPAIGNERS expressed disbelief yesterday after the new Tory homelessness minis-ter said she had no idea why rough sleeping had increased but insisted it has nothing to do with her party’s welfare cutbacks.

South Derbyshire MP Heather Wheeler made the comments after being quizzed why rough sleeping has risen in England for seven years in a row.

“In truth, I don’t know,” she told the Guardian. “That’s one

of the interesting things for me to find out over the last eight weeks that I’ve been doing the job.

“We also have a real problem in London with people coming over [mainly from Europe] for jobs, sofa surfing with friends and then the job changes and they have a problem.”

However she did not accept that welfare reforms and coun-cil cuts contributed to the rise.

Disabled People Against the Cuts (DPAC) founder Linda Bur-nip told the Star: “It’s unbeliev-

able and astonishing that the government’s homelessness minister doesn’t seem to have any idea why rough sleeping has risen.

“Welfare reforms have seen benefits taken away while food banks are saying many users who aren’t on benefits should be.”

Ms Wheeler has pledged to resign from her post if she fails to meet the Conserva-tive manifesto pledge to halve rough sleeping over the course of the parliament.

n IMMIGRATION

Liberty: Hard limit needed on detention of migrantsby Sam Tobin

BRITAIN should introduce a 28-day limit on immigration detention to mitigate the “bru-tality” faced by those indefi-nitely detained whose lives are being “destroyed,” campaigners said yesterday.

Martha Spurrier, director of civil rights group Liberty, told the BBC Sunday Politics that Britain was the only country in Europe not to place a time limit on immi-gration detention and that a fixed limit was “the humane and civi-lised thing to do.”

She added that the “bogey-man idea of a flood of people who are going to go under-

ground” if they are not indefi-nitely detained “just is not a reality.”

Last week, HM Inspectorate of Prisons released a damn-ing report on Britain’s largest immigration removal centre, the Harmondsworth facility next to Heathrow Airport, where one man had been locked up for four-and-a-half years.

Inspectors said that many areas in Hardmondsworth were dirty, some were mouse-infested and bedbugs were endemic.

Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott told the same programme that the “shame-ful conditions” revealed in

the Harmondsworth report showed that Britain had a “broken immigration deten-tion system.”

Ms Spurrier urged the gov-ernment to impose a 28-day limit on detention, warn-ing that “the human cost of detention is so great and the fact that we have no time limit means that the Home Office allow these cases to drag and drag and people’s lives are destroyed.”

She added: “Detaining peo-ple, infringing their rights to liberty, destroying their mental and physical health in the proc-ess, that is not necessary, it is not effective and it is not just.”

[email protected]

STANDING UP: Protesters against racism in Glasgow on Saturday

DOUBLE CENTENARY: People attend the oration in Highgate Cemetery


@m_star_online4Morning Star MondayMarch 19 2018 news

■ HEALTH SERVICE REGULATION

PROTECTION FOR

WHISTLEBLOWERS

‘LONG OVERDUE’GOVERNMENT plans to pro-tect NHS whistleblowers from discrimination when applying for another job in the health service could have been done “a lot sooner,” general union GMB said yesterday.

Under draft regulations introduced today, NHS employ-ers will not lawfully be able to discriminate against job applicants who have previously blown the whistle on potential patient safety risks.

Any applicants who face discrimination will get legal protection and NHS employ-

ers will face tough penalties if applicants’ complaints are upheld.

The proposals would also give whistle-blowers the right to complain to an employment tribunal if they have been dis-criminated against because it appears they have previously spoken out.

Announcing the “important measures” that will “ensure staff can raise concerns know-

ing they are protected by the law,” Health Minister Caroline Dinenage will admit that “for too long we have failed to pro-tect those who are brave enough to speak out when others won’t.”

But GMB national secretary for public services Rehana Azam said: “I think it could defi nitely have been done a lot sooner.

“The vast majority of NHS workers, they are all having to do more with a lot less. We can’t ignore the tremendous pressure to do a lot more with a lot less.”

NHS SAFETY: But union warns against blaming ‘overstretched staff ’

by Sam Tobin

Author John Callow provides the fi rst critical reappraisal of Connolly’s last major work using a wealth of original documents and photographs.In Connolly’s 1915 work the great revolutionary grapples with questions of nationhood, women’s rights and political and economic democracy in a way that resonates today.Includes forewords by Bob Crow and Paul Kenny.

James Connolly& The Re-Conquest of Ireland

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TWO-THIRDS

OFF

■ PENSIONS STRIKES

Uni bosses to review pensions defi citUNIVERSITY bosses announced yesterday that they will review the pension defi cit evaluation at the heart of the long-running industrial dispute.

Universities UK (UKK) will establish a panel of experts to “address concerns” over the current valuation.

More than 60 universities have suff ered disruption after the University and College Union (UCU) staged 14 strike days over four weeks.

The union claims that the proposed shake-up of the pen-sion scheme will cost lecturers up to £10,000 a year.

Employers say the changes are necessary to plug a £6.1 billion defi cit and meet rising benefi t costs.

A deal to end the bitter row with UUK was thwarted last week when union members rejected the conditions, meaning the walkouts could stretch into exam season. One of the terms of the rejected deal was that an independent body would re-evaluate the defi cit to determine if it was as severe as claimed.

Honouring the promise, UUK chief executive Alistair Jarvis confi rmed the panel will be launched and that UCU will be invited to give evidence.

He said: “This panel of inde-pendent experts will consider issues of methodology, assump-tions and monitoring, aiming to create more transparency and understanding of how the scheme is valued.”

■ CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA

MP demands probe into Facebook users’ data grabby Sam Tobin

FACEBOOK boss Mark Zucker-berg should answer to Parlia-ment over allegations that vote manipulation fi rm Cambridge Analytica harvested personal details from more than 50 mil-lion of his site’s users, a senior MP said yesterday.

Digital, culture, media and sport committee chairman Damian Collins said he would be recalling Cambridge Ana-lytica chief executive Alexan-der Nix over “false statements” made to the committee.

The data mining fi rm, which played a key role in analysing voter behaviour in the run-up to the 2016 EU referendum and US general election campaigns, was passed personal data from Facebook apps without the con-sent of the individuals, accord-ing to a whistleblower.

Chris Wylie, a former research director at Cambridge Analytica, told Channel 4 News

that a so-called data grab had been carried out on more than 50 million profi les in 2014.

Facebook vice president Paul Grewal said University of Cambridge professor Dr Aleksandr Kogan had passed on infor-mation to Cam-bridge Analytica and others after launch-ing a Facebook app called thisisyourdig-itallife.

But, despite assur-ances at the time this was discovered in 2015 that the data had been destroyed, Facebook was recently informed this had not happened.

Mr Kogan is alleged to have been involved in the data grab, using his company Global Science Research to accrue information.

Facebook said Mr Kogan, Cambridge Ana-lytica, its parent com-pany Strategic Commu-

nication Laboratories and Mr Wylie’s accounts would all be suspended “pending further

information.”Mr Wylie said he had been

suspended by Facebook “for blow-ing the whistle on something they have

known pri-vately for two

years.”samtobin@

peoples-press.

com

■ PALESTINE RIGHTS

Protesters picket HSBC over arms sales PALESTINE campaigners in Man-chester demonstrated outside the city centre branch of HSBC bank on Saturday protesting against its involvement in the funding of arms sales to Israel.

Manchester Palestine Action is also part of an international campaign calling for freedom for imprisoned 17-year-old Pal-estinian human rights cam-

paigner Ahed Tamimi.She was arrested after slapping

an Israeli soldier after her teenage cousin had been shot in the head with a rubber-coated steel bullet.

Adie Mormech of Manchester Palestine Action said: “We are putting a big light on the invest-ments of UK high Street bank HSBC in the Israeli arms trade that profi ts from the bombing

and violent military imprison-ment of the Palestinian people.

“More and more people are learning about UK support for some of the biggest global war criminals and we also high-lighted the horrifi c conditions for Palestinian prisoners.”

He called for the targeting of HSBC bank branches across Britain.

STANDING UP TO BIG BUSINESS: The demonstrators outside the HSBC bank in Manchester


Morning Star Monday

March 19 2018news

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She highlighted the devastat-ing impact of Tory-led auster-ity on the NHS, which has left trusts “trying to meet their defi cit [targets] and staff are desperately trying to do their best.”

Ms Azam added: “Sometimes, if mistakes are being made, it is not being necessarily the indi-vidual who is to blame because there is a corporate problem.

“There is a corporate prob-lem, a governance problem, and it is much easier to blame individuals.”

She said the recent case of Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba, who was struck off earlier this year over the 2011 death of six-year-old Jack Adcock despite the impact of dangerous levels of under-staffi ng, was a prime example.

Ms Azam warned that “whistleblowers allegedly were always protected” under previ-ous regulations, but nonethe-less “individuals have been the scapegoat.”

She also asked if there was to be a review of those who have been struck off for whistle-blow-ing or whether the announce-ment was “just more spin.”

[email protected]

■ LOAN COMPANIES

Citizens Advice: Time to get tough on doorstep lenders by Our News Desk

DOORSTEP lending must be clamped down on in the same way as payday loans to protect vulnerable and disabled cus-tomers, Citizens Advice rec-ommends.

The debt advice charity found consumers end up pay-ing back more than twice what they borrowed on up to 490,000 doorstep loan

In research published today, Citizens Advice pointed out that more than 1.6 million peo-ple in Britain use these loans — also called home credit loans.

The Financial Conduct Authority’s clampdown on the payday loans market in recent years was cited by the charity as a big success.

Among other things, the clampdown capped the overall cost of the loans to consumers that prevented payday loan bor-rowers from becoming trapped in a debt spiral.

Now Citizens Advice is call-ing for the same measures to be introduced to doorstep lending, which could save up to £123 million in interest payments on up to 540,000 loans each year.

Home credit is the most com-mon form of high-cost credit problem that Citizens Advice deals with, with lenders charg-ing interest rates of up to 1,557 per cent.

Of the 30,000 people Citizens Advice helped with home credit

debts in the last year, nearly half (48 per cent) have a long-term health condition or disability.

Half of clients were in coun-cil tax arrears and 43 per cent were behind on water bills while only a third (32 per cent) were in employment.

On average, clients with home credit debts had unse-cured (non-mortgage) debt totalling nearly half (49 per cent) of their annual income.

A third (34 per cent) had out-standing debt on two or more home credit loans.

Citizens Advice head Gillian Guy said: “There’s no question-ing the evidence. The FCA cap on payday lending has been a success.

“The FCA should build on the success of the payday loan cap and extend their defi ni-tion of high-cost short-term credit to include home credit, making sure that no-one pays back more than double what they borrow.”

The FCA said it expects lend-ers to check loans are aff ord-able for customers.

An FCA spokeswoman said: “Doorstep lending is one of the areas of high-cost credit we have identifi ed as having potential issues.

“We have concerns about the impact on consumers who take out repeat loans. We intend to publish our conclusions in May and take action where we fi nd harm.”

[email protected]

■ FRONT PAGE

FROM P1: He also defended Labour leader Jeremy Cor-byn, who was smeared by many Tories for urging the government to take a “calm, measured” approach and warning against the drift towards a “new cold war” with Russia following the poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

Mr McDonnell said Mr Corbyn had given a “con-structive critique” and others “had misread that,” adding: “It’s the role of a responsible opposition to ensure that they have an honest critique of the government and what they’re doing.”

The party also wants to extend the PEP regime, widening the defi nition of “associates” of high-level government fi gures and their families whose assets must be scrutinised by fi nancial institutions to

prevent corrupt individuals and their wealth slipping through the net.

Mr McDonnell pledged that the next Labour govern-ment “will take a sledge hammer to money launder-ing and tax avoidance and call an end to the exploita-tion of our fi nancial system and property markets by the global elites.”

He said: “We need to see less empty rhetoric from leading Tories competing for the leadership of their party and more action from the top of government to strengthen any fi nancial sanctions we impose on Russia.

“If we want to really take the fi ght to the gangster politicians and Russian elites hiding their money in the UK, then we need serious measures like the ‘oligarch levy,’ which will hit them where it hurts — in their wallets.”

OLIGARCH LEVY ‘COULD BRING IN £3BN’

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@m_star_online6Morning Star MondayMarch 19 2018 world

■ SYRIA

War on Afrin prompts fear of guerilla warfare ‘phase’by Our Foreign Desk

SYRIAN Kurdish offi cial Othman Sheikh Issa declared yesterday that the war with Ankara has entered “a new phase” of guerilla warfare after Turkish troops and allied forces steamrollered their way into Afrin city.

Tens of thousands of residents fl ed the advancing Turkish troops and allied Syrian fi ght-ers backed by intense air strikes.

Some pockets of resistance remain in the town, but the YPG Kurdish militia has largely withdrawn its forces.

Mr Issa said that the war against “the Turkish occupa-

tion” will change from a direct confrontation to guerilla war-fare, “hit and run tactics,” until Afrin’s liberation.

“Our troops will turn into a continuous nightmare for them,” he warned.

Turkey’s military rejected YPG allegations that it bombed a hospital in Afrin, tweeting aer-ial footage and photographs of the town’s general hospital from Saturday morning, showing it as intact.

YPG offi cial Redur Khalil and the Coventry-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had reported an air strike on the hospital on Friday, claiming 16 people were killed there, includ-ing two pregnant women.

The military accused the YPG of trying to create a “negative perception” of its forces.

Syrian Kurds have been dis-mayed by their US allies’ fail-ure to infl uence Ankara against invading Afrin, with YPG spokeswoman Lailawa Abdullah declaring that the military cam-paign against Islamic States (Isis) in Deir Ezzor province has been halted because Kurdish fi ghters have redeployed to Afrin.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was pictured on state TV yesterday visiting his victorious troops in eastern Ghouta, fol-lowing the capture of Kafr Batna and Saqba, which gives govern-ment forces control of about 80 per cent of the former opposi-

tion stronghold.Russian military spokes-

man Major General Vladimir Zolotukhin said that a further 25,000 people had left eastern Ghouta in one day through a safe channel in the town of Hamouria.

Maj Gen Zolotukhin, who works with the Russian centre for reconciling Syria’s warring parties, said that the centre is distributing bedding and food to those arriving in government-held areas.

The Jaysh al-Islam jihadist group claimed last night to have knocked out up to a dozen army tanks in ongoing resistance in the eastern Ghouta town of Ar-Rayhan.

■ TRADE

Trade surplus ‘not under our control’ claims Merkelby Our Foreign Desk

GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel defended her country’s trade surplus at the weekend, insisting that Berlin is working to encourage domestic demand but that not all factors are under its control.

Her Economy Minister Peter Altmaier fl ew to Washington yesterday for talks with US President Donald Trump’s administration, which has criticised Germany’s trade surplus.

Chancellor Merkel said domestic demand has been growing, helping narrow the German trade surplus to €244.9 billion (£216bn) in 2017.

She said fl uctuations in oil prices and exchange rates were outside Germany’s con-trol and trade surpluses also “show that our products are in demand.”

President Trump has announced US tariff s on steel and aluminium imports and the European Union pub-lished a list on Friday of US products it plans to target if not exempted from US tariff s.

Ms Merkel discussed overcapacity in world steel markets in a phone call with Chinese

President Xi Jinping on Satur-day, agreeing that both would work on solutions through the G20 group of industrialised nations.

Chinese state news agency Xinhua said President Xi had told Chancellor Merkel that their countries should “become advocates for a new-type of international relations” and co-operate as partners despite ideological diff erences.

“China-Germany relations will steadily proceed for as long as they adhere to equal-ity and mutual respect, under-stand and care for each other’s core interests and major con-cerns and properly control and handle their diff erences,” the Chinese leader stressed.

A key G20 summit opens this morning in the Argen-tinian capital Buenos Aires with steel production on the agenda.

[email protected]

■ CHINA

China continues corruption clampdown as PM re-electedPRIME MINISTER Li Keqiang was appointed to a second fi ve-year term yesterday by National People’s Congress delegates who voted in his favour by 2,964 to two.

The legislature also approved the candidacy of Yang Xiaodu as director of the new anti-corruption National Supervisory Com-mission created through a merger of the Communist Party’s internal watchdog with another that oversees civil servants.

The National Supervisory Commission will have the power to detain suspects

for up to six months without seeking judicial oversight.

A marathon anti-corrup-tion campaign led by Presi-dent Xi Jinping has rounded up thousands of govern-ment offi cials and managers of state companies.

He has been steadily tightening centralised supervision of the econ-omy, including public bod-ies, while also stepping up eff orts to control material posted on the internet.

The president’s key ally Wang Qishan was appointed to the post of vice-president on Saturday.

■ GREECE

Athens fi ghts closed borders as refugees drown at seaTHOUSANDS of demonstra-tors marched through central Athens at the weekend to pro-test against the controversial European Union-Turkey refugee stitch-up which marked its sec-ond anniversary yesterday.

Their protest coincided with yet another refugee maritime

tragedy when at least 16 people, including six children, were drowned off the eastern Aegean island of Agathonisi.

Their wooden boat is believed to have been carrying around 21 people when it went down, the Greek coast guard said.

Two women and a man man-

aged to swim to the island and alert authorities.

A massive search operation began, involving aircraft, the Greek navy and coast guard and a vessel from the European border agency Frontex.

The Athens demonstrators ended the march outside EU

offi ces, decrying Fortress Europe’s closed borders and Turkey’s mili-tary incursion into Syria.

Greek Migration Minister Dimitris Vitsas said the solution was providing safe procedures for refugees and migrants while cracking down on smuggling rings.

ADAMANT: Angela Merkel

RALLYING CRY: Protesters hold up pro-immigration banners at a rally in central Athens


Morning Star Monday

March 19 2018world

President resigns over fraud scandal

Anti-racism rallies take place in PolandPOLAND: Protesters joined a number of demonstra-tions in Warsaw and other cities against racism and anti-semitism, and demanding an end to the war in Syria at the weekend.

Racism and anti-semitism have been rising since Poland’s right-wing government refused to accept Muslim refugees under an EU allocation scheme.

State of emergency lifted in Sri LankaSRI LANKA: Colombo lifted its state of emergency yes-terday, 12 days after impos-ing it in response to an outbreak of violence against Muslim communities.

Two people were killed, nearly 450 Muslim-owned homes and shops damaged and 60 vehicles burnt in attacks in the central district of Kandy, sparking curfews and social media bans.

Extremist Buddhist groups have accused Muslims of forcing people to convert to Islam and vandalising archaeological sites.

Russian voters head to the pollsRUSSIA: Voters went to the polls yesterday in presi-dential elections that are all but certain to return confident incumbent Vladimir Putin.

“The programme I propose for the coun-try is the right one,” he stressed as he cast his ballot in Moscow.

Mr Putin faced seven challengers in yester-day’s poll, but opinion polls indicate that none is likely to win more than 7 per cent of the electorate.

MAURITIUS: President Ameenah Gurib-Fakim has submitted her resig-nation in the “national interest,” her lawyer Yousouf Mohamed announced at the week-end.

Ms Gurib-Fakim, Africa’s only female head of state, admitted earlier to having “inadvert-ently” used the credit card for “out-of-pocket” expenses of about $27,000 (£19,400).

in briefn GERMANY

GERMAN KURDS HIT

THE STREETS FOR

NEW YEAR PROTESTby Our Foreign Desk

HANOVER’S city centre was taken over by thousands of Kurds and their left-wing supporters at the weekend as they protested against Turkey’s offensive in Afrin and Germa-ny’s arms sales to Ankara.

Under the banner “Newroz means resistance — the resist-ance is Afrin,” marking tomor-row’s Kurdish New Year, the protest was largely peaceful.

Against a backdrop of music and songs praising the military feats of the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG/YPJ), protesters shouted: “Long live the Afrin resistance,” “Long live YPG/YPJ resistance” and “Murderer Erdogan,” referring to Turk-ish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

After marching in sub-zero temperatures, protesters gath-ered at Hanover’s opera house for music and speeches by Kurd-

ish politicians and activists.They were joined by allies

from Germany’s Left party, who are also pressing Ger-many’s government to stop its arms trade with Turkey. Many groups circled up for tradi-tional Kurdish dancing.

Newroz has long carried heavy political undertones around the themes of resist-ance and oppression.

According to legend, evil despot Zahak sacrificed Kurd-ish children until a blacksmith named Kawa organised a rebel-lion, killing the king and torch-ing his castle.

This year Newroz falls as Kurds have warned of an impending massacre and eth-nic cleansing in Afrin, where Turkey’s military and allied forces have surrounded the enclave and vowed to besiege the town.

“Kurds are face to face with slaughter in many areas,” declared Pervin Buldan, who co-chairs the Peoples’ Demo-

cratic Party (HDP), the third-largest party in the Turkish parliament.

She detailed many injustices against Kurds, from the Turkish military’s destruction of towns in south-east Turkey to the arrest of hundreds of Kurdish politicians, before praising the military feats of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the YPG/YPJ against Isis.

“They will push back and defend Afrin” against the Turk-ish army, Ms Buldan told the crowd, who shouted: “Long live brother Apo,” the nickname of imprisoned PKK leader Abdul-lah Ocalan, and “Long live YPG/YPJ.”

Germany is home to 3 mil-lion people of Turkish origin, about a quarter of whom are Kurds.

There have been several clashes in recent weeks between Kurdish and Turkish groups, with mosques, institu-tions and shops attacked.

[email protected]

ALLIES: Members of Germany’s Left party supported the march

n PEACE TALKS

US and N Korea rumoured to talk peace in Finlandby Our Foreign Desk

SENIOR North Korean diplo-mat Choe Kang Il, who han-dles North American affairs, flew to Finland yesterday for an expected meeting with US diplomats and South Korean security officials.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said that Mr Choe had been seen at a Beijing airport before boarding a f light to Finland, suggest-ing that former US ambassa-dor to South Korea Kathleen Stephens would be among those he meets in Helsinki.

The Foreign Ministry in Seoul suggested that the gathering would be similar to the so-called “Track 2” dia-logue that has involved North Korean officials and former US officials and experts and could presage a meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Mr Choe was in the delega-tion North Korea sent to last month’s Winter Olympics in

South Korea.North Korean Foreign Min-

ister Ri Yong Ho concluded three days of talks in Stock-holm on Saturday with his Swedish counterpart Mar-got Wallstrom, who reported discussing the “opportunities and challenges for continued diplomatic efforts to reach a peaceful solution” to Korean security issues.

“The humanitarian situa-tion in North Korea was dis-cussed, sanctions and regional co-operation and security issues for, for example, South Korea, Japan, Russia, China and the United States,” she added

Sweden has been rumoured as a possible site for a Wash-ington-Pyongyang summit.

Mr Trump has agreed to meet Mr Kim for talks in which North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme would certainly be on the agenda.

South Korean President Moon Jae In is due to meet Mr Kim in April.

[email protected]

n PHILIPPINES

Duterte urges leaders to ‘get out’ of ICCPHILIPPINE President Rodrigo Duterte urged other govern-ments yesterday to abandon the International Criminal Court (ICC), calling the world tribunal “rude.”

“I will convince everybody now who is under the treaty at ICC: ‘Get out, get out, it’s rude’,” said the Philippine leader who faces a possible complaint there.

Although the Philippine Sen-

ate has ratified the Rome Statute that established the ICC, Presi-dent Duterte insists that the treaty was never enforced in his country because it was not published in the government journal, as required by law.

As a result, the international court can never have jurisdic-tion over him — “not in a mil-lion years.”

ICC prosecutor Fatou Ben-

souda announced last month that she was opening a prelimi-nary examination into a com-plaint of suspected extrajudicial killings under Mr Duterte’s anti-drug campaign.

The ICC can intervene only when a state is unable or unwill-ing to carry out an investigation and prosecute perpetrators of genocide, aggression and war atrocities.

DEMO: Crowds call for an end to the Turkish military intervention in northern Syria


@m_star_online8Morning Star Monday March 19 2018 features

AS THE government, its spies and their allies in the Establishment press continue with their ludicrous scare-mongering and belligerent campaign against Russia, it is good that the Labour Party leadership is focusing on sensible measures rather than join the Tories in the game of “Who can shout the loudest?”

While Theresa May and her cronies are trying to whip up the hysteria about “big bad Vlad” in a transparent attempt to portray Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as some-how soft on “national security” — because he doesn’t want an insane bloody war — his shadow chancellor has been setting out the sort of rules that would curtail foreign meddling in our country’s politics.

John McDonnell is absolutely right to target purchases of property by secretive offshore companies, which has allowed the world’s dodgy super-rich to stuff their ill-gotten cash in Britain.

The snapping up by foreign buyers of posh flats in London, only to leave them empty, is just the tip of the iceberg. And it is right that Labour draws up plans to root out this corruption — not that its only source is people from abroad.

Naturally, this kind of common-sense policy, going after those with suspicious and unexplained wealth, is something that May’s mob has been reluctant to pursue.

Would it perhaps be because the Tories were paid £30,000 for Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson hav-ing dinner with the wife of one of Vladimir Putin’s former ministers?

Or perhaps it would be the £160,000 that purchased a tennis match with Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson?

In fact, as this newspaper reported last November based on Electoral Commission documents, May “is being propped up by a shady outfit of oligarchs and oil barons … with Russian tycoons leading the pack.”

Of course, oligarchs, oil barons and tycoons of all stripes — not just dodgy Russians — are drawn to the Tory Party, defender and promoter as it is of their class interests.

And it is perhaps this thread that is in need of draw-ing out. It takes an act of wilful ignorance to transform Corbyn’s cool analysis of the poisoning of two people in Salisbury into an apologia for Putin.

He said that people must let the police get on with a thorough investigation and pursuit of the suspects. This should not be a controversial opinion about such a crime.

Yet nothing less than full-throated, evidence-free denunciations of Putin as murderer-in-chief will do for our Establishment.

Now we have Britain’s spooks feeding stories to their mates in the press about the “real beast from the east” — as the New European’s racist front-page headline read the other week — supposedly plotting to turn off granny’s boiler and empty our bank accounts.

And Johnson suggesting that not only does Putin have a personal hit list but that he has placed his throne atop a decade’s worth of stockpiled chemical weapons.

And Newsnight editing a photograph of Corbyn to mock him up as a Russian leader, complete with appro-priate winter headgear, and then bizarrely denying that they’d touched it.

They make a farce out of a situation that demands to be treated with care and consideration.

A serious crime demands a serious police response. Serious financial meddling demands a serious Treasury response. A serious international dispute demands a serious diplomatic response.

But allowing the reaction of May’s war party, now frantically banging the drum, and indulging bellicose MPs’ fantasies of “war with the Russians” provides jus-tice for no-one on any count, instead only making a fraught situation more dangerous.

Labour’s right to focus on dodgy oligarch property rather than the war drums

Star comment

THE attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salis-bury seems to take a new twist daily as empty

speculation and disinforma-tion saturate the major media outlets without even so much as a WMD “dodgy dossier” to go on.

The story’s own chemical formula contains unstable ele-ments of global rivalry, domes-tic politics, tabloid journalism, pseudo-science and espionage.

In dangerous times, impar-tial experts are essential, offering clear-headed rational responses to the unanswered questions raised by this bizarre case.

Instead the British media has, for the most part, wal-lowed in guesswork, served up a steady stream of suspiciously contradictory non-attributable “leaks” and displayed a stub-born refusal to consider possi-ble third-party beneficiaries of this growing tension between Britain and Russia.

Russian policies in Ukraine and Crimea, as well as its stance in defence of Syria, have not made it many friends in the West, nor in Riyadh, Ankara, Tel Aviv or Kiev.

These days, many people have a healthy scepticism towards professional politicians and PR spun for large corpora-tions. The mainstream media therefore often turns to appar-ently independent specialists, with the assumption that their expert views are free of politi-cal bias or commercial self-interest.

While old-fashioned jin-goism may work for some, modern pro-war propaganda is largely framed in liberal humanitarian terms.

The manipulation of genuine concerns with women’s rights, child welfare, healthcare and even anti-racism, can shape opinion in a way that appeals to “God, Queen and Country” no longer do.

Diverse but emotive allega-tions, such as mass rape, hos-pital bombings, child abuse, ethnic cleansing and so on are used to neutralise, or even mobilise liberal opinion over Western military interventions that would otherwise provoke opposition.

Remember headlines such as Gadaffi ‘supplies troops with Viagra to encourage mass rape’ claims diplomat (The Guardian, April 29 2011)? The claims by former US ambassador to the UN Susan Rice were later dis-proved.

Then there were the heartrending tweets of little Bana al-Abed, the Syrian seven-year-old from Aleppo, whose Twitter posts, composed in word-perfect English, revealed her love for Harry Potter books and World War III. Her father’s links to armed opposition groups only emerged later.

Then there was “Ambulance Boy” and the repeated bomb-ings of “the last hospital in Aleppo.”

The very questioning of the mainstream media para-digm seems to invite accusa-tions of conspiracy mania or tinfoil hats. Now add to this list “Putinbots” and “Russian trolls” and we see a further nar-rowing of the limits of accept-able dissent.

The staunchly pro-Nato Guardian has published sto-ries such as How Syria’s White Helmets became victims of an online propaganda machine (December 18 2017), accusing those questioning Western propaganda on the White Hel-mets of being Kremlin puppets or worse.

Yet, as is publicly acknowl-edged, the White Helmets group was founded by James Le Mesurier, a former British army officer turned private-

sector “security consultant.” The White Helmets have

been funded by the US ($32mil-lion from USAID) and British governments (£20m according to the Foreign Office website) among others, and are deeply embedded within the armed anti-government opposition.

However, neither the Le Mesurier connection nor US nor Foreign Office funding, details of which are available on the relevant governments’ websites, was mentioned in The Guardian’s defence.

White Helmets spokesmen have regularly called for West-ern military strikes against the Syrian government and its allies, a far cry from its sup-posedly humanitarian “civil defence” mission but a call which harmonises with the

The media has n

Russophobia is bIn dangerous times, the public is reliant upon the

But so far all we’ve seen is speculation and the ref

“The very

questioning of the

mainstream

media paradigm

invites accusations

of conspiracy

mania or tinfoil

hats


Morning Star Monday

March 19 2018features

interventionists in Washington and London.

Lately another group has emerged, Doctors Under Fire. Coincidentally, as with the White Helmets, it was co-founded by a former British army officer, Colonel (rtd) Ham-ish de Bretton-Gordon.

Quoted daily by multiple media outlets on the Skripal case, de Bretton-Gordon has become a very public expert, relied upon for unbiased com-ment and analysis by the British and foreign media on chemical weapon threats from Salisbury to Syria.

He is a former assistant director of Intelligence Sur-veillance and Reconnaissance Land Forces with the Ministry of Defence. Before that de Bret-ton-Gordon was commanding

officer of Britain’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Regiment and Nato’s Rapid Reaction CBRN Battalion.

While his CBRN background is often mentioned, his military intelligence links are rarely referred to publicly.

Long before the Salisbury event, de Bretton-Gordon was urging greater government expenditure on chemical pro-tection counter-measures and equipment. He has used his col-umns in The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, as well as TV appear-ances to repeat this message.

He was quoted in the Morn-ing Star on March 15 in the news story Tories to fork out £48m for new defence centre.

While his Guardian online biography selectively mentions

his military record and work on Syria, it overlooks his day job — de Bretton-Gordon is man-aging director CBRN of Avon Protection Systems, based in Melksham, Wiltshire.

The company website states: “We have been supplying res-pirators to the UK Ministry of Defence and other Nato allies since the 1920s and we are the primary supplier of CBRN respi-ratory equipment to all United States Department of Defence Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force and Special Operations Forces.”

So Colonel de Bretton-Gordon, among other things, sells gas masks. In fact, it’s likely you’ve seen his compa-ny’s products on TV worn by military or police personnel at high-profile incidents such as the one in Salisbury.

Last month, Avon Rubber, Avon Protection’s parent company, announced a five-year £16m contract to supply the Ministry of Defence with general service respirators.

In November, Avon Rubber announced it was a recog-nised bidder in a 10-year $8bn US Defence Department pro-gramme on CBRN equipment.

In January, it announced the completion of a multimil-lion-dollar order from the US Department of Defence after revealing last May that it had won a contract to supply 37,000 of its FM50 masks to “an unnamed customer.”

In 2017, the company made £50m from its US military con-tracts and a further £63.3m from other “protection and defence” revenue.

Commenting on the results, Fiona Cincotta, senior market analyst at City Index, noted: “Fatal acts of terrorism in the US and Europe have buoyed demand for gas masks that shows little signs of wan-ing any time soon” (Terror acts ‘drive up’ orders at Avon Rubber, RubberNews.com — November 20 2017).

You don’t need to be a mar-ket analyst to predict that 2018 is likely to be a stellar year for the company.

Of course, de Bretton-Gor-don is under no legal or ethi-cal obligation to reveal his business affiliations during his media appearances, but shouldn’t the corporate media alert its readers and viewers to this obvious commercial interest?

After his military i n t e l l i g e n c e service ended and before he joined Avon, de Bretton-Gordon

was a director of SecureBio Ltd, a company officially reg-istered in the Northwest of England.

However, de Bretton-Gor-don’s social media accounts place SecureBio’s location dur-ing this time as Porton Down in Wiltshire, home to the Min-istry of Defence’s Defence Sci-ence and Technology Labora-tory (Dstl).

According to the website of Military Speakers, “a specialist agency for keynote, motivation and after dinner speakers for corporate, industry and public sector events ... Hamish advises UK government at the very highest level on CBRN and fre-quently appears on the BBC, Sky News, AJE and CBS News as their expert commentator on Syria chemical weapons and all things CBRN.”

A veteran of war-torn Kos-ovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, he conducted, we are told, “highly secret operations some of which are now declassified.”

We are also told that he has travelled often to Syria and “has reported with the BBC on some of the very high profile chemical attacks.

He has also worked with US networks and British newspa-

pers to smuggle chemical sam-ples out of Syria for verifica-tion in UK and France.”

The British newspaper was the Daily Telegraph. On April 29 2014, the paper reported that it “obtained soil samples collected from sites of chemi-cal attacks inside Syria by Dr Ahmad — a medic whose real identity cannot be revealed for his own protection — who had previously received training in sample collection by western chemical weapons experts.

“Mr de Bretton-Gordon, a British chemical weapons expert and director of Secure Bio, a private company, was one of the trainers.”

And who carried out the tests? None other than de Bretton-Gordon himself.

In a previous piece for the paper, Syrian activists and doctors being trained to com-bat chemical attacks October 12 2013, de Bretton-Gordon wrote about his training pro-grammes in Turkey, which were attended by senior lead-ers and activists of the Syrian National Council, the political wing of the Free Syrian Army.

This came at critical junc-ture in the war when every attempt was being made to use allegations of chemical weapon attacks, vehemently denied by the Syrian govern-ment, to promote overt West-ern military intervention.

Colonel de Bretton-Gordon was active on both sides of the Atlantic to further this aim.

According to Homeland Security Today (May 22 2015), “In mid-April, he collected and analysed samples from the chlorine attack in Sarmin, Syria, which was presented to the UN Security Council by US Ambassador Samantha Powell (sic) [Power].”

In his many opinion pieces, this military intelligence vet-eran repeatedly called for the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the impo-sition of no-fly zones by the RAF and the US air force, the key foreign policy demands of the Nato hawks.

The current anti-Russia hys-teria is not simply directed against Russian President Vladimir Putin but also against the current Labour leader, whose refusal to meekly line up behind the Tories has appalled Establishment die-hards, including right-wing Labour MPs.

It’s a concern de Bretton-Gordon shares, as he outlined in yet another Telegraph opin-ion piece on May 31 2017, just a week before the general elec-tion, entitled Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street would be a gift to Britain’s enemies.

Whatever truth eventually emerges from the Skripal attacks, there is no need for complex conspiracy theories to see how the incident is manipulated in the media to promote the interests, both commercial and political, of Britain’s very own military-industrial complex.

The mask has slipped.

s not considered how is benefitting business

he media to seek impartial, clear-headed and rational expertise.

refusal to consider third-party interests, writes KENNY COYLE

“One expert the

media relies upon

is Colonel de

Bretton-Gordon,

whose military

intelligence career

is barely

mentioned

MYSTERY: Military personal in gas masks gather evidence in Salisbury


@m_star_online10Morning Star Monday March 19 2018 features

Full Marx core concepts explained

The short answer is “yes, capital-ism does depend on credit.” And it depends on debt, the other side of

the “coin.” But the way it mani-fests itself is complicated.

Have a look at a £5, £10, £20 or, if you’re rich enough to have one, a £50 note. On the face with the Queen’s head on it, under “Bank of England,” all the notes have written: “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of…”

They are all promissory notes, IOUs, to you. But try taking your banknotes into a bank to ask for payment and you’ll get a very dusty answer.

The most the bank will do is offer to “bank” your money, taking your notes in exchange for a statement that your cash is now “in” its coffers.

And of course, if your credit is “good,” it’ll probably offer you a credit card if you don’t already have one — a mecha-nism for encouraging you to replace what the bank owes you, your “savings,” with a debt that you owe to the bank for allowing you to buy stuff — from food and other essentials to that new TV or bed — on credit, this time without “real” money changing hands at all.

At its simplest, credit is the separation between purchase of a commodity and payment for it. That applies at the level of the individual, the company and the economy as a whole.

Borrowing and reimburse-ment probably go back to the origins of private property in prehistory, but, within capital-ism, credit and debt assume a specific, monetary form. They are essential to the “success” of capitalism but are at the same time a major source of its instability.

Credit card “borrowing” is growing at rates between 7 per cent and 11 per cent per year. According to 2017 TUC research, the average house-hold in the UK now owes a record £12,887 — around £8,000 per person — before mortgages are taken into account.

Some of the controversial lending that characterised the pre-2007 banking crisis has dis-appeared. You can’t take out a 125 per cent mortgage any more or constantly remortgage to go on holiday or buy a new car.

But the TUC says 3.2 million British households now spend over 25 per cent of their wage income on unsecured debt repayments.

New forms of lending are constantly being devised. Per-sonal contract purchase (PCP) now make up more than 75 per cent of deals on new car purchases.

Banks anxious to take on more of your debt offer a huge variety of credit card balance transfer deals, despite relatively low interest rates.

Many people rely on being able to shuffle debts from one

company to another. Many have multiple credit cards. In the transition to a “digital economy,” credit and credit cards have become increasingly central to spending, while con-tactless transactions are a fairy wand to pay for lunch, coffee or other small purchases. Many people today don’t carry cash at all or carry what amounts to loose change.

British government debt — the national debt — is rather different from household debt. Effectively, the cumulative dif-ference between money spent and government receipts, mainly taxation, and issued in the form of securities, gov-ernment bonds and bills, is currently approaching £2 tril-lion, over 80 per cent of GDP or almost £30,000 per person. Interest payments account for 8 per cent of all government tax income.

Money has the peculiar prop-

erty of being not just a token of exchange but a commodity in its own right — a property we’ll explore further in a sepa-rate answer.

Debt, in particular, has become a commodity, bought and sold between large finan-cial institutions.

Credit is the basis of what Marx called “fictitious capital” — value in the form of paper money, shares, stocks, securi-ties and debt, all above and beyond what can be realised in the form of commodities or physical, productive capital.

Effectively, it enables compa-nies to raise new “share capital” and banks to lend to borrowers many times the paper value of what investors have lent them. Fictitious capital effectively represents a claim on future production and on the value created by the worker.

New financial markets — “shadow banking” — include

credit default swaps, currency derivatives, hedge funds, plac-ing each-way bets on currency or commodity futures, and even pollution rights, “carbon credits.”

Those who manage them have accumulated vast for-tunes. Those who control the use of these “financial instru-ments” have also acquired enormous power, able to dictate policy to entire and supposedly “sovereign” nation states.

The process is inherently unsustainable, yet it was accel-erated rather than checked by the crash of 2008 as banks went under or were “saved” through public investment, as with Northern Rock and RBS, and more generally through “quan-titative easing,” transferring the burden of financial crisis from speculators to working people.

It was accompanied by the increased power of suprana-

tional financial institutions, including the World Bank and the IMF.

These were initially sidelined by the Ronald Reagan admin-istration in the US as contrary to neoliberal philosophy but hastily resurrected in the early 1980s when country after coun-try became effectively bank-rupt, unable to service their debts.

They are able to impose “structural adjustment” pro-grammes, cutting public expenditure, privatising health and social services, deregulat-ing capital.

So credit is essential for the continuation of capitalism but also a major source of its insta-bility. It is one of capitalism’s central contradictions.

Capitalism is still seeking to recover from the “banking crisis” of 2007-8 and the burden is being borne by the many to the advantage of the few.

Let’s leave the last word to Marx, who wrote: “The two characteristics immanent in the credit system are, on the one hand, to develop the incen-tive of capitalist production, enrichment through exploita-tion of the labour of others, to the purest and most colossal form of gambling and swin-dling, and to reduce more and more the number of the few who exploit the social wealth; on the other hand, to constitute the form of transition to a new mode of production.

“It is this ambiguous nature, which endows the principal spokesmen of credit […] with the pleasant character mixture of swindler and prophet.”

Professor Simon Mohun begins a course of five lectures on Marxian Political Economy at Marx House on Tuesday 27th March, 7pm. Visit mstar.link/MMLEvents for more details.

Does capitalism depend on credit to function?Credit is essential for the continuation of capitalism but also a major

source of its instability, writes the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY

morningstaronline.co.uk morningstaronline @m_star_online

Morning Star Monday

March 12 2018culture 11

Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason by David Harvey(Profile Books £14.99)

IF YOU want to know how the world economy was pulled out of depression after the great financial crash of 2008-9, consider two words — Chinese con-

crete.Between 2011 and 2013 China

consumed 6.5 billion tonnes of cement. By comparison, in the century from 1900 the US con-sumed 4.5bn.

So, in two years China laid down more concrete for new cities, thousands of miles of roads and rail and other mega constructions than the world’s biggest economy had done in the previous 100 years.

That’s one of the startling facts in the final chapter of David Harvey’s book on Marx’s Capital and its relevance today.

Another two words, quanti-tative easing — state-created “fictitious capital,” to use Marx’s phrase — was the method deployed by Western central banks to prevent a worldwide depression. The difference was that most of that credit money went to shore up bank bal-ance sheets and reflate asset markets, whereas the Chinese credit expansion was used for construction and jobs.

Most of the book reviews Marx’s main work Capital and how he took the abstract theo-ries of bourgeois economics and stripped them back to reveal the inner workings of value and surplus value extraction in the labour process.

Through this, he revealed contradictions and an inherent tendency to crisis that classical

economic theory had no explanation for.

Harvey, a renowned populariser of Marxist economics, turns to a US Geological Survey depiction of the water cycle to illustrate the process of capital cir-culation, from money to com-modity form, realisation in the market, distribution as wages, rent and profit and then back to the money form.

The difference, as he points out, is that water, throughout the natural process of trans-formation, remains fairly con-stant in quantity. Capital, by

contrast, expands at compound rates because of the inherent growth requirement of capital-ism.

Harvey is not afraid to say that Marx, on one issue at least, was wrong. In a chapter

on money, he says that Marx believed that capitalism was not able to free itself of a metal-lic base — silver or gold — for money. It would “constantly strive to overcome this metal-lic barrier,” wrote Marx, but would again and again “break its head on it.”

Since the 1970s, when the

US ended the gold convertibil-ity of the dollar, the world has moved to a fiat currency sys-tem — money a government has declared to be legal tender not backed by a physical com-modity — and so has done what Marx said it couldn’t.

This has had a profound and lasting impact on the system of capital accumulation, coin-ciding with the rise of neolib-eralism. “The abandonment of the metallic base to the monetary system in the early 1970s allowed the circulation of interest-bearing capital to take over as the principal and unre-strained driver of endless capital

accumulation,” writes Harvey.As a geographer, Harvey has

spent a career studying urban space and in his last book ana-lysed the new model of rentier capitalism — the dominance of assets such as land and property derivatives such as mortgage-backed debt sold on the finan-cial markets in 21st century capitalism.

As he points out, Marxist theory must contend with this break with traditional produc-tive capitalism, more prevalent in China which, ironically, is ruled by a communist party.

In describing China’s strat-egy for dealing with overpro-

duction, which it faced after 2008, Harvey sees a new form of capital revolutionising the physical environment and the world economy. He does not categorise Chinese capitalism as statist, socialist or otherwise.

China, through its One Belt, One Road mega projects in Asia and beyond, is merely doing what other capitalist powers have done in the past, he sug-gests, “in an effort to stave off depression and devaluation” by absorbing surplus capital.

Harvey deploys Marx’s concept of anti-value — how debt and credit are claims on future production rather than additions to actual value — to explain how finance capi-tal (or anti-capital) accumu-lates wealth in the present. “The role of anti-capital … is to foreclose upon the future of as many economic agents as possible and to condemn all and sundry, consumers as well as producers, merchants, land-lords and even the financiers themselves – to a state of debt peonage,” he writes.

Eventually, as evidenced in 2008, such pyramid-type mod-els of money-making based on unsustainable debt growth cause the system to seize up and payment becomes due. The financial capitalists, of course, passed the bill back to us with the help of our political leaders.

As a refresher or introduction to Capital, The Madness of Eco-nomic Reason is recommended. It reaffirms Marx’s insight into the inner workings of the sys-tem, including how technology transforms production and soci-ety, but it cannot, no matter how much AI fanatics wish it to be so, liberate us from a system based on capital accumulation and impoverished wage labour.

n POLITICAL ECONOMY

Top Marx for sound analysisJOE GILL recommends a thought-provoking examination of how

Capital relates to the inner workings of global economies today

ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO ...CONCRETE: Buildings in Dalian, China

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The King Is Always Above the People by Daniel Alarcon(Fourth Estate, £8.99)

IN HIS Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, Edward W Said argues that migra-tion is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home, whose “essen-tial sadness can never be surmounted.”

His words come to mind while reading The King Is Always Above the People, a new collection of short sto-ries by Peruvian writer Dan-iel Alarcon which depicts

a world of Latino migrants always on the move. Chang-ing countries, language and culture, they leave their families and the traditions of Latin America behind in order to forge new lives.

Alarcon’s are moving and witty stories of people try-ing to survive in foreign lands, sometimes forced out of their own countries or communities by poverty, violence or simply by lack of opportunities. Some live in big cities near docks or ports, where migrants and foreigners congregate to find jobs and build their lives and where perils and insecurities are always lurk-ing.

They “came in trucks, and cleared the land of rock and debris, working in the pale yellow glow of the headlights, deciding by touch and smell and taste that the land was good,” he writes in the first story The Thousand.

These are a group of migrants trying to build homes before the authori-ties force them to leave with bulldozers. They try to raise their children, to start all over again, because for them “the land had no owner and it had not yet been named.”

The Ballad of Rocky Ron-

tal is a compelling story of a poor Latino kid living in south-ern Los Angeles, who tries desperately to break away from a seemingly endless cycle of criminal-ity and destitution

within his community of surenos (southerners), but everything will go against him. He ends up in jail like his older brother, although he tries to reshape an expe-rience of rage and disen-chantment into one of redemption.

In The King is Always Above the People, the main character is a young inter-nal immigrant who leaves

his small home town to try his luck in a big port city full of danger and margin-ality. He manages to find a job in a shop and, posing as an economics student, lives with an elderly couple.

But after his sweetheart from his hometown arrives and suddenly announces that she is pregnant with their child, all his dreams will suddenly change. Or will they?

Republica and Grau tells of young boy Maico, forced by his violent father to beg at a busy street intersec-tion in a Latin American city alongside an old blind beggar. At the end of the day, they divide their tak-

ings under the watchful eye of the boy’s parent.

Their co-dependant rela-tionship has a sudden end, one triggered by greed and domestic abuse, and it typi-fies a book full of desperate characters and unsettling experiences.

But these are more than tales of migration and exile. The King is Always Above the People is a col-lection which also contains brilliant stories of doomed love, uncertain futures and broken families, written in a luminous and powerful prose.

An exciting and ambi-tious work.

LEO BOIX

Telling tales of strangers in strange landsn FICTION REVIEW


@m_star_online12Morning Star MondayMarch 19 2018 info | entertainment

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NO SOONER had the sun peeped out from behind the clouds last week, a shock cold spell has shooed it away.

But, despite the freezing weather conditions, did that stop thousands upon thou-sands of you marching against racism on Saturday? No, of course it didn’t.

Good turnouts for the dem-onstrations in Glasgow, Car-

diff and London as well as those in Poland, Greece and elsewhere to show racists, xenophobics and anti-semit-ics that there thousands of us out there who will not tolerate their division and hate and we will squash intolerance any way we can.

There aren’t many news-papers out there who will stick up for migrant, asylum-

seeker, BAME rights — or even bother to report on the pro-tests standing up for these communities for that matter — however, you can rely on your Morning Star to do that and will continue to do so pro-viding we get the funds we need to help us keep going.

As it’s a Monday today there’s nothing to report, but hopefully I’ll be able to give

you some good news tomor-row.

We’re not too concerned just yet. We seem to steadily moving towards our target, but then we are more than half way through the month so we haven’t got time to rest on our laurels just yet.

Keep the cash fl owing in and we promise to keep the best anti-racist news fl owing.

TODAY

Snow across southern and south-western areas will gradually ease. Mainly dry else-where with only isolated snow showers. Staying windy for most. Very cold, with a risk of wide-spread ice.

NEXT FEW DAYS

Largely fi ne tomorrow, turning more unsettled thereafter, with rain spreading southeast-wards across all areas. Becoming windier, with temperatures recover-ing to nearer normal.

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QUIZMASTER with William Sitwell

TODAY’S QUESTIONS

YESTERDAY’S ANSWERS

1. What colour are the eyes of a British Blue cat (above)? Orange

2. True or false: John Reed is the name of a character in Jane Eyre. True — he is Jane’s cousin

3. A roulette wheel has 37 what? Numbers (0-36)

1 Which late comedian once said: ‘I played Nottingham Labour Club’?

2 What sort of creature is a Common Mesh-Weaver?

3 Prestidigitation involves the use of which playing items?

Solution tomorrow…

DAILY SUDOKU (intermediate)

A FEW days ago, it was revealed that Claire Foy, who plays a young Elizabeth Windsor in period pap The Crown, had been paid less than her male co-star, despite being the focus of pretty much every scene.

It’s a timely exposé as compa-nies must submit public gender pay fi gures for the fi rst time by April this year. There are two opportunities to explore the pay gap tonight, fi rst up is Brit-ain’s Equal Pay Scandal: Pano-rama (7.30pm BBC1). Presenter Jane Corbin catches up with people fi ghting pay disparity across the country, including carers, supermarket workers and fellow BBC staff .

Switch over to The Truth about Your Pay: Dispatches (8pm Channel 4) where Tazeen Ahmad focuses more on the loopholes that some employ-

ers are using to disguise dif-ferences in pay. She meets gender pay gap consultants who are paid to coax fi gures into equality.

However, the star of tonight’s telly off erings looks to be The Funeral Murders (9pm BBC2), an expansive documentary mark-ing the 30th anniversary of the murderous Milltown Cemetery attacks on two Belfast funer-als in 1988. Anyone alive at the time will remember the shock-ing news footage.

Loyalist paramilitary mem-ber Michael Stone shot and killed three mourners at Mill-town Cemetery on March 16, missing his targets — Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness — but injuring 60 other people.

Three days later, at the subse-quent funeral of one of Stone’s

victims, two British army cor-porals drove into the cortege, were assumed to be loyalists, and were shot by the IRA.

A number of the contribu-tors have never spoken to the media before, including rela-tives of those killed, ex-army and ex-Royal Ulster Constabu-lary fi gures, and the funeral director who conducted both funerals. It’s a promising sign of confi dence in fi lm-maker Vanessa Engle.

Much earlier in the day, Michael Rosen is joined by journalist Helen Lewis to dis-cuss the phrase #MeToo in Key-words for Our Time (9.45am BBC Radio 4). Lewis will argue that while it has kick-started a long-overdue discussion on sexual violence and abuse, could its widespread use be diluting the aggression behind the hashtag?

TV and radio preview with Amy Smith

Unheard testimonies in The Funeral Murders brings the Troubles to life

Weekend sudoku

VIOLENT TIMES: George Higgins, British soldier, on duty in Belfast in 1988

Weekend crossword 1,230

morningstaronline.co.uk morningstaronline @m_star_online

Morning Star Monday

March 19 2018letters 13

■ The Daily Worker of March 19 1938 reported on the relatively unusual

organising drive by the Aberdeen branch of the Shop Assistants’ Union.

Of the 114 licenced pubs in the town, 70 had already signed a union agreement with their bar staff , which was then typi-cally a full-time job. “The remaining pubs are to be tackled this evening,” it was promised.

After that, picket lines would be put on non-union premises with leafl ets point-ing out those pubs with a union agreement to prospective customers.

This provided a 50 shilling rate for a 48-hour week after six years’ service, about the same as a non-apprenticed worker and a little shy of the 60 shillings craftsmen got.

Meanwhile one of the city’s prospective parliamentary candidates for Labour, Jean Mann, thought Dundee should “make a desperate bid to capture light industries, on the lines of the Glasgow area’s Hilling-ton Estate.”

Like many parts of Britain, this was now working to a shadow factory plan to enable existing motor vehicle manufac-turing plants to rapidly switch to aircraft production, in this case specifi cally the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine.

Ms Mann pointed out that although 38 per cent of workers in the city were

employed in the jute industry, it might be a mistake to concentrate

on heavy industries. She would like to see silk stockings and rayon goods manufactured on Tayside.

In the Labour landslide at the 1945 general election, Jean

Mann was elected as MP for Coatbridge.

80 YEARS AGO TODAY...

GRAHAM STEVENSON explores the Star archives

Aberdeen pubs were a top target of shops union

You can read editions of the Daily Worker (1930-45) and Morning Star (200 0-today), online at

Ten days’ access costs just £5.99 and a year is £72

mstar.link/DWMSarchive

■ NUCLEAR POWER

VICTORIA BRITTAIN’S review of Kate Hudson’s new book on CND at 60 is very fair (M Star March 12).

But as with the CND general secretary’s important book, she omits the important role the group has played in opposing nuclear power.

Kate’s book does mention CND’s engagement at the 1977 Windscale inquiry into plans to build the nuclear fuel reprocess-ing plant at Sellafi eld, over con-cerns of plutonium proliferation.

But fi ve years later CND also opposed the nuclear plant at Sizewell B, giving detailed evi-dence on plutonium problems with evidence from myself, Keith Barnham, the late Ross Hesketh and others.

We stressed the importance of civil–military nuclear links from the earliest days.

In June 1955, just months after the publication of the original UK white paper on nuclear power, the fi rst Anglo-American bilateral atomic energy agreement was signed. Ironically, it was a comple-mentary military atomic co-

operation agreement, the US/UK Mutual Defense Agreement (MDA) of 1958 which led to the old Central Electricity Gener-ating Board (CEGB) going for Magnox reactors, which pro-duce signifi cant amounts of weapons-grade plutonium.

The agreement committed Britain to producing pluto-nium, which was swapped for the highly enriched uranium used in Polaris submarines and tritium for warheads.

The full implications of this treaty did not emerge until the 1980s, by which time the Brit-ish government was a sponsor of the Non-Proliferation Treaty which aims to separate civil and military nuclear activities. The government tried to draw a line under this past history by claiming to Parliament in 1983 that “no plutonium produced in any of the CEGB’s nuclear power stations has ever been used for military purposes.”

However, at the 1983-4 Size-well B inquiry CND obtained admissions that civil and mili-tary-origin plutonium was still being reprocessed together at

Sellafi eld, and that there was no longer any weapons-grade plutonium in the civil stock-pile. In 1986 “ever” became “during the period of the cur-rent [Tory] administration.”

All subsequent governments have stuck to this line, even fol-lowing the Ministry of Defence admission in 2000 that “fi gures show that the weapon cycle stockpile is in fact some 0.3 tonnes larger than the amount of plutonium the records indi-cate as available.”

The quantity involved agrees very well with calculations published in Nature journal by Professor Barnham and academic colleagues 15 years earlier about the civil origin of weapons-grade plutonium.

The simplest explanation is that all the plutonium from the early years of the civil pro-gramme went into the military stockpile. In addition 5.4 tonnes of weapons-useable plutonium was sent to the US.

Dr DAVID LOWRY Former director,

European Proliferation Information Centre

JEREMY CORBYN needs to sack any Blairites or “moder-ates” (aka those who support wars and austerity), who use the Russian accusations to undermine him, which they are doing as I type.

The likes of Liz Kendall, Chuka Umunna, Angela Smith, that charlatan Wes Streeting, Ian Austin and

John Mann are the biggest bunch of warmongering gob-shites in Parliament, they’ve worked as hard as any Tory and Murdoch’s rags to smear Corbyn for well over two years.

At least the Tories don’t pretend to be left-wing.

STEVEN MCNAMARA Middlesbrough

Blairites found another dead horse to fl og

■ LABOUR

■ FOOTBALL

SURELY the easiest way for fans of West Ham, or indeed any team, to make a point is to not attend matches.

An empty stadium would be an embarrassment for the club when shown on Match of the Day and even aff ect the pockets of those riding roughshod over the fans.

MARTYN HILLSTEADTeignmouth

Empty the scene

at West Ham

Pic: dom fellowes/Creative Commons

BANDWAGON: Chuka Ummuna

SOME supporters of the EU here say that leaving won’t protect us from TTIP. Like all good lies, it’s based on a half-truth. If we just sit and do nothing, then of course there’s nothing to pro-tect us from TTIP and similar trade agreements.

But sitting and doing noth-ing is precisely what these EU fans suggest — that Parliament should overturn the people’s referendum decision. If that happened, which it won’t, we know exactly where we would be, stuck in the EU and banned from making a trade agreement of any kind with any country.

Outside the EU Britain will be able to make its own trade agreements. We don’t want free trade, we want to be able to trade freely, which is quite another thing.

Against the freedom of the multinationals and fi nance capital, we must assert the freedom to protect our indus-tries, services, agriculture and fi sheries.

The last thing we want is to see the country fl ooded with cheap agricultural imports

that knock a few pennies off the cost but lay waste to British farms and make us dependent on imports.

Nor do we want to be a dumping ground for German steel, or Chinese steel for that matter. We should insist that British steel is used on the new railways such as HS2 — and that British-made locomotives and carriages run on the new lines as well.

And if the politicians really screw up their courage, they might even insist that phar-maceutical multinationals like Pfi zer that want to sell their overpriced drugs to the NHS manufacture them in Britain. Which is what a (Conservative) government forced Pfi zer to do in 1952.

WILL PODMORELondon E12

Staying wouldn’t have saved us

■ BREXIT

a

HAVE YOUR SAY

Write (up to 300 words) to

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London E3 2NS

CND didn’t just take on bombs, it went after plants


@m_star_online14Morning Star MondayMarch 19 2018 sport

■ SIX NATIONS

IRISH SOAR TO THIRD

GRAND SLAM WITH

VICTORY OVER

ENGLAND AT

TWICKENHAM

■ MEN’S FOOTBALL: PREMIER LEAGUE

Super Salah storms summit of Prem’s top-scorer chartI don’t think that Mo or any-body else wants to be compared with Lionel Messi,” said Klopp.

“Messi has been doing what he’s doing for it feels like 20 years or so. The last player I know that had the same infl u-ence on a team performance was Diego Maradona.

“But Mo is in a fantastic way, that’s for sure. He helps us a lot. The boys love playing together with him and he loves playing with them.”

Salah opened the scoring after four minutes. He humiliated Watford defender Miguel Bri-tos, sending the Uruguayan to the snow-covered turf with one change of direction, before fi n-ishing the chance he’d created.

His second came following good work from Sadio Mane and Andy Robertson down the left, and in any normal performance Roberto Firmi-no’s inventive fl icked fi nish for the third would have been the

standout moment, but Salah’s performance overshadowed even this.

The Egyptian’s hat-trick goal was prodded through a busy Watford defence into the corner when the chance looked to have gone, and his fourth was a tap-in after Watford goal-keeper Orestis Karnezis spilled a Danny Ings strike.

“It’s quite exceptional, another good performance in a very dif-fi cult game coping and dealing

Liverpool 5-0 Watfordby James Naltonat Anfi eld

MOHAMED SALAH stormed to the top of the Premier League goalscoring charts with four against Watford on Saturday.

The last time a Liverpool player scored this many in one game was when Luis Suarez put four past Norwich in 2013, and the Egyptian is fast reaching the levels of the Barcelona man.

Another Barcelona man Salah has been compared to is Lionel Messi, and Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp didn’t exactly disagree with it.

“I think Mo is on the way [to being the best in the world], but

out a victory in Paris with a stoppage-time drop-goal by Sexton.

They then had to contend with England at their Twicken-ham fortress, where the home side have been unbeaten since the 2015 World Cup.

The result was wrapped up by half-time when skipper Rory Best’s men had ridden out being reduced to 14 men, but led 5-21.

They came out for the sec-ond half knowing that Eng-land would be straining every sinew to get early points on the board, but denied them

until Daly’s second try at 64 minutes.

In the meantime, Murray took over kicking duties from the clearly injured Sexton and fi red over a penalty to extend their lead to 24 points.

Schmidt lauded his side’s eff ort after the match: “There’s a mixture of pride and relief after a game like that.

“Our defence in the fi rst eight minutes of the second half was immense. We knew we couldn’t let them score early in the second half.

“We really had to fi ght our way out of our 22 and they laid

siege to us during that time.”The men in green were

sharper in attack, protected the ball better when they had possession and were resolute in defence.

Rugby should be a simple game and Schmidt has been building his side into a potent mixture of experience and youth.

His side also showed fl ex-ibility when injuries forced players out of position and old hands like Sexton departed the action, with the inexperi-enced Joey Carberry entering the cauldron.

Man of the match Tadhg Furlong was immense in the forward pack, making 14 tack-les and 12 ball carries, but the award could easily have gone to so many in the Irish side.

The stats show that England had more possession, more ter-ritory, more ball carries and metres made. Ireland had to make more tackles and had fewer line breaks but protected the ball better and, crucially, were more clinical when they did attack.

Ireland have beaten the mighty All Blacks, ruined England’s own grand slam

attempt last year, supplanted Jones’s men as the second-best side in the world and carried all before them in the 2018 Six Nations.

Schmidt has developed an awesome side who are improv-ing match by match just over a year from the 2019 World Cup in Japan and are worthy grand slam winners.

To win only their third slam on St Patrick’s Day was the green icing on the cake.

As Schmidt said, “The play-ers are very exuberant in the changing room and it’s very wet in there.”

England 15-24 Irelandby David Nicholsonat Twickenham

A JUBILANT Ireland won only their third grand slam after they defeated England at Twickenham on St Patrick’s Day to cement their position as the No 2 side in world rugby.

The outcome was never in doubt as the men in green raced to a 14-point lead before Elliot Daly managed to score a try while Ireland were down to 14 men after Peter O’Mahony was sin-binned for a transgres-sion too many.

The game’s fi rst try came after fi ve minutes and was courtesy of a typical howitzer of a garryowen from Johnny Sexton, when he sent the ball skyward and towards the Eng-lish line.

Anthony Watson was the starting full back, preferred to Mike Brown, and he missed the catch as he grappled with his opposite number Rob Kear-ney. The ball spilled loose and Garry Ringrose pounced for an easy score.

Coach Joe Schmidt’s men scored three converted fi rst-half tries as they eased into a 21-5 lead and never looked in danger of losing.

If anyone was in any doubt that this was to be Ireland’s day then Jacob Stockdale’s try after the half-time clock showed a minute of overtime clinched it.

Eddie Jones had the dead ball zone line extended and painted blue because of the expected snow, but Stockdale touched down beyond the old line, but just within the new one.

But what a try from Stock-dale, who has set a new Six Nations record of seven tries in one tournament. A stunning pass from scrum-half Conor Murray to Stockdale, who clev-erly kicked ahead and dived on the ball just before that new dead ball line.

Schmidt’s side have had to complete a grand slam the hard way, managing to wring

SUBLIME: Mohamed SalahSMASHING: Salah’s fourth goal


Morning Star Monday

March 19 2018sport

in brief

SCOTLAND: St Mirren extended their lead at the top of the Championship to 12 points and are on course to end their three-year absence from the Premier-ship after they won 3-1 at Queen of the South and second-placed Livingston could only draw 1-1 with Falkirk.

Dundee United drew 1-1 with Inverness Caley, bottom club Brechin’s miserable winless season continued with a 3-1 loss to Dumbarton and Greenock Morton drew 0-0 at Dun-fermline.

Magic Mirren make it a dozen in hand

NORTHERN IRELAND: With just six games left in the Irish Premiership, Cru-saders still lead the way by two points after they cruised past Dungannon 3-0 and second-placed Colerain won 3-1 at Ards.

Linfield drew 1-1 with Glentoran, Cliftonville won 1-0 at Carrick and Warrenpoint eased their relegation worries with a 3-1 win at Ballymena.

Bottom club Ball-inamallard gained only their second away point of the season with a 0-0 draw at Glenavon.

Crusaders maintain slim edge at the top

IRELAND: Champions Cork City opened up a one-point lead in the League of Ireland after they drew 1-1 with Limerick and Waterford lost 1-0 at unbeaten Dundalk, who moved second on goal difference thanks to Patrick Hoban’s deflected injury-time winner.

Derry made it 10 goals in two games as they thumped bottom club Bray 5-1.

Sligo drew 2-2 at Bohemi-ans and Shamrock Rovers beat St Patrick’s 1-0.

Cork pop open a single-point lead

with difficult conditions,” added Klopp of his star man.

“Especially around the first goal because it was obviously slippery and everybody suf-fered, but not Mo, in that situ-ation.”

Watford struggled to get into the game, with Richarlison and Roberto Pereyra coming closest.

“We know we played against one of the best teams in Europe in this moment, and they were much better than us,” admitted Watford boss Javi Gracia.

“We know they have very good players, but we need to compete at the best level. It was not the best performance from us today.”

His side remain eight points above the drop zone, but they would like to make things a little more comfortable in the coming weeks.

n MEN’S FOOTBALL: FA CUP

Mourinho: My players can’t handle pressure at Man UtdMan United 2-0 Brightonby Simon Williamsat Old Trafford

JOSE MOURINHO launched an attack on his players at the week-end, saying that some don’t have the mentality to deal with the pressure that comes with wear-ing the Manchester United shirt.

The Red Devils put the disap-pointment of being knocked out of this seasons Champions League last week at the hands of Seville by progressing to the FA Cup semi-final following a 2-0 win over Brighton at a bitterly cold Old Trafford on Saturday night.

Romelu Lukaku headed in a first-half cross from Nemanja Matic before the Serbian nodded in substitute Ashley Young’s free-kick late on to send United to Wembley.

But, despite the victory, Mourinho criticised the per-formance of his players, sin-

gling out only Matic for praise.He said: “Matic was an island

of personality, of desire, of con-trol surrounded by not water but surrounded by a lack of personal-ity, lack of class, lack of desire.

“A few of [the] guys, I saw them scared to play. I cannot say much more. It is a relation with personality, is a relation to trust, is a relation to class.

“When the sun is shining and everything goes well, you win

matches, you score goals, every-thing goes in your direction, every player is a good player and wants to play and wants the ball and looks amazing and is confident.

“When it is dark and cold and in football that means a period of bad results or a bad result, not everybody has the confidence and personality to play. To be on the pitch and touch the ball every five min-utes, everyone can do it, but to

be on the pitch and say: ‘Give me the ball because I want to play,’ not everyone can do that.”

Mourinho also praised the performance of academy gradu-ate Scott McTominay, despite having his “worst match” against the Seagulls.

“And there’s an example of personality,” said the Portu-guese. “You have the kid that didn’t play well at all ,and I told him already, was the one I first spoke individually with in the dressing room, and instead of being critical with him, I was positive with him. Because you play very bad but did the basic things that a player has to do and one of the basic things is to keep emotional balance.

“To play with that red shirt, which is a heavy one, is a heavy shirt to wear, and the kid in his worst performance by far, he was there. He was not afraid to play, he played bad and every player can play bad.”

n MEN’S FOOTBALL: CHAMPIONSHIP

Everybody’s unhappy in west LondonFulham 2-2 QPRby Kaleem Aftabat Craven Cottage

QPR came back from two goals down to dent Fulham’s faint hopes of automatic promo-tion from the Championship in snowy conditions at Craven Cottage on Saturday.

In the first half, a dominant Fulham looked to be cruising when Tom Cairney and Lucas Piazon put them two goals in front on 44 minutes.

The match changed when the Fulham defence switched

off just before half-time and allowed Massimo Luongo to get onto the end of Matt Smith’s smart header.

QPR came out transformed in the second half and Fulham went cold. The home team were relying on goalkeeper Marcus Bettinelli to keep them in the game as QPR created a host of chances.

The equaliser came on 80 minutes following a moment of madness from Dennis Odoi, who was caught on the ball by Pawal Wszolek. The Polish midfielder made no mistake, capping a terrific performance.

It was a result that left neither manager happy. QPR manger Ian Holloway accused his team of “standing off and admiring” Fulham in the first half and said that at half-time he was “fuming” and gave his players the hairdryer treat-ment.

“In the end I am disap-pointed we didn’t get all three points,” complained Holloway.

“We needed half-time, I needed to tell my players to get close to people and not give the opposition so much respect.”

He wants to see QPR get more consistent. “They are

young and I will teach them,” said Holloway.

Fulham manager Slavisa Jokanovic cut a forlorn figure and did not care for the fact that the draw meant that Ful-ham have broken a club record by going 16 league matches unbeaten.

“We cannot be satisfied and I’m not here fighting for records, I’m here to win matches,” said the Serbian.

“We were very sloppy. We made so many unforced mis-takes and we were not strong enough and in the end QPR deserved to score.”

RUGBY UNION: Taulupe Faletau says there is “definitely more to come” from Wales after they finished runners-up in the Six Nations.

A 14-13 victory over France in Cardiff — Wales’s sixth in the last seven games against Les Bleus — confirmed second place behind runaway champions Ireland.

Attention will soon switch to an appointment with South Africa in Washington on June 2, which is followed by a two-Test Argentina tour as Wales’s 2019 World Cup preparations and the ongoing work of build-ing squad depth continue.

Wales did not trouble France by scoring a point after the 30th minute, but wing Liam Williams’s try and three Leigh Halfpenny penalties proved enough to see them home.

ORMSKIRKLingfield 5:25 (nap)

MERCERSLingfield 2:50

Farringdon’s Doubles

CLIFFS OF DOVERLingfield 3:25

Houseman’s Choice

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HAVING A BAD DAY: Jose Mourinho

Monday March 19 2018

Published by the People’s Press Printing Society Ltd, William Rust House, 52 Beachy Road, Bow, London E3 2NS. Telephone: (020) 8510-0815. Fax: (020) 8986-5694. Email: [email protected]. Registered with Companies House as Morning Star (in corporating the Daily Worker) No N5559. Printed by trade union labour at Trinity Mirror.

SPORT Monday March 19 2018 INSIDE: Irish soar to third Six Nations grand slam

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MSTAR 2018-03-19 MON 1.0

Premier LeagueBournemouth 2 1 West BromHuddersfield T 0 2 Crystal PalaceLiverpool 5 0 WatfordStoke City 1 2 Everton

ChampionshipBarnsley 0 2 MillwallBirmingham City 3 0 Hull CityBolton Wanderers 1 0 Aston VillaBrentford 1 1 MiddlesbroughBristol City 1 0 Ipswich TFulham 2 2 QPRLeeds Utd 1 2 Sheffield WedsNorwich City 3 2 ReadingSheffield Utd 0 0 Notts ForestSunderland 0 2 Preston NEWolves 3 1 Burton Albion

League OneBlackpool 1 1 Southend UtdCharlton Ath 0 0 Fleetwood TMilton Keynes 2 1 BuryNorthants T 0 3 Rotherham UtdOldham Ath 0 2 PortsmouthOxford Utd 2 1 Peterboro UtdPlymouth Argyle 3 2 Bristol RRochdale 1 1 AFC WimbledonScunthorpe Utd 1 2 Shrewsbury T

League TwoAcc Stanley 3 1 Forest Green RBarnet 0 2 Wycombe WCambridge Utd 1 3 Swindon TCarlisle Utd 2 2 Crawley TCheltenham T 1 1 ChesterfieldColchester Utd 0 1 Yeovil TCrewe Alexandra 1 2 Coventry CityLincoln City 3 1 Grimsby TMorecambe 2 1 Exeter CityNewport Co AFC 1 1 Luton TNotts County 1 1 Mansfield TPort Vale 2 2 Stevenage

FA CupManchester Utd 2 0 BrightonSwansea City 0 3 TottenhamWigan Ath 0 2 Southampton

FA TrophyBrackley T 1 0 WealdstoneBromley 3 2 Gateshead

Scottish PremiershipAberdeen 1 0 DundeeHearts 3 0 Partick ThistleRangers 0 1 KilmarnockRoss County 2 2 Hamilton Ac

Scottish ChampsBrechin City 1 3 DumbartonDundee Utd 1 1 Inverness CTDunfermline Ath 0 0 MortonLivingston 0 0 FalkirkQueen Of The South 1 3 St Mirren

Scottish League OneAlbion R 1 2 ArbroathAlloa Ath 2 2 AirdrieoniansForfar Ath 0 2 Ayr UtdStranraer 2 3 Queen’s Park

Scottish League TwoAnnan Ath 1 1 ClydeCowdenbeath 3 1 Elgin CityEdinburgh City 2 2 Stirling AlbionMontrose 3 2 Peterhead

WEEKEND RESULTS

n WORLD CUP

Football chiefs approve VAR for Russia 2018by Our Sports Desk

FIFA has finally and fully approved video review to help referees at the World Cup.

The last step toward giving match officials high-tech help in Russia was agreed to at a meeting in Colombia late on Friday by Fifa’s ruling council, chaired by president Gianni Infantino.

Infantino said it would lead to “a more transparent and fairer sport. We need to live with our times.”

Fifa will now look to sign a World Cup sponsor for video assistant referees (VAR) at the June 14-July 15 tournament.

Fifa also reported a £140 mil-lion net loss in its published accounts for 2017 and agreed to publish the voting choices of member federations in the 2026 World Cup bidding contest on June 13 in Moscow.

A North American bid com-bining the US, Canada, and Mexico is competing with Morocco for the right to host the first 48-team tournament, in eight years time. Up to

207 Fifa members will vote, with the four bidding nations excluded.

Infantino also answered with a firm and simple “No” when asked if recent evidence-free accusations against Russia by British politicians would affect its hosting of the World Cup.

The landmark decision on using technology was taken two weeks after Fifa’s rule-mak-ing panel, known as IFAB, voted to write VAR into the laws of football.

That decision still left com-petition organisers to opt to use

video review in their games and Fifa’s ruling committee had to sign off on the World Cup decision.

Referees can call on VAR to review and overturn “clear and obvious errors” plus “serious missed incidents” involving goals, penalty awards, red cards and mistaken identity.

In 18 months of trials world-wide, including at the 2017 Con-federations Cup in Russia, Bun-desliga and Serie A, reviews have often been slower than promised and communication has been unclear in the stadium.

Warnock fuming over Derby’s frozen pitch

n FOOTBALL: CHAMPIONSHIP

by Our Sports Desk

CARDIFF manager Neil War-nock labelled the postponing of his side’s clash at Derby yes-terday as “scandalous” and a “disgrace.”

The Premier League hopefuls were due to meet the Rams in a lunchtime kick-off at Pride Park, where a win would have taken them back to within three points of Championship leaders Wolves.

However, the return of the snow meant the match was called off at 8.15am on Sunday morning following overnight snow.

Conditions country-wide improved as the day went on, but Warnock was not happy.

“I’m very disappointed. I’m not overly surprised. When I heard [Derby manager Gary Rowett’s] remarks earlier in the week about ‘if we can’t get over this weekend’s injury crisis with this game we should be all right after the event’.

“We came up yesterday and obviously the snow, but I think it’s a disgrace quite frankly.

“You look at games two weeks ago, against Fulham here, and you look on the website, all the Derby fans are saying it was 10 times worse.

There were ploughs and snow ploughs.

“There’s nothing here, the car parks are clear, all the shops are open.”

Derby said the clash had been postponed due to Pride Park and its surrounding areas being unsafe for “supporters, staff and officials.”

But Warnock said: “I think we have some of our fans out-side who have travelled, some Derby fans who have come from miles away and you see all the comments, but I’m sorry, I can’t accept that today.

“Safety? We’ve come from the middle of the countryside on the coach and the roads have been perfectly all right so I just don’t know where they’re coming from with this. It leaves a sour taste.

“I think it’s scandalous.”The English Football League

said in a statement the deci-sion was made “first thing this morning following discussions between Derby County, Derby-shire Police and the local Safety Advisory Group.”

It added that it was “satisfied from the information shared that these were the reasons the match was postponed” and would be giving Cardiff the chance to respond with additional information.

SPORT ON TV

n BASKETBALL: NBA, Cleveland Cavaliers v Milwaukee Bucks — BT Sport 1 11pm; San Antonio Spurs v Golden State Warriors — BT Sport 1 1.30am (Tue).

n CRICKET: ICC Cricket World Cup qualifier, West Indies v Zimbabwe — Sky Sports Cricket 7.15am, Sky Sports Main Event 7.30am.

n CYCLING: Tour of Catalunya, stage one — Eurosport 1 2.45pm.

n FOOTBALL: EFL, Doncaster v Brad-ford — Sky Sports Main Event 7.30pm; Bundesliga.2, Erzgebirge Aue v Greu-ther Furth — BT Sport 1 7.30pm.

n SNOOKER: Players Championship — ITV4 6.45pm.

n WINTER SPORTS: Winter Paralym-pics closing ceremony — Channel 4 12.30am; Curling World Champion-ships — Eurosport 2 1pm.

Cardiff boss suggests it wasn’t just the weather that led to calling-off

SCOTTISH PREMIERSHIP: Scott Sinclair’s last-minute shot is stopped during Celtic’s match against Motherwell at Fir Park.

Motherwell held league leaders Celtic to a goalless draw despite playing for more than half the match with 10 men.

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