The document critiques British imperialism, highlighting how industries, universities, and financial firms contribute to the war machine while exploiting workers. It discusses the myth of the defense sector providing good jobs, the complicity of universities in developing military technologies, and the hypocrisy of major accounting firms profiting from arms manufacturers. Additionally, it covers recent strikes by Royal Fleet Auxiliary seafarers against pay cuts, illustrating the potential power of organized labor in challenging imperialist practices.
As part of the RCP’s ‘Books Not Bombs’ campaign, we want to expose how industry, education, banks, and the state all feed the imperialist war machine; as well as how workers can organise to fight back. Send your stories to ‘The Communist’ today!
Good jobs for British workers?
The imperialists are insatiable leeches, devouring society’s wealth. Every pound spent on the arms industry is stolen from hospitals, schools, and workers’ needs.
The establishment promotes a myth about the ‘defence’ sector providing ‘good jobs for British workers’. This is a sick joke, masking a hollowed-out manufacturing base. Today, British imperialism is based on financial parasitism in the City of London.
Trade union leaders parrot this jingoistic nonsense, providing a left cover for imperialism.
“We welcome increased defence spending,” states Steve Turner, Unite’s assistant general secretary, “and demand that the Prime Minister provide iron-clad guarantees that UK defence procurement will prioritise spending taxpayers’ money within the UK, thus protecting British jobs, skills, and technology.”
“We need long-term commitments to defence manufacturing spending in the UK,” echoes Gary Smith, GMB general secretary, “supporting jobs, apprenticeships, and local economies.”
GMB has even presented a TUC motion calling for increased defence spending to create British jobs.
All the while, there is an unholy alliance between UK universities and the defence industry. As bombs rain down on Gaza, and imperialist tensions flare, our seats of learning have become accomplices in the machinery of death.
Universities, which ought to be used to expand knowledge, now develop technologies for destruction. Every drone targeting system; every ‘smart’ bomb; every piece of surveillance tech: these all bear the stamp of the higher education bosses.
Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, for example, has ties with Rolls-Royce, Boeing, and BAE Systems, receiving £47 million from arms companies between 2013-2020.
Cranfield University, which specialises in defence and security, has longstanding ties with the UK Ministry of Defence and global defence firms. It even supports the UK’s nuclear deterrent programme through links with the Atomic Weapons Establishment.
The production of weapons for British imperialism strengthens a system that divides workers and subjugates peoples worldwide. Our response must be an uncompromising class struggle, supporting workers across sectors and countries against imperialism.
A revolutionary communist in Unite
Counting the loot of imperialism
Following big corporate reporting scandals like Carillion in 2018, the ‘Big Four’ accounting and professional services firms have been at pains to clean up their image and present themselves as a force for good.
“Our values are the foundation of everything we do and every action that we take,” says KPMG – fined £21m by the Financial Reporting Council for their mismanagement of the Carillion audit.
These firms harp on about serving people and communities, promoting diversity and inclusion, assisting companies in the green transition, and all sorts of nice-sounding objectives.
The reality is that they act as nothing less than handmaidens to the rogues’ gallery that makes up the FTSE index, advising companies responsible for the worst human rights abuses and environmental destruction.
The ‘Big Four’ also generate millions in revenue from auditing the financial statements of large listed businesses. To be audited is a legal requirement for these companies, and is therefore hypocritically couched under the pretence of independent third-party verification of data.
Deloitte, for example, is the auditor for BAE Systems, the British weapons manufacturer – 16th on the FTSE by market capitalisation.
They have made record profits as a result of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, famously providing key components for Israeli fighter jets, along with IT infrastructure that is integrated into the Israeli war machine.
“At Deloitte, we believe all people are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” they claim. The £17m that BAE paid Deloitte in 2023 must make up for the children in Gaza being murdered every day by their client’s weapons.
This industry greases the wheels of all the aerospace, defence, oil and gas, and mining giants that destroy people’s lives and the planet in the name of profit.
The higher the revenue and profits of these companies, the more demand they generate for services in the realm of tax & legal, restructuring, mergers & acquisitions, etc.
To satisfy this demand, the ‘Big Four’ exploit their employees, most of whom are young graduates seeking to avoid precarity; often forced to work 70-hour weeks, with no trade union protection or representation. So much for dignity!
These firms are part and parcel of the financial infrastructure of British imperialism. They advise large multinationals on how to maximise their profits by cutting costs, expanding their business (however murderous or morally bankrupt), laying off their staff, and further exploiting natural resources.
To get rid of their chokehold on the economy, we have to get rid of imperialism itself.
An angry worker in a finance house
Royal Fleet Auxiliary strikes: Whitehall overboard!
Seafarers in the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA), organised in the RMT and Nautilus unions, have taken historic action in recent weeks.
During five days of strike action (so far), officers of the merchant navy have downed tools for the first time ever. And boats as far away as Cyprus, Singapore, and Australia have been halted as a result.
This strike has exposed a weakness at the heart of British imperialism. In spite of all the superprofits plundered from across the world, British capitalism is unable to maintain its own state and military apparatus.
The seafarers are fighting against a real-terms pay cut of 30 percent since 2015.
As a result of this underfunding, the merchant navy – a crucial tool for the logistical operations of the British Navy, which has been suffering its own funding crisis – is severely understaffed. One spokesman even suggested that there was a “real risk” of the service collapsing.
In effect, this means that multi-billion-pound carriers, their support fleets, destroyers, submarines, and so on, remain inadequately equipped at best, and undeployable at worst. All for the sake of a pay rise that the Ministry of Defence is now digging in its heels over!
Most of the seafarers on strike probably genuinely care about the ‘defence of the realm’ and their contribution towards this. And yet the logic of austerity has brought them into a head-on collision with their overlords in Whitehall.
If Britannia’s ability to rule the waves can be paralysed by a pay dispute, then the same workers on strike today can surely be convinced to organise and take action again tomorrow against imperialist intervention on foreign shores.
This episode shows the potential power that workers hold – an important lesson for all activists who want to fight against imperialism.
Nick Oung
‘The Communist’ is written by and for revolutionary workers and young people. So if you’re reading this, that probably includes you!
As part of the Revolutionary Communist Party’s ‘Books Not Bombs’ campaign, we want to expose how industry, universities, banks, and the state all fuel the imperialist war machine; and how workers are getting organised to fight back.
Send your reports on how your bosses are complicit in the crimes of British imperialism, using our online form.