The only way to get prices down and wages up: an all-out fight! & Railway renationalisation will not be enough!

Sunak has caused a minor uproar by suggesting that supermarket bosses might "voluntarily" cap the price of (some) food items. Food price inflation has been above 19% for three months now, with the cost of fresh produce shooting up even more.

    So yes, capping prices, (but compulsorily, not voluntarily!) and more importantly, increasing wages in line with them - would be the only rational thing to do, even within the limits of this profit system... But this government is anything but rational!

    Since 2019, food prices have increased by 25%. So the average household is spending at least £1,000 more on food compared to last year.

    In fact many supermarkets have already "locked" or even cut the prices of some essentials. They had no choice, since the high cost of food has driven away customers, cutting sales by at least 3%.

    Tesco, for example, cut the price of its own-brand pasta and cooking oil in February and it cut the price of milk in April.

    Even so, Sunak does not dare to bring in compulsory price controls. It's not that the Tories haven't done it before. In 1973, Tory PM Ted Heath did, when inflation was lower - at 9.1% - but ever-rising after the 1970 oil crisis. It was this event, in fact, which ushered in the permanent state of capitalist economic crisis we have lived under ever since!

    Back then, the government imposed maximum prices for basic food like bread and milk. However to get away with this in front of the capitalist class, it also put a cap on wage rises... And that led to the famous - all out - 1973 miners' strike, which spread to engineering workers and many other sectors! This brought down the government!

    So no wonder that the mere mention of price caps has sparked strong opposition from Tory MPs. They say this would be interfering with the "free market" and point to the supermarkets' already low profit margins. Labour shadow Trade Secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds, agrees. It's not a "practical" solution, says he - and is "unsuited to the 21st century", whatever that means!

    Supermarkets are hardly struggling. Tesco posted a £1 billion profit for 2022-23, followed by Asda and Morrisons, with over £800 million each and Sainsbury's with £327 million. Behind them, three of the biggest food manufacturers - Unilever, Mondelez and Nestle - made a combined profit of £31 billion last year! And beyond that, the four big agribusiness conglomerates that control 90% of the world's grain supply (Archer-Daniels-Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus), increased profits by 255%!

    So, yes, price controls - along with wage rises which are future-proofed and will keep up with prices - are an obvious necessity for the working class. But the only way to achieve this is going to be through a full joint mobilisation - starting with an escalation of action by those already on strike!

Isn't it odd that it's the government which says that the 4% pay offer to drivers is "fair and reasonable"? And tells the 12,000 striking ASLEF members that they should accept it, as if it is their employer and paymaster?

    However, out of the 16 train operating companies which drivers are striking against, only 11 remain in private hands - collectively represented by the so-called Rail Delivery Group of franchisees. Scotrail and Welsh railways are already "public", coming under the Scottish and Welsh governments.

    In May, a fourth private operator - TransPennine Express - was taken over by the government's Operator of Last Resort (OLR) after it had cancelled 1 in 4 of its services earlier in the year and only managed to improve to a score of 1 in 6 by April.

    And while the government's Transport Secretary, Mark Harper blames strikes for this bad performance it's obvious to everyone else that the company just gobbled up the profits (which came from government subsidies anyway!) and didn't bother to fund the service.

    A fifth takeover waits in the wings - Avanti West Coast (like Transpennine, owned by First Group) which only had its franchise extended to October 2023.

    It seems the writing is on the wall for rail privatisation. And although Harper won't admit it, his revival of the Great British Railways project amounts, at the very least to an admission of failure, even if it's a pale imitation of rail nationalisation.

    The sad joke is that the OLR train companies are hardly any better-performing than the private franchises, if cancellations are anything to go by. LNER, in government hands since the Virgin-Stagecoach franchise failed to pay what it owed to the government 5 years ago, has had even more cancellations than Northern, which was taken over by the OLR in 2020. And while Transpennine is the very worst, LNER comes 4th worst in terms of delays and cancellation.

    In other words, poor train services aren't only due to private profiteering. The government and the capitalist train operators behave exactly the same way; they cut the workforce to the bone and outsource everything, to save on costs. So while yes, workers need to demand nationalisation, the railways will only improve if they are taken over under workers' management and control.