THE not surprising news that the government knew of the intention by P&O to sack 800 workers on the cross-Channel ferry service but failed to act demonstrates with startling clarity the nature of this bosses’ government.

A government that placed a higher priority on workers’ job security over the powers that ownership confers under capitalism would have acted in a completely different way.

First, it would have told P&O that Britain’s legal framework for consultation and notice — which merely mimics the minimal EU standard and entails only derisory penalties — should be obeyed.

Of course, a government that took job security seriously would have already repealed the anti-union laws that Thatcher and successive governments have imposed and would have strengthened employment legislation, enshrining labour protection and compulsory sectoral bargaining, as the 2017 and 2019 Labour manifestos proposed.

The right of workers to take solidarity action does not exist in Britain today, which makes the decision by Hull dockers that they will not handle P&O vessels all the more praiseworthy.

RMT has responded to this crisis with admirable speed and impressive organisation. Its four-point proposal is the basis for rational overhaul of the maritime and transport sector.

RMT says that if P&O continues with the course of action, the government should take over its vessels and Dubai’s DP World, which owns P&O, should lose any government support, access to free ports and be excluded from future contracts.

The knowledge that Boris Johnson knew the day before that P&O had conspired to cause major disruption in our ports but did nothing to prevent it shows how the class instincts of these bourgeois “brothers-under-the-skin” overrides any notional national interest.

But workers’ solidarity and organisation is an active factor in this crisis.

When RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: “We have been overwhelmed by the widespread public and political support for our campaign to protect our members’ jobs and these vital services,” he made the critical point that these ferry services are a vital part of Britain’s economy, with a commercial significance that goes way beyond our coastal towns and the local Kent economy.

The unions in Kent and the three closest trades council immediately mobilised support for the RMT and Nautilus protests. From the Pas de Calais federation of the Parti Communiste Francais — in response to a communication from Kent communists — came the message: “We fully share your support to P&O staff.

“How can we let a group as powerful as P&O lay off from day to day, 800 sailors, to replace them with ‘low-cost’ labour, in the name of the sacrosanct profit? 

“We experienced a few years ago the liquidation of Sea France which impacted a considerable number of staff in Calais. Yes, as you suggest, the solution would be to nationalise this business.”

The Calais comrades argue the need for the restoration of national flags to guarantee a decent employment stratus for seafarers and defend national independence against these “pirates of the capitalist globalisation.”

They say: “These financial predators of DP World are only interested in one indicator: their profit rates, which they always want higher. And for this they are ready to seize every opportunity: buy ports, sell fleets, put workers around the world competing with each other, paying them as little as possible, making them work in unacceptable conditions.”

While trade unionists demonstrating at Dover gave the bird to their local Tory MP Natalie Elphicke, the communist senator for Pas de Calais, Cathy Apourceau Poly, challenged the French minister of transport to take a position.

The workers must win this dispute and solidarity by workers on both sides of the Channel will be critical.