Covid-19

1. Requisition (in other words, take into emergency public ownership) • private hospitals, as Ireland and Spain have done • the pharmaceutical and medical-supplies industries, so that production can be ramped up in a coordinated way of tests, PPE, ventilators, etc. • high finance, so that the epidemic is not compounded by a snowballing economic slump resulting from an implosion of credit • and other sectors where coordinated mobilisation is necessary. 2. Fight for workers’ control The workers ourselves, taking expert advice, should have a decisive voice in identifying and running what is...

“You can sit in the mess room, but only two of you. There is the locker room and then the ticket office. The GLAP (the glass box by the barriers) is your choice if you want to go in there." The supervisors are doing their shift change. M asks if there is anything she should know from D. “I can’t tell you anything, we don’t have the sheets, so not sure who is coming in. But you’ve got T, Jay and S. It’s pretty dead anyway”. A customer comes to the window to ask how to get to Old Street. M asks us “Would essential workers really not know where they are going?”. The tedium of working means many...

The Labour Campaign for Free Movement is asking everyone, on the Thursday 8pm “Clap for Carers”, to remember that many of them are migrants who face NHS charges and have no access to social security. Put up a banner in your window and join us demanding universal healthcare for all and an end to “No Recourse to Public Funds”!

Young workers and women are likely to be the hardest hit by the coronavirus shutdown of businesses such as restaurants, hotels, pubs and retailers. Low earners are seven times as likely as high earners to work in a business sector that has shut down, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Their analysis found a third of the bottom 10% of earners worked in the worst-hit sectors, against one in 20 (5%) of those in the top 10%. Women are about one-third more likely than men to work in a sector that has been shut down, as they make up the bulk of retail and hospitality workers. One in six...

At Trinity House, an HMRC workplace in the north west, a worker was diagnosed with Covid-19. The bosses only moved people from their immediate team. The local union demanded that the building be shut entirely and deep cleaned. Management initially refused, so the union issued an ultimatum, and management agreed to shut the building. We now have an issue with the Passport Office, where the employer wants to bring large number of workers back into the office to do routine work, despite the fact that very little international travel is taking place presently. Obviously we have huge concerns about...

Martin Thomas' article on the similarities and differences between this pandemic and the Second World War omits several major differences that make the pandemic more favourable for socialist politics. First, wars are fought against other nations and the capitalist class has to work hard to whip up nationalist spirit. The power of nationalism during first World War mobilisation was sufficient to break the mighty Second International as workers rallied around their capitalist leaders. By contrast the pandemic is an attack on the human species by another organism. The frontline soldiers of our...

For the last 30 years or so we have heard little from those in power but the virtues and the inevitability of capitalism. Today we are witnessing in the face of the ever-spreading coronavirus epidemic a failure so total that literally it manifests itself in the lives of everyone on this earth. The scale of the virus"s effects where no country is immune liquidates distance or lines of combat, metaphorical or otherwise. Emblematic is the idea of Security! Bandied about by every political rogue and racist charlatan against immigrants, poisoning the mind and sowing division among workers, with the...

Easter holidays Were it not for the virus, most schools would now be in their two-week Easter break. The union nationally has been arguing that work in that time must be voluntary and that everyone should get two weeks holiday at some agreed point around the period, and in reasonable blocks, not a day here and a day there. That is certainly happening in Lewisham and as far as I can see across London and probably further afield. Bank Holidays The joint advice from the unions (NEU and the two leadership unions NAHT and ASCL) said they expected schools to be closed on Good Friday and Easter...

Bernie Sanders has drafted a six point plan for dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and the looming economic crisis – and the strange thing is that he doesn’t mention the presidential election nor the name of America’s current president, Donald Trump. While Joe Biden tries to make his voice heard from his basement studio in Delaware, Sanders remains an active member of the US Senate, fighting to get things done without waiting for the Democratic party primary season to end – and without waiting for Trump to be replaced in office either. “Congress must pass, in the very near future, the...

The new emergency law passed in Hungary has made waves in the international press, and rightly, though much of the coverage has been inaccurate. For example, the BBC on 30 March said: “The Hungarian Parliament has voted by 137 to 53 to accept the government’s request for the power to rule by decree during the coronavirus emergency”. However, the 2012 Hungarian Constitution (put in place by Fidesz) already grants the power to rule by decree in a state of emergency. The new law is actually about the edicts that are issued during a state of emergency. A state of emergency legally lasts until the...