Beating the virus

The lights are turning off and the decorations that brightened up an otherwise sombre Christmas are coming down. Last year we were struggling to overcome the Covid plague that was sweeping through the world. Covid is still with us but at least some of the jabbed population have been spared this time round. But the battle to beat the virus continues.
    Covid-19 is having an unprecedented effect on working life. Trade unions can play a vital role in keeping workplaces safer, and keeping workers’ informed of their rights.
    Trade unions are challenging employers and the government over inadequate sick pay offers, failure to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) and testing, and the urgent need to safeguard jobs in disrupted industries.
    Tory politicians bleat on about the need to keep the offices, factories and transport going but this will only work with the support of the TUC and the rest of the labour movement. Boris Johnson should remember that. So should Sir Keir Starmer.

Blair gets a gong

Boris Johnson can take some comfort at the continuing furore surrounding Tony Blair’s knighthood over the New Year. Another knight, Sir Keir Starmer, says "Tony Blair deserves the honour, he won three elections, he was a very successful Prime Minister" but Blair still can’t show his face at any labour movement event.
    The hundreds of thousands clamouring for Blair to be stripped of his award clearly shows that the former Labour leader is more hated than Johnson though that, in itself, is nothing to be proud of these days.
    While the petition with over half a million signatures and still growing is only of symbolic value, it has it has, at least for the time being, halted the Blairite drive to rehabilitate their old leader and his “New Labour” project.

Black lives do matter

We can likewise take comfort at the acquittal of the four Bristol protesters charged with “criminal damage” after the statue of a prominent local slave-dealer was toppled and dumped into the harbour last summer.
    The campaign to remove the statue of Edward Colston, a merchant who made a fortune out of the slave trade in the 17th century began in the 1920s. He was involved in the transportation of over 80,000 slaves from Africa to the New World of which almost 10,000 were children. An estimated 19,000 died on ships bound for the Caribbean and the Americas.
    Colston spent part of his blood-money on alms houses, hospitals and schools and in Victorian days he was held up as benefactor and a pillar of the Anglican church. In Bristol streets, buildings and even a local bun were named after him. But times have changed and it all came to a head last year during the Black Lives Matter protests that followed to killing of George Floyd in America last year.