Summertime blues

 The Government’s decision to delay final lockdown easing for four weeks will come as a relief to the millions of unvaccinated people fearful of the reports of rising Covid infection and hospitalisation rates all over the country due to the spread of the Delta variant. All major anti-Covid restriction will now end on 19th July unless a "far more dangerous" variant emerges.
     Labour says the current crisis is, as usual, all down to Boris Johnson. Shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds says the four-week delay was due to the Prime Minister’s border “negligence”. Calling the Delta variant “the Johnson variant” Labour’s man argues that Johnson’s “refusal to take tough decisions has left Britain facing weeks more under restrictions”.
    “The delay is happening because a new variant first identified overseas was allowed to take hold in this country. There is one reason and one reason only that this happened: lax border measures by Conservative ministers.
    “They have allowed the Delta variant, first identified in India to take hold here. Let’s call it what it is. Let’s put the blame where it should lie. In this country – it’s the Johnson variant”.
     He’s certainly got a point. The failure of the Government to take speedy, firm measures to contain Covid-19 when it came to Britain last year is down to Johnson and his advisers who clearly in beginning believed in the crackpot theory of “herd immunity” that would have let the plaque spread unhindered throughout the population at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. The reluctance to close the borders to all but urgent travel undermined previous lock-downs. Let’s hope that the current stringent controls are not simply shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.
    Meanwhile the teaching unions together with Unison, GMB and Unite – the big three of the TUC who also organise throughout the education sector – are calling for the reintroduction of face masks in secondary school classrooms and for students in communal areas. They also say all pupils should be offered vaccines as soon as their use is approved for children, with schools given extra support so pupils can be vaccinated on-site.
    TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady says: “We all want to beat this virus once and for all. But this announcement is a big setback for many workers and businesses - especially in the arts and hospitality sectors.
    “The government must step up and provide urgent targeted support for these industries. We cannot afford for more companies to go to the wall, taking good jobs with them.
    “The Chancellor also needs to announce now that he will extend furlough for as long as is needed, rather than cutting it off abruptly in three months’ time. Working people need this certainty now - not a rollercoaster approach to protecting livelihoods and when the government does remove restrictions, all workers must know their workplaces are Covid-Secure. The government must consult unions and employers on updated safety guidance for all types of workplace ahead of the final unlocking”.
    The Tory leader heeded medical opinion and ignored the bleating of the tourist and entertainment industry as well as the selfish, profiteering demands from some of his backbenchers to end the lockdown on the original date of 21st June.
     The Sage and independent Sage panels of medical experts had both called for this extension. Johnson, on this occasion, has wisely taken their advice. We can only hope that the mass vaccination programme that is now stretching to the under 30s will finally stop the coronavirus plague in its tracks.

Tiers for Fears

The second national lockdown has ended with the news of a dramatic fall in the Covid-19 infection rate throughout the country and the start of a vaccination programme that will, hopefully, turn the tide in the battle against the coronavirus plague.
     But hundreds of people are still dying every day and lockdowns supported by the Government’s third-rate track and trace service will remain the only way to combat the plague until the vaccine gets out to the vast majority of the population
     The Health Minister, Matt Hancock, somewhat optimistically says Britain will be through Covid-19 "by spring" after the first people are given vaccines from Monday while Boris Johnson, with uncharacteristic caution warns us not to get our hopes up for getting the new coronavirus vaccine soon.
     The roll-out will start with the vulnerable care home staff and residents and then cover the rest of the population in stages starting with the over 80s. There’s talk within the corridors of power of a return to normality by next spring. That clearly depends on the efficacy of the vaccine.
     Whatever happens the “normality” of the post-coronavirus environment will largely depend on the strength of the labour movement. The unions have shown their willingness to work with the Government to protect health and jobs during the emergency. Whether this will continue clearly depends on the Johnson government’s willingness to continue the consultation process with organised labour.

tackling unemployment

Young workers have been hit hard by the economic impact of the Covid-19 crisis. They have experienced the highest rates of redundancy, largest falls in employment, highest rates of furlough with reduced pay, largest falls in weekly pay, and the largest falls in hours worked. The lockdowns have also led to significant job losses in sectors like hospitality and leisure which employ many young workers.
     The Government’s Kickstart employment scheme has got off to a shaky start. Though supported, at least in principle, by the TUC, the scheme is just a rehash of old cheap labour work schemes like Labour’s Youth Opportunities Programme that began in the Wilson-Callaghan era of the 1970s and its successors like the Tory Youth Training Scheme in 1983 and the Blair’s New Deal “workfare” programme that began in 1998.
     The problem hasn’t been totally ignored by Labour. Jonathan Reynolds, Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary recently said that: ““…latest figures show the Government’s Kickstart scheme is failing to deliver for young people, creating opportunities for just 3 per cent of the 600,000 young people unemployed. The Government must be much more ambitious if we are to prevent a generation scarred by long term unemployment. It is worrying that months into this jobs crisis we still have no plan from this Government to tackle rising unemployment and get Britain back to work”.
     But these days Labour’s alternative amounts to little more than claiming that they can run the economy on its existing lines more efficiently than the Conservatives. This was the mantra of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown during a boom that Brown thought would last forever. It’s a mantra that has been repeated by every successive leader of the Labour Party, apart from Jeremy Corbyn, despite the fact that we have not even recovered from the slump of 2007.
    But we are not, as the Tories and Blairites claim, all in it together nor do we have a stake in ensuring that capitalism survives. There’s no trickle‑down effect. All that workers get from the capitalist table is the crumbs, so while capitalism survives there will always be a fight to increase and defend the share that workers get from capitalism. But in the long term the only way to ensure that this share is maintained and improved, and not to have to defend it time and time again, is by fighting for working class state power, the dictatorship of the proletariat.
    It’s either them or us; the workers or the bosses. The alternative to working class state power is increasing exploitation, racial and communal strife, rapid growth in crime, drug trafficking, violence and conflict from local to international levels. The capitalists must not be allowed to destroy society. It is they who must be supplanted.

Locked-down in London

by Ben Soton

Lockdown by Peter May. Quercus Publishing: London, 2020.
Paperback: 416pp; £8.99 (£4.50 on Amazon). ISBN-10: 1529411696; ISBN-13: 978-1529411690.

If I am ever asked what I did during the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020 I will have to say: “Very little, I sat at home reading the occasional book, watched DVDs as well as writing this column.”

This in no way compares to the health-workers, shelf stackers, transport workers and delivery drivers and not to mention bank staff, who kept the country running and saved lives.

I am still streets ahead of those who ignored the rules, painted swastikas on NHS signs, took part in stupid protests and spat at railway staff. However, in Peter May’s crime thriller, the lockdown is used to cover up the murder of a small child.

In Lockdown the virus ravaging London, referred to as the flu, is remarkably like COVID-19. It largely affects the lungs, resulting in Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). The death toll is a million and counting, and the resulting lockdown measures are much more severe: troops patrol the streets in gas-masks, special permits are required to travel, shops have been looted and lawlessness reigns. The Isle of Dogs, where there had been no cases of the infection, has declared effective independence from the rest of London.

Amongst this chaos a bag of human remains appears on a still-working building site and it is the job of Detective Inspector Jack McNeil, a Scotsman with a life overshadowed by tragedy, to solve this heinous crime. His investigation takes him into a world of lawless council estates, secret night clubs for the select few, as well as a foray into the world of deviant art. As he trudges through this netherworld, witnesses become victims to a bizarre assassin.

Who is this assassin? Who is he working for? What is he trying to cover up? These are the questions the reader continually asks throughout the novel. A high-level conspiracy soon begins to unravel centred around the murdered child.

Written in 2005, Peter May’s crime thriller was shelved because the publishers thought the plot too unrealistic. Now it is only too topical!

The story, whether intentional or not, is an argument for state ownership of the pharmaceutical industry. This column has argued that crime novels can lean towards the left as they expose the dark side of capitalist society, although not necessarily advocating its only viable alternative – socialism. Meanwhile the events mentioned above – the higher death toll, troops patrolling the streets and whole areas abandoned – could be a sign of things to come if lockdown measures are relaxed too early. I hope I am wrong.