No death is acceptable if it is preventable

Covid-19 has dominated all our lives for the past year, and it’s not going away. 130,000 have died and hundreds of thousands are facing grief, loss and long-term illness. Unless there is a change of strategy, tens of thousands more will die.

Most of the Covid deaths in the UK could have been prevented if Johnson’s government had adopted a different approach – an approach based on elimination rather than containment – the Zero Covid approach.

We cannot and must not accept ‘living with the virus’ any longer. Government advisers admit that such a strategy is likely to involve a further 30,000 to 80,000 deaths.

That’s 200,000 acceptable deaths – 200,000 preventable deaths.

No death is acceptable if it is preventable

Johnson likes to say the government has done everything it could. But if it were serious about preventing deaths, it would at the very least –

  • properly fund the NHS and its staff,
  • provide the highest quality PPE,
  • scrap Serco’s test and failing-to-trace system,
  • provide full financial and practical support to those required to self-isolate, quarantine or shield,
  • fund local authorities for the crucial work they are doing,
  • ventilate classrooms and workplaces and make whatever structural changes are necessary to enable safe social distancing,
  • provide kids with laptops and broadband,
  • enforce health and safety laws,
  • deal with cramped and overcrowded living conditions which allow the virus to keep spreading amongst our poorest communities.

Instead it has boasted of world-beating this and world-beating that, when the only thing world-beating about its approach has been the death toll and crashing economy. It has squandered billions enriching private companies who have failed to deliver – billions which could have been spent addressing the class, racial and gender inequalities, as well as the dire discrimination faced by disabled people, exposed by their response to the pandemic.

The Zero Covid approach is one which values human lives before profit, which values the health of us all before the wealth of the few.

There are many misconceptions about Zero Covid. For starters, it does not mean endless lockdowns. The reverse – it means an end to this cycle of half-hearted on-off lockdowns. It is based on the strategy humanity across the world has learnt to pursue when faced with a pandemic: trace, isolate and support to stop the spread; vaccinate if you can. Why is that so difficult this time around? Climate change means more, not fewer, pandemics in the future. We need to learn the lessons and get it right next time.

Critics say that zero Covid is a fantasy. But it is living with a deadly virus which is the fantasy. No country is ‘livingwith the virus’. But a number have charted a way through the pandemic by pursuing an elimination strategy – driving down community transmission and using local test and trace systems to stop new outbreaks. The UK’s vaccine rollout is vital, but will not end the pandemic on its own, not when the pandemic is global, prone to variants and mutations, and vaccine nationalism is on the rise.

Of course, we can’t totally eradicate the Covid-19 virus – but reducing and aiming to eliminate community transmission is possible – as we can see from New Zealand’s five deaths per one million population and Vietnam’s 0.4 per million, compared to the UK ‘s 1,828 deaths per million, which even beats Brazil and the USA.

Critics like to point out that New Zealand is small. So it is worth noting that Vietnam’s population is 98 million compared to the UK’s 68 million.

In the past week the BBC has reported how Iceland is now virtually Covid-free, with just 20 active cases and 29 deaths. The Guardian in the Tale of Two Islands concluded its report on Taiwan (22 million people, ten deaths, 1,000 documented cases, 0.4 per million) with:

“It all comes down to government clarity and transparency,” said Chen. “You have to let the people know what the government is trying to do.”

But while the lived experience of Sars gave an urgency to Taiwan’s planning, the conclusions drawn were researched and published extensively.

There was nothing stopping the British government, or others, from learning from them in the intervening years. But perhaps because of British exceptionalism, perhaps because other coronavirus epidemics – Sars, Mers – had been contained far from Europe, the UK chose to follow its own deadly path instead.”

It’s never too late to save lives

It’s not too late to urge both Labour and the Government to change their strategy from containment, from living with the virus, to suppression and elimination. Both SAGE and Indie SAGE scientists are already talking about a fourth surge in the autumn hitting the young and unvaccinated if we don’t start getting it right.

Professor Michael Baker, the New Zealand epidemiologist, says – ‘Reaching zero cases doesn’t depend on a country’s size but on strong leadership’.

Real opposition means strong leadership

Labour’s Conference in September may seem a long time away. And it would be great if Labour’s leadership showed strong leadership now by challenging the basis of the Tories’ containment approach to the pandemic by advocating the real alternative.

There have been so many times during the last twelve months where the Johnson government left open goals in its treatment of the pandemic. Labour could have championed education workers and parents fighting for safe schools, could have pressed for the benefit uplift to be extended to all claimants, could have demanded an end to handing out contracts to Serco and other leeches on our NHS, could have demanded a change of approach and strategy.

#Artivists at Work

Instead it is seen as complicit with the Tories’ incompetence and corruption. How else can the Tories’ poll lead and Labour’s ever-sinking popularity be explained? The success of the NHS-led vaccine programmemay be giving a temporary boost to Johnson, but those thousands who have lost family members and friends, who have worked night and day in the most fraught and stressful of circumstances, whose kids have lost their hopes of a future, who have lost jobs, businesses, livelihoods and dreams, they won’t forget. Nor will they forgive either Government or Opposition for their leadership failures.

Covid is the number one priority

Momentum is currently organising a Policy Primary to determine which motions to Conference it should back. It would be unconscionable if this year of all years Labour did not discuss the Covid Pandemic. It has to be the number one priority. And it has to be a discussion based not just on criticising the Tories for doing too little too late or lining their chums’ pockets, but on a real alternative approach based on social solidarity. Anything else is endorsing social murder.

Zero Covid’s Conference motion is below. It not only calls for a change of strategy but also links that to how ecological destruction will undoubtedly result in more lethal and uncontrollable pandemics, which is why a green recovery plan has to go hand in hand with a Zero Covid approach.

Word limits mean much has had to be omitted and the politics of the pandemic are fast moving. We anticipate topical amendments and want CLPs to put similar motions closer to the Labour Party’s closing date of 13th September.

The campaign to beat the pandemic

Voting in the Momentum Policy Primary is not the only way you can support Zero Covid. We are a grassroots activist campaign of individual supporters and affiliated organisations. Our supporters come from a range of political parties or none. Our aim is to build a movement to force UK policy makers to adopt an elimination strategy. Our structure allows for local groups to establish themselves and have a say in the running of the campaign. Coordinating our work centrally are teams of volunteers that cover areas such as social media, science and health advisory, press relations and mobilisation. We are part of the Zero Covid Coalition.

We are currently campaigning on workplace safety, for Serco to be sacked and for local authority public health experts to be funded to run local Track and Trace programmes. We support campaigns such as the People’s Covid Enquiry, the call for an official statutory investigation into the UK government’s response to the pandemic, and the international Call for a People’s Vaccine for patents on the intellectual property rights of vaccines to be waived.

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Zero Covid’s Labour Party Conference motion

Title: Covid-19 pandemic

Conference notes:

  • The appalling loss of lives and livelihoods due to the Tory government’s incompetence, corruption and refusal to adopt and implement effective measures to drive down community transmission and eliminate the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
  • That this has been exacerbated by a decade of austerity, privatisation and cuts to public services, especially the NHS and local authorities.
  • That the expensive failure of the outsourced Serco Test and Trace system has contributed to this disaster.
  • That individuals have been consistently blamed for systemic and policy failures and not provided with sufficient support through decent sick pay, grants, loans, benefits and other wide-ranging assistance in order to be able to self-isolate, shield, work from home and/or home-school.
  • That climate change and ecological destruction make future pandemics more likely and that the pandemic is a global issue that demands international solidarity.

 Conference applauds:

  • The commitment of the millions of workers and volunteers, in the UK and globally, who have supported their communities, provided dedicated healthcare, and demonstrated scientific and medical brilliance.
  • The UK’s vaccine programme, rolled out and administered by the NHS and local volunteers.

Conference calls for:

  • Labour to adopt now and in the event of any future similar pandemics policies aimed at the elimination, rather than the containment, of the spread of the disease, working with trade unions and public health experts.
  • A forward-looking recovery plan based on the Green New Deal.

This article was published by Labour Hub on 26-03-2021

https://labourhub.org.uk/2021/03/26/real-opposition-means-a-strategy-to-eliminate-covid/

Why Zero Covid?

This is a slightly edited version of my speech to Socialist Health Association London on 9 March 2021. SHAL agreed to affiliate to Zero Covid.

Zero Covid is an elimination strategy supported by many scientists and medics – but at the end of the day it is primarily a political strategy.

Professor Michael Baker, the New Zealand epidemiologist, puts it best – ‘Reaching zero cases doesn’t depend on a country’s size but on strong leadership’.

And he’s not talking about the kind of strong men leaders in various countries who think covid is a form of man flu.

I don’t need to tell you about the UK’s leadership – callous, corrupt and incompetent, and sickeningly proud of this country’s world beating death rate and failed economy.

One that puts the wealth of the few over and above the health of us all.

Yet again we are witnessing another rush to ‘open up from lockdown’ – a lockdown which, despite being much weaker than last year’s, has undoubtedly had a major effect on pushing down infection rates.

Even so the virus is just as prevalent now as it was in mid-October, just two weeks before the November lockdown – and reopening the schools is predicted to push the R number up by between ten to fifteen percent. And you don’t need to be a scientist to understand that the virulence and transmission speed of the UK variant along with the other variants and mutations we are now experiencing will drive infection rates up at a faster speed than before.

The government’s strategy is clear – to place all its bets on the vaccine – and then to ‘live with the virus’.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a major fan and advocate of vaccination – but on its own it can only be part of the story. Because a global pandemic means the whole world has to be vaccinated – and that is going to take some time – even without the nationalistic vaccine wars and patent protectionism we are witnessing.

They admit themselves that such a strategy is likely to involve a further thirty thousand to eighty thousand deaths – on top of the hundred and thirty thousand we have already suffered. In fact Whitty has said today modelling shows a further thirty thousand deaths as lockdown eases.

Two hundred thousand acceptable deaths. Two hundred thousand preventable deaths.

No death can be acceptable if it is preventable.

If the government was serious about preventing deaths not only would they

  • properly fund the NHS and its staff,
  • provide the highest quality PPE,
  • scrap SERCO’S test and failing-to-trace system,
  • provide full financial and practical support to those required to self-isolate, quarantine or shield,
  • fund local authorities for the crucial work they are doing,
  • ventilate classrooms and workplaces and make whatever structural changes are necessary to enable safe social distancing,
  • provide kids with laptops and broadband,
  • enforce health and safety laws,
  • deal with cramped and overcrowded living conditions which allow the virus to keep spreading amongst our poorest communities

– and that’s just for starters –

then, even without a zero covid strategy, it might be possible to take them seriously [and stop calling them murderers].

You might say that all sounds very expensive, but compared to the billions this government has squandered and handed over to private companies we can’t afford NOT to do it, not if we value human lives before profit.

No country is living with the virus. But a number have pursued a strategy of zero covid and are living with its near elimination.

Of course we can’t totally eradicate Covid – but reducing and aiming to eliminate community transmission is possible – as we can see from New Zealand’s five deaths per one million population, Vietnam’s nought point four per million, compared to the UK ‘s one thousand eight hundred and twenty eight deaths per million, which even beats Brazil and the USA.

[Oh – and by the way, Vietnam’s population is 98 million compared to the UK’s 68 million]

Which brings me back to Michael Baker. What it takes is strong leadership and a determination to protect your citizens, all of them, not just your chums and their bank balances.

Zero Covid does not mean endless lockdowns. The reverse – it means an end to this cycle of half-hearted on-off lockdowns. It is based on the strategy humanity has pursued for centuries across the world when faced with a pandemic. Track, trace and isolate to stop the spread – then vaccinate if you can. Why is that so difficult this time round? Climate change means more, not fewer, pandemics in the future. We need to learn the lessons and get it right next time.

It’s not too late to urge both Labour and the Government to change their strategy from containment, from living with the virus, to suppression and elimination. Both SAGE and Indy SAGE scientists are already talking about a fourth surge in the autumn hitting the young and unvaccinated if we don’t start getting it right.

And it’s never too late to save lives.

There’s much more I could say – and I’ve probably left some really important things out – but I’ll stop there.

I’d like to propose SHAL affiliates to the Zero Covid campaign. We are a grassroots independent campaign involving community, trade union and political activists as well as health workers and scientists. We have model motions for Labour Party and Women’s Conference and will happily supply speakers to constituencies and trade unions. And we are having a day of action this coming Saturday which we hope you will support.

None of us are safe until we are all safe

When, late on a winter’s Friday afternoon, I received a text inviting me to book an appointment for a Covid vaccination I was taken aback by the intensity of my feeling of relief. It was as though a weight had been lifted off me – a weight I didn’t realise had been crushing me down from the time I first learnt about Coronavirus.

I am someone with ‘underlying health conditions’, someone who is ‘clinically extremely vulnerable’. I’ve been chronically ill all my adult life. I have had major operations; years of searing pain; I have lost decades of my life to chronic fatigue; I have been in intensive care and know what steroids and opiates do to your head as well as your body. I didn’t need the government to tell me to stay at home to protect myself. I knew that Covid could kill me and what a Covid death would involve.

Over 2.2 million of us have been stuck indoors, often alone, for months and months. We have received minimal support – relying on friends, neighbours and local volunteers for the most basic help. School children are not alone in needing laptops, broadband and tech help. Short term self-isolators are not the only ones who need a massive increase in financial support.

Our unmitigated joy at the prospect, and then the reality, of vaccination should not be underestimated. Most of us are of an age and/or disability to know and understand pain and grief. We did not expect to escape being counted amongst the hundred thousand and rising who have died an unnecessary, preventable, painful obscenity of a death as the virus has been helped to spread by this Tory government’s inhumane and heartless policies.

And, despite the miracles being wrought by the world’s scientists, we cannot yet be sure that we will escape that fate.

The conventional line is that the Tory government is incompetent – and of course it is. But it isn’t incompetence which very efficiently handed out £21.6 billion worth of contracts for PPE, hospital supplies and an outsourced failed test and trace system to a raft of politically connected companies and individuals;  which embraced, and then denied embracing, a herd immunity strategy; which pledged ‘whatever it takes’ funds to local authorities and then reneged on that promise; which spent £840 million on their Eat Out SuperSpreader while refusing to feed kids during half term; which for a decade ran down, underfunded and privatised our ‘world beating’ National Health Service – and then clapped as staff from overseas were shown the door in the name of taking control. None of that was due to incompetence. Rather, it was a brutal demonstration of the dominant political and economic ideology of our times – one based on individualism rather than collectivity, competition rather than mutuality, big business rather than public health – Profit before Patients, Profit before People, Profit before Life.

The death rate is obscene, and all the more so when you discover that it doubled in just 76 days – 76 days which included Christmas and the on-off opening of schools, and this current phoney lockdown. And just look at the lockdown. It designates estate agents as key workers, allows employers to insist workers come in regardless of health and safety on their commute as well as at work, keeps non-essential construction sites working, allows cleaners to go between homes but bans your mum from visiting, leaves the homeless to freeze on the street, keeps nurseries open but closes reception classes, and provides so little support that only a tiny minority of those who must self-isolate if the virus is not to spread further can afford to do so.

Two young men have been fined £10,000 each for organising a snowball fight. But where are the big fines for bosses threatening workers with the sack if they object to being put at risk? The BBC reports that between 6 and 14 January, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) received 3,934 complaints relating to coronavirus and took enforcement action in just 81 cases, usually a verbal or written warning, with only one company facing tougher action.

Johnson and his ministers are being quite rightly castigated for saying that ‘they did everything they could’, and the list of their failures is getting longer and longer. But we are not seeing any alternative on offer.

The death rate is expected to increase exponentially over the winter months and the age groups being hospitalised and dying are becoming younger. There is a clear danger that, as vaccines are rolled out, the virus will develop the ability to bypass them through mutation, so they either don’t work, or work less well, against new variants.

Our futures cannot rely on vaccines.

They are only half the story – and can only be half of an effective strategy.

Because none of us are safe until we are all safe.

In the UK, the plan is for 14.6 million people in the top four priority groups to receive the first dose of vaccine, then 17.2 million in the next five groups. That leaves 21 million adults who may receive their first dose by the autumn – and their second three months later, by next Christmas. Those figures don’t include children and assume a steady supply of the vaccine will be available.

And, despite a good start to the UK vaccination programme – noticeably run by public sector health experts rather than privatised profiteers – the wheels are already starting to come off. Distribution is erratic, essential second doses are being delayed and, more seriously, we are seeing the beginnings of the vaccine wars, so predictable when we live in a country ruled by protectionists and nationalists, who have just bragged about brokering an acrimonious divorce from our nearest trading neighbour. A mix of EU bureaucracy, vaccine nationalism and the interests of Big Pharma are a potentially fatal combination. And of course this vaccine nationalism isn’t just about the UK and the EU. Just 25 doses of vaccine have been administered across all poor countries compared with 39 million in wealthier ones. I’ll repeat those figures – 25 compared to 39,000,000.

This is a global pandemic. None of us are safe until we are all safe.

An alternative – and additional – strategy to vaccination is essential.

Vaccination has to go hand in hand with a policy of elimination.

That is the policy which has been followed by countries as diverse as New Zealand, Taiwan, Vietnam and Australia. Closer to home, it has also been followed by the Isle of Man, which is now Covid free.

It is not too late for that policy to be adopted here. If it isn’t we will be left hanging around in on-off lockdowns waiting for the death knell for the next 100,000 of our loved ones. And then the next 100,000.

What does a proper elimination strategy involve? It needs a short, sharp, hard lockdown to drive down case numbers combined with and followed up by an effective, public sector track and trace system, comprehensive testing and quarantining for all UK arrivals. Workplaces and shops need to be made safe (the trade unions know how to do this even if employers don’t), with properly funded and supported self-isolation – either at home or in good alternative accommodation – as well as physical distancing and mask wearing. In this way community transmission of the virus can be slashed so that vaccination will have time and space to work and mutation is less likely.

Few if any of those in power seem to grasp that this strategy minimises costs and disruption to education and business, as well as saving the most lives. Instead, Groundhog Day is back – yet again the Tory right are calling for an end to the lockdown and Labour are calling for the schools to reopen. Both anthropomorphise the virus and want us to think it is going to consult its calendar to check term and bank holiday dates – half term maybe, Easter definitely!

The government can do this. It is doing it this week in response to the South African variant – testing, testing, testing (anyone else remember the WHO calling for just that last March?), using local authority public health experts, with Matt Hancock stating that they are coming down hard on the virus and that their goal is to eliminate every single case.

This is the opportunity Labour needs to embrace a full elimination strategy and, rather than piecemeal criticisms, Labour must put forward a detailed and comprehensive package of the measures that should be taken immediately if not just schools but our whole society is to be able to get on with our lives and plan for a better future.

Covid’s ideological breeding ground

covid death graph
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

Battered and depressed by the tragic details of the daily news updates and the frustrations of lockdown, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture – and to forget that the Tory response to the Covid-19 crisis is governed by an extreme right-wing ideology which, when combined with the arrogance and greed of the British upper class, means that their decisions have little to do with saving lives, let alone the NHS.

But there are three key elements of Tory ideology we must not forget as we recoil in horror at what is happening:

  • Lansley ‘reforms’ (aka as the 2012 Health and Social Care Act), which institutionalised competition within the NHS
  • Austerity, which didn’t just starve the NHS of resources but led to follies such as the failure to replenish stockpiles of essential equipment despite the recommendations of Exercise Cygnus
  • Privatisation at every level of the economy, shrinking the state and putting profit before people.

Add to these the poisonous concept of British exceptionalism, cultivated during and by Brexit and given free rein now Boris Johnson and his ‘advisers’ are in Downing Street –the appalling and avoidable result of which is that the UK tops the European death league – and we can begin to understand why we have had to experience:

  • The herd immunity policy pushed by Downing Street’s eugenicists – more appropriately called the ‘cull the herd’ policy.
  • The strategy of mitigation rather than suppression; the failure to comply with WHO guidance to test, trace and isolate; and the refusal to lockdown and close borders at a time when it may have prevented thousands of deaths.
  • Boris’s Nightingale Hospitals – white elephants which diverted resources from existing hospitals and care homes. The questions about who profited from building these have yet to be asked.
  • The disregard and indifference towards social care and care home residents and workers. Why should we be surprised by this when the Tories have repeatedly failed to come up with any social care policy for years, let alone one which would integrate a sector dominated by private companies with the public NHS?
  • The refusal to work with Europe, not just on research and procurement, but now on data collection, with the Vote Leave data harvesters deeply involved in Downing Street’s preferred contact tracing App.
  • Private companies involved at every level – for example Deloitte, G4S, Serco and Capita are all involved in one way or another with procurement and contact testing, with data harvesting a binary choice between the US tech giants and AI firms linked to the Tories’ cronies.
  • The exposure of the health, wealth and race divides in our society, inequalities which have worsened over the past decade and which are now resulting in increased deaths in poor and multi-racial communities.

Now we must add messaging on easing the lockdown so muddled – as economic libertarianism comes into conflict with the public’s health – that key members of the Government have been unable to explain what we are all being advised to do.

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Labour has a historically poor record of confronting the Tories on an ideological level, often letting them get away with pretending they haven’t really got one. Labour failed to challenge austerity until 2015. It tended to treat Brexit as a technical issue to do with trade and EU institutions rather than internationalism and solidarity, and was reluctant to call out its motivating mixture of deeply entrenched xenophobic bigotry, Atlanticism and the demands of a faction of capital. Labour’s response to the coronavirus crisis has similarly focussed on immediate issues rather than challenging the ideological reasons underlying the Tories’ failure to protect the health and lives of all their citizens.

This is to a large extent understandable whilst we are in the midst of the pandemic. Indeed, as one of those tagged with that horrible expression ‘extremely vulnerable’, my most frequently voiced criticism is why aren’t we all shouting louder and louder about the government’s catastrophic mismanagement of almost every single aspect of the crisis. But just as we mustn’t lose sight of the bigger picture in the now, we also need to be looking at it for the future.

One of the most depressing features of the global response to the pandemic has been the lack of international solidarity. Britain has not been alone in pursuing its own beggar thy neighbour policies. Trump’s xenophobia threatens the whole world.

The devastation being wrought by Covid-19 is massive. The global economy is in freefall, and because globalisation and technology have linked the world’s populations like never before, the coming depression will hit everyone.  By the time the pandemic is under control, millions of working people across the world will have lost not just their lives or their loved ones, but their homes and their livelihoods. Hunger and destitution will make many desperate. Add the climate crisis to the pandemic crisis and humanity’s future is bleak if the most powerful countries continue to pursue what their strong men leaders perceive as their own national interests and fail to learn the importance of international solidarity and what could be the real meaning and strength of globalisation.

In this country, if it is left to the Tories, their new normal will be a return, with a few tweaks here and there – and with a lot of failed companies and thousands of unemployed workers – to the same old system of profit first people last. To this will be added the spice of a no deal Brexit at the end of the year. As many of us would love much of our lives to return to the way they were just a few weeks ago, it is going to be hard to challenge the ‘Britain will bounce back’ concept.

But we must. Labour has to seize the opportunity to articulate our values, challenge the Tories on an ideological level, and develop a new programme that really grasps the existential challenges the world faces. Our immediate demand has to be that workers neither in the developed north nor the global south pay for the pandemic through unemployment, tax rises and poorer public services. But we then need to go much further than that.

Our last manifesto was written for a different time and for a different economic situation. Some of its policies have shown themselves to be the most vital in the current situation – the much-mocked free broadband, nationalised railways, NHS investment; other policies such as a universal basic income and a national care service are now on the agenda. But our vision has to be even greater than any of those.

Experience during lockdown has shown both the vital role of the state and which aspects of our society and economy are valuable and essential, which are desirable, and which are unnecessary. If we are serious about tackling the climate crisis then that information must be used to inform a new transformative and radical economic and industrial strategy, which goes beyond the Green New Deal and addresses new ways of working, new ways of living, a shift in the balance between the public and private sectors, and the pressing need to alter the whole basis of income and wealth distribution.

The world changed after the 1919 flu epidemic, and again following World War Two. VE Day was not just about an end to the fighting in Europe and the Allies’ collective defeat of fascism. It was a day of celebration and comradeship which paved the way for one of the most transformative periods in this country’s history. That did not happen by accident. We came together and restructured our society and economy to fight the war and rebuild after it, just as we are doing now in a smaller way to cope with the Covid pandemic. ‘No going back to the way things were’ applies just as much today as it did in 1945.

Keir Starmer rightly says we can’t go back to business as usual and that we must go forward with a vision of a better society. But what does that mean? And how do we turn the rhetoric into reality? Across the world most communities have responded to the crisis with kindness, neighbourliness, sympathy and collectivity. We must all, across the Labour movement, now make use of whatever downtime we have, and the way we can now use technology to talk to each other, to brainstorm new, imaginative and progressive ways of living and organising society. We must be ready to #BuildBackBetter;  for a future based on our movement’s collective ideas, understanding and experiences; for a future which rejects the Tories’ right-wing virus breeding ground of fragmented public services, greed and survival of the fittest, and is founded on genuine solidarity and socialism.

 

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Covid can’t wait – Brexit can

brexit-1491370_1280

Labour must demand a Brexit pause while we tackle Covid-19

Covid-19 has exposed the dysfunction at the heart of the British state after a decade of austerity. That dysfunction has been combined with an extreme right-wing ideology, meaning that we have a government utterly incapable of carrying out its primary function – protecting its citizens. This combination has already led to a litany of failures: the foot-dragging initial response; the refusal to follow World Health Organisation guidelines; the failure to requisition adequate and timely supplies and equipment; the adherence to the immoral ‘herd immunity’ policy favoured by eugenicists and elitists; and the current fetish with non-existent antibody tests to identify an immunity that, without a vaccine, has not been evidenced to exist.

Many have been duped by the Tories’ sudden embrace of public expenditure, but the small print shows that it is all smoke and mirrors. Loans and deferred VAT payments mean SMEs and the self-employed gain little other than a bit of time to pay. Waiting on the phone for hour to then wait another five weeks for a Universal Credit payment is no substitute for the immediacy and simplicity of universal basic income or helicopter payments. Statutory sick pay is not a living wage. Utility and rent bills have not been frozen. Thousands are still going to work in non-essential jobs because they have no choice. Mutual aid volunteers are being asked to pay for groceries as people run out of money.

At the end of the day, as with Donald Trump, Tory policies will always be determined by the bottom line – by stock market rather than fatality numbers. We know which side the Conservatives are really on in those ‘economy vs. people’s lives’ debates. We know that by ‘economy’, they mean profit – not our livelihoods, jobs and household bills. The UK’s departure from the EU’s Early Warning and Response System and European Medicines Agency, and the Tories’ refusal to be part of a 28-country purchasing block for ventilators are not just shameful; they exhibit a pig-headed anti-Europeanism and dangerous British exceptionalism that puts ideology before saving lives.

In these circumstances, Labour must be bold. In recent years, Labour was at its best and most popular when Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell showed clear and firm leadership. Their anti-austerity policies and the 2017 manifesto are prime examples of that. But Labour has also been at its weakest and least popular when clear leadership has not been forthcoming. The 2019 manifesto was as radical as that of 2017, but was always going to get swamped and ridiculed in an election dominated by Brexit. And here, instead of boldness and clarity, Corbyn’s triangulation and failure to challenge the nationalist and populist nature of the Brexit project was a major contributory factor to our defeat.

Keir Starmer has already demonstrated a moving empathy and understanding of the effects of the Covid-19 crisis on the poor and working class. Now he must also be bold on Brexit. The economic and social fallout from coronavirus will be more than most people can cope with, without adding the unnecessary and human-made disaster that the Tories’ preferred hard Brexit constitutes. Brexit and fighting Covid are now inextricably linked.

The UK will, by default, be trading on World Trade Organisation rules come 2021 if Labour does not demand the virtual reopening of parliament immediately after Easter to agree an extension to the transition arrangements. If it doesn’t, then this Brexiteer government – that just a couple of months ago thought Brexit bongs more important than confronting the deadly threat that they knew we faced – will be more than happy to allow the July deadline to pass unnoticed, just as it has already ensured that the important Windrush Report was buried by Covid-19. Whatever their position on Brexit, every Labour member should now be demanding the government press pause on Brexit and concentrates on saving lives. You can sign Labour for a Socialist Europe’s petition to that effect here.

The majority’s reaction to the crisis has demonstrated the power of community, of working together, of solidarity, of support for our key workers and the NHS. Where the government has failed to act, cash-strapped Labour councils have stepped into the breach magnificently, working with all sections of their local communities to feed and support everyone. Pop-up mutual aid groups have linked up with established voluntary organisations, small businesses have used their imaginations to find ways to help, online entertainment and education has transformed many people’s lives and enabled them to live in isolation.

Thousands of migrants, refugees and EU citizens whose lives have been turned upside down by the Tory Brexiteers have instinctively and generously worked with their neighbours to build community support networks. These are the very same migrants who have been subjected to the Tories’ hostile environment, threatened with deportation, banned from receiving healthcare because of the ‘no recourse to public funds’ rules, and who have been the first UK health workers to lose their lives to coronavirus.

We must not let this profoundly ideological Tory government continue to put lives at risk, nor to use this crisis as their opportunity to further right-wing projects. Labour needs to be offering a future in line with the community strengths and power of collective action that a new generation is discovering. More immediately, we must demand a pause to Brexit so that all of our collective efforts can be concentrated on fighting the pandemic. And once this is over, let’s make sure that we don’t go back to normal.

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This article was published in Labour List on 8 April 2020

https://labourlist.org/2020/04/labour-must-demand-a-brexit-pause-while-we-tackle-covid-19/

 

 

Kenneth W Gillman – 1937 to 2019

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Ken Gillman

 

I was unable to attend Ken’s funeral in Katonah, NY, USA on 21 December 2019 but I wrote a few words in his memory

 

Ken was my Big Brother. There were three children in our north London working class family, Ken – born a couple of years before the war, David the wartime baby, and me, the post-war baby boomer. Five years between each of us. Dad was a bricklayer – later to rise to master builder in charge of the site, Mum worked part-time in a local shop.

When Dad went off to war in 1943 (Mum always said that, despite being exempt as a builder, he enlisted then to get away from the new baby…..), Ken was told he was now the Man of the House, and he always took that responsibility very seriously, even after Dad’s return.

After the war, rebuilding London provided employment for Dad, and the three of us were able to flourish and grow with the support of the UK’s new welfare and education systems. All three of us were bright, clever kids who did well at school.

Ken and I were similar, inheriting our mother’s adventurous streak. In his late teens, after a stint as a tea taster in the City, Ken was conscripted to the Air Force for his national service, and I have fond memories of him taking me around the coffee bars of fifties’ Soho when he was home on leave. Mum wasn’t told he’d taken a 9 year old to one of the least salubrious parts of London – instead he’d come up with some story of a park or a gallery – but he engendered in me a love for wandering London’s back streets and people watching. Ken had a broad range of interests – cricket at Lords, the British Museum’s Reading Room, opera (I hated with a passion his repeated playing of Bellini’s ‘Norma’, much preferring David’s rock ‘n’ roll collection!), and he was skilled at seeming more cultured than his upbringing should have allowed. He would adopt names – for years everyone was told his middle name was Maxwell – and pretend backgrounds. I looked up to him – and quickly came to share his non-conformity and refusal to fit the mould.

When Ken brought Gisela and Gabi into our lives he shocked the narrow minds of a neighbourhood deeply infused with hatred of the recent enemy, but our parents stood up to them and this taught me respect for other nationalities. I went on to learn languages, including German, at school as a result of that experience. Ken had been stationed in Germany before the Berlin Wall went up, and he had friends in the East, even though as a national serviceman he was banned from going there. After the Wall came down, I sent him photos from the roof of the newly opened Reichstag so he could share the view.

During the late 60s, by which time I was grown and mingling with London’s artistic and political sub-cultures, and Ken had finally moved on from the Air Force, we lived near each other in Kensington. We’d graduated from coffee bars to restaurants by then, and Ken’s knowledge of good eating places meant we spent some enjoyable evenings together. The British taste for ‘foreign’ food was not as it is today, and we were fortunate to live in one of the few areas of the country where it was possible to taste a range of cuisines.

I missed him when he left London for New York. But he visited often enough for us to remain good friends; and we could go years without contact and then just pick things up as though it had been yesterday. Sometimes his visits were a surprise – without social media to tell others of your every move Ken would often visit our parents without contacting me – but I do remember him turning up one evening unannounced in Lambeth Town Hall in Brixton where I was a leading local councillor demanding to see me because a taxi driver had just told him it had been burnt down and he wanted to check for himself!

When my partner died in 2008 Ken and Wendy became a refuge for me, somewhere far away I could go to hide, to be looked after by my Big Brother. I was always his little sister, treated no differently to his children, hardly surprising given that the age difference between him and me is the same as it is between me and his eldest.

Ken will always be my Big Brother, and I will miss him.

Joan

 

Ken’s obituary was published in the New York Times on 19 December 2019

 

GILLMAN–Kenneth, 82, of Goldens Bridge, New York, passed away peacefully on Sunday, December 15, 2019. Born on June 7, 1937 in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England, Ken was the elder son of the late Dorothy and Walter Gillman. A veteran of the Royal Air Force, he worked as a statistician at the Electricity Council of London, the British Ministry of Defense, and the London office of Reader’s Digest. Ken eventually immigrated to the United States, where he worked in the Pleasantville office of Reader’s Digest until 1984. He then founded Considerations, Inc., which provided global direct mail consulting and regression services. He was President of Considerations, Inc. until his retirement in 2002. From 1983 to 2006, Ken was also the editor-publisher of the quarterly astrological publication, Considerations. In 2009, he authored One After Another, which examined rectification and prediction using planetary sequences. Ken is survived by his wife of 35 years, Dr. Wendy Robinson Gillman, his children, Gabrielle, Noah, O’Dhaniel (Julia), and Michael (Ellen), grandchildren, Natalie, Seri, and Imogen, sister, Joan Twelves, and nephew, Timothy (Nicole). He was predeceased by his brother, David. Ken will be remembered by family and friends for his brilliant mind, quiet disposition, love of nature, and dedication to his family. Family and friends will gather at Clark Associates Funeral Home, 4 Woods Bridge Road, Katonah, NY 10536 on Saturday, December 21st, from 1 to 4pm, with the memorial service starting at 2:00 at the funeral home.

 
 
 
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Rare family get together in London: Joan, Nicole, Tim, Ken, Michael, O’Dhaniel, Noah
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Wendy, Michael + Ken
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Ken, Michael + Joan

Vote Labour for Hope and all our Futures!

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I voted Labour on 12 December 2019 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🌹🌹🌹

Because I believe in social justice and a fair and equal society.

Because I want to stop the right-wing’s Brexit project and remain in Europe
Because I want to live in a progressive, outward-looking country
  • where we don’t fear others and welcome migrants
  • where we don’t just want but can expand our horizons and aspirations,
  • where we work together to stop our planet being destroyed to enrich selfish billionaires and corporations
  • where everyone has a right to a warm, secure home, where mums don’t go without to feed their kids, where we don’t get ripped off by privatised utility companies and unscrupulous landlords, where debt isn’t a way of life
  • where our NHS works for all of us and nobody fears a visit to A&E lest they get left for hours in pain without a bed
  • where I don’t look out of my window at homeless people sleeping and begging, and a sign stuck to the wall advising them how to register to vote
  • where I don’t have to keep telling my landlord that only a third of social tenants can afford broadband and therefore can’t access their services
  • where we restore the welfare state I was born into and have benefited from all my life
  • where our leaders aren’t racist, sexist and homophobic bigots and liars
  • where we aren’t faced with the prospect of incipient fascism.

Vote Labour today for hope and for all our futures!

🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩

 

CONGERIES: THE LAUNCH

Congeries is a magnificent collection of writings by members of the Morley College Advanced Writing class. I’m amongst them!

Only Labour Can Stop Brexit

Only a vote for Labour in Thursday’s European elections can stop the Brexit Party topping the polls.

A ‘tactical’ ‘protest’ vote in these elections is not an option. Remainers must support Labour.

Allowing the Brexit Party to top the poll will not bring about a People’s Vote. The opposite. It will send a message to Europe and the world that a bunch of anti-European right-wing little-Englander charlatans speak for this country, and it will strengthen both their neo-fascist friends across Europe and the No Deal Brexiteers in the Tory Party.

Farage said yesterday “If we win on Thursday, we kill off any chance of them forcing a second referendum on us”. He went on to demand a place in the EU negotiating team.

 Only Labour can beat the Faragists.

 Only Labour can stop Boris and Nigel taking the UK out of the EU on Hallowe’en with No Deal.

 I share the frustration of so many Labour members at the Leadership’s ambiguity on Brexit. But we have to acknowledge that they have pursued the policy agreed unanimously at last year’s Conference – to call for a General Election and for “all options to remain on the table, including campaigning for a public vote”.

There were many shortcomings to that composite motion, not least its failure to spell out that Labour is fundamentally a Remain Party, but the way to change that is not desertion but to use every avenue within the Party to effect policy change, in particular by motions to this year’s Annual Conference as well as supporting calls for a Special Emergency Conference on Brexit now.

I’ve criticised the lack of Labour campaigning in this election. But JeremyCorbyn, accompanied by many Shadow Ministers, was out in Vauxhall yesterday, meeting members, knocking on doors and talking about Labour’s positive vision, including:

“If we can’t get a sensible compromise or a General Election, we’ll back a public vote”. (here) 

Voting anything but Labour may make you feel ‘better’, but it is a wasted vote. None of the smaller parties are in a position to deliver the public vote on Brexit of their claims – only Labour can do that. Nor are they in a position to influence the policies and practices of the EU – only Labour and its allies in the S&D can challenge for the Commission Presidency and affect the EU’s attitude not just to the UK but to a range of policies in respect of austerity, migration and the climate crisis.

Instead of using these elections to send a message to Jeremy Corbyn, our message has to be that fascists of the neo-, alt- or any other variety, are not welcome here, and that only Labour can stop Brexit.

Joan

Photos: @JohnStuttle with thanks - Vauxhall Park, 21 May 2019