Coronavirus: Capitalism and austerity are major obstacles to recovery
Statement from Socialist Party Scotland
The devastating Covid-19 pandemic is exposing the failures of capitalist governments and the profiteering system they defend. While governments in general, at least in the early stages of the crisis, have seen high approval ratings there are signs that a change in that initial mood is starting to take place.
Widespread and growing anger over shortages of protective equipment for NHS and social care workers have led to both the RCN and Unison NHS unions to declare members could refuse to work if they don’t have adequate PPE.
Over the weekend there were media reports that the NHS in England would run out of some items of PPE “within hours”. The testing regime in Scotland and the UK has been pitiful – leaving Britain at the very bottom of the league for the numbers being tested.
The rising death toll, well over 1,000 in Scotland and heading towards 20,000 in the UK as a whole, has led to a growing questioning as to what could and should have been done to mitigate the effects of coronavirus.
failures
The recent Sunday Times expose, part of the Murdoch empire let’s not forget, largely confirmed what Socialist Party Scotland and the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) has been explaining for months. In essence, for five weeks Boris Johnson and the UK government were “asleep at the wheel”. This was taking place while medical and scientific sources were saying coronavirus had the potential to be the worst pandemic in a century,
The Sunday Times’ report, after speaking to “scientists, academics, doctors, emergency planners, public officials and politicians”, is devastating. “Britain was in a poor state of readiness for a pandemic. Emergency stockpiles of PPE had severely dwindled and gone out of date after becoming a low priority in the years of austerity cuts. The training to prepare key workers for a pandemic had been put on hold for two years while contingency planning was diverted to deal with a possible no-deal Brexit.”
‘Several emergency planners and scientists said that the plans to protect the UK in a pandemic had once been a top priority and had been well-funded for a decade following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. But then austerity cuts struck. “We were the envy of the world,” the source said, “but pandemic planning became a casualty of the austerity years when there were more pressing needs.”
They quote a government pandemic advisory panel member who commented: “Almost every plan we had was not activated in February. Almost every government department has failed to properly implement their own pandemic plans,” the source said.
A senior department of health official said: “We missed the boat on testing and PPE . . . We just watched. A pandemic was always at the top of our national risk register — always — but when it came we just watched. We could have been Germany but instead we were doomed by our incompetence, our hubris and our austerity.”
Another catastrophic error involved the ‘herd immunity’ – a model drawn up for dealing with a flu epidemic which has no vaccination. Essentially it means allowing for 60% of the population to be infected and for an immunity to then build up in the population at large.
Testing, contact tracing and quarantine was abandoned in early March – even though it had already been proven to work. Talk of a return to that strategy by Nicola Sturgeon for the suppression phase in order to get out of that lockdown is, given how few tests are being carried out – likely to lead to a second and third wave of the pandemic.
Herd immunity was not just adopted by Boris Johnson, but also the top scientific advisors as well. In essence it was a do nothing strategy and let the virus spread. The same missteps were also applied in Scotland.
Scotland
On 2 March, following an emergency Cobra meeting, Nicola Sturgeon announced the “sign-off of a four nations action plan”. On 8 March, Sturgeon said that there was “no substantive difference” between the UK Government and Scottish Government’s approach: On 15 March, Sturgeon repeated that she was seeking to take decisions on a “consistent UK four nations basis”.
The National Clinical Director Jason Leitch was explicit one day later that “community testing and contact-tracing was halted for the containment phase” in accord with the UK Government. Leitch also went on TV and radio talking up herd immunity.
In the words of the normally Scottish government supportive Herald political editor, Iain MacWhirter: “The Tory Government in England and the SNP Government in Scotland are in the same sinking boat.” By the time the lockdown was implemented an estimated 150,000 people had the virus in Scotland.
Austerity is clearly a major factor in the failures over Covid-19. The lockdown policy has prevented the NHS becoming overwhelmed to a degree, yet lack of PPE and the care home horrors have exposed how incapable capitalism is of protecting the population. Privatisation of the care sector, with widespread low pay and exploitation, has contributed to the rapid spread of the virus.
It’s not an accident that the majority of care home deaths in Scotland are in the privatised sector. A lack of PPE, training and the fear of being throw onto statutory sick pay for staff who do go off sick are a finished recipe for virus spread. In council-run care homes workers, who are mainly unionised, can rely on full pay if ill.
Trade Unions are constantly exposing the inaction and criminal neglect over the question of PPE by private sector managers, plus the shortages in the public sector.
The SNP government has cynically attempted to spin an already negotiated pay increase of 3.3% to social care workers to offset mounting anger which bring them up to a paltry £9.30 an hour.
We demand that the care sector is fully brought under the control of local government with trade union rights for all workers. Full pay if off sick and at least a £12 an hour minimum wage as a step to £15 an hour.
Lifting lockdown
Nicola Sturgeon has confirmed lockdown measures will continue for another three weeks at least. The SNP government are now saying they cannot lift the lockdown until evidence of the pandemic infection and death rate curve being suppressed is shown through testing and contact tracing. However currently less than 4,000 tests a day are being carried out.
All the failures around mass testing for which the Tories are rightly being attacked should apply to the SNP.
Trade unions and workplace committees should play a central role in deciding when and how a return to work takes place. Social distancing, health and safety and PPE will be required even after the lockdown is lifted.
National Records Scotland reported in the two weeks to April 5, the number of deaths were 27% higher than the five-year average. Of the 643 “extra” deaths only 282 mentioned Covid-19.
These increases may well be due to people avoiding the NHS, even if unwell. Fears of the NHS being overwhelmed, of not being able to access the care they need, or being too scared to leave the house seem to be major issues. There are reports of significant falls in accident and emergency admissions, and an escalation of the drug deaths that already existed in Scottish society plus the consequences of poverty.
Economic collpase
The economy in Scotland, already with recessionary trends before the pandemic, is collapsing. The Fraser of Allander Institute estimate that production will drop by 30% if the lockdown continues for three months.
The Purchasing Managers Index, measuring output in services and manufacturing, shows Scottish business shedding jobs, dropping 50.1 to 29.7 at an even faster rate than England and Wales which is 50.1 to 36.
The worldwide crash in the oil price also affects the North Sea oil and gas industry. In the last weeks of March, 4,000 were laid off. Shell has paused its projected investment into the Shearwater platform. It is unlikely the deal to cut production by Saudi Arabia, Russia the US and other powers will do enough to stop multinationals pulling out of investment.
The pressure from the capitalist class will be brought to bear on the Scottish government over the next few weeks to end the lockdown not in the interests of the population but for profit.
Sturgeon has echoed the Tories in voicing more anger at the tiny minority who have broken lockdown rules than against greedy bosses who have continued to demand staff continue to work. Witness the example of Skypark call centre in Glasgow, run by Capita, where staff had to publicly appeal to local MSPs over the lack of social distancing.
Socialist nationalisation of the care sector, PPE manufactures, and testing labs, with full workers control of supply chains, are the only guarantee against shortages and profiteering.
Socialist Party Scotland supports any industrial action by workers to demand PPE and health and safety in the care sector, the NHS and any reopened sector in the economy . We call on the STUC and the trade unions to coordinate national action to protect all workers, including setting up health and safety committees in all workplaces.
We have seen again and again during this pandemic how workers action can get results. Unite members at Carntyne transport have organised to win furlough on full pay. Walkouts by postal workers in delivery offices across Scotland forced Royal Mail to implement social distancing and provide PPE.
Tory Chancellor Sunak now warns “hard times” are coming. Hard times are already here now for working people. The price of high-demand food and sanitary products has risen sharply online over the past month – up by 4.4% according to the Office for National Statistics.
For millions the class divisions in society have never been starker. It’s the poor and the working class in general who face the brunt of the health, economic and social crisis. The SNP government only increased support for mental health services in Scotland by £1 million while families live in stress in cramped housing.
Only a tiny minority like Prince Charles, infected with the virus of course, can travel to palaces or even second homes at the weekend. The Scottish Chief Medical Officer broke her own lockdown rules and was forced to resign. Anger at MPs receiving up to £10,000 for having to work from home during the pandemic has been widespread.
Many will now want to go beyond showing the mass solidarity seen in every housing scheme with the clapping for key workers.
A mood of “no going back” to neoliberal unequal capitalism has developed. The SNP leadership have failed ‘social distance’ themselves from austerity and non-existent pro-market solutions to this crisis.
Workers and youth who want to fight for the right to Scottish self-determination and their class interests require a political voice. A new mass trade union-based workers party needs to be built in Scotland fighting for real socialist policies.
Against their will and to save capitalism amidst the greatest economic crisis since the 1930s, the capitalist class and their parties have been forced to use massive state intervention. However the example of the nationalisation of the Royal Bank of Scotland in the crisis a decade ago, still too toxic to privatise, shows, they will bail out the bankers and wealthy share holders at the expense of the working class.
Socialism
As the Socialist Party England and Wales commented in a recent editorial: “A genuine exit strategy – not just from the pandemic, but from the austerity, poverty and exploitation that the capitalist profit system generates – will only be possible in a fundamentally different kind of society.
“This would be based on public ownership of industry, services and finance, in which the planning that governments have been randomly groping towards in this crisis – to build the hospitals, secure essential equipment such as ventilators and masks, distribute food, etc – could be extended to the whole of the economy.
“Working-class people could then democratically decide and prioritise where the enormous wealth that already exists, and will be created in the future, should be spent.”
An independent Socialist Scotland as part of a voluntary and democratic confederation with England, Wales and Ireland could transform society. Instead of 1% of the population controlling 50% of the wealth in Scotland, we could take the banks, top companies, oil and gas into democratic public ownership under working-class control and management to plan a socialist economy that meets the needs of all.
