Fight for a socialist recovery – build mass trade union struggle

Socialist Party Scotland editorial statement

“When the public needed us most we failed.” The revelations by former Tory advisor Dominic Cummings over the chaotic handling of the Covid crisis will have surprised no one.

Both Boris Johnson and health minister Matt Hancock were accused of incompetence, “not fit for the job”, sometimes “criminal” actions were taken and there was “serial lying” over the pandemic.

Johnson believed the virus was no more serious than swine flu. Hancock himself admitted that the UK had no test and trace system at the start of the crisis.

It’s beyond doubt that patients were routinely put into care homes from hospital without testing, resulting in “tens of thousands of deaths”.

The failure over PPE procurement and production left healthcare workers without adequate protection for weeks.

Cummings claimed that in January, February and early March 2020, the discussions at the highest levels of government involved a ‘herd immunity’ strategy.

Basically allowing the virus to spread until enough of the population were infected to build up immunity. Only the most vulnerable would need to be shielded.

The delay in understanding the seriousness of the approaching pandemic applied not just to politicians but to the scientific and medical establishment as well.

Cummings described the many u-turns being made as akin to “a shopping trolley smashing from one side of the aisle to the other”.

Johnson, said Cummings would rather “let the bodies pile high” rather than implement a second lockdown.

None of this will be pleasant reading for the SNP-led Scottish government as they were in lockstep with the UK government over the handling of Covid-19 for months.

Scotland has ended up with the third highest level of excess deaths in Europe, only slightly better than the UK as a whole who are in first place.

On care homes, testing, PPE, putting schools and universities back in the autumn of 2020, the Nicola Sturgeon administration are also culpable.

Sturgeon will no doubt admit to mistakes and errors and a wish to have done better, while pointing the finger at the chaotic Boris Johnson.

It remains a fact that the SNP leadership failed.

After 15 months of lockdowns and restrictions, the largest economic contraction in 300 years, a huge backlog facing under-resourced health services and a developing mental health crisis its clear that Covid-19 has changed utterly our conditions of life.

socialist recovery

As the vaccination programme increasingly provides a route out of the pandemic, the attention of the working class will turn to demands for a recovery.

For jobs, wages, increases in spending for the NHS and public services, affordable homes and no return to cuts and austerity.

It is the most urgent task that the workers’ movement – the trade unions in particular – launch a national campaign on these issues.

A real recovery for the working class means increases in the minimum wage to at least £12 an hour as a step to £15. It means a reversal of the cuts to public services that dominated the last decade.

It means a programme of public ownership to drive the profiteers out of the economy.

It means nationalisation of companies threatening closures. And it means a massive house building and job creation programme to tackle the crisis in employment that will follow the withdrawal of furlough planned for September.

It also means demanding the removal of all legislation, including Covid laws, that bans protest, picket lines and mass gatherings that can be used against the workers’ movement.

Capitalism cannot deliver such a programme for recovery. During the pandemic the global billionaires saw their levels of wealth explode to $15 trillion – an increase of 32% in a year. This was at a time when at least three million people have died from Covid-19.

Global levels of ‘extreme poverty’ will increase this year by 150 million. Today, 3.3 billion people in the world live below the official poverty level of $5.50 a day.

The ruling class are fearful. They know a social explosion against their rotten system is inevitable. In response to the pandemic the capitalist class internationally have vomited out the neoliberal policies that have dominated for the last four decades.

Today, they are turning to a form of Keynesian economics based on state spending and rising government debt to try and forge a recovery.

stimulus

US Democrat president Biden is implementing a $4 trillion stimulus package to kick start the domestic economy.

But that is just one-tenth of the amount spent by US capitalism during the New Deal era that following the 1929-33 world slump.

Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ did not solve the problems for US capitalism. A new recession broke out in 1937 and it was only in the aftermath of the Second World War that a sustained upswing in the world economy took place.

That post-war economic boom ended with a shattering crisis in the 1970s – which marked the start of a new depressionary phase for the capitalist system.

Today, there is no possibility of a return to the ‘golden years’ of 1945-73 boom.

The advanced capitalist countries – G8 – are increasing taxes on the corporations, in part to pay for rising government borrowing, much to the anger of big business.

But these tax rises are small and do not represent a return to even the levels of the 1980s.

Moreover, there are already calls in the US by sections of the capitalist class to start increasing interest rates to deal with fears over rising inflation and ‘too much stimulus’.

Others fear that turning off the tap could pitch the world economy into a new downturn if they act too soon.

The bourgeois hope for an economic ‘bounce back’ based on ‘pent-up demand’, but that may well be short-lived.

For the masses in the neocolonial world these Keynesian measures – which assume a degree of ‘fat’ be used from the coffers of the bourgeois – are a pipe-dream.

Turning off the tap of capitalist state intervention measures to reduce debt will come at some point.

The working class will be asked to pay the price in further attacks on their jobs and living standards. This will be a recipe for explosive class conflict and struggle.

The most burning and urgent of tasks is the building of new mass workers’ parties and fighting trade unions.

Most trade union leaders – even those formally on the left – suspended the class struggle during Covid-19. National unity with capitalist governments in a time of crisis was the order of the day.

Nevertheless there were important class battles over the past year, including over workplace safety.

In the main, though, the trade union leaderships, many of whom support capitalism, actively sought to prevent action from taking place. This is only temporary, however.

Pressure to act on pay, ‘fire and rehire’, on jobs etc will see new waves of struggle erupt.

The temporarily strengthened positions for the right and the rightward-moving sections of the trade union leaderships will give way to new opportunities to build fighting left leaderships at all levels.

Socialist Party Scotland will play a key role in this task. Building combative trade unions is also linked to the necessary task of creating a new mass workers’ party.

In Scotland it’s clear that the SNP leadership have no interest in opposing capitalism.

While they still have large electoral support among the working class, as we saw in the recent Scottish parliament election, they are in no sense a workers’ party.

Their role in implementing austerity and support for capitalism is expressed in the SNP plans for an independent Scotland where the market and profit would come before the interests of the working class.

workers’ party

With Boris Johnson and British capitalism refusing to concede indyref2, only a mass working-class movement for self-determination can break the log-jam.

This is something the SNP leadership will not support. That is another reason why a new workers’ party must be built in order to lead that struggle, linked to a fight back on pay rises, jobs and homes.

With the Blaritie ‘millionaire tendency’ back in charge of the Labour party in Scotland and at a UK level, the trade unions in Scotland should urgently call a conference to discuss the issue of political representation.

Only a new workers’ party with socialist policies can unite the working class on the national question as well as in the struggle for a socialist recovery for the working class after Covid.

Socialist Party Scotland spearheaded the Scottish TUSC election campaign making exactly that case.

Scottish TUSC stood in large parts of Scotland covering 1.5 million electors.

As we said in our post-election analysis: “Overall, the Scottish TUSC campaign was simply necessary.

With an array of pro-capitalist options on the ballot, the need for a fighting socialist alternative was essential.

Now, the attention of workers and young people will turn to the struggles that impend. On the fight for the right to decide and an indyref 2.

On pay rises, jobs, affordable homes and a future free from a system that benefits only the rich and the billionaire class. On the fight for an independent socialist Scotland and for socialist world.

Socialist ideas will gain growing and deeper traction in the new post-Covid period.

The need to build fighting trade unions and a new mass workers’ party is an ever more urgent task.

The seeds planted in this election will grow and become a powerful material force.”