New lockdown – Capitalism still can’t protect us – Fight for socialism
Workers’ movement must take the lead and organise mass struggle
Philip Stott, Socialist Party Scotland
The decision to place mainland Scotland and a number of island communities into a new lockdown, for at least the whole of January, means a miserable start to the year for millions.
As we have pointed out, however, misery has a class dimension. According to reports in December 2020, ten of the richest people in the world increased their wealth by £300 billion since the pandemic began.
The CEOs of Britain’s biggest companies now pocket a disgusting 120 times the average wage. It took those bloated bosses just the first three working days in January to pocket the entire annual wage of a skilled worker.
Above all, the Covid catastrophe has highlighted the serial failures of capitalism and governments who defend that system.
Can there be any worse example than bunglin’ Boris and his incompetent claim, on Sunday 3 January, that schools in England were safe to return to, only to announce a day later that they would be shut until mid-February?
Rapidly increasing rates of infection in late December and early January were driven by the new variant of coronavirus. Yet in the words of the Scottish government there were already “stubbornly high” levels of the previous dominant strain throughout the autumn period.
Fears of the NHS being “overrun” and of being “unable to cope” are being raised by elected politicians. Yet these same politicians, Tory, Labour and the SNP, continually cut budgets leading to fewer staff being available to deal with day to day NHS demands never mind with a deadly pandemic. As it is, the number of people hospitalised by the virus is now approaching April’s peak in Scotland.
Much of Scotland was already in the highest level of restrictions pre-Xmas. Repeated warnings from trade unions that schools were key transmission arenas for virus spread were ignored by the SNP-led government.
The refusal to end the school term early, as called for by education unions, added to the anger of teachers and school staff.
A series of ballots in December 2020 by the teachers’ union the EIS saw massive support for declaring a formal dispute with employers over unsafe working in schools. Glasgow, Edinburgh, West Dunbartonshire, Fife and Argyll and Bute all returned 90% plus majorities.
It was clear that an eruption of anger among teachers and school staff generally was certain in the new year. This mood for action was added to by the growing mountain of scientific evidence that the new mutation of the virus was even more prevalent among young people than previously.
The National Education Union in England, along with Unison and other unions, called on their members not to go to work on the first day of term. Incredibly, more than 400,000 watched or took part in the NEU online meeting on the issue on Sunday 3 January.
The beginning of a mass refusal by staff to attend schools, under Section 44 of the Employment Support Act, played a key role in forcing the Tory Westminster government to announce schools in England would stay shut until at least mid-February.
It is precisely the use of industrial action by the workers’ movement that is the key to the fight for safe workplaces – both in the public and private sector – and for the resources to defeat the Covid pandemic itself.
Education unions have recruited large numbers of new members to the their organisations. Since the pandemic started, for example, 100,000 workers have joined Unison. The trade unions have a decisively important role to play in the battles ahead.
The capitalist class and their political representatives have proved incapable of protecting the population. Paralysis and inaction as coronavirus swept the globe in February and March 2020 meant mass infections had already taken hold in Scotland and the UK by the time of the belated lockdown in late March.
The complete absence of adequate PPE and a non-existent test and trace system were fatal mistakes. As were the decisions to move elderly patients, untested, into care homes which led to a wave of deaths. Care staff both in care homes and in the community carrying out heroic work were and still are being left high and dry without access to regular testing.
A key lesson from this catastrophe is the urgent need for a fully nationalised, fully resourced care sector with national standards and nationally negotiated wages and conditions for staff that end the super exploitation rampant in this largely privatised industry.
The trade unions should, in the run up to the Scottish elections in May, make this a key issue. Including, standing their own candidates on a fighting anti-cuts, pro-public ownership platform.
Socialist Party Scotland and the Scottish Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) is helping to pioneer a socialist election challenge.
After the peak of the first wave of the virus, the Scottish government insisted on reopening all schools in August. There was zero social distancing possible in schools with, in some cases, more than 1,000 pupils and staff together in the same building.
Advice that PPE was not necessary suddenly changed to advise the wearing of face masks; too little, too late. By mid-November 2020, more than 3,000 teachers and support staff were self-isolating and 30,000 pupils were off school.
Even now Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney are clinging like limpets to the discredited fairytale that packed school environments do not act to spread the virus.
Vaccine roll out
The same shortages of staffing and resources will inevitably plague the vaccination roll out. It’s clear that there will be enormous challenges, both in terms of vaccine production and distribution – with big pharma responsible for producing the vaccine – as well the huge task on health workers to administer the jabs to those who need them.
According to the Scottish government it will take at least until May 2021 to vaccinate all those over 50 in Scotland. In reality with a three month gap between the first and second doses it will take a lot longer.
Years of austerity have cut staffing levels in the healthcare system to the bone. Inevitably, delays and the pushing back of deadlines will occur, particularly with the amount of vaccine required across the world.
New conflict between the Scottish government and Westminster over who gets what and when can also break out, inflaming the already red-hot national question.
The solution is to fight for workers’ control and management of vaccine production and distribution based on public ownership of the pharmaceutical industry. And for immediate investment into the NHS to ensure the staff and adequate vaccination centres to do the job.
This would allow scientists, engineers and workers’ organisations to co-operate together to prioritise the interests of the working-class majority of society, not capitalist governments and profit-hungry bosses.
National Question
Alongside the Covid-19 pandemic, the Scottish elections will dominate the first half of the year. The election itself will be dominated by demands for a second independence referendum amidst growing support for Scottish independence. Current opinion polls show a consistent majority in favour of both a new referendum and a Yes vote in an indyref2.
The SNP leadership hope to win a sizeable majority in May 2021, which is likely, and thereby apply irresistible pressure on Boris Johnson to concede a referendum – which is almost certainly ruled out.
Therefore a seismic confrontation is being prepared between a determined working class and youth movement on the one hand and the majority opinion of the ruling class in Britain who will resist with fury the possible break-up of the UK on the other. This collision is likely to erupt in the aftermath of the election if a pro-independence majority takes power in Holyrood.
One of the less commented on consequences will be the opening up of an even bigger space to the left of the SNP leadership, not only on austerity and their support for capitalism but also on their fear of leading a mass movement on the streets, workplaces and communities to win self-determination.
Socialist Party Scotland supports the building of a new mass workers’ party based on the trade unions that could lead such a struggle for an independent socialist Scotland. (see new book by Socialist Party Scotland Scotland and the National Question – A Marxist Approach)
The workers’ movement has a critical role to play in offering a united class struggle approach on all of the issues facing the working class including the national question.
Labour’s position in Scotland is desperate. Under Starmer’s pro-capitalist leadership Labour have doubled down on their opposition to the right to decide.
In December Starmer, in a major speech on the future of the union, pledged to “argue passionately against a new independence referendum”. Instead he offered “a UK-wide constitutional commission, advised by former prime minister Gordon Brown, to deliver a fresh and tangible offer to the Scottish people.”
The Labour leader is much closer to the thinking of the capitalist class who, as in the 1990s, understand a new wave of devolved powers will be needed in an effort to stabilise the union.
However, it is very unlikely that serving up Gordon Brown – who was also wheeled out in 2014 in a desperate last-ditch effort to secure victory in the 2014 indyref, will be enough.
The large stick of refusing indyref2 combined with the carrot of more devolution will be dismissed with disdain by large sections of the Scottish working class.
Both in Northern Ireland and in Wales, the national question will also be a major issue for the capitalist class to contend with. There is growing support in Wales for independence and for more devolved powers.
In Northern Ireland the Brexit outcome, which effectively creates a border in the Irish Sea, combined with 2021 being the 100th anniversary of the creation of the Northern Ireland state following partition can also add further fuel to the fire of sectarian conflict.
Economic crisis
The backdrop of indyref1 was the 2007/08 crises and years of austerity. This time it will be all that combined with the pandemic and the unprecedented economic and social crisis in its wake. While it is true that Brexit has added some support to the independence cause, given the sizeable majority in favour of staying in the EU, it is still a secondary factor, especially among the working class.
The enormous class anger in society, the UK government’s awful handling of the pandemic relative to the less awful conduct by the Scottish government also are factors that point to growing support for independence in the period ahead.
The Tories will of course seek to use the measures they were forced to take – paying 80% of UK workers wages for a year for those on furlough – to point to the benefits of the capitalist union.
However, they will clearly, after the pandemic recedes, seek to claw back that money with a new round of attacks on the working and middle class. Already wage freezes in the public and private sector are being pursued.
Even though a certain economic recovery is likely once the vaccination process is complete, it will not be sufficient in depth or scope to ameliorate what has been suffered over the past year. New rounds of austerity in this year’s council budgets are very likely for example.
There has been an 80% increase in claims for Universal Credit in Scotland since the pandemic began, with 475,000 people now in receipt of UC. The ending of state support for wages through the furlough scheme, planned after April, could take this figure close to 1 million.
Demands by NHS and care workers for pay and conditions improvement will not be conceded without the building of mass trade union struggle in 2021 and beyond.
Young people, whether in school, unemployed, college or university, face a system that is crushing their hopes and aspirations.
Last year’s inspiring BLM movement, and the moves towards rent strikes and occupations at universities, are the opening shots of a youth revolt.
The impact on young workers of the jobs slaughter in industry, hospitality and services will create massive anger and result in a new audience for a socialist and revolutionary programme as a way out of the crisis.
Socialism
Working class and youth struggles in 2021 are therefore inevitable. However, the emergence of a generation of fighting trade unions leaders at all levels of the unions and a new mass workers’ party are critical.
Such developments would enormously speed up and sharpen not only the class struggle but also the crystallisation of a socialist consciousness among broad sections of the working class.
Socialist Party Scotland members will be standing in the forthcoming Scottish elections as part of the Scottish TUSC election campaign. We’ll be advocating that the trade unions help launch a new workers’ party by calling a conference for that key task.
At the same time we will be standing for and end to all cuts and for a mass working class campaign for the right for a second referendum on independence. We will stand unequivocally for taking the decisive socialist measures to harness the enormous wealth, science and technique that capitalism has created through the labour of the working class, to start to meet people’s needs, and to safeguard the environment.
That means breaking with profit-driven, rotting capitalism and taking the major corporations and banks which dominate the economy into democratic public ownership.
A democratic, socialist planned economy in an independent socialist Scotland and through a voluntary socialist confederation in England, Wales and Ireland as a step to a socialist world would transform the planet.
A socialist economy would prioritise a living income for all, mass building of high-quality and carbon-neutral housing and expanding massively public services in health care, social care and education.
It’s a fight for the future. Join Socialist Party Scotland today.
