Fight Back! interviewed Andy Brooks, General Secretary of the New Communist Party of Britain, on the impact of the pandemic in Britain. Fight Back!: How are the working people of Britain being impacted by the pandemic?

Brooks: Well the pandemic is something no one in living memory has ever experienced. Thousands of workers, including many pensioners, have died due to the coronavirus. The emergency measures that were eventually taken in late March have now reduced the mortality rate. But many of those deaths could have been avoided if the Johnson government had taken emergency action when COVID-19 first spread to Britain at the beginning of the year.

Most schools and all “non-essential” shops have been closed for over two months, along with all sporting and social events under a lockdown regime not seen since the Second World War.

The government’s emergency measures to stave off social unrest were taken in consultation with the unions as well as Labour and the other opposition parties in Parliament. These included the suspension of business rates for small firms, extending sick pay and increased NHS [National Health Service] funding and providing subsidies for furloughed workers and the self-employed. But they only went part of the way to tackling the escalating threat of a devastating epidemic that has stretched the health service to its limits and seriously undermined the economy at the same time.

Workers have responded cautiously to the easing of some of the restrictions in June. Boris Johnson’s decision to shelve the plan to get primary school pupils back into the classroom before the summer break was welcomed by parents and teachers fearful of a premature return that could trigger off a second wave of the coronavirus plague, particularly given the government’s failure to get an adequate track and test system running and still no sign of a COVID-19 vaccine in sight.

Fight Back!: Are the big factories and large workplaces still functioning? If so, how are workers resisting?

Brooks: Manufacturers were exempted from the UK coronavirus clampdown on “non-essential” work, travel and gatherings. Staff were encouraged to work from home in large parts of the financial sector but in other areas the imposition of social distancing has led to massive cuts in their services.

The social restrictions, which banned all meetings of more than two people, has paralyzed the unions at the grassroots level. Many national union elections have been deferred for a year and all union conferences have been postponed until September at the earliest. The union bureaucracies, of course, continue to function and at a national level; they continue to negotiate with employers while lobbying the Labour Party leadership and the government in the usual way. But the rank and file have not been completely side-lined. While health service workers’ demands for personal protective equipment have still to be adequately met, transport and postal workers have had more success by threatening or taking wildcat action to enforce health and safety demands.

The actions of some Royal Mail depot managers, [which were] indifferent to the government’s emergency health and safety regulations, led to worker walkouts in a number of sorting offices in April that forced management to deep clean the sites and enforce the two metre spacing guidelines.

In London at least 33 London bus drivers have died from COVID-19 and a further ten underground and railway staff have also fallen to the deadly infection. In the absence of any serious response from management, many drivers began taping off the front of their buses to avoid close contact with passengers. This forced Transport for London to suspend all bus fares on April 20 when passengers were banned from using the front door in a bid to shield drivers because the emergency measure meant the card reader next to the driver's cab was out of bounds.

Now we’re seeing workers, particularly young workers, taking to the street in support of the new Black Lives Matter campaign that erupted over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. When they pulled down the statue of the Bristol slave dealer Edward Colston and dumped it in the river last week they sent a message to the ruling class that goes far beyond the issue of the trans-Atlantic slave trade which built the British Empire in the first place.

Fight Back!: How does your organization view the government's response to the pandemic?

Brooks: The Tory government’s response has been evasive and ambiguous. It’s led by Boris Johnson, a vain man clearly unfit to hold public office even by the low standards of the Tory Party he leads. Initially Boris Johnson’s plan for dealing with the coronavirus plague was to let the infection sweep through the population to keep people working to protect the capitalist economy, while accepting that tens of thousands of vulnerable elderly people would die prematurely as a consequence. But Johnson was forced to abandon the “herd immunity” ideas of his Rasputin, Dominic Cummings, which would have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable pensioners, through public pressure that included doctors and pensioners’ groups.

Government figures say that some 41,000 people have died, so far, from coronavirus. Others say the real death toll, when all the deaths in care homes are factored in, is much, much higher. What is certain is that Britain has the highest death rate in the whole of Europe. The easing of the lockdown has led to a surge in the numbers returning to work in central London. Trains and buses are, once again, packed in the rush hours, firing fears that a new round of infection will spread like wildfire across the capital.

Fight Back!: What is the New Communist Party doing in response to this crisis?

Brooks: Our regular fund-raising events have been cancelled. We cannot hold public meetings. Our bookshop outlets are closed and our street sales have been suspended. This has produced a cash-flow problem, but our supporters have responded to the call and our weekly paper continues to come out, as it always has since 1977, for regular subscribers who receive it in the post.

As soon as we can, we will return to campaigning on the street. In the meantime, we fight to put the communist answer to the capitalist crisis back on the working-class agenda in the columns of our paper and in the social media. We stand for Marxism-Leninism. We fight for peace and socialism, solidarity with Venezuela and national liberation movements all around the world and the people’s democracies of China, Cuba, Democratic Korea, Laos and Vietnam. We’ve got plenty to say and everything we’ve said in the past has been proved right.

Our paper represents the voice of struggle in all its forms. It gives a clear communist line on the issues of the day, a Marxist-Leninist analysis of the problems facing the working class and it provides a window to the world communist movement and the national liberation movement; the bigger the readership, the greater our influence. This is our paramount task.

#Britain #International #CapitalismAndEconomy #Opinion #Europe #Healthcare #Interviews #Socialism #COVID19 #NewCommunistPartyOfBritain #UnitedKingdom

The United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union is an event of great importance for the people of the United Kingdom, a fundamental change in the framework of relations between States in the European continent, and the only outcome that guarantees respect for the sovereign will of the British people, expressed in the 2016 referendum.

This important event is inseparable from, and simultaneously an expression of, the contradictions and deep crisis of the European capitalist integration, which increasingly reveals itself in conflict with the peoples' interests and aspirations, increasingly exhausted and incapable of answering the economic, social and political problems affecting various countries in the European continent.

The UK's withdrawal from the European Union represents a serious setback to the theories of inevitability and irreversibility of the European Union; a defeat for all those who tried – through unacceptable pressures, blackmail and maneuvering, in both the European Union and the United Kingdom– to counter the sovereign decision of the British people.

PCP expresses doubts, disagreements and concerns about the terms of the UK Withdrawal Agreement, inseparable from the mould and impositions of the Treaties, the political and ideological nature of the forces that negotiated the Agreement, and the long process of interference and blackmail at the origin of its shortcomings, weaknesses and constraints, and which do not answer the legitimate aspirations and interests of the British people, but rather try impose solutions that keep that country bound by European Union policies.

However, and despite the profound contradictions that have arisen and that continue to mark the social and political situation in the United Kingdom – many of which are the result of pressure and interference from the European Union – PCP underlines that the decision of the British people now realized constitutes a victory over fear, submission and catastrophism, thus representing an additional element in the struggle for another Europe of workers and peoples.

PCP salutes and expresses its solidarity with the communists and other British progressive forces who have never given up affirming and defending an alternative progressive project for the UK to leave the EU and who, in this new framework, defend the rights and aspirations of British workers and people and fight, like PCP, for an alternative framework of relationship between sovereign states in Europe, respecting the sovereignty and rights of peoples.

PCP reaffirms its commitment to fight against all attempts and manoeuvres that, under the pretext of a “reinforced Union of 27” and the supposed consequences of the UK's withdrawal, seek new attacks on workers' rights and the sovereignty of States, the deepening of the neoliberal and militaristic pillars of the European Union, and an even greater asymmetry and concentration of power in the supranational sphere and in the Franco-German axis.

PCP affirms its intention to continue to closely monitor all issues related to the rights of the Portuguese to work and reside in the United Kingdom, and reiterates that the Portuguese Government must resolutely intervene, with the authorities of the United Kingdom and the European Union, to ensure the defense of their legitimate rights – among which, the right of residence, the right to equal treatment, the right of access to public health care and education services, the right to social security benefits, the right to family reunification, the mutual recognition of academic qualifications and professional qualifications.

PCP considers that the Portuguese Government should take the necessary initiatives to ensure the development of mutually advantageous bilateral relations between Portugal and the United Kingdom, within the framework of respect for the sovereignty and equal rights of each country and the rights and aspirations of the Portuguese and British people. Therefore, PCP considers that the defense of the interests of the Portuguese people, and of the Portuguese community in the United Kingdom, should not be constrained or jeopardized by any impositions or conditions from the European Union, namely in the context of a future relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union.

#UnitedKingdom #Europe #PeoplesStruggles #EuropeanUnion

The World Federation of Trade Unions salutes the transport workers in the London Underground in their struggle for the satisfaction of their fair demands and congratulates its affiliate, the RMT Britain, for organizing a 5 day strike in Southern Rail.

The Railway Workers in Southern Rail are struggling to protect their jobs and the security of the workers and passengers. We call all WFTU affiliates and friends to support their hard struggle by any means possible.

WFTU stands on the side of the railway workers and RMT and their struggle for job security and better wages. WFTU calls on all trade unions to take initiatives of solidarity with RMT and send messages of support to the railway workers.

The Secretariat

#UnitedKingdom #WorldFederationOfTradeUnions #WFTU #NationalUnionOfRail #MaritimeAndTransportWorkers

Here in the U.S., the working class continues suffering from right-wing anti-worker policies – cutbacks and privatization of public services and education, giveaways to for-profit health care and insurance corporations, outlawing collective bargaining and unions, curbing voting rights, etc. Few of us among the working class would mourn the death of right-wing figureheads like ex-President George Bush, or Wisconsin Governor Walker, or Florida Governor Rick Scott. Nor should we mourn for Margaret Thatcher after what she did to the working class in Britain.

Under her rule, the coal miners were some of many victims, with Thatcher declaring the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) as “the enemy within.” In 1984, the NUM waged a militant strike for over a year, fighting Thatcher’s privatizations and the closing of coal mines. In Thatcher’s Britain, a militarized police force beat the miners and their supporters off the streets. At least six picketers were killed during the great miners’ strike of 1984-85. Thatcher’s domination of the National Coal Board meant no work agreement, numerous mines closed and more than 20,000 miners losing their jobs. The NUM was gutted.

This should stand as a stark reminder to workers here in the U.S., union and non-union, where we have such a deep-rooted history of militant labor unionism amongst coal miners. The government is in the hands of the wealthy, they will use whatever means necessary to serve the rich.

Thatcher’s policies overseas were even worse. In response to the decline of the British Empire, Thatcher revived a racist and colonial foreign policy. This is the other great tower of her ‘contributions’ to humanity. For example, Prime Minister Thatcher declared the African National Congress a terrorist organization, opposed sanctions on racist apartheid South Africa and, in 1987, Thatcher’s spokesperson said in responding to a reporter that anyone who believed the ANC would ever rule South Africa was “living in cloud-cuckoo land.”

Thatcher was unlikely to win a second term as Prime Minister until she launched a completely unnecessary, but bloody war against Argentina over the tiny Malvinas islands, thousands of miles from Britain and right next to Argentina. Thatcher revived jingoism, the extreme nationalism of British imperialism, and won big in the next elections. In terms of arrogance, she puts the American Republican Party to shame.

So too Thatcher amped up the war on the people in the occupied six counties of Ireland. She unleashed death squads and brought in the shoot to kill policy, but Irish Republicans adapted. It was Thatcher who forced the Irish Hunger Strike, soon broadening sympathy and support for the Irish Republican movement throughout Ireland and the world. Bobby Sands and his comrades are being remembered throughout the world, and especially in Palestine, today.

Due to her anti-worker policies in Britain and her colonial approach to the rest of the world, Maggie Thatcher leaves a legacy of repression, misery and bloodshed. There is no sadness in her death, only the feeling of a burden being lifted and giving new energy to our determination to organize working people and the oppressed to take control of our destiny.

#UnitedKingdom #Imperialism #Remembrances #Europe #Ireland #Argentina #britain #Apartheid #workersStruggle #coalMiner #MargaretThatcher #NationalUnionOfMineworkers

Ecuador’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Integration reported June 19 that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrived at its London Embassy and asked for asylum. Assange stated that with a, “regrettable factual statement of abandonment received by the authorities of my country, Australia, who state that they will not defend even my minimum guarantees before any government and delegate in the constitution of a foreign country that applies the death penalty for the crime of espionage and treason, and the guarantees it offers to its nationals, ignoring the obligation to protect its citizens, who is persecuted politically.

“Such statements make it impossible for me to return to my home country and puts me in a state of helplessness by being requested to be interrogated by the Kingdom of Sweden, where its top officials have openly attacked me, and investigated me for political crimes in the United States of America, a country where the death penalty for such offenses is still in force.”

The government of Ecuador states that it is evaluating the request of Julian Assange and any decision on it will take into account respect for the rules and principles of the International Law and the traditional policy of Ecuador to safeguard human rights.

#UnitedKingdom #AntiwarMovement #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #Ecuador #WikiLeaks #JulianAssange