Lockdown : notes from a pandemic

Michael Barker

First published in the UK, October 2, 2020 By Hextall Press, Evington, Leicester

HEXTALL PRESS 2

Introduction

“After weathering the initial onslaught of Covid-19, we can’t go back to normal. Normal is what led to this, and more of it means there will be more pandemics, and they could well be worse.” This is the measured conclusions of the influential scientific journalist, Debora MacKenzie, who is the author of the recent book The Pandemic that Never Should Have Happened and How to Stop the Next One. Moving forward “We have to take the obvious preventive measures,” she says, to protect our society from future pandemics. But her conclusions fail to offer up solutions for how we might overcome the limitations of the old normal. Like the elephant in the room, missing from MacKenzie’s many recommendations is the most the obvious preventive measure, that is ensuring the thoroughgoing democratisation of political decision-making processes. A transformative action that can only be achieved by ordinary people rising- up and pushing forward a global transition to the type of socialist society whereby human needs direct political choices not the need to make profit.1 This perpetual fight for socialism is taking place in workplaces and communities across the world, and this book with its focus on Leicester, has been published as a small contribution towards building this struggle. Throughout the pandemic I have been writing for my blog (“Thoughts of a Leicester Socialist”), and the following text comprises all the posts that I wrote over a six-month period from mid-March onwards.2 When the pandemic began no one knew that Leicester would become the first city in the UK to re-enter lockdown in late June – and from that day right through to today (and no doubt much longer) people have been banned from meeting people from outside their own households in their own backyards. So, much of what I have written over the past months represents my own attempts to interpret these strange goings on – something that was aided by my scientific training and ongoing activism as a Union steward in a local college, and through my role as an Assistant Secretary of the Leicester and District Trades Union Council and as a member of Socialist Alternative.

1 For my review of MacKenzie’s book, see “The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened and How to Stop the Next One: A Review,” International Socialist Alternative, July 29, 2020. 2 Other longer essays and book reviews that I wrote during the pandemic include: “COVID-19: How Big Pharma and Big Philanthropy Consume the World,” CounterPunch, April 16, 2020; “COVID-19 Planning: Is It Time to Nationalize Big Pharma?” CounterPunch, May 15, 2020; “Billionaires Are Not Our Friends: The Limits of Planet of the Humans,” Socialist Alternative (US), May 29, 2020; “Vaccines: Truth, Lies and Controversy: A Book Review,” Under the Mask of Philanthropy, July 20, 2020; “Understanding the Role of Right-wing Conspiracies in the Covid Pandemic,” Under the Mask of Philanthropy, September 27, 2020.

3

Most of the issues I have written about concern themselves with ongoing socialist struggles taking place in workplaces in Leicester and the surrounding area, especially those workplaces employing key workers. One case in point is the manufacturing sector, and most particularly -- a -based company that is vigorously opposed to trade unions. Indeed, Samworth’s failure to listen to the concerns raised by their workers and trade unions mean this company should take some credit for Leicester’s lockdown predicament. One other exploitative food company that features heavily in this book is Greencore Food Group. And although Greencore does recognise a union at their nearby site in Northampton, their ongoing failure to put the rights of key workers before their profiteering highlights many of the types of problems faced by workers throughout this covid-nightmare. Another significant issue covered in this book involves coming to terms with our city’s ongoing sweatshop controversy. This is of course a longstanding concern, but one that once again came to the fore in recent months – with textile workers slaving away for billionaire-owned fast fashion company Boohoo. Unfortunately, this issue is far from resolved. And working with the aid of the Trades Council I am currently involved in building a campaign in the local community to organise workers to fight to end the scourge of sweated labour in a city that is dominated by Tory-lite Labour politicians. Likewise, efforts to fight for all key workers’ rights continues to this day, and will no doubt continue to rise in importance as the pandemic drags on. I only hope that this book will help inspire others to get involved in the fightback against the Tory’s pandemic chaos and enable us to usher in a new era of socialist politics.

Michael Barker, October 4, 2020.

4

How Trade Unions Can Fight Coronavirus and Demand #SickPayForAll March 16 Many people’s lives are currently at risk, and in coming weeks and months the working-class will need to fight hard to demand that our bosses and our government act promptly and democratically to serve our collective interests and act to minimise the growing death toll. As we all know, it was bad enough before coronavirus struck — with all public services including our hospitals and schools already way past breaking point — which means that if we are serious about improving the lives of the vast majority of people in Britain, and across the world, we will need to organise determinedly to lay the ground work for building a socialist alterative to capitalism. In pursuing this vital task, trade Unions can and must play a central role in organising resistance to the dangerous ineptitude of the Tories. And so as a starting point the Trades Union Congress (TUC) — which to its eternal shame has yet to launch any form of meaningful resistance to the Tories anti-trade union laws – has at least produced a useful introductory “Covid-19: Guidance to unions” pamphlet which sets out some of the basics about Coronavirus and it how is transmission is intimately related to the fight for workplace rights. However, as should be expected in the fast-moving reporting on the science of the coronavirus pandemic, some of the information contained within the TUC guide is slightly out-of-date, which is why earlier today the TUC updated their message by producing a useful webinar resource which can viewed on YouTube. In their pamphlet the TUC observe that: “Following transmission, symptoms take an average of 5 days to begin – this differs to flu viruses which tend to incubate very quickly.” Hence this is the reason why handwashing is so very important in stopping the spread of the disease which is “air-borne and contracted by breathing in viral droplets, ejected during coughing, sneezing or even breathing.” The pamphlet however notes that: The virus cannot survive on non-living objects for more than a few hours.” This information has however now been updated, and in the TUC’s webinar the trade unionist commentator highlights how more recent research shows that the virus can live on hard surfaces for up to 72 hours. A point which again illustrates why cleanliness is so vital in limiting the spread of the coronavirus. On other issues the pamphlet remains spot on; and when it comes to the point of holding bosses to democratic scrutiny the TUC explains:

5

“Trade unions should ensure their employer has in place either a separate policy for dealing with COVID-19, or a general policy covering emergencies, major disasters or incidents. It should not be left to employers alone to decide on what is an appropriate response – unions must also be involved, as any effective policy must have the confidence of the whole workforce.” When it comes to hygiene the TUC add:

“Many employers will plan to step up their cleaning regimes in the event of an outbreak. However, they should bear in mind that it is likely that the number of cleaning staff may be reduced as a result of illness. Damp rather than dry dusting should be carried out during a pandemic to avoid the generation of dust and it is recommended that the cleaning of surfaces be carried out using a freshly prepared solution of detergent and hot water followed, where necessary, by a chlorine based disinfectant solution.” Unfortunately owing to cost-cutting and years of austerity many cleaning services are now privatised and workers suffer under appalling conditions with few cleaners obtaining even basic entitlements like paid sick pay. Thus, relating to this point, the TUC make it clear:

“Some workers, employed on zero hours contracts, may find they are not covered by an occupational sick pay scheme, nor Statutory Sick Pay [which is only £94 a week] if they find themselves unwell or must self-isolate. Employers should treat workers on these contracts like any other, and pay sick pay on the basis of a workers’ average hours – or, full pay in cases of isolation.” This is a critical demand that must be raised and fought for by the entire trade union movement. All workers must suffer no loss of pay if they have to self-isolate to prevent the spread of the coronavirus! This is the same now, as it should be even if there was no such thing as the coronavirus. Nevertheless, as a launching point for building a campaign to guarantee full pay for all workers (whatever their contracts) the TUC is asking trade unionists to sign their online petition: “#SickPayForAll: Guarantee decent sick pay for every worker.” Much more needs to be done to halt the spread of the coronavirus, but what is apparent is that the only people who will fight to represent ordinary people are the working-class themselves. So now the life-saving task that lies ahead for us all is to build the strength of the trade union movement and ensure that we minimise the death toll from the coronavirus and work towards building the type of socialist society in which the needs of humans are placed before the needs of the capitalist profiteers in the billionaire-class!

6

Action Taken As a Unison steward at a college in Leicester, earlier today (March 16) I sent the following email to my own management as a starting point to working towards ensuring that the rights of all workers’ rights are protected… To whom it may concern (Senior Leadership Team and Trade Union reps) It now seems likely that an epidemic of Covid 19 will be declared in the in the near future so it is critical that our institution is as prepared as possible for all eventualities. So in my capacity as the UNISON representative I would like to suggest that management call a meeting with trade union representatives to discuss our institutions risk assessment for Covid 19 and their continuity plan for closure. Based upon health guidance that has been proposed from the World Health Organization and from a leaflet produced by members of the Education Solidarity Network (which is organised by members of the National Education Union), at this stage UNISON would like to make the following suggestions/guidance for schools/colleges: Risk assessments for Covid 19: We advise that schools should immediately carry out risk assessments for vulnerable staff including those with disabilities, staff who are pregnant or who are immunocompromised (such as anyone undergoing treatment for cancer, HIV etc). In the case of a suspected case in school, a risk assessment should be carried out to determine whether the school should close in order that a deep clean can take place. Self-Isolation: Government advice is that anyone who develops a persistent cough or fever should self-isolate for a period of seven days. Where this happens, it should not be treated as sickness absence and the member of staff should continue to receive full pay. You do not need a GP certificate to cover this period of isolation. Staff who are self-isolating, may be asked to do work at home if possible. Pre-existing medical conditions: We advise that colleagues with pre-existing medical conditions seek advice from their GP and if advised to stay off work, this should be confirmed in writing. Covid 19: Where a member of staff does contract Covid 19 their absence should be recorded as sickness. However, their absence for this reason should not be counted as part of the trigger for sickness monitoring or review meetings. Caring for dependents: We believe that the current arrangements for taking time off to care for a sick dependent should be relaxed to take account of the current crisis.

7

Agency staff: We believe that staff who are on long-term placement with a school should continue to be paid. We will be campaigning nationally and locally to ensure that our agency staff are protected financially during this crisis. After school events and activities: We believe there should be a review of Directed Time activities such as parents’ meetings, school trips and events outside school. Are these absolutely necessary? Can they be organised in another way. Hygiene: As part of schools’ risk assessments, we think there should be a review of cleaning routines, particularly in respect of handles and switches, keyboards, surfaces etc. All toilet and washing facilities should contain sufficient soap and water to allow users to wash their hands, which can help eliminate or reduce the risk of the virus spreading. Our support staff, especially cleaning, premises and kitchen, should be provided with the necessary resources and protective clothing to carry out their work safely. Exams: Exam boards are monitoring the situation and preparing for contingencies should there be long-term school closures. Our students will be worried about their future and we encourage colleagues to do our best to support them in this challenging time. Workload and cover: Cover policies should not be changed in the light of this crisis. Schools must look at ways of reducing workload at this stressful time and halt all observations and performance management policies. School closures and working from home: If staff absence reaches a level where the safe management of the school cannot be maintained, plans must be in place about minimum staffing with ratios to pupils which do not compromise safety which may involve partial and complete closure to pupils. Time should be given to staff for school closure, so colleagues can work collegiately to support each other in this work. School management should outline their expectations for staff working from home in the advent of school closure.

8

Cleaning Workplaces to Prevent the Spread of Coronavirus March 18 In order to prevent the spread of coronavirus in the workplace, the British government states that it is necessary to “clean and disinfect regularly touched objects and surfaces more often than usual using your standard cleaning products.” This is why the government say that:

“Cleaners and janitors have a key role in keeping those in their buildings protected, and are on the frontline in the battle against coronavirus (COVID-19) to keep staff, customers, and particularly the most vulnerable safe.” It is for this reason that workplaces should ensure that adequate staffing levels are maintained to ensure that the extra cleaning that is required to prevent the spread of coronavirus can take place. If anything, workplaces should look into spending additional resources on paying for more cleaning time during this period of crisis. If adequate cleaning staffing levels are not possible then it may be necessary to close down the premises. It is also necessary to take measures to ensure that all workers (including cleaners and catering staff) can be guaranteed full sick pay if they have to self-isolate because of the coronavirus. This measure is critical as without such assurances, some low-paid workers may feel forced into attending work even while ill, which will counteract the purpose of maintaining a safe working environment. As we can never be sure whether we have had staff or students on the premises who have already contracted coronavirus (and are spreading the virus) then it is necessary to ensure that cleaning staff focus on cleaning “high-contact areas such as bathrooms, door handles, telephones, grab-rails in corridors and stairwells”. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that cleaners should “Practice routine cleaning of frequently touched surfaces… including tables, doorknobs, light switches, handles, desks, toilets [and toilet handles], faucets, sinks, etc.” They add that other surfaces to be cleaned regularly include laptops, tablets, and keyboards. With special reference to computers, The Evening Standard newspaper talked to Dr Yimmy Chow, a consultant in Health Protection at Public Health , which led the paper to conclude that workers “should be cleaning down your office desk before and after you use it for the day.” This includes cleaning desks, keyboards, screens and mouses.

9

It is generally recommended that regular cleaning refers to wiping surfaces at least twice a day. Thus, the Public Health board in Canada write: “In addition to routine cleaning, surfaces that have frequent contact with hands should be cleaned and disinfected twice per day and when visibly dirty.” In order to minimise the need for the cleaning of regularly used doors, it might be possible to leave such doors open. With special reference to areas serving food, tables should be wiped down regularly, and staff should look at ways of distributing cutlery which do not allow infection to be spread easily. For example, staff not involved with the handling of money may pass individual cutlery to students. Bear in mind that the transfer of money between staff and students is another possible means of transmitting coronavirus, and so staff involved in such work should be given time to wash their hands more regularly than normal. Finally, in schools all printers/photocopy machines in public areas should also be disinfected regularly. Consideration might also be given to shortening lesson times by 5 minutes to allow teachers to have time between lessons to thoroughly clean their own hands (a practice that will have a positive influence on students too).

10

Make the Capitalists Pay… We All Need Sick Pay! March 19 Earlier today the leader of the influential Unite trade union urged the government to reassure working people that their incomes will be guaranteed if they are laid off from work because of the coronavirus pandemic. Unite general secretary Len McCluskey called on the government to act by this week’s end to announce a comprehensive incomes support package to reassure millions of worried workers that this disease, which poses huge risks to public health, will not punish them economically too. For the working-class and most particularly for the working-poor this is a life or death issue. This is because capitalists always place the needs of their own bank balances before the needs of the employees who generate all their profits. Take the shocking example of Wilko’s a huge and highly profitable company that has been trying to remove sick pay entitlement from their workers for the past few months. As GMB the union have stated:

“Under the cruel plans there would be no company sick pay after the first occasion of sickness and anyone who has been with the company for less than a year is entitled to no sick pay at all from Wilko.” Industrial action against Wilko will likely happen in the next few weeks given the contempt that Wilko’s bosses are showing for their hard-working employees. And on this front, Wilko workers should take inspiration for the recent victory that cleaners obtained in London. Indeed, earlier this week the rail workers union, RMT, celebrated an important win for privatised tube cleaners who are now going to get full sick pay after a lengthy union campaign. General Secretary Mick Cash said:

“The union has been demanding that all privatised staff on the transport network get full sick pay in light of the Coronavirus outbreak and the news that tube cleaners working for ABM are to get just that is a welcome breakthrough others must now follow.

“Transport workers in all grades are being exposed to high levels of social contact across the board and the idea that any of these essential staff should be financially penalised if they are forced to self-isolate remains a scandal. They cannot opt to work from home and they come into contact with a damn site more people than you encounter on a visit to the pub. Transport bosses and the Government must recognise that fact.

“RMT wants all these services brought in house but the very least that should happen in the interim is that these key staff are fully protected both financially and in the workplace at this time.”

11

Let’s remember that until this victory for cleaners the boss of ABM received just under $6.5 million in wages last year. The stark inequality between such gross levels of corporate pay and ABM’s despicable treatment of their workforce once again demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt why capitalism can never work for ordinary people. More than ever before the world is in crisis because the super-rich have refused to meet the needs of ordinary people, and so now, more than ever before, we need to alter this intolerable situation by fighting for a socialist alternative where the future of society is placed firmly under the democratic control of the global working-class!

Another Inadequate Plan from the Tories for People’s Jobs and Incomes: The Pandemic Continues March 20 Every day that goes by the Tories are forced to do about-face after about-face as their policies belatedly attempt to catch-up with the demands being made upon them by ordinary workers and the trade union movement. But such unnecessary delays on the part of our incompetent and deadly government are costing the lives of thousands of members of the working-class. So what is clear is that the Tories must now be forced to implement the evolving demands of the millions of us regular folk – a process which should be coordinated through joint democratic committees of workers’ representatives. Today, shortly after 5pm, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced his government’s latest partial kowtowing to trade union demands which still goes no way near enough to help our country take the necessary actions to defeat coronavirus. Indeed, right from the start of the coronavirus outbreak, socialists have been demanding that all workers face no loss of pay as a result of pandemic. If there was money for the banks in 2008 there is money for workers now! So today’s announcement from the Chancellor can at least be celebrated as another partial victory for our class, as the government are now saying they are going to step in and help pay some people’s wages, providing grants that “will cover 80% of the salary of retained workers, up to a total of £2,500 a month”. But the first question that will come to most workers minds is why not pay 100% of people’s salaries, after all, if

12 the government can bail out billionaires, they are perfectly capable of meeting such demands of thousands of workers? That said, these new grants are arriving too late for the tens of thousands of workers who have already been laid off, having already been forced into unemployment by selfish bosses. These workers deserve to be reinstated with immediate affect, and the government should state this clearly, and all these workers should have their previous salaries reinstated in full. Tragically, all the government is offering to the swelling ranks for the unemployed is a slight uplift to Universal Credit, which for a single claimant aged under 25 is £251.77 per month which is £3,021 a year. Thus our ever-beneficent government is “increasing the Universal Credit standard allowance, for the next 12 months, by £1,000 a year.” This means that a single claimant under 25 will now (potentially) get £335 a month, which is still a starvation income of £77 a week! But let’s not forget that our not so generous government will also be giving a slight uplift to housing benefit, and as they put it “so that the Local Housing Allowance will cover at least 30% of market rents in your area.” Go figure how people who have just been laid off from their jobs will be able to make ends meet when only 30% of their rent may be paid by the government? Heaping further problems on the governments alleged generosity is the fact that the Tories latest promise does not really help self-employed workers, who, as the Chancellor boasts, “can now access, in full, Universal Credit at a rate equivalent to Statutory Sick Pay for employees.” This is clearly not enough, as Statutory Sick Pay works out to be a paltry £94 a week! Why can’t self-employed workers be paid at least 80% of their salary too? How are people meant to survive when so many people will not have an income that can cover their rent and bills? The Chancellor of the Exchequer is evidently living in cloud cuckoo land when he says “Getting through this will require a collective national effort, with a role for everyone to play. It’s on all of us.” Certainly, we all are expected to suffer while his life of luxury rolls on as normal, helped along by the fact that the wife of the Chancellor (who himself is a former investment banker) is the daughter of a billionaire! A truly collective effort would see the corporate elites like Chancellor Rishi Sunak pay the same amount of tax as the rest of us, and would necessarily entail the nationalisation of all major British corporations so that their immense resources can be deployed to help minimise the rising death toll that will come through this ongoing pandemic. Let’s rid ourselves of our deadly Tory blight and join Socialist Alternative in fighting for a democratic future where workers needs are placed before private greed. Join here https://www.socialistalternative.net/get-involved

13

Preventing the Spread of Coronavirus in Our Supermarkets March 21 We cannot rely upon the bosses of corporate supermarkets to protect workers and shoppers from the spread of coronavirus. So, it is critical that the dominant trade unions in this sector play a leading role in ensuring that the big corporations that run the food sector take every possible precaution to protect everyone! USDAW is the most powerful union within our supermarkets, and with over 410,000 members they have the ability to exert real pressure upon corporate bosses to take workers concerns seriously. This is why USDAW are clear that:

“Shopworkers should have regular access to handwashing facilities. We expect employers to provide staff with hand sanitiser whenever it is available.” (Tweet, March 20) On March 18, USDAW put out a statement on their web site for members, stating:

“Wearing of masks is not recommended for most people as they do not provide much protection and can increase the risk of colds, flu and other infections if not properly used.

“The Union is working with employers to ensure that our members are protected at work, and we are calling on them to ensure that:

handwashing facilities are accessible

workplaces are kept clean

hand sanitiser is available wherever possible to those who need it

staff are properly paid and not penalised if they need to take time off. Although USDAW don’t mention it, we should also be clear that it is not appropriate for shop workers to wear gloves of any kind (unless they are doing so for other reasons unrelated to preventing the spread of coronavirus). For example, a spokesperson for (PHE) has said:

“PHE is not recommending the use of gloves as a protective measure against COVID-19 for the general public. People concerned about the transmission of infectious diseases should prioritise good personal, respiratory and hand hygiene.” Likewise, it has been reported that a virologist at Imperial College London worries that “items like gloves give a ‘false sense of security’ and washing hands is a far better precautionary measure.” Supermarkets should make sanitisers available to staff at every till, not ifs not buts, because the spread of the coronavirus via the handling of money poses a very real

14 danger, and one that can be easily minimised. Prof Sally Bloomfield, of the International Scientific Forum on Home Hygiene, has said:

“Trying to make sure that people do not pass on or pick up the infection via hand contact on surfaces whilst they are in the store is important. In a supermarket it is impossible – because everything customers do is about hand contact.

“I think the best way is to offer customers free hand gel at the entrance and politely ask them to use it to protect other customers whilst they are in the store. Do the same thing for customers who are leaving to protect themselves against people who refused to comply with the earlier request – simple but effective.” Supermarkets should also learn from important safety precautions being taken in other countries, and trade unionists should make every effort to establish international links with their counterparts overseas to share ideas for demands they should be placing upon employers. For instance, in Italy it has been widely reported that customers adopt practices while shopping by forming queues where individuals maintain a 2m gap between one another. Immediate demands for creating safe working environments in supermarkets is one thing, but socialists believe that many other related demands must be made upon the bosses and the government. In this regard members of Socialist Alternative are also presently calling for: • Price controls on hand sanitisers and medicine • End bulk buying – retail unions to set a cap on sales per customer of items under shortage. Special arrangements to be made for elderly and vulnerable people • Democratic workers’ control of supplies of food and pharmaceuticals, including hand sanitisers and wipes, to prevent shortages See more of our demands here https://www.socialistalternative.net/post/quarantine- capitalism-fight-for-a-socialist-alternative

15

Boris Johnson Must Learn Lessons From Italy: People Before Profit! March 22 Most people know that we cannot trust and his government to take the correct measures to protect the safety of the working-class. That much was made clear last Monday when Johnson was forced to drop the government’s dangerous strategy of promoting so-called “herd immunity” which experts warned would result in the unnecessary deaths of around a quarter of a million British people! A crisis is enveloping the world and an article published in yesterday’s New York Times (March 21) pointed out how urgent lessons must be learned from Italy which has now “surpassed China as the country with the highest death toll, becoming the epicenter of a shifting pandemic.” At the moment the area of Italy most affected by the pandemic is the northern region of Lombardy, an area famous for its high density of factories and horrific pollution — a factor which is believed to have only intensified the power of Covid 19 to kill. However, like Johnson the Italian authorities have demonstrated their inability to place the needs of people before profit. The Times reports that on Friday the government “sent in the army to enforce the lockdown in Lombardy” but at the same time they still kept factories open that were producing non-essential products! It was only after the growing death toll was announced on Saturday that the government finally acknowledged that they would respond to the demands being raised by socialists and trade unionists. Hence the New York Times wrote:

“On Saturday night, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced another step in response to what he called the country’s most difficult crisis since the Second World War: Italy will close its factories and all production that is not absolutely essential, an enormous economic sacrifice intended to contain the virus and protect lives.” The lesson that must be learned now by the Johnson government is that they should not sacrifice the lives of British factory workers currently being forced to go to work to produce non-essential items. The Tories must make the call now, before it is too late, and cease all production of goods that are not absolutely essential to defeating the pandemic. The fact that the Italian government delayed making the “economic sacrifice” of shutting their factories is appalling but shows exactly where the priorities of capitalist politicians really lie. For example an article published yesterday by exhausted clinicians working at the Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital in Bergamo (a brand-new state-of-the-art facility with 48 intensive-care beds) noted how their “own hospital is highly

16 contaminated, and we are far beyond the tipping point”. But worse still the clinicians explained:

“But the situation in the surrounding area is even worse. Most hospitals are overcrowded, nearing collapse… We have been in quarantine since March 10. Unfortunately, the outside world seems unaware that in Bergamo, this outbreak is out of control.” (March 21) Yet while “the government put 26 provinces in the country’s northern region under quarantine to halt the outbreak” on March 8, with restrictions preventing all but essential travel, hundreds of factories were kept open! This meant that companies were largely able to carry on with business as normal, with very few taking the correct precautions to prevent the spread of coronavirus. One media report from Italy, dated March 10, pointed out how:

“At factories producing for the fashion sector, work mostly appears to be continuing… Candiani, a denim mill that supplies high-end clients such as Hugo Boss and Stella McCartney, put a notice on its website that production and deliveries are occurring as normal, but it has limited visits from suppliers and limited travel abroad for its staff.” The lessons to learn here from the Italian example will be apparent to all workers in Britain. The Johnson government must be forced to take immediate action, and to do so in a way that does not degrade our basic democratic rights. Some initial demands that have been formulated by Socialist Alternative include (but are not limited to) the following: • No faith in the Tory government to decide what measures are necessary or for how long – for democratic trade union and community committees to decide on recommendations • Widespread provision of free, rapid testing for Coronavirus. Government resources to use this data to fully and properly monitor the spread of the disease • Closure of all non-essential workplaces, with no job losses and wages guaranteed – including for workers on precarious or zero-hour contracts. Employers to support work from home arrangements wherever possible. For emergency state-funded childcare for those who need to work. • A coordinated, international strategy, to fight the virus and develop a vaccine to be free and accessible to everyone – don’t leave it to the corporations and big pharma!

17

Demand That Greencore Treat Their Workers Like Humans During This Pandemic (And Afterwards Too) March 23 In times of crisis you find out who the most important workers really are, and one thing is for sure it is not the bosses. The people who get things done, who make society tick, are the ordinary workers in their millions. Often struggling to make a living, these workers are currently working day and night in our hospitals and in thousands of factories manufacturing our food. And as we know, for too many years, the bosses and elites in society have not been paying these workers enough or treating these essential workers with the respect they deserve. A stunning example of such poor treatment of workers can be found on our doorstep in Greencore giant food manufacturing factory in Northampton, a company whose CEO, Patrick Coveney, earns in excess of £2.3million a year! Understandably with the coronavirus spreading like wildfire, life as we know it has been temporarily put on hold. Therefore, the demand for , which is the main output from Greencore’s Northampton site, has declined somewhat. This reduction in demand for Greencore’s factories can be attributed to the closure of some parts of the service sector, most especially M&S cafes. But if less sandwiches are being ordered by companies like M&S and if the production lines don’t have to run all the time what happens to the workers? Well it turns out that Greencore is making their factory workers slave away on the production lines until their reduced quotas are met, and then they are sending them home and only paying them for the hours worked! For instance, Northampton Greencore workers whose night shifts start around 10pm recently found out that they had met their quota within just a few hours of work and so were turfed out on to the streets at around 2am, with no pay for the remainder of the shift, and leaving those without cars stranded in the middle of no-where with no easy means of getting home. This is barbaric. The government may well pretend that they are taking actions to support workers during these times of crisis, but the fact that so many workers are facing massive pay cuts while still going into work is utterly outrageous. The bosses must be made to pay. Greencore is a hugely profitable company and they should not be allowed to get away with treating such essential workers — workers who keep us all alive — like so much dirt. Trade Unions like the Bakers Union are out talking to Greencore’s workers day and night and doing their best to organise enough workers into their ranks to enable

18 them to organise together to demand full pay whatever hours they work for the duration of the pandemic. Share this article, and do what you can to support all workers slaving away in the critical food manufacturing sector for profiteers like Greencore. It is unacceptable that anybody should lose wages as a result of the coronavirus, let alone those who are helping feed the nation!

THE FOLLOWING LEAFLET WAS DISTRUBUTED BY THE BAKERS UNION AND LEICESTER SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE.

19

Owen Paterson and His Coronavirus Profiteering March 24 Other than key workers, millions of other low-paid workers are still being coerced into working in dangerous conditions, providing goods or services that aren’t necessary to help our country stop the spread of coronavirus. These workers must be allowed to stay at home on full pay, or else be asked to help with the type of work that can help us collectively break the back of the pandemic. The issue of testing for coronavirus has, globally speaking, revealed itself to be a huge problem for the majority of the working-class who simply cannot afford to pay to be tested, or in the case of health workers simply do not have access to such testing. This means that it is more difficult to know who exactly has had the virus or not, which makes it a thousand times harder more difficult for health experts to prevent its spread. This problem however is not one that the ruling-class must worry about. Millionaires like Owen Paterson, the Tory MP for North Shropshire may currently be self-isolating but he can easily afford to purchase the tests they want to. In fact, Mr Paterson has easier access to testing kits than most because since 2015 he has been working as a consultant to the Irish company that is presently making millions from the sale of COVID-19 test kits. The company in question is Randox Laboratories, which since early 2017 has been paying Mr Paterson a wage of £520 an hour for his services rendered to their health profiteering! Remember this is the same sickening MP who in October 2016 gave a speech in which he attacked the idea of have a nationalised health service, promoting the wrong idea that the number of annual avoidable deaths from common serious diseases in the UK is thousands higher than many other places across the globe. Yet it was the privatisation of our health services that has had the biggest negative impact on health provision in Britain, not to mention the funding cuts our NHS has suffered over the past ten years of Tory rule. Yet Mr Paterson has outdone even the Health Secretary in his defence of the indefensible: although that is not too surprising for Mr Paterson who is no friend of science, as demonstrated by his active campaigning against the science of climate change. So when news of his self-isolation made the media (on March 19) he said to the press that he would be “holed up for the next 15 days” which is strange as the current advice is that you only need to self-isolate for 14 days. At no point in the newspaper article does he highlight the work he has done for the company that produces the test for COVID-19, and instead, of his current illness, he said:

20

“Bizarrely I hope it is Coronavirus, particularly as I feel so unwell. At least if I can show that I have had the virus I will have an immunity which could really be an asset. I could get out and about helping knowing that I don’t pose a risk to anyone.” (Shropshire Star, March 19) This harks back to the Tories dangerous plan to promote so-called “herd immunity” which they only ditched (last Monday) when experts warned that it would cost the unnecessary deaths of a quarter of a million British citizens. But even if it turns out that Mr Paterson does have the coronavirus and makes a recovery, it is absolutely not true that he would not pose a risk to anyone. This is because he of course, like of all us, would still be in a position to transmit COVID-19 to anyone he came into contact with. As even if he did recover from a genuine infection, he could still spread the virus between others on his dirty money grubbing hands, and to date no scientist has yet clarified if people can catch (and spread) it more than once.

21

Leicester Socialist Alternative to Launch Campaign to Demand “Full Sick Pay for All Workers” March 24 Promoting health and safety is one of the main issues that trade unions are concerned with on a daily basis. That is why workers are doing everything they can to help coordinate actions between workplaces to do everything in their power to halt the spread of the deadly coronavirus. In the last week, one issue that has become very popular with all workers is the need for levels of sick pay to go beyond that of the £94 a week statutory sick pay that is being provided by the government to only limited numbers of workers. To help address this concern, members of Leicester Socialist Alternative with the support of the Bakers Union (Region 3) are hosting a Zoom meeting tonight on Tuesday 24th March at 8pm. This online meeting will discuss how workers and trade union representatives across the region can most effectively collaborate to ensure that all workers who cannot work for whatever reason (whether closure or self-isolation) will be guaranteed to be able to claim their normal full pay during the length of this crisis. This is a problem that is particularly bad where people are employed on zero-hour contracts and already, prior to the pandemic, had no legal entitlement to sick pay. The Trade Union movement has always played a central role in improving working conditions, and members of Leicester Socialist Alternative believe that during this crisis they can play a positive role in helping workers organise collectively to respond. Anyone interested in participating in this online meeting or getting involved in the “Full Sick Pay for All Workers” campaign should contact Michael Barker on [email protected] or join the Zoom meeting at 8pm tonight via https://zoom.us/j/635650927 https://www.facebook.com/events/655189845037875/ (A press release for this event was sent to the local news media on Monday.)

22

Unite Members Resist the Tories Disregard for Human Life March 25 Last Friday, Unite union members were correctly dismayed at their General Secretary’s apparently glowing endorsement of the money that the government were finally forced to offer (some) workers. Len McCluskey referred to the funding package as “historic, bold and very much necessary” noting that “We recognise that these are huge decisions for any government, and especially for a Conservative government, but they have listened to the calls for action and have acted appropriately.” This is why Socialist Alternative member Danny , who is the branch secretary of Greenwich Unite 2050, recently wrote an article to highlight his disappointment with McCluskey’s comments. But even last Friday it was clear there was open dissension within Unite’s ranks, as Jackie Pollock, their Regional Secretary in Northern Ireland, responded to the government’s offer to workers using similar language to McCluskey but by emphasising the role of workers struggle. Pollock said: “The measures announced today are huge – especially for a Conservative government – but reflect the strength of the demand of workers and the trade union movement for urgent and bold action.” Pollock then went further than McCluskey, continuing:

“It is now vital that clarity is provided that the wage supports announced will be extended to those who are self-employed and also that a living income is provided to zero-hours workers, based on a simple assessment procedure.” That is why many Unite members will have welcomed the more militant statement made by McCluskey on Sunday in which he called on the government to extend its wage support scheme to protect the million plus workers trapped in bogus self- employment in the building industry. But as ever it is the militant actions of organised workers that ultimately can act to make the government see reason. So, while Unite are (as of Monday night) are correctly demanding that all construction sites must be closed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, it is clear that capitalist bosses and their Tory friends will only listen to workers when they take matters into their own hands. This happened earlier today when:

“Approximately 80 employees at ABP Meats in Lurgan who are deemed ‘essential’ refused work today over fears for their safety. Unite has been informed that the workers are demanding adequate social distancing of two metres be facilitated and enforced and other measures be adopted to keep workers as separated as possible and deep-cleans are

23

conducted on work stations where workers have self-isolated with Coronavirus symptoms.” While in another inspiring action that took place today:

“Up to one thousand workers have walked out of the Seagoe Moy Park site in Portadown. This follows the failure of the biggest employer in Northern Ireland to provide basic health and safety protections to its workforce.” There can be no more pleading with the government to protect workers rights. The Tories have only ever attacked us, so now is the time to take pride in our own power. Trade Unions like Unite must take a firm stance and organise mass walk-outs across the entire country to force the government to close down all non-essential production and to ensure that bosses take the necessary precautions to prevent the spread of the pandemic by listening to workers demands for creating safe working environments.

Workers in Italy and Ireland Strike Back Against Their Governments Dangerous Coronavirus Priorities March 27 The Tory government continues to ignore the lessons from the pandemic’s growing death toll in Italy, and ultimately it is the working-class, not Boris Johnson and his Eton buddies, who will pay the price for his failures… in the short-term anyway. Last Friday the military were brought onto the streets of Italy to enforce a lockdown, all the while millions of workers continued working in unsafe factories, many producing completely non-essential items like designer shoes and handbags for Gucci. This only changed on Saturday evening when after much pressure being brought to bear upon the Italian authorities by enraged citizens and trade unionists, the government finally declared a shut-down of all factories producing non-essential items. But all is not well, and on Monday trade unions based in the epicentre of the Italian pandemic pointed out how the list of workplaces that can be exempt from the shut- down “has been excessively extended, covering areas of dubious importance” which has allowed firms “excessive discretion” to apply for exemptions.

24

Militant trade union action was the only tool left at hand to the Italian workers, hence the Lombardy branches of the three main metalworkers unions, FIOM, FIM and UILM, moved quickly to organise strike action. Although not widely heard about outside of the region, the New York Times (March 23) reported:

“In a joint statement, the trio of unions said workers in all factories not directly linked to the beleaguered health sector would down tools. Lombardy’s chemical workers said they would also stay home on March 25.

“’The decree allows a lot of firms to remain open, many without the proper guarantees and safety norms, creating conditions not agreed with us and fanning a lot of concern among workers,’ said Paolo Pirani, national head of the UILTEC chemical and textile workers’ union.

“Bank workers threatened a nationwide walkout, saying they were forced to work in unsafe conditions without masks, gloves and sufficient amounts of antiseptic gels. Several banks have already temporarily closed branches to sanitize them.” (“Italy’s Coronavirus Deaths Slow, Offering Glimmer of Hope,” New York Times, March 23) The important strike was also pushed forward by the USB (Unione Sindacale di Base) which released a press statement on Monday stating that if the government refused to listen they would be forced to take matters into their own hands:

“For weeks now, the USB has asked the government to stop all non-essential production activities to safeguard the health and life of millions of workers forced to go to work every day, a request that has not been listened to despite the explosion of the coronavirus infection.

“Faced with this wicked choice of government, USB has launched the declaration of strike in all industrial companies, logistics, commerce, telecommunications etc.

“Even the latest government decree does not accept the need to stop all non-essential production activities, indeed, with a decree that seems written in the ink of Confindustria, it decides to leave most of the production and industrial activities open.

“In this scenario, with millions of workers who will be forced to go to work with the real risk of getting sick and bringing the virus to their homes, the USB Private Worker has decided to extend the strike and therefore proclaims a further 48 hours of strike throughout Italy and in all industrial companies and sectors not strictly necessary in order to stem the coronavirus.” The importance of such collective displays of working-class militancy and solidarity cannot be underestimated, and such actions are now being replicated around the world. Needless to say this fightback against the greed of the billionaire-class was going on before the coronavirus pandemic struck, and will continue afterwards, as capitalist bosses have never been too keen on allowing workers’ rights to get in the way of their profiteering.

25

Yet the true extent of the Italian government’s ignorance in respect to protecting the lives of their own citizens seems to get worse by the day. Yesterday the Financial Times (March 26) carried a shocking report wherein an intensive-care doctor in Brescia, a city in Lombardy.

“I think we all have it here but they won’t test us, even if we display symptoms, which allows the spread to continue,” the doctor, who did not want to be named, told the Financial Times. “They are not testing the medical staff because we are understaffed and they can’t quarantine us. If things go on this way, this will never end because we will continue to spread the disease and to get sick.” (“Lombardy medics fight to save patients — and themselves,” Financial Times, March 26) The scale of the capitalist-fuelled disaster was further highlighted by the grim statistic that 5,211 medical workers at tested positive for the virus, with a total of 33 dying. That is a death rate of 1 out of every 160 medical workers!

“The first thing to do is to protect healthcare workers, to make sure they are not the ones spreading the virus. Our doctors have been sent to war unarmed,” said Filippo Anelli, president of Italy’s national doctors’ association. “The dead do not make a noise. Yet, the names of our dead friends, our colleagues, put here in black and white, make a deafening noise.” With more than 7,000 already confirmed dead from the virus in Italy, given the lack of testing being undertaken the actual death toll from the outbreak will be even higher. Giorgio Gori, the mayor of Bergamo, has stated that: “For each person who is deceased with a diagnosis of coronavirus, there are three others for whom this is not ascertained but who die of pneumonia.” This would put the current death toll nearer the 30,000 mark! The response of British capitalists is not all that surprising. Take for instance Steve Rowe, the CEO of M&S whose person income is a whopping £1.7 million a year. When his employees at one of his distribution centres complained about the unsafe working conditions and the fact that they were still delivering non-essential products, Mr Rowe sent the following appalling message to his work force stating: “We know customers want to get the essentials they need – like PJs and slippers – and we absolutely should provide them.” Quite evidently PJs and slippers are NOT essential products! Workers lives are however essential to protect, but all Mr Rowe is capable of thinking of is protecting his own wealth – an action he would no doubt deem essential! That is why M&S workers and all other workers being forced to work distributing or producing non-essential should follow the lead take by Italian workers and demand that their unions take industrial action to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

26

It is clear that capitalist bosses and their Tory friends will only listen to workers when they take matters into their own hands. This happened in Ireland on Wednesday when:

“Approximately 80 employees at ABP Meats in Lurgan who are deemed ‘essential’ refused work today over fears for their safety. Unite [the union] has been informed that the workers are demanding adequate social distancing of two metres be facilitated and enforced and other measures be adopted to keep workers as separated as possible and deep-cleans are conducted on work stations where workers have self-isolated with Coronavirus symptoms.” While in another inspiring action that took place on the same day:

“Up to one thousand workers have walked out of the Seagoe Moy Park site in Portadown. This follows the failure of the biggest employer in Northern Ireland to provide basic health and safety protections to its workforce.” Now the breaking news this morning is that sixty workers at Linden in Dungannon are protesting outside their factory demanding safe conditions so they can carry out their essential work. Capitalism is not fit for any purpose. That much has been clear for years, but the dangerous response to this current pandemic is making this fact more apparent to millions of people across the world. We deserve better! That is why later this evening workers from around the world will be joining an ONLINE RALLY organised by Socialist Alternative to find out more about socialists across the globe are already organising to bring about the socialist transformation of society.

27

Remembering Our Key Food Manufacturing Workers Who Are Risking All Because of Their Bosses’ Greed March 28 Like health workers, food manufacturing workers are “key workers” who continue to work unsociable hours in a high-pressure environment for the lowest of pay. But why should the workers who feed us only get paid the minimum wage while the bosses of the huge corporations that employ them make millions? This is the toxic logic of the capitalist system, a broken system that leaches profit form our hard labour and is unwilling to share these gains with the workers who generate them. That is why we need to fight for a socialist alternative in which food workers are treated as the key workers that they truly are! Afterall, why should our key food workers have to demand that their bosses take action to prevent the spread of coronavirus? Because this is exactly what poorly paid food workers are having to do! Thus, earlier this week we saw Irish employees of the ABP Food Group stage militant union walkouts in defence of their basic human right to a safe working environment. Of course it is an indictment of the current political system that any worker should ever have to demand to be treated like a human, but the fact that the sanctity of workers’ lives always seems to come behind profits is why people continue to join trade unions to collectively fight to protect their rights. Socialists always support such organising efforts, but ultimately socialists also believe that a simpler method of sharing the wealth of society amongst all of us, instead of allowing the super-rich to hoard it all, is to get rid of the capitalist system itself. One thing we can be sure of though is that the gap between the billionaire-class and the working-class, the haves and the have-nots, continues to grow by the day. So, while factory workers scrape by on minimum wage, the newly appointed chairman of ABP Food Group. John Moloney, last year earnt nearly £0.5million, not through engaging in hard work, like his staff, but by networking on the board rooms of three powerful companies (these being, the Irish health/energy profiteer DCC plc, the global paper manufacturer Smurfit Kappa, and the food manufacturer Greencore). Although Moloney has just retired from Greencore’s board room so he could join ABP Food Group’s board of directors, one thing remains consistent, and that is the poor treatment of the workers at both major food manufacturers. Only three days ago, Greencore were, like ABP, exposed in the press for treating their employees with utter contempt. One worker who is based at Greencore’s site in Northampton explained how as a result of a downturn in necessary production, management had “put workers on the back burner” with some worker having “been

28 sent home when they turned up for their night shift” while others had “been sent home without pay.” Letting management have the right of response the newspaper article in question then went on to state: “Greencore says any employees who cannot work will receive at least statutory sick pay, depending on what their contract states.” But why should any key workers earning the minimum wage be forced to try to live off £94 a week when they were already risking their lives to come into work to feed the nation? I say risking their lives because Greencore continue to refuse to take anyway near decent precautions to promote social distancing amongst their employees, whether this be on the production line or on the buses that transport their low-paid employees to work. This lack of respect is exemplified by the treatment of a lorry driver earlier this week, who while delivering food to Greencore’s Wisbech site in Cambridgeshire was told by a manager “not to come back” simply because he had asked for hand sanitiser!

There is a good reason why the Bakers Union have taken to referring to the company as MeanCore.

This appalling treatment of key workers is unfortunately all too common in the food industry, and another notable leader in promoting such abuse is Bakkavor Foods, whose contempt for the low pay of their staff led their employees (at their Spalding site in Lincolnshire) to ballot for strike action at the end of last year. This ballot took place when Bakkavor offered their workers a paltry 1.5 per cent pay offer after posting

29

£105 million in pre-tax profits. At the time Unite regional officer Mick Orpin pointed out how:

“Bosses at Bakkavor have absolutely no justification for suppressing workers’ pay year on year when the company has increased its profits year on year. Between 2014 and 2018 Bakkavor’s profits have increased by a massive £40 million but management has left hard- up workers with no choice except to take strike action to fight for their fair share.” Here we should be thankful for victories whenever they come, and the threat of strike action forced their greedy employer to increase their pay offer to 2.5% (which union members then reluctantly accepted even though it was no way near enough). Yet with the coronavirus pandemic wreaking havoc with peoples lives, Bakkavor like many other food processors is refusing to take the threat posed to their workers and their families lives seriously. Thus umpteen reports are now coming out of Bakkavor’s factories that management are still not taking the necessary precautions to allow social distancing to become a reality; unless of course you include the social distance that managers are putting between their front-line workers and themselves; with managers happily ensconced in their offices or working from home. As one shop floor worker put it earlier today:

“I think a lot of people do not feel safe at work right now. People are frightened of the virus and frightened of the repercussions of speaking out. We do not see the management in our factory, they are shut away in an office upstairs and mostly don’t even acknowledge us if you happen to encounter them so they are hardly going to give two hoots when we are “moaning” again. The spike of this pandemic is coming our way and so time is short, we see the temporary morgues being built and the places being turned into emergency hospitals on the news every day, we are being told every day to stay at home but we go to work and everything carries on as normal , apart from sanitizer posts , and a couple of other bit. I feel that going to work is like having a gun held to my head and someone playing Russian roulette with me.” Again, workers faced with loss of pay, and the imminent threat posed by trying to live off £94 a week, are being effectively coerced into work even when conditions are dangerous especially when their own family members are at risk. As another worker put it: “How about social distancing when working on the [Bakkavor production] lines and we are barely 50 cm apart from each other? Often we get agency [staff], everyday different person working in different factories each day who can potentially contract Covid-19 even faster.” What has been clear all along is that no worker should have to work under such horrifying conditions. The entire food manufacturing industry must immediately take the necessary measures, whatever the cost, to ensure that our key workers are safe, whether that is in the workplace, or at home on full pay for the duration of the pandemic. To do anything less is unacceptable, and if the bosses won’t listen then

30 workers will have to engage in walkouts to force their bosses to take the future of their lives seriously, and of those in our communities who may die as a result of food industries prioritising of profits over public health.

CSM Bakery Solutions Workers Fear for Their Lives While Owner Opposes Trade Union Rights for Workers March 31 On Saturday a regional British newspaper ran an article raising concerns about the dangerous conditions at a factory in Bradford. They reported:

“One worker at CSM Bakery Solutions, on Cutler Heights Lane, spoke of their fears… They claimed “hundreds of people” have been gathering to wait to go into work and inside the factory, no precautions are being taken.

“We can physically not work two metres apart, we don’t wear gloves or masks and we are running out of PPE for the people that work with dry ingredients,” they said. The worker added there was “hundreds of people coughing and have symptoms” but are still working. They also raised fears about agency staff coming from other companies.

“I’m scared for mine and my colleagues lives,” said the worker. (March 28) Tragically this is not an uncommon story, and many thousands of essential food workers across the globe are currently being forced to carry on working as normal, with little or no regard for the necessity of safe social distancing measures. It seems that the millionaire and often billionaire profiteers who own the food manufacturing sector only care about one thing, and that is not their workers rights but just their own profit margins. In the case of CSM Bakery Solutions, the ultimate owner of this multinational food manufacturer is a private equity firm based in New York known as the Rhone Group – a group which is run by an ultra-conservative American billionaire name Robert Agostinelli. Although most people will not be familiar with the name of this capitalist predator, football fans from Liverpool probably remember the year that Agostinelli (unsuccessfully) tried to buy their club – a move which led to protests on the kop with banners sporting slogans like “Debt, Lies, Cowboys – Not Welcome Here”.

31

At the time of Agostinelli’s failed bid to buy Liverpool Football Club even The Times newspaper, a famous right-wing rag owned by Rupert Murdoch, was unimpressed with his plans. Thus the paper described Agostinelli as the founder of a “private equity group whose modus operandi is cashing in on the weakness of others” and whose personal hatred of socialist ideas had led him to opine that “the left is a cancer that needs to be eradicated”. As you might have guessed from the above quote, like many capitalists Mr Agostinelli is prone to conspiratorial rants, and in 2010 — the year of his Anfield antics – he penned a hate-filled opinion piece for the Washington Times (a tabloid then owned by the far-right cultist Sun Myung Moon) in which he referred to President Obama as a socialist set to “impose the will of tyranny on our land.” Not one to accept even the slightest nod towards democracy Agostinelli fumed that:

“The descendants of Marx, Mao and the entirety of illiberal and tyrannical minds have finally stuck the raw edge of their poisoned sword into the heart of the glorious genie of capitalism and freedom….The agent of change is their homegrown, deeply indoctrinated, soulless serpent from the deep, President Obama.” But the real reason why Agostinelli was so incensed by his political foe is that he fears democracy – even of the extremely limited sort promoted by capitalists like Obama who, as genuine socialists in America have previously pointed out, “disappointed millions of [his] supporters by failing to enact any fundamental progressive changes” during his time as President. Mr Agostinelli clearly has no intentions of spreading his wealth to help protect British workers and the broader public from the cononavirus pandemic. Yet all the same, we might extend our limited sympathy to Mr Agostinelli’s daughter, Heloise Agostinelli – star of the reality TV show Made in Chelsea – who is one the latest people to have contracted coronavirus and unlike most people was wealthy enough to get tested. Of course, the virus of capitalism that has deeply infected Mr Agostinelli’s mind will mean that it is unlikely that he will learn any useful lessons from his daughters expose to the pandemic. That is why although Mr Agostinelli’s paranoid delusions about Obama are completely false, it is true that he should be worried about genuine socialists who continue to strive to bring workers democracy to the heart of his hugely profitable business empire. Socialists remain at the forefront of Mr Agostinelli’s consciousness precisely because we are committed to democratising all workplaces through trade unions – democratic organising bodies which, with will the pushing of their members, can help coordinate the type of industrial action that can improve the working lives of all workers.

32

The continual prioritising of profits before workers’ rights, like those shown in the case of CSM Bakery Solutions, demonstrates why capitalism is not fit for human consumption, and why workers must struggle to fight for a socialist alternative to the ongoing chaos of capitalist exploitation.

Greencore Workers Demand 100% Furlough Pay! April 2 During the ongoing pandemic, members of the Bakers Union employed in Unit K at Greencore’s factory on Moulton Park Industrial Estate in Northamptonshire continue to fight to improve their workplace rights, battling against an exploitative employer who refuses to recognise any trade union for the basis of negotiations. Showing their contempt for the workers who are currently producing sushi for M&S in Unit K, Greencore have already been forced to deal with the Bakers Union at their site’s four other units (A, B, C, & D), but bosses still won’t extend those same democratic rights to all employees! With the threat posed by coronavirus increasing by the day, over the past few weeks the Bakers Union has received a number of complaints from their members at Northampton in reference to Greencore’s breach of furlough arrangements whereby some members were sent home from work without any formal consultation. But the Bakers Union is clear that any workers who are sent home during this pandemic should not be forced to accept a pay cut! Greencore’s millionaire bosses are still earning hefty salaries a thousand miles away from the minimum wage of their workers, and so they should pledge to do the right thing by their employees and not enforce a 20% pay cuts on their already low paid workforce. This is why the union has now raised a formal grievance with the bosses at Greencore to deal with this critical matter of pandemic pay. However, not every food manufacturing business insists on treating their workers like second-class citizens, and companies like Allied Bakeries have already promised that all their workers will be paid at 100% of their normal salary during any period of furlough. If Allied Bakeries have done it, why not Greencore?

33

Or take the latest news that the very supermarket that Greencore provide food to, M&S, has announced that all their furloughed staff will be getting full pay, and that are “awarding frontline stores and supply chain staff an additional 15% pay in recognition for their work during coronavirus outbreak.” M&S also seem to be taking the safety of their workers seriously and all their staff are being offered “reusable plastic face shields to protect from coronavirus.” We should also note that the public are on the side of the workers too, recognising the vital work that is being undertaken by all key workers, whether they be factory workers or front-line medical staff. In fact, an online petition, signed by more than a quarter of a million people, is currently being circulated that demands that all key workers should be paid 30% extra during the COVID-19 crisis. As the deaths caused by the coronavirus increase by the day, the Regional Organiser of the Bakers Union at the Greencore site, George Atwall, has been kept busy dealing with new and angry recruits to his union. As he explained: “Ordinary people who have lots of good ideas want more than a management suggestion box, they need a union to represent and fight for their ideas.” That is why the Bakers Union continues to push forward their demands for 100% furlough pay for all Greencore staff and for trade union recognition for Unit K workers at the Northampton site. But let’s not forget that Greencore employees, like all other key food workers, should also be entitled to a ‘real’ Living Wage rate which takes full account of the cost of living. The national minimum wage must immediately be lifted to a £12-an-hour minimum wage as a step towards creating a real living wage of £15 an hour. Fresh from a successful national campaign which has just forced Wetherspoons into paying their workers their legal entitlement during this pandemic, the Bakers Union are demanding that the government and their friends in big business (like Greencore) promise essential food workers the following: 1. Full Sick Pay for all casual workers, based on the living wage. 2. £15 an hour for all workers forced to work (people deserve to be paid extra for working during this crisis and risking both their health and that of their families). 3. Service only by Apps and drive through. 4. No loss of pay or jobs during closures. 5. Better health and safety

34

Amazon Contractor Treats Their Workers Like Dirt April 2 Capitalism is an inhumane system that must be replaced with a socialist alternative that puts life before cold cash. We knew it was bad before the pandemic, but the coronavirus outbreak is demonstrating once and for all how completely broken our current economic system is. A perfect example of the inhumanity of capitalism is demonstrated by the working practices enforced by a French telecommunications corporation that operates in over 80 countries and employs more than 330,000 people worldwide. Yesterday the Financial Times reported how at one of Teleperformance’s call centres in the Philippines workers who have been contracted by Amazon to provide support to customers who have bought the US tech giant’s home surveillance systems were faced with permanently living in their office “or forgoing their work entirely.” (“Amazon contractors enduring ‘subhuman’ conditions in Philippines”) This has meant that hundreds of workers having to sleep in close proximity to one another at the Teleperformance facility, “including on the call centre floor itself and in a small gym.” The Financial Times reported that in a letter to their bosses, “workers said conditions had become ‘subhuman’ after the travel ban meant staying at the location was their only option if they wished to get paid. ‘Our choices are only between going to work or else to starve,’ the letter said. ‘And you are all aware that in this desperate time, we will choose the former. But that does not excuse you from your responsibility to treat [us] fairly, as human beings.’” Despite the nature of these appalling working conditions Teleperformance of course like to boast about how caring their corporation is, and on the front page of their web site they talk about “Overcoming Coronavirus Together” noting that “it’s the 330,000 people that work within the TP family that are on our minds and in our hearts during this extraordinary time for humanity. Our employees are the soul of who we are and what we do.” Public relations and the hard slave-like reality of working for corporate giants like Teleperformance are two entirely different matters! Socialists however are fighting back against the systematic exploitation highlighted by the ongoing persecution of workers by employers like Amazon and Teleperformance. Speaking on April 1, Socialist Alternative Seattle councillor Kshama Sawant said:

35

“Workers are facing a double crisis, coronavirus and capitalism. The millions who are at home now have either been fired and so have no income, or have not been fired but have to take leave with no pay. On the other hand, the workers at companies that are still running, are exploiting their workers and making it very clear that billionaire wealth and profit is more important than the safety, health, and lives of their workers. One such company is, of course, Amazon, the trillion-dollar corporation owned by the richest guy in the world. This week dozens of workers at JFK8’s Amazon warehouse on Statten Island, the company’s largest facility in the tri-state courageously walked out.”

Demanding Safe Working Conditions for Britain’s Key Food Workers April 4 Key workers around the world are keeping us alive during this pandemic, yet time and time again bosses and capitalist politicians are failing to do anything meaningful to protect their lives. But these workers are beginning to speak out and mobilise against their disgusting treatment. Earlier this week a food worker employed by Samworth Brothers (a food manufacturer famous for producing products and Melton Mowbray pork pies) spoke to the Bakers Union to blow the whistle on their bosses. Samworth Brothers, which employs over 9,000 workers nationally, has a longstanding reputation for attacking workers’ rights so, for obvious reasons, the employee wished to remain anonymous. This is what they said:

“A few weeks ago, management started to remind all their workers about us being a very big family, that we care about each other, but now we don’t see this at all. We are just normal workers who have to do our jobs, and we are not treated like family.

“Family protects your members, Samworth don’t. If we were really being treated like a family then management would be concerned about our health and lives… so this is not a family this is more like a dictatorship.”

“I hope that something changes because when I wake up every day my first thoughts are of fear, of having to go to work. The first time I felt like this was just last week. Now all I think about after waking up are the dangerous conditions we have to face at work.” Like most factories, some limited measures have been taken by Samworth to help protect their workers, like for example the enforcement of strict social distancing in

36 their canteen. But on the shop floor things are very different, and as the whistle-blower explained “even when managers see that workers are too close together they do nothing.” If management can’t be bothered to take adequate safety measures they should be forced to close for the duration of the pandemic (with workers maintained on full pay), and trade unions should be brought in to ensure that when their sites do reopen that their premises are safe. Samworth Brothers also put their staff at risk because they refuse to pay agency workers who are having to self-isolate after exhibiting symptoms of COVID 19. This creates a culture of presenteeism, where workers are compelled to attend, even if ill, because of the threat of a massive loss of pay. It is not as if Samworth cannot afford to put their workers needs first. By 2017, Sir David Samworth, who is a Tory donor, had amassed a personal fortune in excess of £500million. Perhaps he might skip this year’s donation to the Tories and use this money to ensure the safety of his employees. Full pay for the duration of the pandemic, whether workers can come to work or not, must be guaranteed. This is a question of basic safety and not doing it will put lives in danger! But of course, these issues are not unique to Samworth Brothers. Rival food manufacturing company, 2 Sisters Food Group (with a workforce of 20,000+) is also failing to provide basic safety for its workers, as reported in a local newspaper, Eastern Daily:

“One worker, who completed his first shift at 2 Sisters in Thetford last week, said he was surprised to spend the shift just half-a-metre from other staff. “What struck me was the lack of checks,” he said. “I was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with people on the line.” … The 2 Sisters worker said he was given protective equipment such as boots, a hairnet and overcoat, but claimed he had no training before he started his shift.” (Eastern Daily Press, April 1) 2 Sisters also have a reputation for poor treatment of workers. Indeed, one of 2 Sisters’ board of directors is Alex Russo, who moonlights as the Chief Finance Officer for the budget supermarket Wilko. Last week, Russo and the rest of the corporate management were forced to backtrack on plans to scrap sick pay for Wilko staff. This was a direct result of shop-floor anger and organisation and clearly shows the way forward for Samworth and 2 Sisters workers. As ever, there are many difficulties in organising to protect and extend workers’ rights in the food manufacturing sector, but these are not insurmountable by any means. Only last week Irish food workers employed by ABP Meats and by Linden Foods led successful union walkouts of their factories in defence of safe working conditions in their factories. This is despite the fact that exploitation in many workplaces has been intensified in recent years by the routine use of zero-hour contracts, which is supplemented by the anti-union stance adopted by food bosses.

37

But the only way that workers can stand-up in defence of their workplace rights is by banding together in trade unions so they can speak with a united voice when bargaining with their employer. Individually questioning workers can always be picked off by management, but when they voice their complaints collectively through the democratic structure of trade unions everything changes, and bosses, no matter how bad, can be forced to make changes that improve the working lives of all workers. Throughout history it has always been the case that workplace rights have been extended through the struggle of ordinary workers. Thus important lessons can also be drawn from recent trade union victories across the country, including from members of Unite who forced Kent’s Norse Medway to implement coronavirus safety measures for key workers after staff walked out (April 1) – the Norse Group is a facilities contractor employing more than 10,000 people; members of the GMB union who walked out to condemn DHL, which runs a Swindon warehouse on behalf of M&S, for failing to prioritise worker safety (April 1); CWU union members at three Scottish sites, who took industrial action to raise their concerns with poor health and safety arrangements (the most recent walkout took place earlier today in Edinburgh (April 1); Unite members employed by Hackney APCOA Parking who forced their employer to implement safety measures and in the process won a 50% pay increase for working during the health emergency (April 1) – APCOA has more than 4,000 employees across 12 countries; and Unite members at outsourcing giant Amey PLC who forced management to agree to union demands to acknowledge that all its workers in the UK will be fully paid if required to self-isolate due to the coronavirus (March 31) – Amey employs over 17,000 workers across four continents. Key food workers have always deserved more than minimum wage, and now workers are once again beginning to fightback and demand they are treated like the key workers that they are. Food workers deserve more than the minimum wage crumbs being offered by their millionaire bosses, which is why it is vital to support them by fighting to raise this minimum wage to £12 a hour, with the aim of raising it to a real living wage of £15 an hour in the very near future. Why should food works and the rest of the working-class continue to enrich fat-cat bosses when they treat our keys workers with so little respect? Instead join with other socialists and trade unionists and help lead the fight for a socialist alternative. The world is ours to win.

38

Union Demands Proof That Greencore Can’t Pay Salaries April 4 Greencore workforce are categorised as key workers, although you wouldn’t know it by the way they treat them so badly! Greencore profits were up by 1.8% to £367.8 million in the first quarter of this year, but when the global pandemic hit our shores the food manufacturer decided it had to furlough some of their loyal workforce and punish them with a 20% pay cut! Needless to say the government is paying 80% of the wages of Greencore’s furloughed staff, so it makes sense that Greencore’s millionaire bosses should top-up their workers’ already meagre salaries so during this period of difficulty, their workers can continue to afford to eat. To put into context exactly how greedy Greencore’s bosses really are, we should consider how much money Greencore it would cost them payto the 20% top-up for three months for 300 full-time factory workers. To do this would only cost the company about a quarter of a million pounds, which is substantially less than the annual pension package of their CEO (see “Greencore to review CEO Coveney’s annual pension contribution after shareholder vote,” Irish Examiner, January 28, 2020). But as 1,200 full-time key workers have now been furloughed by Greencore, the cost of paying the 20% top-up for three months would be just short of £1 million. Or put it another way, Greencore could afford to pay all of their furloughed staff by spending the equivalent of 40% of the total annual salary that they give their CEO. (One respectable financial source puts Coveney’s total income from Greencore at a very generous £2,353,000 a year.) So, it is not as if Greencore or it’s CEO is unable to pay their staff fairly… they just don’t want too! Speaking earlier today to the Northampton Chronicle & Echo (April 4), George Atwall, the regional officer for the Bakers Union, questioned the shocking way in which Greencore are treating their staff. He stated:

“The union is asking for 100 percent pay, which is a 20 percent top up on the furlough pay.

“The majority of people who have been furloughed are on minimum wage and shouldn’t be forced to take a pay cut.

“The union wants clear answers.”

39

The newspaper article then went on to point out how “other food companies such as Allied Bakeries and M&S are pledging to pay their staff in full with M&S even offering bonuses,” which is precisely why the Bakers Union believes that Greencore could and should do the same. As one might have expected, Greencore responded to the unions completely fair demands with typical management-speak, whereby they suggested that the union had agreed with their decision to give their furloughed workers a pay cut. The truth is the complete opposite. Of course, the Bakers Union welcomed Greencore’s statement “We can confirm that we have reluctantly taken the decision to make use of the Government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme for a number of our colleagues…” But the Bakers Union didn’t expect anything less: why wouldn’t Greencore take the free money being offered by the government! That said, the Bakers Union have always been clear that the employer should top up the pay of the furloughed workers, as key workers should never be forced to suffer because of the current pandemic. During these difficult times, George Atwall and the Bakers Union continue to be a hundred percent behind the Greencore workers, which is not something that can be said about their greedy employer. Atwall believes that Greencore has made plenty of profits from its workers to treat them properly during this crisis. On this matter he is clear:

“I would say that I am shocked out how Greencore’s spokesperson totally distorted my unions discussions with management, but I am not, as they have a long history of treating their own workers in such an appalling manner.

“That said, if the bosses at Greencore continue to say that they don’t have enough money to top up the pay of their furloughed workers, then they should be forced to prove their companies apparent poverty to their workers.

“What is clear is that by cutting the pay of their furloughed workers, it is Greencore who are forcing their own hard-working staff into poverty. Greencore should immediately open its books to inspection so this multi-million-pound company can prove their poverty to all. Of course they won’t open their finances to democratic scrutiny because as the workers already know the company has plenty to money to pay them properly, they just don’t want to share it.”

40

Samworth Brothers Takes Advantage of Coronavirus April 6 Samworth Brothers is a huge food manufacturer whose turnover exceeds £1.1 billion a year, whose greedy bosses make a tidy profit by keeping the wages of their workforce down low… down very low. The manufacturer also has a long history of opposing trade unions and of intimidating their own employees (a matter that was documented in a previous book). Now with demand for Samworth’s food products slowing down, the exploitative managers at Samworth have been pressurising employees to sign up to new contracts. One by one, key factory workers are literally being frog-marched into management offices, and with no meaningful consultation, are being coerced into signing new contracts with different hours and days of work. For a start this process has no semblance to democratic norms that we should expect in any workplace, which is why there is widespread public outrage that Samworth should treat our countries key workers with so little respect during this pandemic. But as it turns out, it doesn’t make sense that workers should have to change their hours. The driver for these contractual changes is the fact that Samworth are reducing weekend production to save money. This approach is the exact opposite of what other “good employers” are doing to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, as the best way of minimising the risk to employees is by spreading work over as much time as possible. For safety reasons — if factories have to remain open at all — they should stay open for as long as possible. Keeping factories open for their normal operating times, despite reduced output of products, would then allow the speed of the production lines to be substantially slowed down; which would mean that workers would be able to work at least 2m from each other. Yet instead of taking such simple actions that would place the lives of workers before the profits of a few, Samworth have only slowed down their production lines by a tiny amount. This places workers in the dangerous position of having to stand shoulder-to- shoulder on many production lines. This should never be accepted by any key workers. As the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) make clear, if “employers are not complying with the relevant Public Health England guidance (including enabling social distancing where it is practical to do so), HSE will consider a range of actions ranging from providing specific advice to

41 employers through to issuing enforcement notices, including prohibition notices.” Workers should also complain and take collective action via their trade unions. However, it is apparent that the major contributing factor to the ongoing problems facing workers at Samworth sites stems from the fact that the employer refuses to recognise any trade unions for the purpose of negotiating. Something that must change with immediate effect. All key workers lives are placed in danger because of the coronavirus pandemic and so to put the lives of their workers first Samworth bosses must immediately start to talk to the Bakers and Allied Food Workers Union (BFAWU) to take the necessary measures to safeguard their workers. At the same time management must move to guarantee all furloughed workers that they will get 100% of their normal pay; and if some key workers are getting pay increases for working during this global emergency then why shouldn’t the same apply to those key workers employed by Samworth!

McLaren Group Are Still Endangering Workers’ Lives in Construction of Foxes Training Ground April 9 Management at Leicester City Football Club need to do the right thing by the public and immediately speak to their subcontractors to demand that they stop endangering the lives of non-essential construction workers! Earlier this week the Leicester Mercury (April 7) ran a story exposing the life- threatening working practices being undertaken at the £100 million building site of the Foxes new state-of-the-art training centre in Charnwood. The newspaper article explained:

“The construction is being overseen and operated by building company McLaren. One employee of the firm, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “After Boris Johnson made his announcement about non-essential work, I thought the site would close.

“I am unsure how construction work falls under ‘essential work’, and yet we are required to carry out construction on a building that is not essential.”

42

The employee went on to say that it is ‘impossible’ to remain two metres apart, as per Public Health England’s guidance on social distancing.

They added: “We are being told that it is fine.”

Although, the worker did say that some steps were being taken to ensure social distancing, they did not believe enough was being done.

They said: “I feel fine at the moment, but I could go in tomorrow and contract it quite easily, there are so many people there.” If there was ever the case of non-essential building work it would be this. This is why last month (March 31) Unite the union “repeated its call that non-essential construction and maintenance works stop with immediate effect and that workers be put on full pay following the latest revelation of firms who continue to put workers at risk.” Moreover, McLaren Group are hardly a small company, as they employ over 800 people and have an annual turnover in excess of £600 million. They can easily afford to put workers lives first and stop construction on City’s training ground. The irony is that when McLaren began construction on the grounds early last year they made it clear that they were concerned about animal life (which is good). They wrote:

“To facilitate the earthworks, protected newts were collected and rehomed in newly formed areas prior to Christmas. The remainder will be relocated as they emerge from hibernation. From the existing ponds on site, approximately 400 fish have been netted and moved to a new home elsewhere on site.” So, the question is why don’t McLaren’s bosses now take the necessary action to protect their workers?

43

Bakkavor Bullies Key Food Workers April 10 The Tories and their fat-cat friends know exactly what type of abuse is going on in British food factories, they just don’t care! Bullying is the norm, workers are on minimum wage, health and safety is completely inadequate and, as ever, profits reign supreme! Today, Bakkavor’s appalling treatment of their staff is featuring in the news, not because they have done anything particularly unusual, but because a worker managed to secretly film their operations manager in mid-tirade. The manager, who has been told that he will be keeping his job after undertaking some training, is shown to say to his employees:

“…our volume has gone from one million units down to 600,000 units. If we need to get rid of 200 people’s jobs next month, I’m going to look at who turned up to work and I’m going to look at who didn’t bother turning up to work. The people who didn’t bother turning up to work, you know, they will be the first people that we have to get rid of, unfortunately.” Bakkavor has since distanced itself from this message saying the manager’s behaviour was “inappropriate”, but this is not an isolated incident. Two weeks ago, a Bakkavor employee at a completely different factory said: “I feel that going to work is like having a gun held to my head and someone playing Russian roulette with me.” Bakkavor is a powerful player in the global food industry, employing over 19,000 workers in countries as diverse as China and the United States and its owners are not marginal people, but are at the centre of running big portions of the economy. Bakkavor’s chairman, for example, Simon Burke, had previously held various positions, including acting as the CEO of Virgin Retail, Virgin Cinemas, and Virgin Entertainment Group (between 1988 and 1999). More recently he has served as a board member of the BBC (from 2011 until 2019). Burke is also currently a director of a London-based property management company and “has managed buildings in West Kensington, London, for some 16 years.” Burke’s former colleagues at the BBC’s prestigious board of directors includes Sir David Clementi, the broadcaster’s chairman for the past three years who prior to assuming this position acted as the chair of Virgin Money from 2011-2015. The BBC has of course always played a critical role in colluding with the Tories, and New Labour before that, to undermine workers efforts to promote meaningful democracy in their workplaces. So, we should be thankful for small mercies that finally the BBC managed to say something relevant during this ongoing pandemic. And just a few days ago, Emily

44

Maitlis, in her introduction to the BBC flagship show Newsnight unexpectedly explained:

“The disease is not a great leveller, the consequences of which everyone, rich or poor, suffers the same. This is a myth which needs debunking. Those on the frontline right now – bus drivers and shelf stackers, nurses, care home staff and shop keepers – are disproportionately the lowest paid members of our workforce. They are more likely to catch the disease because they are more exposed.” This is all true, although it would have been nice if she had remembered to mention factory workers too. The very people whose lives are most at risk are those same workers who get paid the least and often work in parts of the economy where bullying is rife. This must change, and one significant way in which workers can take power into their own hands is by collectively joining a trade union, and organising their fight-back again their exploitative employers. Taking united action within a trade union, however, is just as important now as it will be when the crisis is over. This urgency for struggle was demonstrated earlier this week when 170 food workers employed by another greedy food manufacturer (2 Sisters Food Group – whose board of directors include Wilko’s Chief Finance Officer amongst their number) took strike action to push forward their demands for a safe working environment. Key trade unions in the food sector include: • https://www.bfawu.org/ • https://www.gmb.org.uk/ • https://unitetheunion.org

45

The Fight Continues to Improve Working Conditions for ALL Carers April 11 Suddenly the corporate media have woken-up to the obvious fact that hundreds of thousands of minimum wage workers, who strive to deliver care in the community or within largely privately-owned cared homes, are not being treated fairly by their bosses or by the government. Just yesterday, for instance, the Financial Times (April 10) highlighted how such low-paid “jobs require patience, stamina and empathy” despite it being labelled as ‘unskilled work’. The newspaper continued:

“But, for now, the virus has added fear to what were already tough jobs. Staff worry constantly that they might transmit the virus to their elderly charges, or their own families. In locked-down hospices and care homes, with distraught relatives kept away, the care workers are having to hold the hands of the dying, trying to give them a decent passage out of the world. This week, a quarter of care staff are off sick or self-isolating. There were 122,000 vacancies in adult social care before all this. We have never needed compassionate care workers more; and their value has never been clearer. A third of care providers say they have been approached by people wanting to volunteer.

“Yet social care remains the Cinderella service. Workers have been at the back of the queue for face masks, gloves and other personal protective equipment, even though many have more close, unavoidable personal contact than some GPs. While NHS staff have rightly been given protected shopping hours in supermarkets, some care workers have reported being stopped from buying food for their clients, even though they are key workers…Many care workers don’t even receive pay for the time they spend travelling between clients.” These same concerns were recently raised in the letters page of my local newspaper, the Leicester Mercury (April 8). One contributor wrote:

“Just an idea. I have carers at home three times a day. Like so many people in my position, words cannot say how much we appreciate them.

“Like the NHS workers, they do a frontline job putting their own lives on hold to care for us.

“Could not all carers, paid or unpaid, in homes or in the nursing homes, be accorded the same appreciation as those who come under the NHS banner?” (Anne Allen, Leicester) On the same letters page, another individual who described themselves as a “key worker in the community doing care work” was concerned that supermarkets, like their local Morrison’s store, were not treating them like they do NHS workers. They wrote:

46

“I thought, maybe wrongly, that key workers would be allowed to go in to shop at opening time without queueing.

“I spoke to the staff at the entrance and they said only NHS staff have the privilege to do so, on Government guidelines.

“So I had to go and queue for 20 minutes.

“It made me late for getting to my clients.” (Anonymous) Finally, in light of the decision of some corporate elites to reduce their pay packets because of the pandemic – in an attempt to try to dissipate the anger of their employees many of whom have had to face pay cuts or unpaid layoffs – another letter writer made a good point. He explained:

“Regarding your story “Business boss stops taking salary” (Mercury, March 30).

“Ian Mattioli own 3,371,939 shares in his company that paid out a dividend last Friday of 7.3 pence a share.

“This gives a net income after deducting the various dividend tax rates of £174,205.

“I think most of us could afford to forego a basic salary for three months with over £1,000 of disposable income per day available.” (Gordon Duncan, Bushby) Trade unions have of course spent years campaigning against the privatisation of care provision, and continue to fight for fair working conditions for all of our countries dedicated and vital care providers. So far, such campaigns have not yet proved able to restrain government attacks on these dedicated workers, but as the UNISON delegate to the local campaigning group Save Our NHS Leicestershire I am pleased that earlier today we have launched an initiative to reach out to all care workers in the region. As our campaign statement made clear:

“We all love and support our NHS workers, but one group of health workers who often get overlooked are carers. Part of the reason for this is that care homes in this country are not run centrally like the NHS, but broken up into lots of different private companies with a huge range of different conditions for their workers and their residents. Carers are also organised into a variety of different trade unions. Many are not unionised at all making it difficult for them to have a voice.

“So we want to appeal to all carers across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland to please get in touch with us, Save Our NHS Leicestershire, if you are facing difficulties at work. We want to do everything we can to help ensure you are all being looked after and treated fairly.

“Do you have enough PPE? Do you feel safe at work? Are you being allowed to self-isolate with pay if you or someone in your home exhibits symptoms? Are you being allowed to self-isolate with pay if you live with a vulnerable person? Has bullying increased as a result of the crisis? Are staffing levels adequate?

47

“If you know someone who is a carer please make sure they see this message. Please like and share this post to make sure the word gets out. We will protect the anonymity of anyone who gets in contact with us but please message us privately either on Facebook or our email: [email protected] and not in the comments below. Alternatively, if you would like to speak to us directly, you can call this number 07896841902.”

University of Leicester Construction Work Carries on Despite Pandemic April 14 Throughout this pandemic we have seen that the needs of big business always trump the sanctity of human life. So, it is fitting that the University of Leicester is ploughing ahead with the construction of the new site for their School of Business on London Road. Henry Boot plc, the construction company carrying out this work on behalf of the university, has made the appalling decision to place the needs of its profit margins before the needs of their own workers. The construction giant also appears to know something about the deadly nature of COVID-19 that the rest of us don’t know about, and after a brief pause in operations, as of April 6, Henry Boot decided it was time to send all the builders back to work! In an astounding statement posted on their website on April 8 they boasted that they “can now consider a phased return on the majority of our sites.” In fact, they add: “The majority of our sites were open from 6 April 2020.”

48

The Truth About and Emilie Oldknow: An Anti-Corbyn Retrospective April 14

As a trade unionist living in Leicester, I have been organising and writing about socialism for many years. By virtue of the fact that I live in Leicester, whether I liked it or not, I found myself writing a number of articles about our three local Labour MPs, Jonathan Ashworth, Liz Kendall, and Keith Vaz. The following article is a synthesis of some of the reports I have penned about Jonathan Ashworth, which I am publishing today because of this week’s disgusting news about how his wife, Emilie Oldknow, had played a critical role in undermining democratic values within the Labour Party.

For many years I have been writing and Leicester politics and Jonathan Ashworth has been a regular feature. In October 2013, with Tory cuts to services in full flow, I wrote one of my earliest articles noting how:

“Ashworth is… never going to take… a principled stand against the government’s unnecessary and vicious cuts agenda, as demonstrated by his ongoing willingness to facilitate the privatisation of our schools. This is after all a careerist who was ‘elected in a by-election in 2011, [and] remains on Labour’s influential National Executive Committee, to which he was appointed earlier this year’; a fine fellow of a man, who just this week has been promoted by Ed Miliband to become a member of the shadow cabinet office.” Around a year later, demonstrating where his allegiances lay, Jonathan then joined most other Labour MPs in voting to back the bombing of Iraq. Then, in January 2015 he once again went along with his fellow New Labour cohorts by voting to cut tens of billions from public services (£30 billion to be precise). After the 2015 General Election Jonathan, not willing to learn any lessons from history, wrote an opinion piece for the local newspaper, the Leicester Mercury, in which he argued that “Labour must… change. We need to become full-blooded in speaking up in defence of public services.” In practice this sounded nice:

“Yet while Ashworth says ‘Labour must… change’ his preferred candidate for Labour’s leadership, Yvette Cooper, does not promise such change. Cooper’s views are in fact quite consistent with those of her husband, Labour Shadow Chancellor Ed Ball, who earlier this year famously promised that his party would not reverse the Tories destructive budget of cuts.

“Thankfully, not all Labour Party members believe that further austerity must be inflicted upon the 99% of us. This is why it is so refreshing that local Labour Party members of Ashworth’s Leicester South constituency chose to back anti-austerity realist Jeremy Corbyn as their preferred candidate to represent the interests of the working-class.”

49

In his aforementioned election ‘analysis’ Jonathan did talk briefly about how sad he was that Labour had performed badly in the Sherwood constituency where “the Tory majority increased from 214 to 4,647”. He failed to mention that this poor result was not entirely unexpected, especially given the fact that when Labour lost their Sherwood seat in 2010, Labour lost 6,552 votes to the Tories, allowing the Tories to gain a majority of 214 votes. Jonathan also forgot to mention that the Blairite responsible for the massive 2010 fail was the person he had chosen to marry just a couple of months later (in July 2010). His now infamous wife, Emilie Oldknow, had at the time been the Labour Party’s Director for the , and her selection for this ostensibly safe Labour seat had made national headlines because it was mired in controversy. As The Times (December 6) wrote at the time:

“A woman who had hoped to be the party’s candidate for the Sherwood constituency in Nottinghamshire has pulled out, claiming that the selection process has been skewed in favour of the fiancée of a close aide to the prime minister.

“Helen Holt believes she has been the victim of dirty tricks by supporters of Emilie Oldknow, whose boyfriend Jonathan Ashworth is Brown’s deputy political secretary.

“Holt said: ‘I feel I have been totally stitched up. My face does not fit. I believe I am being used in a process that from the outside looks fair but is a way of parachuting a candidate into the position because she has family links to Gordon Brown.’” In March 2016, Jonathan failed to attend Parliament to discuss the NHS Reinstatement Bill — a Bill which proposed to fully restore the NHS as an accountable public service by reversing 25 years of marketisation in our health service. By April, Jonathan had now chosen to throw his voice into the ring to help smear Labour as the party of anti-Semites. And later in the year, he was involved in another minor twitter scandal (“the mystery of the boo”) wherein Jonathan helped fan the flames of a national media frenzy about leftwing Corbynistas destroying the Labour Party. By October 2016 Jonathan, perhaps because he skilled at hiding his real poltical views, had the good fortune to be promoted to become Labour’s new shadow health secretary.

“This is… fantastic news for those who are interested in reclaiming the Labour Party as a political party of the working class, as Ashworth has now had to resign from his former position on Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC).” One year one, Jonathan was still pretending to be neutral on the issue of Corbyn. Thus…

50

“…even Labourleaders who ostensibly support Corbyn, like local Leicester South MP Jon Ashworth, continue to undermine genuine socialist policies. Thus in his position as Shadow Health Secretary, Mr Ashworth refuses to commit to kicking all the corporate profiteers out of our health service by supporting calls for the full renationalisation of the NHS.

“By contrast, members of Mr Ashworth’s Constituency Labour Party (CLP) are more clued up as to how to win electoral support for Labour. Thus just prior to the Labour Party Conference, against his wishes, his Constituency members passed a motion proposed by the Socialist Health Association which, amongst other things, called for Labour to reaffirm “its manifesto commitment to restore our NHS by reversing its privatisation and halting Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships.”

“This motion with minor amendments was passed unanimously at the subsequent Labour Party Conference.” In March 2018 Jonathan’s wife, Emilie who had spent the past six years working as the Labour Party’s Executive Director for Governance, Membership and Party Services, quit the Party in an effort to undermine Corbyn’s leadership. Given this week’s past revelations about Emilie’s disgusting behaviour within the Party it is ironic that at the time of her resignation one senior Labour official dubbed her “the brains of the party”. At the time Emilie said she was standing down to “pursue some new and exciting opportunities,” which as we found out a few months later led her to a handy position in UNISON where, with no democratic discussion with the membership, she was anointed as the unions Assistant Secretary General for Resource and Organisation. Surrounding these turbulent months, in April 2018 Jonathan was making his own contributions throwing further fire on the anti-Semitism debate, yet again.

“Take for instance Ashworth’s current engagement with the anti-Semitism smear being waged relentlessly against Corbyn and his hundreds of thousands of supporters in the Labour Party. Ashworth timed his initial public intervention well, and on the very day that the smear was building to a crescendo – on the day of the planned protest on Parliament Square — Ashworth made the following comment on facebook:

“So I’m ashamed of anti semitism in the Labour Party. Jeremy Corbyn has rightly apologised on behalf of the Labour Party and affirmed our commitment to facing it down. Anti semitism has no place in the Labour Party or society. It’s ridiculous of anyone to suggest Jeremy is racist or anti Semitic in fact he has a long history of fighting racism and anti semitism. The reality is anyone expressing anti Semitic views is not socialist, does a disservice to the cause we are fighting for and should be stripped of Labour membership.” (Facebook, 11.31am, March 26, 2018)” Jonathan dug the knife in deeper still in July, at exactly the moment that the UK’s Jewish media (Jewish Chronicle, Jewish News and Jewish Telegraph) ran with identical front-page’s to smear the good name of Corbyn and his socialist supporters. The following month Dave Prentis, the General Secretary of UNISON (Emilie’s new

51 employer), decided to weigh in on the issue of anti-Semitism, criticising Corbyn for not adopting the full International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition.

“No doubt, Corbyn’s Blairite critics will now be facing challenges from both Labour and union members — including those Labour Link officers and ordinary Labour Link members who were not consulted on the decision taken by their national committee — to explain why they persist in ignoring the needs of the rank-and-file labour movement by attacking Corbyn during this ongoing civil war for the future of socialism.” Corbyn’s enemies now knew they were onto a good thing, and in February 2019 Jonathan was quick to attack Corbyn again on the issue of his so-called racism. Speaking to the BBC Jonathan said:

“I think what we’ve seen on anti-Semitism in the party utterly breaks my heart. I am such a big fan of Luciana Berger… She has stood up against anti-Semitism all her political life, she has got my full support. It’s clear that we need to go further and faster in dealing with anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.” The next month, in the wake of the witch-hunt against Chris Williamson (the MP for Derby North who was suspended over allegations of anti-Semitism), Jonathan…

“…latch[ed] upon this issue to undermine Corbyn’s leadership. Hence on the day of Williamson’s suspension he said to Channel 4 News that Williamson’s ‘damaging the Labour movement, and I hope that the leadership take the action that they need to take.’ This is scandalous behaviour on Ashworth’s part, which was reasserted by him in his equally scandalous tweet that only served to distort the entire issue wherein he asserted:

“‘It’s simply not possible to be too apologetic for anti semitism. Such comments are totally wrong, hurtful, offensive, provocative and self indulgent. And there is nothing socialist about castigating the Party & movement for being too apologetic when it comes to racism’ (Twitter, February 27)” In political warfare timing is everything, and just two days before the 2019 General Election Jonathan…

“…was outed in the media for secretly harbouring plans to oust Corbyn as Labour’s leader. He explained to his Tory friend that he hoped that Labour would be able to move forward and get a ‘half-decent leader next time round’. On talking about earlier attempts to depose Corbyn, Ashworth continued:

“‘God knows … because we f***ed it up. We f***ed it up in 2016 when we went too early. People like me were internally saying this isn’t the right moment, but I got ignored.’” These “views are in keeping with Ashworth’s preference for amplifying the attacks on Corbyn via the smear of anti-Semitism levelled against his leadership.” This is why:

“Moving forward it is clearly a large task to undo forty years of neglect. But what is certain is that it is only through a process of thorough internal democratisation that the Labour

52

Party will ever be able to fight for socialist ideas without being shot in the foot by its own elected representatives.

“The Blairites are of course already calling for Corbyn’s head and for an end to the Corbyn Project, and so these attempts to move the Party backwards must be fought against tooth and nail. The essential task that now lies ahead is to fight to ensure that the socialist ideas that have been brought out in the mainstream under Corbyn’s leadership continue to be the policies of the Labour Party.

“Lessons do need to be learned about why Labour failed to win this General Election, but these will not be the lessons that the corporate media will want us to learn. This is because the only way to win the working-class fight for socialism is by coming out and fighting on the streets in an uncompromising way for the socialist ideas that can bring all aspects of the economy under democratic workers control.

“What is certain is that there can no longer be any compromising with those enemies of socialism that still exist with the Labour Party. Tough decisions need to be taken, and taken soon if Labour is to become the mass workers party that it needs to be if it is oust the Tories in the coming years.”

53

How Care Home Providers Like HC-One Profit At the Expense of Us All April 15 During this pandemic, care workers continue to play a vital role in keeping people alive. And in the past few days the government has come under unprecedented pressure to help key workers after deaths in UK care homes soared. For example, as of Monday night, HC-One who currently operate around 350 homes, revealed there had been 311 deaths from confirmed or suspected Covid-19 in their homes, “with outbreaks in two thirds” of them. HC-One’s executive chair, Sir David Behan, defended his company saying: “We have staff feeling anxious not just about PPE [personal protective equipment], but that they will catch the virus and bring it home to their loved ones.” That is all true, but it is not enough to say it if it is not then acted upon. Last week, the Regional Secretary of GMB Scotland, Gary Smith, pointed out that his members working at a HC-One care home had…

“…been raising concerns about the running of the home and the issues raised have not been acted upon by management. The staff were told they were overreacting and causing panic by taking temperatures. Very worryingly they were advised that at the start of the outbreak face masks were actually locked away by management and staff were told they did not need to use them. Concerns have also been raised about staffing levels and specifically levels of nursing cover.” (Daily Record, April 6) HC-One denied these allegations. But it should be noted that because of their dominance in the care industry we should really expect that their care homes might be run more safely than the thousands of others for-profit homes run by smaller companies whose employees’ stories of bullying aren’t considered to be big news stories. HC-One should, in fact, be held to higher standards, as their chair, Sir David Behan, is also the chair of Health Education England and was the former CEO of the Care Quality Commission. Nevertheless, the complaints against HC-One are numerous. On 24th March one Labour Party MP tweeted:

“Getting some really Concerning messages from staff @HC_One no have had terms altered on Sick Pay, threats to dock wages for staff late due to reduced bus service lack of #PPE and more. Spoke to your head office, the promise of a call back never came #coronvirusuk @GMB_union” (Mike Amesbury MP, March 24, 2020) Low pay and insecure contracts are another important issue that continues to dominate the care sector — an area of work where poverty wages of £8.10 are the norm rather than the exception. Last year, for example, in a report that UNISON

54 submitted as part of their evidence to the government’s Low Pay Commission, the union noted:

“The tendency of social care company accounts to perhaps mask greater levels of profitability was perhaps also reflected in the declaration in May 2019 by HC-One, one of the UK‘s biggest care home operators, that it had paid out more than £48.5m in dividends over the last two years. This was despite accounts showing a loss almost every year since its establishment in 2011…” Pay, or lack of it, is a big problem for care workers and, especially when contrasted to the megabucks made by the bosses, contributes to clear class distinctions within HS- One. Bullying is another big concern. Before the pandmic, care worker and UNISON NEC member Polly Smith recalled how staff (but particularly non-union members) in a care home she previously worked in were scared to point out serious work-related problems to their bosses because they believed that “managers would think they were complaining and they’d lose their jobs.” Last week, in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, Polly once again spoke out against the appalling conditions facing care workers. She said that she didn’t feel safe and “said workers have to rely on ‘rumours’ to work out who has suspected coronavirus.” She continued:

“They’re not telling us anything. It would be better if the manager came out and said who has a temperature, and who has been coughing. I actually heard from a nurse on duty that a resident had symptoms and then died from it. Who do you believe—the nurse or the manager? I believe the nurse.” HC-One has paid “no UK corporation tax” since its creation in 2011. Its “highest paid senior director” has been paid £2.5 million over this period (Financial Times, May 10, 2019). One wonders how they can get away with paying their staff so little? But the answer is fairly simple: they pretend they make little-to-no profits. Their financial structures are organised in ways that are next to impossible to submit to democratic scrutiny. Even the Financial Times notes that:

“Tracing the flow of money is difficult as HC-One has a complex corporate structure, with 50 companies, six of which are registered offshore either in the Cayman Islands or Jersey and a further five in the UK as foreign entities. This means investors and executives are likely to have received much greater sums as only one of its subsidiaries files consolidated accounts — the top UK company, FC Skyfall Upper Midco Limited.” Although this article didn’t provide any details, they highlight that one of HC-One’s many owners was a private equity group based in Dubai called Safanad, a group whose web site boasts: “We operate to the highest ethical standards and put trust,

55 transparency, and respect at the heart of our long-term partnerships with investors, operating partners and the businesses we back.” The type of ethical standards promoted by Safanad are however not the ones that members of HC-One’s frontline staff would recognise as their own. Thus one member of Safanad’s six person strong board of directors is Lubna Olayan – a businesswomen whose talents are very much in demand among the most exploitative corporations in the world (think McKinsey & Company and Citigroup). Ethical is hardly the word for Olayan’s work. For the past nine years, she has also been a board member of the world’s largest listed oilfield services group, Schlumberger. In a shocking expose of this huge corporation’s global activities, in 2015 described it as a “the oil world’s most secretive operator” which had just received “the largest corporate criminal fine for sanctions violations in US history.” In the world of big money such criminal activites can apparently be easily shrugged off. Business thus carries on as normal, and the article emphasises how Schlumberger has already “proven itself unafraid of contentious customers, with operations in autocratic states widely criticised by human rights groups and western governments.” HC-One may like to tell the world that they treat their employees well, but the truth is another matter. With respect to the ongoing pandemic GMB explain that HC-One’s policy for their hardworking staff who happen to become pregnant is this:

“No pregnant worker will be forced to attend work if they do not want to. If you are pregnant and wish to exercise social distancing and not attend work, you will be paid Statutory Sick Pay.” So in a sector where (in 2017) the average cost of residential care is charged out at just over £600 a week (it will be higher now), workers who happen to get pregnant will be forced to live off £94 a week?! This is clearly a national scandal which extends across the entire care sector, and it is an outrage that continues to grow by the day. Yesterday UNISON released a statement noting:

“More than 3,500 messages from anxious and frightened employees have been sent via UNISON’s PPE alert hotline since it was created. Many are worried for the safety of the people they look after, their own families and for their own protection.” Some initial positive steps for caring for our carers are now being taken, at long last, and in Scotland social care staff were told they would “receive an immediate 3.3% pay increase backdated from 1 April.” The Scottish government write:

“Social care support workers providing direct adult support will have their pay increased to at least the Real Living Wage rate of £9.30 an hour for all hours worked, including sleep-overs and hours worked by personal assistants.

56

“The Scottish Government will also provide funding to third sector and independent providers specifically to ensure staff receive sick pay if they are off work ill or because they are self-isolating.” This positive step forward must now be extended to all care workers. In fact, demands are already being placed upon the Tory government by some of the country’s biggest charitable care providers, requesting that the government act “to fund a new £11.50 hourly minimum wage for frontline workers in social care for the duration of the Covid-19 pandemic.” This is good, but why shouldn’t key workers get a permanent pay rise? Huge corporations like HC-One and thousands of others avoid tax to the tune of £100 billion a year in Britain, so this injustice can and must end. Corporations should be taxed and all workers should always be paid a real living wage! In terms of immediate demands, a pay rise would be good, but we need to go much further to get to the root of the ongoing crisis in social care. This is why I agree with the chair of Health Campaigns Together, Mike Forster, who concluded a recent article for Socialist Alternative (“Covid 19: social care crisis”) by making the following demands:

“Every home and home care provider should have as a priority:

• compulsory daily testing

• the correct ready supply of PPE

• sufficient funding to ensure there is a full complement of staff

“At the moment, this is just not happening so the disaster will unfold before our eyes and yet again this government will have blood on its hands.

“This crisis has exposed a care sector and NHS which is drastically underfunded. We must demand:

• The immediate transfer of home and residential care back to the public sector

• Proper public funding to end the scandal of the vulnerable and sick being ripped of by the private sector

• A decent living wage for all carers

• Free care for all those assessed of being in need at the point of delivery

57

COVID-19: Trade Union Statement on Fighting Racism April 16

As an Assistant Secretary of the Leicester and Districts Trades Union Council, and as a member of the Leicester Anti-Racist Anti-Fascist and Action Committee (ARAFAC), I am pleased that I was able to contribute towards helping draft this excellent public statement on fighting racism in the midst of this pandemic that has been released by the Trades Council and ARAFAC.

Launched last year by the Leicester and Districts Trades Union Council, the Leicester Anti-Racist Anti-Fascist and Action Committee (ARAFAC) is a coalition of organisations and individuals united behind a common goal. We are based solidly on the working class, in all its diversity, and the trade unions and we seek united action against forces that would divide our communities and attack our organisations (see Leicester Mercury article “Rise of the extreme right,” March 26, 2020). How we and those around us collectively respond to the deadly coronavirus pandemic is a critical test for society, but most of all for our political leaders. Yet so far, our government has categorically failed to put the needs of ordinary people before the needs of big business. Key workers are still failing to receive adequate support from the government, whether they be health workers, bin workers, or those involved in the production of food. Most acutely, we note the desperate need to provide PPE to those who require it. Of course, we recognise that this is not a new issue, and the government’s unwillingness to fund our health services or enforce the type of standards that would make companies pay their workers sick pay all predates the pandemic. When profits come before human need it is ordinary people who pay the price… with their lives. One of the most despicable results of the government’s response to the pandemic has been their refusal to take action to discourage racism. We are aware of a physical racist attack in Leicester in which coronavirus was given as the reason for the attack. Initially the Conservative government remained silent in the face of growing violence directed at minority groups but particularly against the Chinese community. But now the government is seeking to scapegoat the Chinese government for the rapid spread of the coronavirus in Britain, something that will only make racism worse. In Britain the real cause for the spread of the coronavirus have been the dangerous policies of our own government. First, they deliberately wanted to infect everyone with the virus, apparently to promote “herd immunity” — a strategy which could have killed more than a quarter of a million people. They continue to fail to ensure that

58 adequate protections are in place to reduce the spread of the virus amongst key workers, and to top it off they still refuse to take the necessary action to close non- essential businesses. This has meant that some workers have had to take matters into their own hands – through walkouts – which thankfully has led to the closure of some non-essential businesses, a good local example being the fashion retail outlet NEXT. Ordinary workers of any ethnicity should not be blamed for the spread of the pandemic. That is why we are proud to be part of a global anti-racist counter movement which under the hashtag #IamNotAVirus stands in solidarity with all those affected by racism. We stand firmly opposed to all efforts by the government to try to divide workers and scapegoat oppressed groups in society by blaming them for the problems caused by their capitalist system. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak governments across the world, like ours in Britain, had already gained a track record for whipping up hatred against immigrants, refugees and Muslims in an ongoing effort to deflect attention from their degrading of public services. We were perpetually told the lie that other working-class people from different countries were to blame for poverty and job insecurity, and the lack of affordable housing. But the real problem is the capitalist system — a system driven by profits that are created on the basis of exploiting all workers. That is why ARAFAC continue to fight for a socialist alternative to this bankrupt system that can consign all forms of racism and division to history, and can lay the basis for a society run in the interests of working class, where human need is put before the drive for profit.

59

Food Workers Told By Greencore Boss That They Aren’t Key When it Comes to PPE April 17 Millions of people across the world are now having their eyes opened to how appallingly many of our countries key workers are treated at work. Even with the pandemic bringing death and destruction into all our lives, it appears that many bosses still value their own profit margins more than the safety of their employees. Pandemic profiteering has taken many forms during this crisis, but the latest outrageous act of greed involves Greencore Food Group — a huge food manufacturer who throughout this crisis have treated their workforce with contempt. At Greencore’s Northampton site the bosses have chosen to furlough the majority of their staff, but despite making millions they pretend that they cannot afford to top-up the salaries of their furloughed workers. This means that their employees, who already earn less than a real living wage, are currently being forced to endure a 20% pay cut in the middle of an international crisis! To make matters worse, most of the staff at this site in Northampton are employed on so-called flexi-contracts. This means that unlike more longstanding staff, when the majority of factory operatives become ill they are only entitled to statutory sick pay. So, workers who contract COVID-19 while working as “food heroes” (Greencore management’s preferred term) are being sent home to self-isolate and forced to live off just £94 a week! This is appalling! Now to rub dirt in the faces of our nation’s invaluable key workers, yesterday the managers at Greencore’s Northampton factory decided to distribute “special” emergency PPE in a highly discriminatory way. Plastic face shields were thus given to a minority of staff with management positions, while the majority of staff working making products on the shop floor were excluded. This appalling act of discrimination was quickly challenged by a steward for the Bakers Union who was then told by management that only “key workers” could have face shields. Everyone else would apparently have to make do with just hand sanitiser. This is outrageous and it is clear that the union will not take such nonsense laying down. George Atwall, the regional officer for the Bakers Union, explained:

“Our members are appalled that Greencore bosses have created a two-tier workforce when it comes to health and safety. It is an attack on our members democratic rights that managers on the shop floor are being provided with face shields, while key workers are

60 not. To top it all, when this was challenged, our stewards were told that shop floor workers making sandwiches were not key workers.

“This is why the Bakers Union continues to organise all workers to demand that they have a democratic say in how Greencore is being run. Every worker must be guaranteed full pay whether they are furloughed or are self-isolating.

“We also demand that Greencore use some of their millions to help fund emergency mass testing of all key workers and their families, and make available appropriate PPE for all who need it. Finally, we have asked the management at Greencore Northampton time and time again to share their Covid-19 risk assessment plans, they must immediately make these available to our shop stewards or we will be forced to take this matter further.”

61

Weaponising Anti-Semitism: The Case of Sam Matthews April 17 Two days before last year’s critically important General Election, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, was outed in the media for harbouring plans to oust Jeremy Corbyn as Labour’s leader. Ashworth, who in the preceding period had persisted in criticising Corbyn for his alleged failure to root out Labour anti-semitism, was recorded as saying (to his Tory friend) that he hoped Labour would be able to move forward and get a “half-decent leader next time round”. But just five days prior to Ashworth’s devastating attack, an individual who had recently worked in Labour HQ under the leadership of Ashworth’s wife, Emilie Oldknow, had also spoke out to the press as part of an ongoing attempt to undermine Corbyn. The corporate media duly seized upon this opportunity to smear Corbyn and reported that the individual “has accused the party of ‘a campaign of lies and misinformation’ in relation to anti-Jewish racism.” (The Independent, December 5) As many people might now know, the individual in question was Sam Matthews — the Labour Party’s head of compliance until early 2018. But even before this Matthews was already quite well-known as earlier in the year he had starred as a whistleblower in a Panorama episode about the allegedly systemic nature of Labour’s anti-semitism. Speaking to the BBC filmmakers in 2019, he had explained how not long after he took on his job in Labour’s HQ in the summer of 2016 that…

“For the first time it became immediately apparent to me that there was a really, really extensive problem with antisemitism at that stage. For the first time that I had noticed, people who held deeply antisemitic views were feeling like the Labour Party was their home.” But as revealed in the just leaked 860-page internal report that had been compiled by the Labour Party, Matthews is not really the innocent whistleblower that he has always been presented as in the corporate media. The leaked report makes this categorically clear and arrives at a damming conclusion, highlighting that during his time overseeing the Party’s complaints process, which included dealing with reports of anti-semitism, Matthews “rarely replied or took any action, and the vast majority of times where action did occur, it was prompted by other Labour staff directly chasing this themselves”. To this day however Matthews maintains his innocence, and talking to Sky News just the other day he stated that the leaked document “simply cannot be relied upon,” explaining:

62

“The proper examination of the full evidence will show that as Head of Disputes and Acting Director, I did my level best to tackle the poison of anti-Jewish racism which was growing under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.” (Sky News, April 12, 2020) That being said, it appears that all the evidence presented within the leaked repot demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that the one person who cannot be relied upon is Sam Matthews, especially when it comes to matters of anti-semitism. So first let’s go over a little of the historical record, as it is important to recap how this shocked young man came to find himself in the middle of Labour’s anti-semitism nightmare. And on this matter the leaked report provides some interesting details, pointing out Matthews got his cushy job at Labour’s HQ precisely because he had a proven track record for being on Labour’s rightwing.* In January 2016 Matthews was therefore interviewed for the post of “Compliance Officer” and commenced his work in the Labour HQ at end of June, where his “first major task was to organise a second round of ‘Trot hunting’, for the 2016 leadership election.” Trot hunting referring to the purging of Labour members who might possibly be opposed to the Blairite agenda of Oldknow and her fellow rightwing cronies at the helm of Labour HQ. With his Trot hunting operations apparently carried out with some degree of success, the “Head of Disputes” position within Labour HQ became vacant, and Matthews (who was the only person interviewed for the post) soon slid into this new senior leadership role (starting work in December 2016). Now it is true that during Matthews two-year stint at Labour’s HQ he had participated in a multitude of acts of sabotage, but for the purpose of brevity I will just dwell on one prominent example of how he dealt with complaints about a holocaust denier called Chris Crookes. This loathsome escapade began in August 2016 when…

“… a member of ‘Labour International’ submitted a complaint about fellow international member Chris Crookes, for antisemitism. In September 2016 he followed up with further evidence. Both emails were forwarded by ‘Legal Queries’ to ‘Validation’, but no further action appears to have been taken.” In November, another individual then reported Crookes to the Labour Party, but this time…

“The complaint came from the ‘pro-Corbyn’ admins and moderators of an unofficial Facebook group for members of Labour International CLP, who had discovered that Crookes had, ‘over a number of years’, published a range of Holocaust denial and ‘pro- fascist’ materials across the internet, including on Facebook and in Amazon reviews. Extensive evidence was attached of Crookes’ explicit Holocaust denial.”

63

On November 10 this important information was then forwarded on to Matthews. Yet as the leaked report notes: “Matthews did not respond [to this email] and no further action appears to have been taken.” To the dismay of the complainants, by the end of month still no action had been taken against Crookes. In December, Labour NEC member Ann Black, who had already been cc’d in emails regarding Crookes, intervened to help ensure this case was promptly resolved — with the emails that she had sent to Iain McNicol and Julie Lawrence (the Director of General Secretary Operations) being forwarded on to Matthews. But still no action was taken against Crookes, and in January 2017 a complainant again wrote again to the dispute’s unit stating: “It is a little worrying to see that Chris Crookes is not yet suspended.” Understanding that sometimes mistakes happen, in April the complainant wrote again to press for some form of disciplinary action. Still noting happened! Then, as the leaked report explains:

“A further report from Euan Philipps of “LAAS” [Labour Against Antisemitism] was also received on 19 July 2017, containing two posts of Crookes defending Ken Livingstone’s comments and dismissing antisemitism. It was forwarded from ‘Legal Queries’ to ‘Disputes’, but no action was taken.” So, over a year after the first complaint was raised still nothing was being done by Matthews’ office, and in October 2017 Ann Black “raised the case directly with Matthews” emailing him to say:

“Chris Crookes was reported by Labour International nearly a year ago. Is he somewhere in the system, and if not, could he be followed up for investigation?” (October 10, 2017) Once again “Matthews did not reply.” In fact, it was only when Black “chased Matthews ‘requesting urgent action’” that he finally responded by stating “We’ll be sending a notice of investigation today”. Yet unfortunately, as the leaked report adds, “No case was created, and no NOI [notice of investigation] was sent. We have no record of any action being taken at this point.” When Black emailed Matthews (yet again) to check on his progress, Matthews said that Crookes was “under investigation,” but this was not true. The Labour report continues:

“This was inaccurate. We have no evidence of Chris Crookes having been contacted; no record of any case being saved; and no evidence of Matthews forwarding any of these emails on to investigations officers for action.” Although no doubt Black had other work to be getting on with, she emailed Matthews again to check on progress in December 2017 and again in January 2018. “Again, Matthews did not respond, and no action was taken.”

64

Now people were really getting frustrated at Matthews refusal to suspend Crookes. Matthews was after all Labour’s “Head of Disputes,” and so…

“In February 2018… 289 members of ‘Labour International’ signed a petition demanding action on the Holocaust denier in ‘Labour International’, with the petition containing a full timeline of their attempts to get GLU [Governance and Legal Unit] to take action on Chris Crookes.” But still no action was taken, and it was not under the GLU “came under more scrutiny” from Jeremy Corbyn’s own office (on March 26, 2018) – which no doubt was interpreted as bullying on Matthews part — “that Matthews then accessed his previous emails from Ann Black and initiated a case.” To recap, over “an 18 month period, the case of Chris Crookes was raised directly with Sam Matthews twelve times,” but it was only in March 2018 that Crookes was finally suspended (an act which eventually led to his expulsion in July 2019). This was a massive dereliction of duty on Matthews part and totally contradicts his assertions that Corbyn was the real sources of problems when it came to dealing with anti-semitism within the Labour Party. Rather unsurprisingly perhaps, when the Labour Party finally expelled Crookes (after undertaking an appropriate investigation) his expulsion led to a slew of articles in the mainstream press attacking Corbyn for failing to deal with Labour anti-semitism! Nevertheless even then, a critical article published in The Jewish Chronical (August 13, 2019) was forced to admit that:

“Jon Lansman, the head of the pro-Corbyn Momentum campaign group… suggested Labour staff ‘from the Labour right may have delayed action on some of the most extreme and high-profile antisemitism cases, including Holocaust denial, allowing a backlog of cases to build up that would damage the party and Jeremy’s leadership.’

“Mr Lansman also suggested that, because the party’s National Executive Committee was no longer led by ‘Blairites’ and Mr Corbyn’s ally Jennie Formby had become the party’s general secretary, its processes had improved.” Such statements were of course belittled in the press. And while Jon Lansman has, on the whole, been a liability to supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, in this instance Lansman was correct… there most certainly were people deliberately acting to delay action on dealing with anti-semitism and they were no friends of either democracy or socialism! But bigger questions now loom for Labour members who support socialism. Yes, the leaked report “exposes the pernicious nature of the campaign that has been waged against Corbyn” on the issue of anti-semitism, but what next?

65

“Crucial now, is that a mass struggle is built to fight for consistent political representation for working-class people. To do so effectively, such a movement needs to abandon any notion of this being possible on the basis of compromise or unity with the right wing of the Labour Party. Workers need their own independent political representation. Those who have already been politically activated by Corbynism can form an important basis for this. But to succeed it must go beyond this, drawing in workers, young people and trade unionists, and organising around socialist ideas. And if wresting control of Labour’s leadership and machinery back from the hands of the right proves impossible, it will become necessary for such a movement to find its expression through a new party or formation.

“The multiple capitalist crises our world currently faces – from the coronavirus, to the collapsing economy, to the climate catastrophe – show that we do not have unlimited time to build a movement to change the world. The experience of Corbynism should stand as a warning as to the dangers of attempting to do so without being prepared to break with the representatives of the sick system of capitalism. And these lessons must now be absorbed, lest they be repeated.”

Notes * Illustrating how high-ranking jobs appear to have allocated within the rightwing dominated machinery of the Labour Party, the leaked report outlined a conversation that took place (in 2015) that involved Emilie Oldknow (the Executive Director for Governance, Membership and Party Services), wherein she discussed how to allocate a compliance unit job to an employee’s sister. Oldknow was particularly pleased to hear that the individual’s sister was a new member of the Labour Party, which led her to comment: “That means she will be completely malleable”.

66

Greencore: Important Coronavirus Response to CEO Patrick Coveney April 18 This week multi-millionaire Greencore boss Patrick Coveney kept himself busy, writing an email update to his workers to remind them that he has been working “simply”, “collaboratively” and “fairly” to keep them safe. But many will disagree. For example, just at a basic level, some Greencore workers still have no recognition agreements in place between management and their trade union of choice, even while neighboring units do. Surely Mr Coveney can see that it would be simpler and fairer to work collaboratively with unions at all Greencore’s units, not just at a select few? If he was really concerned with matters of fairness, Mr Coveney might also like to do something about the health and wellbeing of the 4,000 staff he is currently furloughing who have to suffer a 20% pay cut throughout this unprecedented period. Mr Coveney may well says that his staff should “rest” and “recharge” to ensure they “are mentally and physically” prepared to cope with the pandemic, but is hard to do this when you are struggling to pay your bills because your boss has cut your pay! Mr Coveney expresses deep-felt compassion for “Several of our colleagues [who] have been personally – and deeply – impacted by COVID-19 and our thoughts remain with them and their families.” He then adds that across Greencore “circa 1,000 colleagues are in self-isolation” although he doesn’t emphasise that many of these individuals are being deeply impacted by his company’s unwillingness to guarantee they face no loss of earnings during self-isolation. In fact, to make matters worse, many of Greencore’s already low-paid factory workers are being forced to endure with just statutory sick pay (£94 a week) during self-isolation. Mr Coveney states that he wants all his staff to “think about creatively and ambitiously” about how to deal with the crisis, and yes, all his managers should do so with immediate effect. Greencore factory workers certainly need ambitious managers who will now start to think creatively about how they can put the lives of their workforce before Mr Coveney’s profits! Mr Coveney lectures his workers about his company having already “applied best practice in relation to social distancing,” but as his workers know, in practice this means next to nothing is being done. All the same Mr Coveney is pleased about “using temperature testing at some sites” (to check for fevers among staff), but the haphazard way in which this testing has been deployed has already caused extra anxiety amongst his employees. Afterall why test workers temperature unless you are going to do it properly?

67

And while we all know that having a temperature is a sign of possible COVID-19 infection that should result in self-isolation, there are many other reasons why people should self-isolate too. For example, just the presence of a mild cough with no other symptoms is reason enough to self-isolate. On this point, on 11th April Mr Coveney approvingly tweeted a short video made by a famous Irish television host who explained:

“As you may know I was troubled by a very simple cough last month, and I am talking about a really mild cough, under normal circumstances no big deal whatsoever. I had no temperature, no aches, no pain, no flu at all, but a cough nonetheless. But given what’s going on in the world at the moment I decided to… self-isolate just in case. And you may have heard that I was subsequently tested and later diagnosed as positive for the coronavirus. And even though I felt okay, I cannot tell you how shocking and profound that diagnosis was, but then how relieved I was to be at home, and to be isolated away from the world — in order words, to break the chain and to prevent me from passing COVID-19 onto anyone else.” Further on within his most recent coronavirus email “update” Mr Coveney talked about “keep[ing] everyone updated” on Greencore’s health and safety plans. But as the union stewards at Greencore’s Northampton site already know, management still haven’t shown them the content of their COVID-19 risk assessments (and management have been asked many times). And here we should not forget that even if workers do test positive for coronavirus, there is no scientific evidence that those same workers cannot contract COVID-19 again. This makes the implementation of genuine social distancing on Greencore’s factory floors critical, that is, if Mr Coveney’s genuinely cares about the safety of his workers and their family’s lives. Clearly Greencore’s bosses aren’t doing everything they can to help their worker break the chain of COVID-19 infection, which is why they must immediately begin to act upon the demands being put upon them by members of the Bakers Union. For a start if Greencore are to minimise the chance of workers being put at risk by workers who can’t afford to self-isolate (but who may still have symptons, like a mild cough), it is essential that workers don’t face any loss of pay if they exhibit symptons. On this point, George Atwall, the regional officer for the Bakers Union, is very clear:

“As our union has said to management on numerous occasions, ordinary workers should not face economic hardship because of Covid-19. We have heard all about Greencore’s multi-millionaire bosses taking a small cut in their already bloated salaries during this crisis, so why don’t they now step up and promise all their workers that no one will suffer any financial loss because of this pandemic?

“We all know that Greencore CEO Patrick Coveney could easily afford to give full sick pay for his staff. But it appears he is more concerned with inflating his bank balance than helping those key workers who make all his profits. His employees are all key workers,

68

but instead of taking actions to keep all of them safe, his shop floor workers are being treated as expendable by bosses.” Rather than receiving peppy email “updates” from Mr Coveney, what workers really need is to be listened to. Until this happens, Greencore are putting us all at risk. Greencore must listen to their workers and the Bakers Union and take the type of concrete actions that can help break the chain in prevent their own employees from passing COVID-19 onto anyone else. To do anything less is to endanger us all.

69

Justice, Not Charity for Key Food Workers At Greencore: Solidarity Forever April 28

“They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn, But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn. We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn That the union makes us strong.”

Lyrics from the song Solidarity Forever (1915) Today the trade union movement commemorates International Workers Memorial Day as “a day of remembrance for those people who have been injured, killed, disabled or been made unwell in anyway as a result of their work.” Tragically, five individuals from across the East Midlands lost their lives at work this year, a “list [which] does not include deaths caused by coronavirus caught by workers not provided with adequate PPE.” All the same greedy bosses across the country are making untold millions from the hard labour of ordinary workers, and it is we who continue to pay the price with our lives. Indeed, as the Trades Union Congress (TUC) makes clear:

“Every year more people are killed at work than in wars. Most don’t die of mystery ailments, or in tragic ‘accidents’. They die because an employer decided their safety just wasn’t that important a priority.” This year the theme of International Workers Memorial Day is coronavirus, which has taken the lives of tens of thousands of key workers across the world. That is why as well as remembering the dead trade unions continue to fight the workplace rights of the living as people continue to go to work risking their lives. The disregard for our lives by millionaire bosses has never been more apparent as “many workers are still attending work ill-equipped and without necessary safety measures in place.” Greencore, the huge food manufacturer whose local factory base is in Northampton is a case in point. Not only have this exploitative employer failed to take the health and safety of their employees seriously during this pandemic, but despite their massive profits they have imposed pay cuts on their minimum wage employees! A few lines from the 1915 song “Solidarity Forever” sum up the nature of the bloodsucking relationship between the bosses and their key workers:

“Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite, Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?

70

Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight? For the union makes us strong.” For the thousands of the food workers at Greencore’s Northampton site who have been furloughed during this crisis, the parasitic actions of their bosses is still being rubbed in their face daily. The key workers have to pay their bills, feed their families, but no longer have the means to do so. “Now we stand outcast and starving midst the wonders we have made,” states the aforementioned song. To make matters worse, Greencore instead of ensuring our countries’ key workers don’t starve during this crisis they explain to them in a leaflet titled “Supporting our colleagues” that if they are short of food they should “contact” a food charity called GroceryAid. So, rather than pay their workers Greencore directs them to charity run by millionaires who made their fortunes in the food industry from the toil of their exploited and underpaid workforce! That is why today is as good as any to join a union so we can all fight back to reverse this systemic oppression collectively, and fight for a socialist alternative to capitalism. https://www.bfawu.org/join https://www.socialistalternative.net/get- involved “Solidarity Forever” may have been sung over the years by countless workers, and just this week a talented songwriter has just updated its lyrics to focus on the vital role played by all key workers during this crisis. As he sings:

“Do the CEOs and entrepreneurs really make their worth? Or is it that the workers hold the key to the running of the earth? Yes we can save the world and there is power in our work Our key workers keep us strong

Solidarity forever Solidarity forever Solidarity forever Our key workers keep us strong…”

Join the one minute’s silence at 11am (today) to mark International Workers Memorial Day and show solidarity with workers worldwide.

71

COVID-19 Infects Greencore Factory, But Bosses Say Only Managers Need to be Tested! May 2 The 1st of May is International Workers’ Day and is it an important historical event in which workers across the world unite to celebrate the power of the working-class. Its origins date back to 1886 and the infamous Haymarket affair, which saw the repression/murder of workers involved in the struggle for the implementation of an 8- hour working day… a fight that continues today. But some bosses would prefer workers to forget about workplace rights all together. For example, for the past six years the powerful Irish lobby group, the Irish Business Employers’ Confederation, have been hosting an alternative day on 1st May, something they like to call “National Workplace Wellbeing Day.” One of the many tax-shy corporations that has been behind this attempt to erase the history of working-class struggle is Glanbia; whose board of directors includes the multimillionaire CEO of Greencore Food Group, Dr Patrick Coveney. For the tiny amount of work involved in serving on Glanbia’s board Dr Coveney obtains £75,000 a year — a lot more money than nearly all his key workers who slave day and night in his factories. In a perfect illustration of how corporate bosses only care about their profit margins we can turn to an disturbing example from Dr Coveney’s own food empire. This is because earlier today union members at Greencore’s Northampton site reported that one of their managers had contracted COVID-19, but were furious and shocked because their bosses had “only informed management to take a test and not production staff.” To make matters worse, even now management refuse to share any COVID-19 risk assessments they (might) have prepared.

72

ExtraCare Must Reinstate Nadia Whittome May 9 What the appalling death toll from the ongoing pandemic makes absolutely clear is that all public services must be renationalised so that they are run and funded under democratic workers control. This is as true for our education system as it is for our health services. Privately-run service providers do not act in the best interests our countries’ key workers, let alone for the service users. The poor treatment of frontline workers, who have risked so much to keep society running, has been a sickening part of this entire pandemic, and the recent termination of employment for one high-profile worker crystallises the need for an immediate change in how our country is run. The worker in question is Labour MP for Nottingham East, Nadia Whittome. With the onset of the pandemic she returned to her old job working as a carer for the elderly. But Whittome is a rare breed amongst the leaders of the Labour Party, because since her election in 2019 she has only been taking an average workers wage, donating the majority of her parliamentary wages to charity. In the same way she has been given all the money from her care job to charity too. On Wednesday night Nadia found that she no longer had a job with her second employer ExtraCare Charitable Trust – they decided that they had too many staff and no longer required her help. In reality, she was sacked because she had been outspoken in the national media about the shortage of PPE at ExtraCare, and her bosses weren’t impressed. Nadia’s contract was effectively terminated with no notice. She found herself in this impossible position because, like hundreds of thousands of other care workers, Nadia was employed on a zero-hour contract. One has to wonder what sort of society we live in where employees working for a charity which cares for the elderly can exploit their workers (even MPs) so easily. Another question that comes to mind is why do we rely on charities to care for the elderly? ExtraCare may have said they were overstaffed but there is always work to be done in their care villages, this much is made clear by the fact that the charity boasts that unpaid volunteers undertook the equivalent of £4.3 million of work in 2019 for the charity (that is, if you assume that they earned minimum wage). One might also wonder where ExtraCare’s loyalties really lie: with the elderly or with their well-paid bosses? Between 2015 and 2019, ExtraCare’s income from their paying customers increased from just over £9 million to just over £16 million a year, while the number of full-time equivalent carers was moving in the opposite direction and had decreased by about a third (from 919 to 612). Over this same time the proportion of

73 pay going to top earners massively increased too. So, in 2015 ExtraCare employed just 9 employees earning more than £60,000 a year, while in 2019 the number earning this much rocketed up to 26 individuals. The combined spend on these big charity earners also increased too, from just over £1 million in 2015 to over £2 million in 2019. This income inequality between the very low paid carers (many of whom are on zero- hour contracts) and their bosses (who have permanent secure contracts) more than illustrates the need for change. As a first step, ExtraCare must be forced by the trade union movement to reinstate Nadia to her care job. A campaign must be launched to ensure that care workers are given a real living wage of £15 an hour, with permanent contracted hours. Zero-hour contracts enable a culture of bullying and victimisation and must, therefore, be banned. But the trade union movement must go further in demanding that the entire care sector is nationalised under workers control, so as to ensure that services are joined up, fully transparent services, and run for need not profit. Care workers deserve nothing less!

Millionaire Bosses at Greencore Endanger Us All With Their Pandemic Profiteering May 9 Greencore, the hugely profitable food manufacturer run by multimillionaire Patrick Coveney is still refusing to treat key workers with dignity. This disgusting behaviour has been going on for years, but a small breakthrough was made earlier this week when the BBC reported on the abysmal conditions Greencore’s staff are being forced to endure at their Northampton site. The incident in question revolves around a COVID-19 case that was identified at the Northampton site on International Workers Day (May 1): a factory manager was suspected of having contracted COVID-19 and at 11.30am was immediately sent to get the official test. Work at the site then continued like normal, despite the potential risk to all staff, and at 7.30pm that evening the results of the test came through positive for COVID-19. Without any input from trade union reps or from the factory floor staff themselves, management then proceeded to carry out what can only be described as a bodged form of “contact tracing”. This led to some managers being immediately sent home to

74 self-isolate, and another 48 hours later, management then identified another six people who they also sent home to self-isolate and get tested. Bear in mind that throughout this pandemic the trade union reps at the Northampton Greencore site had been persistently asking to see the workplaces COVID-19 related risk assessments. And disgracefully such procedures have still not been shown to any union reps, although they have been assured that a COVID-19 procedure is being written. So, when the union reps met with management on Thursday (May 7) they did the logical thing and asked if their managers had bothered to use the company’s CCTV cameras to work out who the infected manager might have infected in week running up to their testing positive? The totally negligent answer the union received was that Greencore’s bosses had not bothered to utilise such footage in their contact-tracing process. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Greencore bosses endanger everyone in the local community through their cost-cutting measures, as management have made it clear that only workers that managers identify as having (or potentially having) contracted COVID-19 can receive full pay during any period of self-isolation. At the same time management have also explained that if a worker “is unwell or has a member of their household showing symptoms, they should stay away from work and this is treated as sickness absence.” To which the sites union reps correctly pointed out that Greencore’s flexi-contract workers are therefore only entitled to Statutory Sick Pay whose measly allowance is no-where near enough to live off during any period of self-isolation. Taken together this means that Greencore’s official sickness policy is manifestly dangerous as it encourages workers to come into work even if they think they might have COVID-19 for fear of losing most of their already low income. This is exactly why the Bakers Union continues to fight back against Greencore’s greedy bosses and demands that all workers should be entitled to full pay during any period of self- isolation.

75

Why the Government Science Does Not Mean it is Safe to Return to School May 19 Spinning science to sell their own right-wing political agendas is a dangerous speciality of our government, but one that is common to all capitalist elites across the world. And on the critical issue of the safe reopening of our schools the Tories are once again twisting science to attack our countries key school workers. Rather than engage in any form of meaningful dialogue with the trade unions representing school staff, the Tories instead choose to wage war upon them. ‘Let Our Teachers Be Heroes’ was the disgraceful front-page of the Daily Mail last Friday, wherein Tories joined forces with Blairites in condemning education workers for wanting to see the science that informs the government’s reckless decision-making. So far, the Tories have refused to show the trade unions the scientific evidence that they are relying upon to justify their partial reopening of our schools. And in lieu of dialogue, this weekend the Tory press was ablaze with the until now undisclosed scientific evidence that had convinced the Tories that opening our schools will be safe. The Daily Telegraph (May 17) led the way stating that a study undertaken in New South Wales, Australia, had demonstrated that “Coronavirus does not spread widely in schools”; while the following day the Daily Mail ran with the headline: “Risk of spreading coronavirus between teachers and children in schools is ‘extremely low’, according to major new study.” Yet what is absolutely clear is that this academic study can in no way be used to justify the opening of schools in Britain. But the shortcomings of this study have not stopped Australia’s own governing Tory party from twisting the research so they can argue that social distancing measures are “not appropriate and not required” within schools!? Thankfully this nonsense was quickly challenged by the lead author of the scientific report in question, Dr. Kristine Macartney, who highlighted her study’s various limitations while making it clear that children can still transmit coronavirus. But the main reason why the preliminary Australian study cannot be used to justify school opening in Britain is because the countries are in no way comparable, as so far Australia has been barely touched by the pandemic (in terms of deaths anyway). With a population of 25 million, Australia has only just reached a total death toll of 99, while the UK (with a population of 68 million) has suffered over 50,000 deaths.

76

We should also add, that over the six-week course of the Australian study (March 5 to April 21) of coronavirus infections in the state of New South Wales (which has a population of 8 million) only 26 people died from COVID-19. Even more crucially it has already been reported that by the first week of April “in-person attendance” in the state’s schools had fallen to just 5% as the “government encouraged parents to have their children study at home if they were able.” Thus, we can safely say that what is happening in Australia regarding the spread of the coronavirus is nothing like what has occurred in Britain or Europe for that matter. A cursory look at the impact of the coronavirus in Australia and the UK using graphs provided by the Financial Times (see below) illustrates the huge differences between the two countries. At its UK peak, just short of a 1,000 people were killed each day, while in Australia total deaths, that is total deaths, is just short of 100.

77

But regardless of the relevance of the Australian study to our shores, the Tories have already made up their minds: the teachers and school workers are wrong and the government are right. In their own profit-driven minds our capitalist leaders are apparently always right. This in spite of the glaring fact that the entire world can see that the British government has failed at every hurdle. What is now clear, as if it wasn’t evident already, is that the real heroes in Britain are our key workers, which includes all education staff. Increasing numbers of these pandemic heroes are fighting back against our governments capitalist lies, whether they work in food factories or in our schools, which in many sectors is being accompanied by a huge surge in union membership. And many people are now beginning to realise that capitalism has not and will not deliver us the goods, and more and more people are seeing the need to fight back for a socialist alternative that can place the everyday needs of ordinary people before the profits of big business.

78

Millions For Greencore Bosses, And Breakfast Vouchers and a Self-Care Calendar for Key Food Workers May 20 Greencore Food Group may have made slightly less profit than normal over the last few months, but the company is still very, very profitable. Earlier this week they announced Group Operating Profits of £35.6 million. So, at the same time that Greencore have furloughed many of their employees on £95 a week (which is statutory sick pay), the food giant is making just short of £100,000 every day in pure profit. And the only crumbs that Greencore’s exploitative bosses have been willing to throw to their tireless employees has been a handful of breakfast vouchers! Adding insult to injury, Greencore pretend to care about our key food workers, and just the other day tweeted:

“This week is #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek. Taking time to look after yourself is so important, now more than ever. Below is our self-care & positivity calendar with 30 small daily activities for you to try, for a happier and healthier you. #peopleatthecore” (May 19) Such messages are beyond insulting. But either way, while workers would prefer not to be financially punished during this pandemic, and would rather that Greencore took their concerns about safe working conditions seriously, it would be good if their bosses actually engaged with their own calendar. Some of the calendar’s relevant tips include “Join a trade union and organise collectively against your bosses” … only joking. But the real tips do make the following suggestions: “Show gratitude and appreciation to others” And “Respond positively to everyone you engage with”. Now if in “a random act of kindness” Greencore bosses read their own calendar and decided to increase their workers happiness levels by looking after their health and safety, listening to their union during negotiations, increased the pay of their workers, then I am sure everyone’s happiness levels would be given a welcome boost.

79

Labour Councils Must Openly Resist Government’s Dangerous Policy of Re-opening Schools May 21 Last night the main trade unions representing school staff in Britain authored an open letter addressed to school and college leaders to make it clear that any re-opening of educational facilities in June (at this stage) will endanger our communities. The letter stated:

“Scientific evidence is yet to be released that establishes that the measures contained within the DfE guidance are capable of ensuring the risk to pupils, staff and the wider community is reduced to an acceptable level. We believe it is important you fully understand the potential liability you are exposing yourself to by following the current deeply flawed guidance.” But tragically the Blairite leader of Leicester’s Labour Council once again failed to fully and actively support workers when he released a public statement earlier today. City Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby, a former teacher himself, said:

“The Government’s announcement that it wishes more children to return to schools from 1st June has caused understandable concern and unreasonable pressure on schools. The risks had not been fully assessed by the Government and the many unanswered question were not discussed with school leadership, staff, unions or Councils. My colleagues and I share these legitimate concerns. For this reason, I would like to make it clear that there is no pressure from the Council for opening to a wider intake on June 1st or on any other particular date.” This is very weak indeed, especially when you consider that more than 800 people have been confirmed as having COVID-19 in Leicester (with more than 200 dying). If Sir Peter Soulsby really believes what he writes he should be supporting the trade unions in opposing the reopening of our schools not just saying he will exert no pressure to open schools! But at least Soulsby gets one thing right when he emphasises that “the Council will not be taking enforcement action to ensure attendance.” This means that parents, where possible, should definately keep their children away from schools until the government answers the questions that have been posed to them by school workers and their trade unions. What we do know already is that conditions in the schools across the country that have remained open (to educate the children of key workers) have already been unable to take the necessary precautions to safeguard our communities. Thus, when the

80

National Education Union (NEU) carried out a survey of nearly 2,000 teachers working in such schools, they found out that “around a quarter said their school did not have sufficient soap and/or hand sanitiser” with the same proportion saying “there was no routine of hand washing at their school.” Making matters worse around “61% of respondents said they were ‘concerned’ or ‘very concerned’ about the social distancing measures in their school for pupils.” (NEU survey conducted over the weekend of May 2-3) In a demonstration of the type of actions that need to be undertaken by all unions the Unison branch in (which admittedly some distance away) wrote to all their members on Monday to say that any school that plans to open on any date “for children other than those currently supported must demonstrate compliance with the conditions set out in the [joint unions’ ‘Coronavirus workplace checklist’] document, and must do so with the direct involvement of recognised trade unions.” Furthermore, the union branch added:

“We are calling on Salford City Council to take its responsibilities seriously and to declare openly and publicly that it will actively resist – and support staff and their unions to resist – the further opening of any school or educational/childcare setting that has not actively demonstrate its compliance with these requirements to its staff, their trade unions, parents and the local authority. As such, this email will be forwarded to relevant Council officers and local politicians, as well as operators of non-LA schools and other settings.” If Labour councillors, MPs, and City Mayors up-and-down the country – including in Leicester – made such public statements in support of education unions then the country will be far less likely to suffer further unnecessary coronavirus deaths. Already many Labour councils have responded positively to such demands, but alas, not here in Leicester.

81

#Justice4ShukriAbdi Leicester June 27

“Say her name. Shukri Abdi! “No justice, no peace!” The following was posted on the Leicester Socialist Alternative facebook page as a short report on what was an inspiring 200 strong demonstration held in Leicester today. So many people spoke passionately and eloquently… the fight for justice continues:

“Leicester Socialist Alternative members attended a powerful protest today marking the first anniversary of the death of #ShukriAbdi, a 12 year old Somali girl who fled conflict in her home country only to face racism in the UK which ultimately led to drowning in a river. The response from the authorities in investigating this crime was atrocious, exposing the thick seam of institutional racism which runs through the police force.

This is an extremely important story and one that needs retelling. Please take the time to read about it here: https://gal-dem.com/the-death-of-shukri-abdi-she-was-faile…/

But Shukri Abdi is just one individual in a long list of BAME people who have been killed and denied justice by this racist system. This is why the Black Lives Matter is just as relevant in the UK as it is in the US and why we have seen huge explosions of protests across the country.

So how do we build a movement that can win? We need to demand community control over policing, so they are accountable us, rather than this racist government. We need to demand an end to the racist migrant charges in the NHS and for a welfare system which provides for people of all backgrounds. We need to fight for jobs and homes for all so that we are not left to argue over the crumbs that spill off the plate of the super-rich.

Finally, we need to build a united movement of working class and oppressed people to fight to take the wealth off the 1% and to build a society based on the idea of solidarity, not competition.

As Malcolm x says: “You can’t have capitalism without racism.” That’s why we need socialism.

Say her name. #ShukriAbdi No justice, no peace!

82

Leicester’s Lockdown and a Case of Boohoo Profiteering July 2 An important report has just been published that looks into the real reasons why poor largely BAME workers are being forced to work in dangerous conditions by bullying bosses during this pandemic. The report highlighted the fact that while many small textile companies in Leicester were treating their workforce with contempt there were larger forces behind the scenes that were ultimately to blame for such practices. The sinister force was a Jersey- based company run by billionaires called Boohoo. This information was hardly a secret as you might have guessed from the report’s giveaway title which was “Boohoo and Covid-19: The people behind the profits.” The introductory page is clear:

“For several years, numerous media reports have detailed illegal practices at Leicester- based garment factories linked to big brands. As a result, many brands have switched to sourcing elsewhere. Only a few remain. The largest of these is Boohoo and its sister brands which dominate the local industry…

“Generally, Boohoo Group Ltd accounts for almost 75–80% production in Leicester and sources around 60–70% of its production from Leicester. This has reportedly increased in recent weeks to around 80%.” This point was not lost on the Financial Times who quite correctly made Boohoo the centre of their report on this matter “Boohoo accused of fuelling virus spread in Leicester production push” (July 1). Megs Lewis, the campaign manager for Labour Behind the Label, the garment workers’ rights group that released the report explained: “This is not about a few unscrupulous suppliers, it is Boohoo in particular who’s driving production during the lockdown”. In the same article Kate Hills, the founder of trade show and garment industry group Make it British, added that the flouting of lockdown rules “is all derived by the way Boohoo gets factories to compete against each other” which has the natural effect of pushing down prices and standards among manufacturers. A perfect example of how capitalisms race to the bottom is put into practice with deadly effects. But the focus on Boohoo has been erased from other important reports on this flagrant pandemic profiteering, most particularly in the pages of Leicester’s only local newspaper. Thus the Leicester Mercury manages to do the impossible and ignore the most important aspect of the story in the course of a 740 article titled “Some Leicester textile firms flouting lockdown say campaigners” (July 1).

83

Here the only focus of their report is on the bad practices of “some of Leicester’s” thousand odd textile factories. The Mercury even manages to downplay the extent of the problem by stating that Labour Behind the Label says that “most” of Leicester’s garment factories “have acted responsibly” during this pandemic. But this is not what is happening, and this is certainly not the story that is told in their report. In fact, given that production for Boohoo in Leicester’s small factories has increased in recent months, the report explains that “It is inconceivable that such factories would be able to operate at full capacity whilst ensuring social distancing and adequate COVID-19 protection measures.” (Bizarrely the Mercury includes this quote despite pretending that problems only affect “some” factories.) As if ignoring the central role played by the billionaire profiteers at Boohoo in allowing such dangerous working conditions to thrive, the Mercury then goes on to give the last word to Andrew Bridgen, the racist Tory MP for North West Leicestershire who speculated about ethnicity and how “maybe even 50 per cent of [young people] have been flouting the rules” adding that they have “probably been going out socialising in breach of the lockdown”. In misreporting on this critical issue the Leicester Mercury not only manages to mangle the story, but in doing so gives fuel to racists who are happy to place the blame for the spread of the pandemic in Leicester upon small business owners in BAME communities and upon young people. Instead of leaving the last word to the Tories who after all are responsible for the pandemics huge death toll the Mercury, if it had been able to mention Boohoo by name, could have simply ended with some of useful demands listed in Labour Behind the Label’s informative report. Nevertheless, this is perhaps too much to ask of the corporate media. Throughout this pandemic, members of Socialist Alternative have been campaigning for genuine solutions to the problems highlighted by the pandemic profiteering of companies like Boohoo. We believe that all companies must pay a real living wage to those who work for them, must guarantee safe working conditions, and ensure that workers are entitled to full pay during any period of sickness. If companies like Boohoo say they can’t afford to pay their suppliers enough money to enable them to pay their workers a living wage then they should open their finance books for inspection by trade unions. And if it turns out that Boohoo really can’t afford to share their immense profits with those who make their profits then their company must be nationalised so it is run under the democratic control of ordinary workers.

84

Sweatshops and Anti-union Bosses: The Real Roots of Leicester’s Coronavirus Outbreak July 3 Divide and rule is a tried-and-tested tactic that is employed by the billionaire-class and their political representatives, in order to deflect attention away from their own callousness. This is why right from the start of this crisis the Tories have sought to blame us for the spread of the pandemic; in reality, it is the government’s gross incompetence that has allowed Covid-19 to rip through our communities and care homes. Yes, the Tories issued ‘guidance’ for how to stop the spread of the virus, but they have been totally negligent in ensuring it was ever implemented. Particularly in low waged non-unionised workplaces, this has enabled unscrupulous bosses to put profits before safety. Based in Beaumont Leys, Leicester, Samworth Brothers is a well-known anti-union company that runs one the UK’s largest production operations, and has just witnessed an outbreak of the coronavirus amongst its staff. That Samworth’s food factories would contribute to the pandemics spread was, however, entirely predictable; both before and during this pandemic, this is an employer that has refused to work with trade unions to help ensure their factories were run safely. As one Leicester-based whistle-blower working for Samworth Brothers explained to the Baker’s Union at the start of April, “all I think about after waking up are the dangerous conditions we have to face at work.” In addition to failing to take the necessary measures to ensure that safe social distancing practices were applied to workplaces, the billionaire owners of Samworth Brothers also put all their staff at risk when they refused to pay agency workers if they needed to self-isolate. This creates a culture of presenteeism, where workers are compelled to attend, even if ill, because of the threat of a massive loss of pay. But Samworth Brothers were merely acting like many irresponsible corporations who choose to elevate the growth of shareholder profits over the needs of key workers. Greencore is another case in point. Despite recognising a trade union at some of their Northampton production sites, when one of their employees tested positive at the start of May the site managers were still refusing to share their Covid-19 risk assessments with the local union reps. (For more on this see “Millionaire bosses at Greencore endanger us all with their pandemic profiteering.”)

85

Another anti-union company that indirectly pays the (very low) wages thousands of workers in Leicester is the trendy online fashion retailer Boohoo, which appears to be doing very well out of this crisis. Last month the Financial Times reported: “Seemingly unaffected by the pandemic, the fast-fashion retailer…reported a 45 per cent increase in sales in the three months to May, to £368m.” Profits it seems are booming for their billionaire executives, and last week Boohoo “unveiled a plan to pay bonuses of up to £100m to its two co-founders and £50m to other executives”. Just days after this distasteful display of pandemic profiteering played out in the media, a damming investigative report undertaken by “Labour Behind the Label” demonstrated how Boohoo’s profits were intimately entwined with the deep exploitation and untimely deaths of the people of Leicester. Boohoo’s trade, it turns out, is built upon the back of the existence of a huge illegal sweatshop industry located in many of Leicester’s poorest suburbs, which Boohoo relies upon to provide most of their products, many of whose factories also remained open for business during the peak of the pandemic. As the investigative report makes clear these exploitative working practices are “not only the result of some unscrupulous suppliers but also an inevitable outcome of the current fast fashion business model and the lack of regulation of pricing and purchasing practices. Indeed, the current abuses could in fact have been foreseen.” That the government has done nothing to address ongoing reports of extreme exploitation in Leicester’s garment industry shows what we already know: that the Tories political priorities have nothing to do with improving the living conditions of ordinary people. In providing the horrific details of the bullying that is going on inside many of Boohoo’s sweatshops, the report explains:

“One worker in a factory employing about 100 workers stated that he told his employer he felt unwell but was told he had to come into work. After working that day, he got tested and was found positive over the weekend. He informed his manager who told him that he should not inform any other workers of his result and not to send in a sick note. He has later found out that there were four other workers all sick with COVID-19 in similar positions – one however is still working because he cannot afford to take time off. When the worker applied for statutory sick pay his manager informed him that he was not going to get any sick pay and that he should just work through it or he would be sacked. According to the worker, the manager even told him that he himself has been tested positive but has continued to work every day and ‘not died’. The workers also said that there are no social distancing rules or PPE / sanitizers provided.” Tragically this was no anomaly. In “another relatively large factory employing around 100 staff, supplying for Boohoo, there have been 8 cases which led to the factory being closed. However, the factory has since reopened, and workers are being told to come into work or face dismissal.”

86

Such intimidation is not unique to Boohoo’s numerous suppliers – as we have seen with Samworth Brothers, key workers are not immune from attacks. This is also demonstrated by the ongoing attacks upon care home workers in Leicestershire who are currently battling against a massive cut on their pay and conditions, all in the name of securing greater profits for the bosses. Making these matters worse, while turning an eye to the oppressive actions of bosses during this pandemic, the Tories have been consistent in their attempts to blame the spread of the coronavirus on the failure of ordinary people to follow their so-called guidelines. But if anyone is to blame for the death of so-many people in Britain, it is the government and their friends in the billionaire-class, many of whose profits have soared to new highs at the same time as the pandemic claims our lives. Leicester has now been placed under lockdown measures again, and exploitation continues apace. The one thing we can be certain of in the coming weeks is that thousands of workers will be expected to turn-up at unsafe factories to continue producing more profits for Boohoo. And unless we do something to stop this exploitation, it will be the people of Leicester who will be forced to pay with our lives. That is why local Labour politicians who completely dominate the city must take an immediate lead in implementing the actions that are proposed in “Labour Behind the Label’s” Boohoo report. The first urgent demand noting that:

“All Boohoo sales and production must be suspended by the local authorities right away pending investigation into safety measures and reports of fraud at its supplier factories. All workers affected – regardless of employment status should receive full pay while work is suspended.” The report makes many other useful demands (which can be read online here), but first and foremost, it is clear that Boohoo and their suppliers must immediately recognise the right of their employees to negotiate collectively as members of trade unions to defend and extend their working rights. Without having access to such basic rights, it is unlikely that the situation in Leicester’s workplaces will improve anytime soon. For too long Leicester’s Labour politicians have stood on the side-lines allowing attacks upon ordinary workers to continue. This must end. Now such politicians must be forced to join trade unions and socialists in leading a coordinated response to this pandemic and position themselves at the front of a determined fight-back against the Tory death- cult that continues to sacrifice our lives on their altar of profits. And finally, we must be clear what is to blame for this ongoing crisis, it is the capitalist system itself. The Tories are but its latest servants, with New Labour doing capitalism’s bidding before.

87

The future remains uncertain, but one thing is sure, there will be no going back to the old normal. The new normal, that we must now collectively fight for, must be a socialist future where the needs of ordinary people come before the needs of profiteering. A future where ordinary workers take democratic control their own lives, and create a world in which bullying billionaire bosses remain as a fading prehistoric relic of a distant more inhumane past.

The Battle to Unionise Leicester’s Sweatshops, and How Boohoo Profits From Covid-19 July 3 Capitalism treats the entire working-class as mere cogs in a gigantic machine that doles out meagre wages for workers and plentiful profits for the ruling-class. So, while it is us who undertake the hard work that generates the profits which enables our bosses to pay our wages, at the end of the day it is not us who really benefits from our daily toil, it is the bosses – with the economic gap between the super-rich and the rest of us growing greater by the day. This toxic state of capitalist affairs is no accident, and it owes entirely to the fact that capitalism, by definition, must always place the creation of profits before the needs of humans; it also explains why capitalism has had its day and must be replaced with a new genuinely democratic form of society where ordinary workers can determine our future collectively. That alternative is socialism. Exploitation of workers takes many forms but its most intense expressions are found in workplaces where workers have few, if any, democratic rights. Usually the bosses in such environments act to demonise trade unions and try to prevent their workers from collectively organising to negotiate with management to improve their working conditions. This is no conspiracy, as for obvious reasons, bosses like to keep all the power for themselves so they can hire, fire and bully with no democratic interference from their employees. That is capitalism for you. The existence of such systemic exploitation therefore raises the need for workers to stand together in solidarity, especially if they want to gain any semblance of control over their working lives. Indeed, so long as capitalism exists as a political and economic system that dominates our lives the need to fight for workplace democracy will be critical, but even more so in workplaces where bosses continue to flout democratic norms. Leicester’s sweated garment industry provides a good case in point with

88 regards the longstanding nature of its antidemocratic conduct and remains an industry where bullying bosses break the law with seeming impunity, even refusing to pay their employees the national minimum wage. Under such appalling conditions thousands of workers are treated like serfs, working long hours under the close gaze of their bosses, so they can churn out garments that enrich their immediate bosses and make billionaires of the bigger bosses of the huge fashion outlets which sell on their wares to the public. In Leicester a very large proportion of the garments produced by the 10,000 plus workers slaving away on sewing-machines in around 1,500 different workplaces are destined for Boohoo’s warehouses – a company that is in the process of gifting millions of pounds to their executives in reward for their shifting so much stock during this pandemic. Of course, in normal times politicians typically prefer to focus their anger upon the hundreds of greedy bosses running Leicester’s tiny sweatshops. And despite all the handwringing that accompanies the intermittent media coverage that exposes the existence of sweatshops, rarely are any meaningful solutions posed to deal with the systematic nature of such exploitation: the main one being for workers to organise to promote their workplace rights within trade unions. Nevertheless, we live in strange times, and owing to the national attention drawn to our city because of the new lockdown and the release of an investigative report into Leicester’s sweatshops that was titled “Boohoo and Covid-19: The people behind the profits” a lot of national attention has focused on Boohoo, the anti-union fashion retailer that generates a high proportion of their record-breaking profits from our city’s sweatshops. One person who has investigated the role of business giants like Boohoo in contributing towards ongoing labour abuses in Leicester is Sarah O’Connor, a journalist for the Financial Times. In the course of making a statement to Parliament in late 2018 — which formed part of an ongoing investigation into the social and environmental impact of ‘fast fashion’ industry — she outlined some of the background regarding the recent growth of the super-exploitation of workers.

“Leicester always was a big garment manufacturing centre. It used to have lots of big factories, like Corah, which employed 3,000 people at the peak. It went into decline when a lot of retailers, like M&S, started outsourcing, started moving their manufacturing to the developing world. What remained was a skills base, a community of people, often people who had emigrated from places like India and Pakistan who still knew how to make clothes. They survived by parcelling up these big old factories into tiny outfits that might employ 10 people. I think the average factory size in Leicester is 10 people.

“They rumbled along, did not do very well and were making clothes for market stalls and that sort of thing. Then what has happened in the last five or 10 years is fast fashion, which you were talking about a lot in the previous session. The word ‘fast’ there, the reason that it is fast is that they manufacture close to home. Companies like Boohoo and

89

Missguided source 50% of their clothes from the UK, so Leicester is absolutely now a prime manufacturing place for fast fashion.” In 2018 the minimum wage in the UK was £7.83 an hour, but O’Connor explained that:

“The going rate for a garment worker in lots of places in Leicester is £3.50, £4 an hour. I was told that £5 was like a really top rate. You would walk out of a factory with your head held high if you were on £5 an hour. That shows that you are really skilled. You have a lot of experience.” She noted that not only are the terms and conditions that workers endure actually illegal, but “that goes for health and safety as well, so lots of these places are operating out of very old crumbling buildings that genuinely look and feel quite unsafe”. Yet such Dickensian practices continue in large part because of the perverse priorities of capitalism. As O’Connor mused:

“The strangest thing about all of this is that it is a totally open secret. Central government knows about it; local government knows about it. All of the retailers know about it. I was first told about it by a Government official. He said, ‘You should go and look at what is going on in Leicester. It is really interesting’.” Combined with the Tory government’s longstanding opposition to encouraging any form of meaningful regulation of health and safety in any workplace (ever), let alone in hundreds of tiny garment factories, it is little wonder that the sweatshop industry continues to thrive in Leicester, as it does across the world. Indeed, all this is taking place in the context of a Tory government who has spent the last decade slandering and attacking trade unions — the very democratic organisations that have the potential to improve the working conditions for all workers. O’Connor wasn’t able to provide such contextual details in her statement to Parliament, but she did make clear that the sweatshop workers she spoke to had come to the natural conclusion that they were considered to be second-class citizens. On their response to the continuing lack of government action to eradicate the existence of sweatshops, O’Connor added that the workers “said to me, ‘The Government know this is happening so they must have decided that we are not worth bothering with. It is not worth enforcing the law for us’.” Since this Parliamentary investigation took place nothing appears to have changed, and in many respects’, matters have only grown worse over the past 6 months. A global pandemic arose, and the billionaire owners of Boohoo decided that they were going to capitalise on the forced shutdown of ordinary clothing shops by increasing their own online sales. Hence the two owners of Boohoo are in the process of splitting a £100 million bonus amongst themselves for all the hard and dangerous work being carried out by their subcontracted sweatshop workers in Leicester. But not happy with just profiteering from the sale of non-essential goods that were made in sweatshops

90 with little or no regard for health and safetly matters in the midst of a pandemic, the owners of Boohoo have invested in another profit-making enterprise which will see them providing Covid-19 anti-body testing kits to the British public (selling at an estimated cost of £25 a test). This blatant Covid-opportunism is particularly appalling given Boohoo’s role in helping spread the pandemic in our city and beyond. According to the recent report into Boohoo’s profiteering, it has been estimated that during the pandemic as much as 80 per cent of the total production of Leicester’s garment industry is being sold-on to Boohoo. But despite all the ongoing accusations of sweated labour taking place in Leicester, Boohoo continues to maintain the fiction that they are doing nothing wrong. With no hint of irony or sorrow, in a recent statement they stated:

“The Boohoo group will not tolerate any incidence of non-compliance especially in relation to the treatment of workers within our supply chain. We have terminated relationships with suppliers where evidence of this is found.” From this statement it would appear quite obvious that Boohoo’s ongoing problem (which is more of a problem for sweatshop workers that the senior executives) is that their investigations into their subcontractor’s employment practices is not up to the task of determining instances of wrongdoing. This failure is understandable, as to discover wrongdoing in their own supply chain would imply that Boohoo must sort out the problem. Interestingly when Boohoo boss, Carol Kane, was interviewed as part of the aforementioned Parliamentary investigations, she was adamant that her company was doing everything possible to spot Labour abuses in their supply chain. Kane explained that in Leicester they employed three people who served as their local compliance team which make unannounced inspections of every single factory in their supply chain every single month. Evidently this compliance team may need some form of extra training as it would appear they must be doing something wrong if they have been unable to unearth any evidence of wrongdoing in Leicester. Yet seconds after the Boohoo boss made the above statements, the deeply troubling nature of the abuses taking place in Leicester were made clear when similar questions were posed to Paul Smith, a senior executive working for Missguided (another well- known fashion retailer). Although at the time Missguided were dealing with far-fewer Leicester-based suppliers than Boohoo (just 12), Smith admitted that in the past 18 months two members of his compliance team had “been threatened or physically assaulted” by factory owners based in Leicester. Remember those individuals who were attacked were members of the compliance team of a powerful company, not just under-paid workers slaving away on zero-hour contracts in illegal conditions of

91 employment. When asked why his compliance staff had been assaulted by the factory owners Smith explained:

“Because they did not want us to enter their premises. These I must add were people that we were not currently manufacturing with but were scoping out, and they did not like the questions that we were asking. On one occasion a former director of Missguided was chased out of the building and one of my employees was gripped by the throat and pushed out the door.” Here we should recognise that the problems in Leicester, which remain visible to all except Boohoo’s compliance inspectors are just a small part of a much bigger problem. As under capitalism, abuse of employees is sadly all too common in pretty much all sectors of employment. For example, in 2017 a survey of UNISON workplace safety reps determined “that bullying and harassment was one of their top five hazards of concern at work.” While another survey of UNISON members “found that one in four NHS staff had experienced bullying, harassment or abuse from colleagues in the previous 12 months.” Bullying rather than being an anomaly is a deep-rooted phenomenon as demonstrated in March 2020 when the public service union (PCS) called for an end to the “bullying culture” that the Tories has presided over in the civil service. This bullying, most regularly enacted by managers, has of course not gone away with the pandemic, and in many ways has become more serious, as are its consequences. Thus, throughout this ongoing pandemic tens of thousands of key workers have effectively been forced to go into work when ill (potentially with Covid-19) so they can continue to pay their bills all because their greedy bosses refuse to pay them sick pay. This is precisely why more militant workers and their trade unions are continuing the fight against such bosses to ensure that all employees are entitled to full pay if sick and should not be forced to live off the unliveable £95 a week that is offered as standard as statutory sick pay. Much more still needs to be done to improve working conditions in Britain, but ultimately, if we are serious about eradicating all exploitation of workers, we must strive to build the type of mass democratic movements of workers that can fight to eradicate capitalism and replace it with a socialist alternative. Attempts to organise such movement are of course a work-in-progress, and in the meantime, we must continue to collectivise all our workplace struggles to improve pay and conditions for all. This process of collective struggle will help more workers become confident in realising that it is they and they alone who have the power to eradicate poverty and raise up the living conditions of our class, the working-class. Needless to say, throughout the pandemic organised workers across the world have helped to prevent the pandemics spread by taking industrial action to force their

92 bosses to take their health and safety concerns seriously. Amongst other actions, this has included inspiring action being taken by key workers employed as cleaners, carers, and factory workers. Labour politicians can and should play a role in helping workers get organised; but all too often they have chosen to sit on the side-lines of the class- struggle, failing to take the necessary actions to challenge the capitalist roots of the ongoing exploitation of all workers. In recent years many people had hoped that Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party might enable ordinary members to reclaim this party from the supporters of capitalism, but this dream now appears smashed. Hence the urgent task at hand is for the labour movement, including trade union activists, anti-racist campaigners and those fighting to defend our public services to organise urgent discussions on the need for a political voice for the working class. As noted in a recent article published by Socialist Alternative (of which I am a member):

“A political voice for workers and youth will have to be rooted in the struggle taking place on the streets and in the workplaces. It will need to unapologetically fight for a pay rise, an end to zero-hours contracts and free education, as part of a socialist programme. It will need to actively be part of the climate strikes and the Black Lives Matter protests, and not just visiting picket lines, but part of building and mobilising for strikes to win. It will have to be a mass organisation, committed to mobilising the widest number of people in its ranks – not just around elections – but week-to-week in all of the important movements up and down the country. It’s clear that workers and young people, frustrated by mainstream politics, will not sit back and wait but many will be at the forefront of building a genuine opposition to the Tories and for real change.” A powerful socialist challenge to capitalism is long overdue, and now that the Labour Party is once again under the leadership of pro-capitalist forces (this time aligned around Kier Starmer not Tony Blair), the Labour Party is moving “further away from being a vehicle of struggle and is now unlikely to be a useful tool for workers and young people fighting back in the era of Covid and a new economic Great Depression.” This leaves those who wish to fight for a socialist alternative to capitalism many important tasks to carry out:

“Those choosing to remain in the Labour party must now draw firm conclusions – the path of conciliation, retreats and silence in the name of ‘unity’ can only lead to the ‘unity’ of the graveyard. Only a combative, organised and determined fight for a really democratic and socialist party, free from Blairite saboteurs, can meet the needs of the stormy period opening up in Britain and internationally.

“Socialist Alternative pledges to be part of any real attempt to build such an organisation of struggle, bringing to the table our experience as activists and trade unionists, our commitment to socialist politics and revolutionary change and our determination to win the world for the working class and the oppressed.” But we should not be too disheartened by the failure to reclaim the Labour Party. Positive inspiration for seismic political changes is all around us. For instance, earlier

93 this week in America, a “Socialist Alternative” city councillor in Seattle who helped lead a successful mass struggle against Amazon (the world’s most powerful corporation) to force them to pay taxes like the rest of us. On the nature of this weeks “historic victory for working people”, Sawant explained, the “victory was hard fought and it was hard won.” She continued:

“We will do everything we can to spread our movement. Our rallying cry everywhere must be: NO to austerity under this pandemic and recession! Tax Amazon and big business, not working people! We must build on this rebellion against the ruling class, as we did with the $15 minimum wage, to make it a national and global fight. Jeff Bezos, we are coming for you – for you and your billionaire friends – here and everywhere.

“In this struggle, we were clear eyed about naming the real power pulling the strings in Seattle: Amazon. Many argued that we should not “antagonize” big business and instead try to broker a deal, but we know that our power comes from the self organization of the working class, not from negotiation with the elite. If you are listening to this from another city, don’t let anyone tell you in your fight to tax big business that you’re being divisive, because class struggle is what gets the goods.

…

“If big business again tries to overturn the victory, our movement will go all out to the doors and onto the streets in the thousands to defeat them once again, and we will go further.

“Because you see we are fighting for far more than this tax, we are preparing the ground for a different kind of society. And if the ruling class wants to drive that process forward by lashing out against us in our modest demands, then so be it. Because we are coming for the corporate elite, for the ruling class and for their rotten system. We are coming to dismantle this deeply oppressive, racist, sexist, utterly bankrupt system of capitalism, this police state. We cannot and will not stop until it is dismantled, and we replace it with a socialist world, based on solidarity, genuine democracy, and equality.”

94

Withholding Data From Leicester July 3 This is a short post that I first wrote on June 30 and posted on Facebook for Leicester Socialist Alternative.

A week is a long time in a national crisis, and people’s lives depend on the quick reactions of the government to minimise the spread of the deadly coronavirus. Yet the government have yet to wake up to the challenge facing our country. Here in Leicester we are in the process of living through the nightmare of the Tories’ failure to put human life before corporate profits. A localised lockdown is now slowly coming into place — with schools to be closed by Thursday — but the apparent spike in positive tests for COVID-19 that is informing this decision was known to government decision-makers for weeks! What is clear is that the data to allow local authorities to respond to the pandemic is being centrally controlled and withheld – an act of neglect that was a “ministerial decision”. Speaking to the Financial Times earlier today, Leicester City Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby said the government had failed to give our city the data about the spike in cases and then waited 11 days before deciding that something needed to be done. As he put it: “That’s a long gap and a long time for the virus to spread.”

95

On the dangerous nature of the current so-called track and trace regime, Kate Ardern, who leads health protection and emergency planning for , explained to the Financial Times that: “If I don’t know who is being tested, and getting positive tests, in the community because one of the major elements of the testing system isn’t currently sending me complete and reliable intelligence . . . it actually hampers our ability to get ahead of the curve on outbreak management”. We say: • Outsourcing firms have failed. Bring test-and-trace in house • Organised workers in the trade unions must be central in determining when and under what conditions schools will re-open. We do the work, so we are best qualified to know what is safe • For an immediate proper public enquiry into the crisis, led by the unions and workers involved, with powers to act & immediate action around the disproportionate deaths in the BAME community • For a fully democratised and accountable NHS and Social Care System which caters for all our health needs

The Independent SAGE Group Report on Leicester’s Lockdown July 3 The Tories dangerous games with our lives never cease, and while the government have failed to get a functional track and trace operation in place, they are happily lifting the lockdown (except in Leicester). This willingness to forge ahead and get things done (but not track and trace) is typical for the Tories even though they got the entire Leicester situation wrong. On this latest fuck-up the Independent SAGE Group released an important report titled “Statement on Leicester and local lockdowns” (July 2) that made the Tories reckless behaviour absolutely clear:

“The situation in Leicester was both predictable and avoidable. It derives from the premature lifting of lockdown restrictions at a time when the virus is still circulating widely in some areas, when there is still no functional system of find, test, trace isolate and support and when the Prime Minister was sending an implied message that things are ‘back to normal’.”

96

The report quite correctly laid the blame for the Leicester mishap firmly on the doorstep of the government, noting that their failure to share data with all local authorities in a timely manner “has eroded trust in government and the information it provides about COVID-19 risk.” As if this were not bad enough, the “imposition of a lockdown” in Leicester “without the prior involvement of local authorities,” has caused further entirely foreseeable problems. The Independent SAGE Group warns that the government’s actions…

“…risks creating a deep sense of resentment and of inequity in the local populations. It also creates a situation in which racist groups may politicise that resentment by blaming ethnic minorities for the lockdown.” They then add:

“These resentments and divisions feed into resistance to restrictions. If this is met by repressive measures on behalf of the police and other authorities, then there will be a serious risk of local outbreaks of disorder and for that disorder to spread to other areas with similar resentments. Widespread disorder would be disastrous for the entire national response to the pandemic.” But although Independent SAGE are sympathetic with the predicament facing Leicester’s council, which is headed by Labour City Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby, it is clear that Leicester’s City Mayor also failed at various points during this pandemic. For a start — as most people already know — Sir Peter was unable to follow the basic rules of the first lockdown. But, more importantly (although of course not the focus of the medias attention), the Labour City Mayor refused to listen to local education workers and their unions who warned him that the wider reopening of our city’s schools at the beginning of June was dangerous. (That being said his decision to ignore the trade union is not entirely unexpected given Sir Peter’s not so left-wing politics.) That Sir Peter understood that the Tory government was failing to share all their data from the private track and trace program with our city’s pandemic decision-makers in late May and early June it is more clear than ever that he should have listened to the unions and opposed the Tories plan to reopen our schools. But like many pro-capitalist Labour politicians, opposing the Tories does not always come naturally to authoritarian leaders like Sir Peter.

97

Understanding Leicester’s Lockdown: A Tale of Tory Chaos July 7 Full lockdown of the economy is controversial and damaging in a variety of ways and most people would agree that it should only be undertaken when the available scientific evidence suggests that it is unavoidable. During the early stages of this ongoing pandemic the Tories tried to push forward with what was widely held to be a reckless “herd immunity” approach, but when it became evident that this approach would result in a massive number of deaths and the total overloading of our health services, the Tories implemented a lockdown. What is most critical to recognise in the implementation of the belated lockdown was that the government did not take this action voluntarily, and right until the last moment the Tories had tried to ignore what their own advisors were saying to them. Credit for the lockdown should be given to the concerted pressure put on the government by the trade union movement (with a particularly commendable role played by the National Education Union) who looked at what the scientific evidence was saying and took the appropriate actions. Unfortunately, as we all now know the lockdown came too late, and the UK’s per capita death toll ranks amongst the highest in the world. If this wasn’t bad enough, the Tories continued to blunder through this pandemic, making elementary mistakes which resulted in the needless deaths of thousands. From the beginning of the pandemic the government has told lie after lie: first that they weren’t trying to promote “herd immunity,” and later saying we should open our schools because children don’t actually transmit the coronavirus as much as adults (despite the fact that their own data from the Office of National Statistics showed that there was no statistical difference between any age group carrying the virus). Pushing ahead undeterred, the Tories told us schools would be reopening for business at the start of June. But thankfully a combination of pressure from trade unions and concerned parents forced a partial retreat. Although tragically – feeling the pressure from the government -- too many schools did end up reopening (even if partially) prior to the government fulfilling its promise of getting a working track-and-trace system in place to protect our communities. On this latter point: the ongoing failure of the government’s ability to implement what should be a fairly simple track-and-trace system owes much to their decision to trust the private sector to deliver the goods. The Tories are giving contracts to the very corporations with a proven track record of profiteering at the publics’ expense.

98

What could have been done? As noted already, an ideal response to the pandemic would not have necessitated a full national lockdown at all. Instead if the government had taken the threat of pandemics seriously, they would have not cut our NHS to the bone, and they would have worked out a strategy for containing outbreaks with locally informed responses based on accurate data on infection rates, with mass testing and tracing. This would have meant having a competent government that was willing to put the needs of ordinary people before the needs of big business – a socialist alternative, where decisions are made by workers for workers! July 4th has come and gone, and the national lockdown has now been lifted, but without the necessary safeguards in place to protect ordinary workers (not that they were in place anyway). The only people who remain protected are the super-rich, those who by virtue of their accumulated wealth -- that is generated from the hard work of the working-class -- are able to isolate themselves from the hustle and bustle of working life. The only city that remained in lockdown beyond “super Saturday” was Leicester. Once you dig into the details of what has happened, it is clear that no city is safe from the Tories ongoing pandemic pandemonium. In an ideal world you might assume that the government would provide meaningful scientific data to local authorities up and down the country, in order to alert them to the pandemic spread. But the government has once again utterly failed in its democratic duty to be trusted to do even this, a colossal failure that has now seen Leicester locked into another two weeks of wholly avoidable pain. Vital data not shared In the case of Leicester, it seems that while the government and private sector profiteers providing testing services for the Tories understood that the pandemic was still spreading in parts of our city, they decided to keep this knowledge to themselves. This meant that local authority leaders only had a view of the infection data that was derived from the testing carried out in the NHS (so-called pillar 1 tests), and these test results were demonstrating that the infection rate had been on the downturn for some time. Needless to say Boris Johnson knew what was going on and on July 1 he boasted in parliament that “The government first took notice and acted on what was going on in Leicester on 8 June, because we could see that there was an issue there.” This ‘cleverness’ on the part of the government owed entirely to the fact that only they had sight of the decisive private sector test results for Leicester (the pillar 2 tests) while the City Council were deliberately kept in the dark. This critical data that only Johnson and his chums could see showed that the total daily infection rate on June 2 had already

99 reached 67 in Leicester, while the Labour Council only had access to pillar 1 results which indicated only 7 people had tested positive that day.

Graph: from Rapid Investigation Team report by Public Health England

In response, Johnson then pretended that the government had leapt into action to save the day, and he stated that they sent “four more mobile testing units” to Leicester “shortly thereafter” June 8th. The problem here is that Johnson’s statement is simply not true. In fact, prior to the peak Leicester only had one testing facility which was located five miles from the city centre (in Birstall), and for a few days only had a temporary visit from a mobile testing unit (which arrived on June 2 and left shortly after). Instead of ordering a quick response, the government waited to let the city open their shops on June 15, then waited a few more days, until June 18, when the Tories finally managed to get around to opening their first permanent testing unit within the city itself (in Evington). On this day, one week after the government apparently noticed a problem, but 16 days after Leicester had a sizable pillar 2 infection spike, the government partially shared some of their pillar 2 data, and on the same night decided to announce that the city now had an “outbreak” on its hands.

100

At this stage Leicester’s Labour City Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby repeated a request he had made many times earlier that the government immediately share the detailed information from the partly revealed pillar 2 data so that Leicester could plan a response to contain the apparent outbreak. Thus, on June 19 Soulsby explained to the press that Leicester “doesn’t have crucial detail about where people who have been tested are from.” He added: “That is the only way we can get a proper picture of what is happening, what communities are being affected and then start to do anything about it.” Failed by the government The government chose to ignore the council’s reasonable requests and waited a few more days before setting up a second testing unit in the city (in Spinney Hills Park) on June 21. Then on June 25 the government established a third city-based testing site in Victoria Park. On this latter day, now many weeks into Leicester’s alleged crisis, the government finally shared the detailed results of pillar 2 testing with the city. Unbeknown to local politicians, on June 28 the Tories then announced on television that Leicester was potentially facing a full lockdown. Then, against Soulsby’s very reasonable reservations, the city was quickly forced into accepting a two-week extension to their lockdown, with this decision being announced the following evening by Matt Hancock. What we see here are the actions of an incompetent and bullying government who are deliberately trying to make a Labour-run council look like fools in their apparent mishandling of the pandemic. And while socialists have criticisms of Soulsby’s many political failures (including his long standing opposition to basic socialist ideas which was extended to his opposition to Jeremy Corbyn), what is clear is that Leicester was not given the data it needed to plan a targeted response to a localised outbreak. Increase in cases or increase in testing? Soulsby’s initial reluctance to enforce the Tories’ city-wide lockdown has been widely ridiculed and misreported on in the national media, but it turns out that his views on this matter were actually better informed by science than those pushed by the government. On the same day that the Tories publicly announced that the council had reluctantly agreed to the new lockdown (Monday, June 29), a critical report had been published by Public Health England’s Rapid Investigation Team which was titled “Preliminary investigation into COVID-19 exceedances in Leicester.” Importantly this report, drew particular attention to the high level of reported incidents “related to food factories/outlets” -- which fits with reports about the lack of social distancing being carried out at one of Leicester’s largest food factories owned by the Tory-supporting owners of Samworth Brothers.

101

But most crucially the report concluded that “Evidence for the scale of the outbreak is limited and may, in part, be artificially related to growth in availability of testing.” This was a serious criticism that was largely overlooked in the media, and what it points to most of all is the ongoing failure of the government to collect the type of infection data that is useful for enabling local authorities to understand and contain outbreaks of the pandemic. More localised testing obviously results in the identification of more infections, but without contextual information the persistent reporting of such isolated numbers means next to nothing. Hence we should be glad that more recently the Science Media Centre published a short report on July 2 which reviewed the recommendations made within Public Health England’s report. This led to one of the scientists reviewing the report to make a positive suggestion for remedying this problem, writing that “whether the rise in new cases [in Leicester] is attributable to the wider availability of testing could be tested by comparing the rates per 10,000 population between Leicester and other areas after normalisation by the total number of tests performed in each area.” Unfortunately, as obvious as this suggestion sounds, the Tories have neglected to perform such analyses – they seem to ignore all common-sense recommendations. And to make matters worse the government hasn’t even begun to undertake the type of randomised testing of the UK’s total population that would allow them to make accurate predictions for the true infection rate in different parts of the country. It is what we knew all along, the government simply doesn't care about saving lives and minimising the spread of the pandemic, which is why we need to organise to remove them from power. A selection of some of the still relevant demands that Socialist Alternative were raising from the beginning of the national lockdown (which can be read in full here) to help protect and extend workers’ rights during the lockdown included:

• Closure of all non-essential workplaces, with no job losses and wages guaranteed - including for workers on precarious or zero-hour contracts. Employers to support work from home arrangements wherever possible

• A programme of massive increase in hospital bed provision, including requisition of private hospital beds and secondment of medical workers in the private sector to the NHS – no compensation for private health bosses

• Nationalise the pharmaceutical companies under democratic workers’ control and management

• Proper protection of all health workers’ health - including mental health, - safety and working conditions. Democratic workers’ committees in each hospital to ensure health and safety of all workers and patients

102

• A democratic, socialist world where the means of production are collectively owned and planned to meet the needs of all, rather than the profits of the tiny few

Leicester’s Lockdown Timeline July 7 April 2 – NHS data shows that peak of coronavirus cases in Leicester occurred on April 2. For the first months of the pandemic the testing for coronavirus was limited to that carried out within the healthcare system, which is known as pillar 1 testing. Data from Leicester shows that positive pillar 1 test peaked on April 2 (at 33 cases) and gradually reduced from then onwards.

April 30 – G4S helps open the first private sector drive-through testing centre which is targeted at NHS staff and other key workers (by appointment only) at the Birstall Park and Ride (north of the city, approximately 5 miles from the city centre). Owing to a major government error the pillar 2 data collected at this centre is not shared with local authorities until mid-June. However, the results from the first day of private sector testing obtained 32 positive tests for Covid-19 compared to the 10 positive tests from pillar 1 testing. This information would have indicated to the

103 government that coronavirus cases were far higher than expected from the pillar 1 data. Leicester City Council however were not informed of this problem. May – throughout May the data available to City Council shows decreasing infections. June 2 – an appointment only Mobile Testing Unit opens in Leicester in an undisclosed location for “a few days” – priority is given to essential workers. This visit was a normal part of the governments national strategy wherein mobile units visit different areas of the country. The total number of positive pillar 2 cases in the city on this day reaches a new high of 60 (an increase of 20 from the data from the day before). Contrast this data to the data that the City Council can see which indicates that Leicester had just 4 positive cases on June 1, and 7 positive cases on June 2. After a few days the mobile testing facility leaves Leicester. June 8 – private sector pillar 2 data shows 56 positive cases. The City Council only has access to pillar 1 data that shows the city has 4 positive cases. Boris Johnson has since stated: “The government first took notice and acted on what was going on in Leicester on 8 June, because we could see that there was an issue there. We sent mobile testing units—four more mobile testing units—shortly thereafter.” This statement made in Parliament on July 1 was a lie. June 15 – following national government guidance shops in Leicester are opened for business. June 18 – ten days after the government boast that they identified a problem in Leicester the government established a drive-through testing site in Leicester. This new site was based at Evington leisure centre. (Leicester now had two testing sites, the new one in Evington and the one just north of the city in Birstall.) On the day that the Evington site was opened 66 people tested positive across the two private testing sites compared to 61 cases the day before (when only the Birstall testing centre was functional). Later in the evening of June 18 Matt Hancock reveals that there had been an ‘outbreak’ of Covid-19 in Leicester. At this stage it seems that the City Council had gained access to the rough data from pillar 2 testing results as they responded in the press by highlighting how of the total 2,494 Covid-19 cases confirmed in the city since the start of the pandemic (pillar 1 and pillar 2 combined) 658 cases had been reported in the previous two weeks. June 19 – Leicester City Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby talked in a conference call with Matt Hancock and responded publicly by pointing out that the government was not giving the Council enough detailed information about the confirmed cases. Soulsby said to the press that the data they had access to “doesn’t have crucial detail about where

104 people who have been tested are from.” He added: “That is the only way we can get a proper picture of what is happening, what communities are being affected and then start to do anything about it.” This a problem that is replicated across the country. June 21 – a third testing site was set up by the government in Spinney Hill Park. Total pillar 2 test results for this day were 62. June 23 – the Council explained to the public that although they still need the details of pillar 2 cases, but note that there had been 866 cases occurring over the last two weeks. June 24 – the total number of cases (pillar 1 and 2 combined) peaked on this day at 97 cases and has been reducing since then (see figure presented at the bottom of this article from July 6). June 25 – due to the extremely hot weather (which occurred from June 23 to June 26) the Spinney Hill walk-in centre was closed for the day. People were redirected to a new testing centre that had opened that day in the car park at Victoria Park/De Montfort Hall. On this day (June 25) the government finally decided to share the detailed results of pillar 2 testing with the city. Sir Peter Soulsby tweets: “After weeks of asking… we finally got addresses of positive tests from Govt. Working now to analyse if there really is an upturn of cases and if so, where. Only then can we know what may need to be done.”

105

June 27 – local Labour MP Jon Ashworth was briefed by Matt Hancock about the Covid- 19 spike in Leicester. Ashworth reported to the press that Hancock had made it clear to him that at this stage a local lockdown would not be necessary. June 28 – Home Secretary Priti Patel announced on television that a lockdown in Leicester was a possibility. June 29 – On Monday morning the local newspaper reported the details of the weekends mixed messages, including Ashworth’s comments about Hancock saying a local lockdown was unlikely. Soulsby, having been interviewed the day before, explained in the Leicester Mercury (June 29) that the Council was trying to analyse the latest data they had received from the government noting: “From the reliable data we do have we can see while positive tests are rising, admissions to hospital are falling, and also deaths.” Having spoken the reporter the day before, Soulsby said that he didn’t think a city-wide lockdown would be necessary, adding “there may come a point, when the information shows it, for an intervention in a neighbourhood or a group of streets.” Government officials inform Sir Peter Soulsby that they want him to implement a local lockdown. Later in the day the planned two-week extension to the lockdown is publicly announced by the Council, and as Sir Peter explained: “These measures are stricter than we anticipated but we understand the need for firm action. I am determined that we will make this work and to minimise the time these additional measures need to be in place in the city.” However later reporting by The Times (July 2) suggests that Soulsby was not happy about the decision and had been pushed by the government into accepting the lockdown sometime on Sunday (June 28). The newspaper report explained:

“Sir Peter said that he had been ‘bounced’ into agreeing to lockdown after being shown a few slides on Sunday that did not compare Leicester to other cities. He said: ‘The inescapable fact is that we and councils up and down the land need street-level data if we are going to understand what’s happening. Until now we haven’t had it.’” It was later in the night (apparently at 1:04am on Monday morning) that Soulsby then received an email from the government advising him of the need for a two week extension to the lockdown. Then on Monday (June 29), before the Council decided to accept the government guidance the BBC reported:

“Sir Peter criticised the analysis as ‘superficial’ and said he did not know whether the government had the power to impose an extension if council officials concluded it was not necessary. ‘I think it’s very unclear as to what difference it would make if they continue the regulations in Leicester and why you would do it,’ he said. ‘Frankly, if the virus is out of control and spreading in Leicester with the restrictions, I can’t understand how extending them for a further two weeks would make any difference to that.’”

106

It was only later on Monday evening that both the government and the Council formally announced the two week extension to Leicester’s lockdown. Finally it is important to note that on June 29 the Public Health England’s Rapid Investigation Team published their own report about Leicester situation (“Preliminary investigation into COVID-19 exceedances in Leicester”). The report drew particular attention to a high level of reported incidents “related to food factories/outlets” which fits with reports about the lack of social distancing being carried out at one of Leicester’s largest food factories which is owned by Samworth Brothers. The report states:

“East Midlands has reported 37 situations of interest in the last 3 weeks; with 22 related to Leicester postcodes. This is more than double the nearest region; with the majority of regions reporting less than 10 situations of interest in the last 4 weeks. Many of these incidents are related to food factories/outlets.” (p.18) Highlighting the government’s clear failure to act in a timely fashion to notify Leicester City Council about the high numbers of people testing positive, the report says that “increasing numbers of cases” could be identified “most notably since early June 2020.” The report’s authors also shed light on the reasons why Soulsby was sceptical that the high level of positive testing in our city meant that a lockdown was necessary. Hence the PHE report states:

“The rise in pillar 2 diagnose is probably linked, in part, to the availability of testing to the general public, and at least one component of the rise in new diagnoses is due to a steadily increasing proportion of infections (symptomatic and asymptomatic) being identified rather than a true increase in the number of new infections occurring.” (pp.20-1) This is supported by the reports final conclusion that “Evidence for the scale of the outbreak is limited and may, in part, be artefactually related to growth in availability of testing.” (p.25) For a comparison of pillar 1 and pillar 2 infections in Leicester over time see the diagram below from page 6 of the report:[1]

107

June 29 to July 1 – two additional mobile testing units were set up in the city although their location was not advertised publicly. People with appointments would have been guided to these new units. July 1 – in an article published in The Daily Telegraph (July 1), Professor Carl Heneghan, the director of evidence-based medicine at the University of Oxford “said the number of cases [in Leicester] was likely to be a consequence of more testing after an outbreak was first spotted on June 8.” Elsewhere analysis of Leicester’s Covid-19 cases undertaken by Dr Duncan Robertson, a researcher based at Loughborough University’s School of Business and Economics, highlighted some of the serious limitations associated with the infection data released so far for Leicester (as elsewhere). As he writes on his blog, two caveats to understanding the data include:

“The number of tests carried out: when there are low number of tests, there are necessarily low numbers of detected cases. We do not currently have information for the number of tests carried out in each region, so cannot take account of this – it is possible that high cases per 100,000 is due to particularly high levels of testing in that region.

“More local testing in locations with known cases: As local outbreaks are detected, extra testing resources may be allocated to towns such as Leicester, with mobile testing stations being set up. There is a feedback loop here meaning that extra cases will be detected – this does not necessarily mean that there is a higher incidence, just that the cases are being detected.”

108

July 2 – a report from the Science Media Centre reviewed the recommendations made within Public Health England’s report on Leicester. Commenting on the potential for increased testing to have contributed to the apparent spike in cases, Professor Jose Vazquez-Boland, Chair of Infectious Diseases at the wrote, “whether the rise in new cases is attributable to the wider availability of testing could be tested by comparing the rates per 10,000 population between Leicester and other areas after normalisation by the total number of tests performed in each area.” Unfortunately, as obvious as this advice sounds our incompetent government has neglected to perform such analyses. July 7 – the most recent government data for daily confirmed infections in Leicester (pillar 1 and pillar 2 combined) shows that the number of infection cases peaked on June 24 (at 97 cases) and has been reducing ever since (see below).

ENDNOTES [1] This diagram (figure 2) shows a massive drop-off in pillar 2 tests on June 24 to just 16. (Total cases for the day including 4 pillar 1 cases equals 20.) However, the latest data from the government shows that these figures were later revised upwards to a total of 97 positive cases (see the final diagram – shown just above – that is reproduced from data obtained on July 6).

109

Boohoo Sweatshop Investigation: Fight for Workers and Trade Union Control July 8 Today it was announced that the billionaires in charge of Boohoo, the fast fashion company that makes immense profits from buying its products from sweatshop suppliers, has decided to launch “an independent investigation” into the so-called allegations “that workers in its supply chain were paid illegally low wages and suffered poor working conditions.” According to a report carried in the Financial Times (July 8) the “independent” review would be led by Alison Levitt QC. But if we are going to get a genuinely independent review into Boohoo’s flagrant misconduct then organised workers must have democratic oversight of the entire investigation. Democratic representatives of ordinary workers from the trade union movement must be allowed to play a leading role in determining the terms of the review, and we must demand that full public transparency of findings throughout the duration of any forthcoming investigation. But we also need a much broader investigation into the exploitation of workers within society. A starting point for this might be Alison Levitt herself and those who serve alongside her on the board of trustees of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) – a ruling-class think tank that describes itself as being “engaged in cutting edge defence and security research.” We might also investigate the role that Morgan Stanley (the banking giant) plays in the ongoing oppression of workers worldwide, as the Vice Chair of RUSI currently works for Morgan Stanley as a Senior Advisor. Remember after all that this is the bank, who in 2017, attacked Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party which led him to respond by saying that…

“…banks like Morgan Stanley should not run our country, but they think they do, because the party they fund protects their interests, the Conservative Party in Downing Street. That’s why they want to keep the Tories there, because their rigged economy and their tax cuts for the richest work for them. These are the same speculators and gamblers who crashed our economy in 2008 and then we had to bail them out. Their greed plunged the world into crisis and we’re still paying the price because the Tories used the aftermath of the financial crisis to push through unnecessary and deeply damaging austerity. … While Morgan Stanley’s CEO paid himself £21.5 million last year…” Another institution that could be investigated might be MI6, whose former head, Sir John Scarlett is the aforementioned Vice Chair of RUSI. Likewise, we might also look

110 into the exploitative actions undertaken by Times Newspapers Holdings, where Scarlett is a current board member, which would be particularly relevant given the Sunday Times recently published an expose into Boohoo’s use of sweatshop labour. Such a far-reaching investigation aiming to address the problems of systemic exploitation might also investigate the CIA too, as RUSI’s Senior Vice President, David Petraeus, is the former head of the US intelligence agency!

Update on the Politics of Leicester’s Lockdown July 9 On July 8 Leicester City Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby published a helpful seven-page “open letter” as a response to the government’s ongoing lockdown deceptions. This open letter was published on the local council’s website. The main points that I made in my earlier timeline of pandemic events — published online two days ago as “Leicester’s lockdown timeline” — remain for the most part accurate. However, it seems that the local authority actually had access to the total number of positive private sector tests (pillar 2) on June 1, but only received useable data from such pillar 2 data on June 25. In my previous article I had ncorrectly inferred that Leicester City Council first had access to pillar 2 data on June 18. Nevertheless, as I highlight below, the fact that the Council had access to some pillar 2 data earlier than I first reported does not change much. This is because in order for the Council to take meaningful action local authorities needed to have full access to the private sectors results – data which the government refused to share with them until June 25.

Summary of Some Important Points Made in Sir Peter Soulsby’s Open Letter April to July – Sir Peter Soulsby wrote: “Hospital admissions, which helpfully include ethnicity, have fallen from over 100 per week in mid-April to 15per week by 3rd July.” June 1 – the local authorities Director of Public Health (DPH), Ivan Browne, “was given access to the number of positive tests in the City (Pillar 2) data which only gave numbers for those testing positive across the whole of the city. On the test and trace call later that week the DPH asked for clarification as to whether the figures were a

111 cause for concern and was told it was probably ‘a small numbers issue’ and may well go down again in the following week’s data release.” June 9 – the local Director of Public Health “remained concerned that [Leicester’s] overall numbers appeared to show an increased number of positive results compared with other areas of the country.” June 18 – the government set up the first testing centre that fell within Leicester’s city boundary, this was located in Evington. Sir Peter explained: “There were 2 others beyond the city boundary. All were drive through only and a long way from the areas subsequently identified as being of concern”. June 20 – “After the Secretary of State’s announcement [on June 18 which raised his concern about an outbreak], a further walk through testing centre was made available on Saturday 20th June” in Spinney Hill Park. Sir Peter makes it clear that this was only established after he suggested it and he adds: “Those organising it [working directly for the government] said they were only there for the day and the DPH had to spend much time over the following week persuading them not to pull out of Leicester.” June 22 – the government sent the local authority a “data sharing agreement” which had to be signed off before the full private sector testing data would be shared with Leicester City Council. The government had used this process to attack the local authority, accusing them of taking too long to complete the paperwork. Sir Peter explains that the first form for the data sharing agreement was signed and returned to Public Health England on June 23. “A second form was sent to us on the 24th June which we returned the same date.” June 25 – “Finally, after weeks of requests, the link to the postcode Pillar 2 data was sent to us on 25th June – a full 11 days after the SoS’s statement at the News Conference of an ‘outbreak’.” Sir Peter adds: “On 25th June the Midlands and Lancashire NHS reassured us that for Leicester Hospitals – ‘… actual admissions and discharges for COVID19 are generally lower than predicted throughout April, May and into June, and are very low’. There were no specific Government or PHE interventions in Leicester at any time or advice given that was not acted upon. Leicester does have very significant resources and expertise to intervene, but in the absence of local data has been hampered in knowing where to use it.” June 28 – “On the evening of Sunday 28th June, we were sent a summary of a report from PHE which…. recommended, ‘Delaying July 4, 2020 relaxation actions in Leicester and enhancement of enforcement or monitoring of social distancing guidelines for at least two weeks to allow the impact of the above measures to be assessed’.” As Sir Peter goes on to explain: “This recommendation and the description of the effect of more testing have now been omitted from the published version of this report. It is

112

reasonable to assume that this is because it is at odds with the decision to ‘lock-down’ Leicester.”

Three Other Significant Problems Identified in Sir Peter Soulsby’s Letter 1. “Although the numbers being tested is now increasing, there is an even more significant limitation in the usefulness of the data. We are not provided with the total number of tests undertaken for each” area of the city. “We only receive positive results…To be useful we need the proportion of tests that are positive in every particular area…” As Sir Peter correctly points out: “Thus, with more testing now being done we will of course get more positives.” 2. “The [pillar 2] data is also difficult to clean up for use. It relates to the number of tests not to individual people. In some cases, individuals will have several swabs taken and each swab processed counts as a separate test. There is therefore, inevitably, a level of double counting. PHE have now advised this will be changed to provide lists of the first positive case for individuals.” Sir Peter then adds: “Finally, the test dates do not appear to correspond to the specimen date. This makes trend analysis very problematic.” 3. “The only way we can really know the rate in the community is by random sampling. Then we can understand the level of infection and not just the figures for those who, for whatever reason, present themselves for testing.”

113

Political Responses to Leicester’s Covid-19 Crisis July 9 This week an open letter was circulated by Leicester Stand Up to Racism which correctly placed “responsibility for this [pandemic] crisis, both in Leicester and nationally at the door of Central Government.” On top of the huge death toll caused by seemingly endless government ineptitude, the statement highlighted how the Tories persistent “failures have been compounded by a decade of cuts and privatisation.” (Although we shouldn’t neglect the cuts and privatisation carried out by New Labour prior to this.) Importantly the statement went on to acknowledge how:

“Black Asian and Minority Ethnic communities have suffered disproportionately during this crisis and there is widespread concern that they will take the brunt of the spike in infections. Black Asian and Minority Ethnic groups have between 10-50% higher risk of mortality from COVID-19 in comparison with white British people. In Leicester as in other places there are pockets of poverty, inequality and high density housing which disproportionately affect our Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities. The inspiring explosion of the Black Lives Matter movement has also shone a light on structural inequalities that our communities face every day.” I am proud that my own union branch (Unison City Council) signed this statement, and I welcome the fact that twelve local Labour councillors signed it too, as did one local Labour MP, Claudia Webbe. But what to make of Leicester’s forty Labour councillors who didn’t sign the statement, not to mention Leicester’s City Mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, and the two other Labour MPs, Jon Ashworth and Liz Kendall? Of course, the petition is still open for them to sign, but given that the majority of Leicester’s political representatives have just spent the past five years opposing Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party (echoing a highly destructive national trend), most are very unlikely to sign a progressive statement opposing institutional racism. In other recent news, Claudia Webbe, who is a breath of fresh air compared to her predecessor (Mr Vaz), has written a useful article for the Guardian (July 5) newspaper in which she noted:

“Leicester’s diversity is our strength. Yet we know that racial and class inequalities, coupled with inadequate government support, mean that working-class people, migrants and minority ethnic communities are at greater risk both of being exposed to Covid-19, and suffering its worst effects. As Leicester East is one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse places in the UK, and has high levels of in-work poverty, we disproportionately suffer from these issues. The virus itself may not discriminate, but our economic and social system certainly does.” While referring to the local report produced by Public Health England, Webbe highlighted how the study…

114

“… found that many of the reported Covid-19 incidents [in Leicester] are related to food factories and outlets, and that the average age of those infected is around 40. This suggests that too many working people in Leicester were given inadequate government support to self-isolate – something borne out by recent reports of outbreaks of the virus in garment factories. This reflects my experience, as I have been helping countless local businesses and employees to stay afloat and access funding by navigating the government’s prohibitively strict guidelines.” On the issue of aportioning blame for this dire situation, another article authored by the campaigning group “Psychologists for Social Change” (published on July 7) explained how the…

“… COVID-19 crisis has increased the visibility of existing social inequalities in our society and could further compound divisions in our communities. Tragically, we are experiencing this in Leicester today. Many of the speculative narratives focus on personal responsibility with even the Prime Minister bemoaning problems “getting people to understand what was necessary to do” in Leicester. This caricatures residents as either unintelligent or unable to speak English; the latter pointing unfairly to our Eastern European, Somali and Asian communities. There is no evidence that social distancing was understood any less here than in other parts of the country, and the reality is far more complex than that narrative implies. Blaming individuals in this way is unhelpful, shaming, feeds into nationalist rhetoric, and takes the focus away from a government who have been slow to act not just in Leicester but from the outset of the pandemic. It also obscures the more powerful and intersected systemic influences at play that people cannot change.” On the specific issue of racism, they write:

“We know that COVID-19 disproportionately impacts communities racialised as Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME), which itself is a label steeped with racism and power imbalances. Leicester’s rich history as one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse places in the UK has been drawn on by social media reports emphasising biological ideas to explain what might have happened. This has no scientific basis and ignores the sustained disinvestment in places that BAME communities live. Judgments have also taken aim at cultural norms about intergenerational households. These racist narratives not only detract from the longstanding issues of housing shortages and overcrowding in the city, but are vastly different to houses of multiple occupation where exploitative landlords – who often also provide employment – rent properties to several workers from different households, moving them around to meet business needs. Incorrectly attributing ethnicity and culture as the cause of increased cases is therefore dangerous as it masks the specific socio-political and economic factors at the heart of the issues in Leicester.” As they go on to surmise:

“The narrative that residents are wholly responsible for being at risk of infection or not understanding the rules is neither credible nor helpful. Rather it forms a poisonous smoke screen that serves those with structural power (be it central Government or local employers), not the citizens of Leicester.”

115

On the same day that the aforementioned article was posted, an editorial in the British Medical Journal likewise took the government to task for their “chaotic” mishandling of the pandemic (“Lessons from Leicester: a covid-19 testing system that’s not fit for purpose”). This editorial makes similar points, noting:

“Leicester was a city at risk, with high levels of social deprivation and ethnic diversity. We now know that cases spiked in late May and that new cases were being detected throughout June at rates of over 100 per 100 000 population per week. But these data were made available to the local authority only days before lockdown was re-imposed on 30 June and were not made public for several days after that.” Hence the “population of Leicester is suffering the fallout of a chaotic testing system that seems to have forgotten its prime purpose, namely to trigger prompt, targeted measures, informed by local knowledge and up-to-date surveillance.” Indeed, given what we know about the withholding of the private sector tests (so-called pillar 2 tests) from local authorities across the country the editorial points out how the corporations involved (which includes Serco) “seem to have focused on doing as many tests as possible, rather than establishing testing as a key component of a system designed to contain the virus and save lives.” The editorial therefore emphasises that:

“Up-to-date local data were available… but were not shared with local authority teams, apparently on the orders of a government minister. It is hard to see what could justify such a prohibition.” This shocking behaviour leads the writers in this prestigious medical journal to conclude that “if a ministerial directive blocked timely data sharing, the minister should be held accountable for avoidable deaths and the consequences of reinforced lockdown.” Too right. But we should go further still, and as a recent article published by Socialist Alternative (July 8) argues: “Every job lost as a result of this crisis should be placed at the feet of the Tory government who have mismanaged the crisis from day one, and ultimately of the capitalist system they defend, which is failing globally to provide working people with a secure future.” The entire capitalist system must be uprooted and replaced with a socialist alternative:

“…we need nothing short of revolutionary change to truly tackle this crisis. Companies threatening layoffs should be taken into public ownership to defend jobs, alongside the big banks and monopolies, under workers control and management. This would open the way for a democratically planned socialist economy that could guarantee full employment, a living wage and a genuine green recovery.”

116

Pandemic Lies Endanger Us All: New Revelations About Leicester’s Lockdown July 10 Leicester’s lockdown highlights the utter incompetence of our government, but most of all it clarifies why workers and their trade unions now have no choice but to step- up their fightback against such malicious Tory actions that continue to endanger us all. On Monday Boris ‘whack-a-mole’ Johnson wallowed in his ignorance when he scapegoated care workers for Britain’s devastating death when he asserted that “too many care homes didn’t really follow the procedures”. This appalling lie coming from a government that has always failed to acknowledge their own complete failure to protect human life, whether that be in the past or during this pandemic. On Tuesday the government, affirming their callous disregard for the living, then informed Leicester’s residents that lockdown or not, they had “no plans to change the scope or extend any of the [business support] schemes currently available.” So, now the Tories — the so-called friends of the business community — are allowing Leicester’s already weak economy to go to the wall! If this is the government’s new procedure for implementing local lockdowns, they will find it impossible to retain the consent of the public for the duration of this pandemic. Even the “head of the region’s Chamber of Commerce has warned of a ‘two-tier recovery that risks disadvantaging Leicester’.” (July 10, Leicester Mercury) On Wednesday Leicester’s City Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby publicised detailed information about Leicester’s pandemic response which exploded the government’s ongoing lie that Leicester is to blame for the lockdown. Initially The Guardian (July 8) was the only newspaper that reported on this new development, but they only focused on the substandard private testing ignoring the bigger story contained in Sir Peter’s timeline that showed how the local authority had been made to look stupid for initially opposing government advice about the lockdown. This oversight was later corrected by the Leicester Mercury (July 10) which ran an article that explained how:

“Sir Peter has said an initial copy of a Public Health England report [about Leicester] sent to him in the days leading up to the local lockdown suggested only extending existing restrictions for a two-week period, that is, not allowing pubs, restaurants and hairdressers to reopen on July 4.” This critical piece of information had initially been reported by the BBC on July 3 in an article titled “Leicester coronavirus outbreak timeline: Who knew what, and when?” But this news was subsequently ignored by the national media. The early article had nevertheless observed:

117

“The BBC has seen a leaked copy of a draft Public Health England report that was sent out less than 24 hours before lockdown was announced. It made certain recommendations – but did not include a full lockdown. It suggested: ‘Delaying July 4, 2020 relaxation actions in Leicester and enhancement of enforcement or monitoring of social distancing guidelines for at least two weeks to allow the impact of the above measures to be assessed.’ In other words, as pubs, bars and hairdressers opened up across the rest of England, in Leicester they were to be kept closed for a minimum of a fortnight. This is far less stringent than what actually happened.” Either way Leicester has now been forced into a full lockdown by a government who continue to scapegoat the local authority and ordinary people for the pandemics spread; even though a local lockdown (both nationally and locally) would have been completely preventable if only we had a competent government. Making matters worse, to this day the private sector continues to withhold the full data from their community testing (pillar 2 testing). This means that Leicester (like other cities) still has no information about the total number of people in the city who have been tested but do not have Covid-19. Nevertheless, the data released last night by the government shows some good news (see below), as despite a massive increase in private sector run testing being undertaken in Leicester over the last few weeks, the total number of people testing positive for Covid-19 is coming down.

In closing, what is clear, and has always been clear since the start of this pandemic, is that the Tories were never going to provide the solutions to this ongoing crisis. This is not surprising as it this Tory government and all of their capitalist predecessors (which included New Labour) whose combined actions over the past few decades have led to the dismantling and privatisation of our country’s health services. That is why we cannot trust the Tories to continue manage our countries pandemic response. Not that we should have any faith that Sir Keir Starmer’s response would really have been much

118 better given his ongoing failure to provide a robust challenge to the Tories throughout this pandemic. A meaningful pandemic response is however urgently needed – a response that provides a socialist alternative to the current capitalist mayhem that we have had to endure for too long. This will mean ordinary people getting organised in their millions within their trade unions and our local communities so we can dictate the terms of our country’s future response to this crisis of capitalism. We will need to demand that private sector profiteers are kicked out of the pandemic response apparatus, so we can ensure that our health support systems can be run under democratic workers control. The same should be true with other sectors of the society tasked with managing our future health. We need to take all health services back into public ownership, and the same argument holds true for the pharmaceutical corporations too – they must be nationalised under workers control. To do anything less is to endanger the lives of us all.

Greencore’s CEO Takes Pandemic Lessons from Boohoo’s Sweatshop Racket July 10 That Patrick Coveney, the CEO of Greencore Food Group, would seek to profit from the hard work of others, especially during this pandemic, should be expected given his background – right from the start of his life he had always been groomed for great power and the domination of others. Living in Ireland, Patrick’s father, the late Hugh Coveney (1935-1998), was a wealthy politician for the right-wing political party Fine Gael who, in 1995, in the final stages of his career was demoted from the Department of Finance “after allegations of improper conduct.” This was linked to accusations that Hugh had personal connections to a bank account based in the Cayman Islands (known as Ansbacher Bank) which was reportedly “set up to facilitate widespread tax evasion and to defraud the revenue authorities.” According to a review penned by a well-known economics commentator of the 2018 book Moneyland: Why Thieves and Crooks Now Rule the World and How to Take It Back, it was clear that Hugh Coveney and several Fianna Fáil politicians had accounts with the bank “which enabled them to evade tax.”

119

Hugh had always been determined that his children would benefit from his ruling-class connections and both Patrick and his brother Simon (who is the current deputy leader of Fine Gael) were educated at Clongowes Woods College, which is Ireland’s equivalent of Eton. A good summary of the conservative pedigree of this college is provided in Elite Schooling and Social Inequality: Privilege and Power in Ireland’s Top Private Schools a book which explains:

“Explicitly enough, Clongowes Woods College aims at producing young men whose personality and intrinsic qualities will set them apart from common men – from the ‘wider community’ they will lead. This process begins with their symbolic isolation from others, and their upbringing in a world inaccessible and largely unknown to most children their age.” (p.72) The influential online media outlet Independent.ie refers to the Coveney brothers as the country’s “most influential siblings” and outlines how Patrick “climbed the greasy pole of business” first working “for the McKinsey consultancy firm before joining Greencore” where he assumed his current CEO position in 2007. The informative article goes on to note that:

“Living in a palatial house in Ranelagh, Dublin, his earnings package as the boss of one of Ireland’s biggest food companies has varied from €6m to €3.6m a year depending on the company’s performance.” These earnings are substantially more than the £95 a week many of Patrick’s already low-paid employees are currently being paid as a result of being forced to claim Statutory Sick Pay because of the pandemic. And needless to say the increase in Patrick’s wealth during this pandemic is many times more than the measly £200 covid-bonus that Greencore is paying to some of their employees working in Northampton. I say some because it appears that those contracted workers who were furloughed on just 80 per cent of an already low salary are having this bonus withheld from their pay packets — a matter which the Bakers Union and their reps are in the process of challenging. If there is to be a bonus, and it should be much more than £200, it should be available to all workers! Born to a life of privilege, Patrick has always been happy to withhold even small bonuses from his staff. This is because every penny counts when it comes to squeezing the maximum profits out of his employees! Not that Patrick really needs the money, as in addition his hefty Greencore salary he supplements his earnings by serving on the board of directors of nutrition company Glanbia plc, where he earns an additional £75,000 a year for doing, let’s be completely honest, probably not very much work. Other streams of income also arise from his serving as the chairman of CORE, which is Ireland’s “largest marketing communications

120 group,” and in recent years his bank balance couldn’t have suffered to much through his acting as the President of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce. As Patrick’s employees already know from past experience, their boss clearly cannot be trusted to put their welfare first. This has been especially true throughout this pandemic, where time and time again Greencore managers have exposed their workforce to needless risks by refusing to take the health and safety implications of the coronavirus crisis seriously. And what did Patrick do when he found about such abuse? Well nothing probably best sums up his response. That is why the Bakers Union fights for union recognition agreements to be implemented at all of Greencore’s sites in Northampton and across all Greencore’s global sites: the union asks Patrick to #talk2us because if he really believes in his companies own slogan #peopleatthecore then he would engage democratically with his #foodheroes through their #tradeunions. Staff don’t need new schemes which seek to bypass union democracy like Greencore’s “brand-new peer to peer confidential support service, Talk2Us,” what workers need is to be treated like humans not just like so many expendable cogs in a machine! The Bakers union has spent the entire pandemic pushing for covid-safe working practices to be implemented across Greencore’s factories, and has been busy fighting to push Greencore to ensure that none of their employees (whether they have full contracts or not) suffers any financial loss during this pandemic. This fight is of course a work-in-progress, but it is a struggle that is more likely to succeed as more people join the Bakers Union www.bfawu.org/join; and it is struggle that is more likely to succeed if it successfully links up with other fights for workplace rights like the ongoing efforts to eradicate sweatshop labour within the other capitalist industries, with the Boohoo scandal presently being at the forefront of the nation’s minds.

121

Covid-19 Update (July 11): Reducing Cases in Leicester and an Analysis of the Latest Data from the Government’s Randomised Survey on Infection Rates July 11 The most up-to-date testing data released by the government (represented in the figure below) illustrates that as of July 7 the seven-day average for positive cases in Leicester is 40.1 cases. Leicester’s seven-day average for positive cases had increased from 39.4 cases on June 4 to a peak that was reached on June 20 and June 21 when the seven-day average on both days was 80.7 cases. Note: serious community testing within the boundaries of the city only belatedly began on June 18 owing to the government’s failure to share detailed testing results with the local authority (see “Leicester’s lockdown timeline“).

The problems caused by the government’s incompetence with regard to sharing testing results was discussed by in the New Scientist on June 8 (“Lack of UK testing data is impeding our understanding of the outbreak”). This article quotes Jason Oke, a statistician based at the University of Oxford, as saying: “Early on, what we really wanted to know was how lethal this condition was and we can’t get anywhere close to that until we know how many people have had the

122 infection. If we wanted to know the infection fatality rate, we can only guess at the moment”. This ongoing problem owes much to the way in which data is and isn’t being collected and shared. Oke noted that “what we really need to do is have a system where we can monitor potential spikes in positive cases. We can only do that if we have clear data on who’s getting tested and how many people are getting tested, not just total numbers of tests.” In the instance of Leicester Oke’s points are very relevant, because the government is still not releasing the type of data that would allow analysts to determine what is really happening on the ground. For example, the government must also start reporting how many people are testing negative for Covid-19. Having such data will allow for systematic comparisons to be undertaken across different parts of the country with regard true infection rates. In addition, the government needs to massively expand the scope of their national, randomised trials into Covid-19 infection rates. At the moment data collected from these crucial (very underreported) trials is only broken down (on the government’s web site) by region, but what is really needed is for data from randomised trial to be broken down to the level of local authorities. This will allow decisionmakers across the country to get a firmer understanding of actual infection rates and how they compare to other areas. Commenting on the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures derived from the governments onoing “Covid-19 Infection Survey”, Dr Daniel Lawson, a lecturer in Statistical Science at the University of Bristol said:

“These national, randomised trials are a critical part of the UK COVID-19 monitoring and represent the least biased data source available. The problem is that when prevalence is low, good information on trends requires very large samples that we don’t have – the last data had only eight households out of 25,662 testing positive. The corresponding estimate of 1,700 infections per day is plausible given the 642 daily positive tests reported (on 9th July).

“The data show that prevalence is low, and modelling recent weeks data implies that is now stable, though we must remain vigilant against a rise. As testing capacity grows, some of that capacity should be reserved for larger statistical samples, especially if we hope to reduce the prevalence further.” Ideally the government would expand the coverage of such randomised surveys to allow meaningful data to be presented on localised infection rates, like for instance in Leicester. Nevertheless, it is still noteworthy that the only region where the rate of Covid-19 infection is currently increasing again (if only slowly) is London (see below).

123

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddisea ses/datasets/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveydata

124

The New York Times Reports on the Tories “Divisive” Whac-a-Mole Mayhem July 12 Reporting on the second lockdown imposed upon Leicester city by the Tories the title of a New York Times (July 9) article said it all: “‘Whac-a-mole’ against virus sounds reasonable, unless you’re the mole.” As it explained: by…

“…carving a stay-at-home border around one region while others hurry back to pubs and jobs has proved to be a convoluted and divisive step. And it illuminates the difficulties that countries across Europe and Asia will face as they try to battle local flare-ups of Covid- 19, the disease caused by the virus.” The article correctly made the connection between the city’s relative deprivation and the spread of the virus, noting that Leicester was “recently ranked as the 21st most deprived of more than 300 local authorities in England.” It also highlighted how the government had prevented the city from responding to a localised spike by refusing to share testing data with the local authority. “Even now,” the report added, “Leicester officials said, they were being notified of positive results only in local areas, and not the overall number of tests, preventing them from determining the rate of new infections.” On the issue of Leicester’s garment industry, where workers are paid “as little as £3.50, or $4.40, an hour,” the New York Times said “cheap online retailers like Boohoo… thrived in the pandemic,” profiting from the type of sweatshops where workers were forced to turn up to work even when infected with Covid-19: “At one 80-person factory, a fifth of the staff had the virus.” Something that has been missing from most of the reporting on the Leicester’s sweatships in relation to the lockdown is the role of the trade union movement in fighting for workers’ rights. And the Times article at least gives them a very brief mention, writing:

“Labor unions have criticized the government’s Health and Safety Executive, which had been promised an extra £14 million to enforce workplace safety during the pandemic, for not inspecting factories and other facilities more aggressively.” It also noted how the high rate of infection in South Asian neighborhoods surrounding the bulk of the city’s sweatshops “fed a false perception that nonwhite residents were to blame for the outbreak, spawning racist remarks online.” What is clear is that the British government has been both willing to fuel racial tensions in dealing with this pandemic while being unwilling and unable to take the necessary actions to stop the spread of Covid-19. Facts that are now readily apparent to the entire world.

125

Last month, the New York Times (June 17) ran another article on the Tories seemingly endless pandemic failures in a article titled “England’s ‘world beating’ system to track the virus is anything but.” At that point, they reported:

“In almost three weeks since the start of the system in England, called N.H.S. Test and Trace, some contact tracers have failed to reach a single person, filling their days instead with internet exercise classes and bookshelf organizing…

“And a government minister threatened on a conference call to stop coordinating with local leaders on the virus-tracking system if they spoke publicly about its failings, according to three officials briefed on the call, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.” The article highlighted how the “troubled rollout” of the Tories track and trace program was “staffed by thousands of poorly trained and low-paid contact tracers” and “has left public health officials across England trying to battle a virus they still cannot locate.” Most of the problems with this program of course owed to the fact that the government chose to use private sector providers. Commenting on the nature of the Tories “disastrous” response to the pandemic the Times observes:

“Other nations in Europe are building their public sectors to support contact-tracing systems that might be needed for years to come. Germany, for instance, has hired contact tracers in 375 public health authorities, with doctors on hand to administer tests. “But in England, where a decade of austerity has starved public health departments of workers who used to regularly track illnesses, Mr. Johnson has entrusted the job largely to Serco, an outsourcing giant that was recently obliged to pay the government a hefty fine for fraud on a previous, unrelated contract. The New York Times has learned that the contact- tracing contract, awarded in a secretive procurement process, cost 108 million pounds, or about $136 million.

“, a professor of public health at , said, ‘The government has dismantled, fragmented and eviscerated so much of its health service over the last 20 years that it was much more difficult to get a coordinated system. They’re basically trying to build a centralized, parallel, privatized system,’ she added. As a result, she said, ‘We’ve had far more deaths than we should have. And lockdown has had to go on much longer than in other countries because we’ve let the virus rip for so long.’” Echoing the way that powerful companies like Boohoo profit from the super- exploitation of human labour to make billions for their bosses, the Tories approach to the pandemic has been to give hundreds of millions of pounds to their friends in the corporate sector. Giving millions to those same corporations that have a track record of exploiting their staff and engaging in criminal activities. The New York Times makes the reasonable accusation that the government…

“…is trying to do contact tracing on the cheap. While some American states are paying tracers salaries of around $50,000 a year, many English tracers said in interviews that they

126

were paid £8.72 an hour, barely above the minimum wage, a figure equivalent to less than $24,000 a year. Some of them were teenagers who had never held jobs before.

“After answering online ads for generic customer service jobs, they started work with little or no training. One Serco-employed contact tracer said that at least a third of his 40 or so colleagues in London had not received any online training before starting.” How did this come to happen? Well as the article goes on to explain:

“Details of the procurement process, shared by a senior civil servant, suggest a possible reason for the low pay and sketchy training: Serco offered to provide the service at an extraordinarily tight profit margin of less than 5 percent, roughly half the margin of the next cheapest contender. The contract was awarded without any real competition, the senior civil servant said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe a confidential process.”

127

The Sunday Times’ Stokes Racism During Leicester’s Lockdown July 12 It was only a matter of time: the Tories are in disarray over their mishandling of the pandemic, and Leicester’s Labour-run Council has been forced into another lockdown. Enter stage right and the Tories are now attempting to stir up racial tensions by accusing Labour of being too scared to deal with their city’s sweatshops because of the ethnicity of those running them. The Tories are trying to manufacture another Rotherham moment to distract us all from their murderous response to Covid-19. So, earlier today, echoeing tales of racialised reporting from the recent past, the Sunday Times led with the headline “Boohoo investigation: ‘racism fears’ let Leicester sweatshops go unchecked.” The source for this disturbing claim is an unnamed “source close to [Priti] Patel” who said:

“This scandal has been hiding in plain sight and there are concerns cultural sensibilities could be in part to blame for why these appalling working practices haven’t been properly investigated.” The journalists at the Sunday Times write that: “The home secretary fears ‘cultural sensitivities’ have prevented police from tackling illegal sweatshops in Britain’s fast- fashion industry amid concerns that they would be accused of racism.” They reporters then add:

“Priti Patel has privately raised concerns that police and other government agencies have turned a blind eye to exploitation in Leicester’s textile warehouses and factories in the same way as the grooming scandal in Rotherham was ignored for years.” If you remember it was The Times that first whipped up all the hysteria about the Rotherham and Rochdale scandals – a matter I attempted to shed some light on in my 2018 article “Child rape and the roots of political anger: grooming gangs in context.” And now Rupert Murdoch’s hate-rag is attempting to do the same all over again. It is true that the scandal of Leicester’s sweatshops has been long in the making, and certainly Leicester’s Blairite Labour Council could have taken meaningful action in addressing this problem. But we should not lose sight of the fact that the real reason why such abuse continues is because of the Tories are ideologically committed to exploiting workers, hence their relentless attacks upon trade unions, and their slashing of government funding for the Health & Safety Executive.

128

The Sunday Times correctly refers to the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) not the local Council as being responsible for “enforcing the minimum wage” and they quote an anonymous “senior” source from the Home Office as saying: “HMRC has been asleep on this issue for ages… They are too busy going after Mrs Miggins”. However, what the journalists fail to mention is that structural constraints imposed upon the HMRC by the Tories (and New Labour before that), means that the government agency has been rendered next to toothless when it comes to eradicating the sweatshop industry. So, not only have the HMRC only prosecuted 14 companies for criminal actions over the past 21 years, but the fines that HMRC typically imposes on minimum wage offenders are widely accepted as being insignificant, and are no way enough to act as a deterrent to those who exploit their employees. The Sunday Times article does go on to point out how: “A recent study by HMRC found that a quarter of UK textile factories caught failing to pay the minimum wage over six years were based in Leicester.” But what the article doesn’t explain is that this information came out a parliamentary investigation which made a series of recommendations to the Tories for how the problems associated with sweatshops might be addressed – commonsense recommendations which were subsequently ignored by the government. Moreover while it sounds bad that a quarter of the textile factories identified by the HMRC were based in Leicester, what is really bad is that over a six year period only 24 textile factories where investigated by the HMRC across the entire country. This meant that six factories in six years were investigated in Leicester! Surely if the government were really concerned with the existence of sweatshops in Britain, they would empower the HMRC to be more proactive?

129

Taking such progressive actions with regard the running of the HMRC would however not be in the best interests of the Tories. Not least because many Tory politicians themselves are (or have been) exploitative bosses, and are part of a political party that seeks to do everything in its power to undermine the ability of ordinary workers to fight for better pay and conditions at work. The idea that the Tories want to end exploitation of workers is beyond a joke, but it is one that the Sunday Times readily peddles when they warn that:

“Robert Jenrick, the communities secretary, has ordered an investigation that could lead to the government seizing control of Leicester city council, which has been accused of repeatedly failing to address claims of labour abuse in the garment industry.” All this is too much to take seriously. Really? Are we talking about the same Robert Jenrick who is well-known for his own dodgy dealings with bullying billionaire bosses: this same man is going to take control of Leicester Council in the name of democracy! (John Sweeney’s “What connects Robert Jenrick to the Gambino crime family and Putin’s oligarchs?,” Byline Times, June 23, 2020. ) On the matter of dodgy deals, we should not forget about the ‘troubles’ that Priti Patel got herself into when caught out lobbying Israeli politicians while on holiday overseas. Or what about her prior employment which led her to working as a spin doctor for Burma’s military dictatorship and racking up a huge income (making over £150 an hour) selling her PR services to British American Tobacco (BAT) – a company that stands accused of profiting from the use of child labour. (Jamie Doward, “Minister worked as spin doctor for tobacco giant that paid workers £15 a month,” The Guardian, May 31, 2015.) If we are to investigate anyone it should be the Tories who are currently throwing their weight around! None of this is to say that Leicester’s Labour Council shouldn’t have spent the last decade strenuously campaigning to stamp out the existence of sweatshops in our city: something they most definitely have not done. It may be true that the ability of local authorities to shut down exploitative companies may be limited by government decree, but there are many things that Labour Councils could do to combat sweatshop exploitation, all of which would have been easier to carry out in Leicester if the City Mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, was really a socialist. Yet socialists know that it is not enough to make polite requests upon the a rightwing government to enact even modest recommendations — even if they have been deliberated upon in parliamentary committees. That is not how socialists ensure that the working-class is protected from Tory predations: the Tories have never, and will never, respond positively to such pleas no matter how much evidence you put before them.

130

The only thing the Tories respond to are the organised struggles of the working-class, whether that be through trade unions or through community organising, or ideally both. Needless to say the Tories will try to ignore such grassroot campaigns for justice, but it is through the active construction of such movements for socialist change that the working-class (in Leicester as elsewhere) can build the type of mass support that could, and still can, sweep the Tories from power. That Labour politicians in Leicester failed in their historic task of launching a fighting initiative to defend ordinary people, owes much to the fact that Leicester’s Labour Council (like most others across the country) remain dominated by the type of careerist representatives who have spent the last five years fighting against what they considered to be the number one enemy of their own party, Jeremy Corbyn. It would nice if the Labour Party could still be reclaimed for our class, but this now seems very unlikely. So, now the urgent task moving forward for all socialists will be to create a new democratic and socialist organisation that can enable be a vehicle which can enable our class to undertake the critical task of eradicating the scourge of sweatshops and, more importantly, move forward with the task of ending all forms of capitalist exploitation forever.

131

Claudia Webbe, Trade Unions, and the Fight to End Sweatshop Exploitation in Leicester July 13 Once upon a time Leicester had high hopes for Keith Vaz: that was in 1987 when Vaz was first elected to Parliament. But Vaz was never really a man of the people. So, not long after entering Parliament he ditched those socialists who campaigned to get him elected and relaunched his career as one committed to serving the ruling-class. This transformation was most visibly seen in 1991 when he backed the Gulf War. The residents of Vaz’s old constituency, Leicester East, were therefore mightily relieved when Vaz was replaced with Claudia Webbe — a socialist MP who represents a clean break with her predecessor’s toxic legacy of careerism. But not all is well as Vaz still maintains a strong powerbase in Leicester and last year even managed to wrangle getting ‘elected’ to a leading position of authority within Webbe’s Constituency Labour Party (CLP). This is despite the fact that the disgraced and longstanding chair of Vaz’s CLP, a bitter and jaded man name John Thomas, publicly quit the Labour Party during last year’s General Election in order to better attack Jeremy Corbyn. In recent months however the main thing (perhaps only thing) that Vaz has done since losing his parliamentary seat is to support a right-wing anti-Muslim religious pressure group called Insight UK in organising a PR stunt in defence of a statue of Mahatma Gandhi (which had been threatened by a petition of all things). And as we already know, Keith Vaz — the eternal hypocrite — in addition to being a warmonger and supporter of far-right politicians in India is no friend of workers in this country, and in recent years has remained studiously silent about the existence of a huge sweatshop industry within his own constituency. Yet in contrast to Vaz’s disgraceful silence on the sweatshop trade, Claudia Webbe talked openly about this troubling issue in her parliamentary maiden speech. She talked passionately about the “unionised factories” that her father worked in on Green Lane Road, and contrasted those better days with the present situation “in Leicester’s garment industry [where] today many workers, overwhelmingly women, earn well below the minimum wage — as little as £3 an hour in conditions that most people would find unthinkable in modern Britain.” But understanding that workers can and will fightback she went on to say:

“That is the legacy of Tory deindustrialisation, yet Leicester is the place where working women fought back. It was Asian women who went on strike for equal pay at Leicester’s

132

Imperial Typewriter Company factory, and it was those women who led the way in equal pay, race equality, and employment. I pay tribute to them.” Now in response the Tories ongoing attempts to lay for the blame for Leicester’s sweatshops wholly at the door of our city’s Labour Council and our three Labour MP’s (who of course could have done alot more), Webbe has responded with a very clear and positive message for change saying:

“We have seen a government simply brush the issue under the carpet, allowed zero-hour contracts and poor pay to flourish whilst rejecting every single recommendation from a select committee report. This could have actually addressed the problem whilst the mainstream media, of course, sought to demonise migrants as not worthy.

“It is important to understand that the combined power of the political elite, media and big business has created and sustained the disaster capitalism where our communities are collateral damage. Leicester’s garment industry of course, and the crisis that it presents, is actually just a microcosm of the global assault on workers rights.

“Many of the workers who approached me for help have an immigration status of ‘No Recourse to Public Funds’ are ineligible to access Statutory Sick Pay and are employed by firms which have no union recognition and where health and safety measures have not been implemented at all. The crisis has demonstrated the need for unionised accountable workplaces that prioritise employee well-being above all else.

“All workplaces in my view must adhere to health and safety measures and no-one should be forced to work in unsafe conditions. The government must ensure that all of us, regardless of our immigration status, can afford to stay safe during the continued lockdown. Its true, billionaires exist because the working-class including migrants are exploited. We must end this. A wealth tax to make billionaires pay their fair share could not come sooner than now!” (July 12, 2020) This is a good start, but Webbe, like all Labour members, must now think carefully about the opposition they will continue to face from the rightwing leadership of their own political party (let alone from the blue Tories) in pushing for a serious tax on the billionaire-class. Maybe Webbe and others will seriously consider working with other socialists outside of the Labour Party in helping launch a new democratic and socialist alternative. Either way, now is the time for immediate action. And the next step for all socialists and trade unionists in Leicester (and further afield) must be to join together to launch a mass campaign to being an end to all sweatshops – and in building for such a campaign activists can take inspiration from the United States where just last week socialists won an important victory in the battle to tax the super-rich (see “Amazon TAXED! Lessons of the Tax Amazon victory in Seattle”). Solidarity!

133

Who’s Behind Boohoo? Investigating Exploitation in the Garment Industry July 14 Leicester’s sweatshop scandal is truly a tale of how millionaires and billionaires are made from the sweat and blood of ordinary workers. But don’t expect this to the story to be told in the capitalist media. In addition to recycling the dangerous Tory lies about Leicester being too politically correct to close down the sweatshop trade, the Daily Mail (July 13) has been digging the dirt on Boohoo’s billionaire co-founder Mahmud Kamani and his wife. It turns out that the Kamani enjoys socialising and holidaying with Asheem Sobti, the director of the Leicester-based fast fashion supplier that has just been accused of failing to pay its staff anywhere near the minimum wage. As the Daily Mail article also went on to explain:

“In a statement [Boohoo] said its supplier Revolution Clothing had instructed another company Morefray Limited to fulfil an order for its brand Nasty Gal. Asheem Sobti is the sole director of Revolution Clothing, while the sole director of Morefray is Siddharth Sobti, 18, believed to be a relative. Boohoo terminated its relationship with both companies saying they had broken its code of conduct.” The public revelation concerning the Leicester-based Morefray Ltd had actually been exposed in an earlier investigation written-up in the Sunday Times (July 5) as “Boohoo: fashion giant faces ‘slavery’ investigation.” An undercover journalist had gained employment at the indirect Boohoo supplier where he was told he would earn £3.50 an hour: “At the factory the foreman warned: ‘These motherf***ers know how to exploit people like us. They make profits like hell and pay us in peanuts.’”[1] But that is not all, as in addition to producing Boohoo’s clothes, Morefray has other connections to the Kamani family which come through the activities of Boohoo cofounder Jalal Kamani (who is the elder brother of Mahmud Kamani). In 2017 Jalal founded I Saw It First, a relative newcomer in the lucrative fast fashion racket whose gaudy garments were paraded before the world on the latest series of Love Island; where Jalal works with Shahzad Irshad, who is the owner of a Manchester-based firm called I5 Holdings – a company which owns 50% of Morefray. The sole director of Morefray Ltd is Siddharth Sobti; another member of the wealthy family who recently served on Morefray’s board is Sanjeev Sobti.[2] Investigations reveal that Sanjeev himself is quite involved in running Leicester-based textile factories and he served as a board member of Trendsetters (Leic) Ltd (until it dissolved its operations in early 2017), and since last year he has managed the operations of Stitch by Stitch (Leicester) Ltd.

134

Here we might pause to consider the recurring issue of companies forming and then dissolving. Related to the often-temporary existence of textile factories the background of one Leicester-based boss is particularly revealing – a vocal and bullying boss who only made the news after he had gained a certain level of infamy when he was caught on camera verbally harassing a sweatshop worker who was talking to a television crew about his experience of low pay and dangerous working conditions. It turns out that the boss in question, Mahomed Hanif Musa Patel currently “owns a controlling stake” in Dariyai Products Ltd and was recently…

“…disqualified as a director for conduct while acting for Ezili Dariyai UK Limited, a garment manufacturing company headquartered on the same street as Dariyai Products that was dissolved in April this year.

“Records provided to the Guardian by the Insolvency Service show that HMRC was owed £618,059.66 by the company at the date of liquidation. As evidence that it had not been treated equally to other creditors, the authority said that over a four-year period from 2011 to 2015, Dariyai Products paid it just £58,575 out of total expenditure of more than £4m.

“According to the Insolvency Service’s 2018 document, Patel did not dispute HMRC’s account and was disqualified as a director until October 2022. He is still allowed to own shares in a company, provided he does not play a part in running it.” (July 13, The Guardian)

135

136

So, bearing this intriguing information in mind it might be worth digging a little more into the reasons why some of the Sobti family seem to dissolve their textile businesses so regularly. For example, in reference to the family’s Leicester-based factories it would be interesting to find out why Leelam Sobti dissolved Phase-2 Clothing Ltd in 2009 and then dissolved Moreglam Ltd in 2011, before setting up Trendsetters (Leic) Ltd in 2012, which was then also dissolved some five years later.[3] Another Boohoo-linked textile company that could perhaps do with closer examination is J&L (Leic) Ltd, which was founded in 2016 by Lukman Yusuf Patel and presently includes Boohoo cofounder Jalal Kamani on their two-person strong board of directors. And on the perplexing matter of companies mysteriously dissolving – which of course in some cases may have legitimate causes – we might point out that Patel was the only listed director of the Leicester-based textile manufacturer Cat Girl Ltd until it was dissolved earlier this year. But just months later a new textile company based at the same site arose phoenix-like out of Cat Girl’s ashes as the newly incorporated firm Shok Activewear Ltd. Finding out what is going on in such instances is surely something the media will now be looking into with a matter of some urgency. Furthermore, in terms of future investigations Manchester is undoubtedly an important city with respect to the existence of sweatshops in the textile industry as it represents the largest textiles employment area in the UK, with Leicester playing second fiddle. Just before the pandemic broke on the UK’s shores the Guardian reported how:

“In November 2019, a scoping survey on the Greater Manchester textile and garment industry that included 182 companies operating across the region, also found evidence that workers were being paid as little as £3-4 an hour.

“The survey, conducted by HomeWorkers Worldwide, a labour rights NGO, found that the garment workforce across the region was diverse with British workers employed alongside European and other migrant workers, but that many were working in insecure environments without permanent contracts. Some of the most vulnerable workers were undocumented migrants who had little recourse to public assistance or support.

“One worker quoted in the report described illegal working practices at one factory: “We’re paid in cash … instead of a bank transfer. They give us payslips but they only show 16 hours a week at £7.50 an hour, whereas in fact we’re doing many more hours than that … usually we do 40 hours a week from 8am to 6pm and we’re paid around £500 a month.”

“Other workers interviewed for the survey claim that they have been forced to hand over part of their wages to their employer, and faced demands for money in return for help with passport applications.” (The Guardian, January 23, 2020) In terms of the sweatshop-linked textile industry in Manchester one key player who should be the subject of further scrutiny is Shahzad Irshad, if only because he serves

137 alongside Jalal Kamani on the board room of three companies: I Saw It First, Ultimate Models Ltd, and LOTD Ltd. In the latter textile firm Irshad and Kamani are also joined by the Leicester-based factory owner Lukman Yusuf Patel.[4] Finally, in addition to looking into the business activities of Shahzad Irshad a second person whose Manchester-based factories are worthy of closer attention is Asheem Sobti, the sweatshop profiteer/family friend of Boohoo’s cofounders. Thus, in addition to serving as a board member of Revolution Clothing Ltd and Ombre Clothing Ltd, last year Asheem Sobti became the owner of a longer standing textile manufacturer called CorporateRealm Ltd.[5] In terms of moving forward and dealing with the ongoing exploitation of workers that takes place in the textile industry I will leave the final word to George Atwall, the Regional Organiser for the Bakers Food and Allied Workers Union who recently explained:

“We believe there is a lot of work to be done to bring an end to all sweatshops. But this is not a problem that is isolated to Leicester, it is a global problem. As we continue to point out, the Bakers’ Union believes that the government has for some time been moving in the wrong direction when it comes to strengthening workers’ rights.

“A recent report published by the Resolution Foundation demonstrated how government actions really do nothing to stop abuse of workers, noting that companies found to have been paying their staff less than the national minimum wage “rarely suffer significant financial loss” in the rare instances when the government finds out. Over the last decade the government has also slashed £100 million from the funding they provide for the Health & Safety Executive and have ordered their inspectors to carry out less workplace inspections. These actions need to be immediately addressed.

“The Bakers’ Union has no faith in the government to willingly take any serious actions to stop the existence of abusive labour practices in Leicester or anywhere else. The government only ever help workers when they come under pressure from trade unions and their members. That is why our union will continue campaigning alongside members of the Leicester and Districts Trades Union Council to launch a broader campaign to support workers in the knitwear and garment industries. We would also encourage all workers to join a union as soon as possible so we can fight together to improve everyone’s working conditions.”

For further details about getting involved in a trade union led fightback to expose all workplace exploitation see https://www.facebook.com/leicestersocialistalternative

138

NOTES [1] In a perfect illustration of the convoluted way in which Boohoo’s supply chain works, the Sunday Times (July 5) report got the name of the company who employed their undercover investigator wrong. The article wrongly identified the sweatshop employer as Jaswal Fashions Ltd when in reality the employer was Morefray Ltd. [2] Another former director of Morefray Ltd was Jehangir Khan Muhammad Muhammad who in May 2016 became a founding director of Leicester-based Lookwear UK Ltd — a company that was dissolved the following year. He was also a former board member of Lookmark Ltd which was founded in 2014 and dissolved in 2019, and is the present board member of two textile firms in Leicester, these being Stars Gazer Ltd and Pretty Styles, both of which were founded in 2019. [3] On Moreglam’s demise, a report from mid-2011 explained: “The Leicester-based clothes manufacturing and importing business has struggled to keep its head above water, and with debts of about £4 million has effectively drowned. Weak sales on the high street and the loss of several contracts have been cited as causes of the demise of the clothing business.” [4] Mr Irshad helps manage other companies too, like EverythingTenQuid Ltd and Zogan Ltd (a company which includes a board member who lists her employment as being the “head of tax” for the Kamani Group). [5] The founder of CorporateRealm Ltd was Rizwan Khan, and he served as the Secretary of this company from 1997 until 2006. Khan’s involvement in the garment trade is interesting because he is most infamous for profiting from providing care services for children in needs which is a highly lucrative industry that charges local councils up to £250,000 a year to care for a single child! An article in the Independent from 2013 noted how Khan was the CEO of Advanced Childcare which “is owned by a US fund set up by Rick Magnuson, a former banker at Nomura and Merrill Lynch”. In 2013, Khan was “thought to be the highest-paid director of the company, taking home £206,000 last year, according to the latest available figures – £42,000 more than the year before.”

139

Clipper Logistics’ Role as “breeding ground for coronavirus” in Boohoo’s Warehouses July 15 Dangerous working conditions are common in Britain, and so day-in and day-out trade unionists do their best to force bosses to treat their workers with the dignity we all deserve. After all, without our hard work there would be no profits for the super-rich, so the least they can do is treat us with respect. But as we see time and time again capitalist bosses in their never-ending pursuit of profits place the accumulation of personal wealth before the needs of their employees. This is why socialists fight for workers to take direct control of their own workplaces and continue to organise for a socialist alternative to the capitalist exploitation that damages so many peoples’ lives. Leicester is presently in the news because of our lockdown and the continuing abuse of workers’ rights in our city’s garment industry, most of whose textile factories are situated at the bottom of Boohoo’s supply chain. But capitalist exploitation is occurring all around us, not just in sweatshops. For example, if we just look to the company that currently distributes Boohoo’s products around the UK (and further afield), we find that unacceptable levels of exploitation are again at the core of what they do. The company in question, Clipper Logistics, was even the feature of a recent investigation in the Sunday Times (July 12) which run an article under the title “Boohoo warehouse was ‘a breeding ground for coronavirus’, said staff at distribution centre where 25 caught Covid-19.” The article, which concerned itself with a Clipper warehouse in Tinsley, Sheffield, however, did really add anything new to earlier regional reports on such exploitation, except to give Boohoo and Clipper the opportunity to assure everyone that everything was now in order. On March 25 the BBC reported on the dangerous working conditions in the Tinsley warehouse explaining:

“One worker, who asked to be identified only as Patrick, said: ‘Going to work has the chance of killing me and infecting my grandson. To save lives, shut the place.’ Patrick said the warehouse, in the Tinsley area, had 4ft wide aisles where up to 10 people worked at a time, often passing close by one another while picking clothes for dispatch. Another warehouse worker, who did not to want to be named, told the BBC: ‘There are four small sanitiser dispensers in the warehouse and they’re always empty, it’s a breeding ground for Covid-19.’” A month later an article carried in the local press again showed that little had changed:

“A PrettyLittleThing worker based at the Tinsley warehouse, who asked to remain anonymous told how he had heard from colleagues that two employees had been sent home on Thursday, April 23 with suspected coronavirus symptoms. ‘We haven’t heard

140

anything from management about this and I believe they should have let workers know so we can fully protect ourselves,’ he said. ‘They’ve got distancing measures in place but not all employees are following them, and I don’t think it’s possible with so many people working here and the fact they’re trying to take on more staff.’” (The Star, April 25) Clipper of course runs more than one warehouse — they own 46 — and rather unsurprisingly similar problems present themselves at their others sites. Thus, at Clipper’s warehouse in Ollerton, Nottinghamshire, the BBC reported how several workers had…

“…said warehouse staff were ‘crammed into corridors’ and given no hand sanitiser. It comes as people have been told to keep at least 2m (6ft 6in) apart to help curb the spread of coronavirus. Staff have also said their jobs should be classed as ‘non-essential’.

“Carly Maddock had worked at Clipper for three years, dealing with clothing refunds for High Street retailers, including M&S and River Island. She walked out on Wednesday – along with two other colleagues – over the lack of action taken from management. The mother-of-three said: ‘It’s not good, the corridors are tiny, there’s been no hand sanitiser for weeks apart from in the offices…’” She said when she questioned the lack of social distancing and hygiene at the warehouse, a manager told her ‘at this time all I care is about getting refunds processed’. ‘When I voiced my opinions and said I felt unsafe one manager said “Just think of how many people die of cancer every year”.’ Ms Maddock said anyone who did not turn up to work would either be sacked or go unpaid.” (BBC, March 31) But it seems unlikely that anything has really changed for the better at this warehouse, as in May a union representing workers at the site wrote to Clipper’s management to outline their ongoing safety concerns. Some of the issues that GMB raised with Clipper included members being scare to go to work because of a lack of social distancing, and “Management applying unnecessary pressure to breach social distancing to ensure that our members meet picking targets.” The union also pointed out how “Measures that are put in place when the site is visited by the Police or external regulatory bodies are not maintained after they have left, leaving members feeling dangerously vulnerable in the workplace.” (May 7) Steve Parkin, who is the founder and chairman of Clipper, is a multi-millionaire who despite his start in life as a miner has no qualms with treating his working-class staff with contempt. In a useful demonstration of his misplaced priorities his boardroom in Leeds is decked out with a “walnut desk with gold inlay” that cost him £200,000 which to top it off is surrounded by 26 chairs that cost him a further £78,000! In 2016 Parkin gave a revealing interview to the Financial Times (March 18) in which he boasted that his “big break” came through his work with Sir Philip Green — the exemplar of the bullying Tory boss. Parkin said that Green’s “been a massive influence on the success of the business.” Parkin then went on to boast that despite his humble

141 beginnings he had “always been a Tory,” noting that one of his heroes had always been Margaret Thatcher. He even explains how making money doesn’t concern him anymore: what gives Parkin a real “buzz” is exerting power over his employees. As he put it:

“…when I’m at home when I tell my children to do something, or my wife, I get a blank. I come in here and tell any of my people to do something, they do it. It is a power thing; but I love it.” If this honest reflection from a megalomaniacal boss doesn’t encourage people to join a union then nothing will. Parkin it seems has made his own personal fortune and he asserts that the only thing that drives him on to make more millions is it provides him with the ability to boss his people around. His evident power-trip helps explain the flagrant disregard that his company maintains for their warehouse workers who earn just a touch above the national minimum wage. Nevertheless, despite Parkin professing that he is not obsessed about the vulgar pursuit of personal wealth, we can be sure that just a few Clipper executives will continue to get fat off the exploitation of their workforce — or as Parkin has it, his people — who will continue to be forced to slave away in his dangerous warehouses for a pitance. Emily Kenway discusses how the actions of the Tories that Parkin so loves have actively promoted the type of anti-worker policies that has encouraged the abuse of workers in ‘Boohoo’s’ sweatshops. In her Guardian (July 14) article she states that: “Employers push abusive working conditions on to workers for one very simple reason: to make more money. In this way, it’s an opportunistic act. So, very simply, we need to remove the opportunity.” But rather than make the case for abolishing capitalism, Kenway says we just need to exert more control over capitalist bosses. This leads her to propose three solutions: “properly funded labour inspection, ensuring reporting abuse is safe for migrant workers, and strong unionisation.” This of course would be a good start, and we should welcome her strong emphasis on the role of workers in improving their own working conditions as she goes on to conclude that…

“… the most effective defenders of workplace rights are workers themselves. We’ve become inured to the decline of unions, and yet Covid-19 demonstrates their importance: without them ensuring that health and safety rules – like social distancing and PPE – are observed, this job is left to business. Brands do have the power to ensure unionisation in their supply chains, just like they have the power to impose such low prices for orders that necessitate poverty wages, but they don’t use it. Boohoo was outed during a 2019 parliamentary inquiry for refusing “even the most basic level of engagement” with the union Usdaw, and for being generally hostile to workers organising for their rights. If the government really wants to avoid more lockdowns and more exploitation, it should mandate unionisation in high-risk sectors.”

142

As Kenway understands, the Tories are of course fully committed to exploiting workers and will never willingly mandate unions to help workers organise against their employers. The only way to change the balance of power in high-risk sectors, and for any workplace for that matter, is for workers to collectivise their workplace struggles by joining a trade union and by making sure that their unions act as a militant and political defender of the whole working-class. But workers need to recognise that until we get rid of the profit motive that drives all capitalists onwards in their unrelenting oppression of our class, we will always be on the backfoot in defending our rights in our workplaces no matter how well-organised we become. That is why it is so important to simultaneously organise for a socialist future, and for that we will need democratic political organisations that are willing to fight for our class interests. Especially with the ousting of Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party no longer serves this socialist purpose, and so the next task at hand will involve building a new mass workers party to help push forward the urgent need to abolish capitalism and replace it with a socialist alternative.

NOTE: Clipper Logistics provides its exploitative services for many well-known Highstreet brands. As their CEO recently boasted: “We look after John Lewis, we work with Marks & Spencer, as we do with Asda, Wilkinsons, Superdry, Harvey Nichols, Liberty… a long, long list of retail big and small…. One of our biggest customers now is Pretty Little Thing… We work with ASOS…” He added that Clipped in fact has a “sizable account” with ASOS. (April 24, 2020)

143

A Summary of Sir Peter Soulsby’s “Measuring Covid-19 in Leicester” July 15 Earlier this afternoon (July 15) Leicester City Council released a series of graphs with a few explanatory notes titled “Measuring Covid-19 in Leicester” that for the first time included the number of the people testing positive in Leicester for two overlapping 14 day periods. The Council also provided data for the total number of individuals tested over those two periods. (The Council report that this data has only just been made available to them.) The table below shows this new data for Leicester. The data relating to the UK figures was obtained here https://coronavirus-staging.data.gov.uk/cases

Comparing the two 14-day time periods in the above table, the total percentage increase in rate of testing across the UK was 19% while the percentage increase in rate of testing in Leicester was 38%; and the percentage of people testing positive across the UK decreased from 1% to 0.6%, while in Leicester it decreased from 8.5% to 4.3%. Although it is clear that the percentage of people testing positive in Leicester has dropped significantly, it does not seem to have dropped as much as might be expected considering that routine testing has now been extended to those exhibiting no symptoms. Leicester City Council observe that “Random sampling is the ONLY reliable measure” for calculating infection rates, and they correctly add that the government “don’t do it!” This is something that the government needs to do as a matter of some urgency.

144

The Council also add that they still need even more detailed information from the government in order to respond to Covid-19 spikes in infections. Hence they explain that they need:

1. “Positive and negative test data by at least LSOA [Lower Super Output Area – which is a small neighbourhood of about 1,800 people] –but preferably address -separated out by manner of testing and updated within real-time. 2. “Track and trace data should be available to all LA’s [Local Authorities] so that they can support follow up of any cases or contacts that the national programme are unable to make contact with. 3. “Datasets should be aligned as counts differ and are up to different dates”. Sir Peter Soulsby in his introduction to today’s new data notes:

1. “Together with other Local Authority leaders throughout England, we have been asking for some weeks for neighbourhood data about the Coronavirus testing in our areas. We have now received the first set of that data. I have set out what it shows us for the current ‘lockdown’ area. 2. “This clearly shows that the areas most significantly affected by the virus are those with high levels of deprivation in the inner city. Now that we have the data, we and Councils elsewhere in the country can focus on things on a neighbourhood basis. 3. “Given what this data shows, it is no longer possible to justify the continuation of the ‘lockdown’ across the remaining 90% of the Greater Leicester area.” It is of course true that the best and most appropriate way of dealing with Covid-19 outbreaks is on a localised basis, however, the Council could make a stronger case for doing this by presenting comparative data from other cities.

145

The Tories have Cut Proactive HSE Workplace Inspections Across All Local Authorities by a Massive 97% July 16 In July 2018 the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Occupational Health and Safety published “Local authorities and health and safety” – a short report that illustrates exactly why the Tories have no interest in making workplaces safer or in eliminating the use of sweatshops in the British textile sector. By way of an introduction the report notes:

“The responsibility for enforcing workplace health and safety in the workplace is shared between several regulators. … [B]ut generally the enforcement activity for most workplaces is split between the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and local authorities.

“The local authority workplace health and safety enforcement is done through environmental health officers who are also responsible for many other enforcement areas including food safety, housing and environmental nuisance.” Then the report goes on to highlight the result of the government’s ongoing policy changes noting that:

“The number of inspections done by local authorities have fallen dramatically since 2010. The number of pro-active inspections fell by 97 per cent between 2010 and 2016, however these have not been replaced by reactive inspections and the overall number of inspections and other interventions fell by 65 per cent.” The All-Party Parliamentary report explains that one significant reason for this fall in local inspections…

“…is that the HSE now directs the enforcement activity of local authorities and requires them only to make proactive inspections under very limited circumstances. The 2013 Enforcement Code specifically requires local authorities not to inspect except under certain strict circumstances.” Here the 2013 Enforcement Code actually compels local authorities to stop inspecting so-called “lower-risk” workplaces (which includes textile factories). The government however can only see the positives in all these changes, and in a government report released in November 2013 they boast about the Code’s alleged merits which they say “sets out the risk based approach to targeting health and safety interventions that LA regulators should follow.”

146

Tweet from Senior Editor at the Financial Times

Earlier on Hazards magazine warned trade unionists about the Tories ongoing attacks upon workers’ rights, and in January 2013 the magazine wrote:

“The plan to end Health and Safety Executive (HSE) inspections in ‘lower risk’ workplaces repeats changes already implemented under the Department for Work and Pensions’ March 2011 ‘Good health and safety, good for everyone’ strategy. But [Vince] Cable’s plan includes a legally binding statutory code, to be introduced in April 2013, explicitly outlawing proactive inspections of in all but ‘high risk areas’.

“HSE will also be required to ensure local authority regulators abide by the non-inspection directive. Business minister Michael Fallon said this wasn’t just a paper policy, as the government ‘will be holding departments’ feet to the fire to ensure all unnecessary red tape is cut, and we can boost the jobs and growth that our economy needs.’” Of course, the government’s intention has always been to have less workplace inspections, which explains why they have slashed HSE’s government funding in recent years. These numerous government-driven problems are ongoing, and their damaging

147 results were tragically highlighted in a 2017 Guardian article authored by an local authority environmental health officer who observed:

“I have done the job for 13 years and had found it worthwhile and enriching – until austerity arrived, that is. Cuts to council budgets have impacted the ability to do my job properly, leaving members of the public at risk. It used to be a mixture of proactive and reactive visits. A balance of education and enforcement. Proactive visits are diminishing. And education?” To end his deeply harrowing narrative about the gutting of the agencies tasked with the enforcement of workplace health and safety, the local authority employee concluded:

“My profession struggles to recruit new talent. Our wages are in a stagnant state and it looks likely that our car allowance, which covers the cost of essential visits to people and places, is the next thing on the chopping block. After 13 years in the job, I have only just paid off my student loan. I question whether I’d recommend the profession. But it doesn’t have to be like that.

“My profession has the potential to reduce the burden on other sectors such as the NHS, fire service and police – it would be smart to safeguard its funding, increase resources and secure its place in public health. Safer homes and workplaces, less reliance on GPs and A&E. Less pressure on the fire service. Prevention is always better than cure.” Yes… as most people would agree, prevention is always better than the cure. But the government disagree: they believe that cutting workplace regulation is the best way to help buinesses grow irrespective of whether the ensuing lack of inspections causes problems for workers. But local authorities up-and-down the country have never been happy to accept the government’s ongoing attempts to undermine their ability to regulate workplace health and safety effectively. And in 2017 the concerns of local authorities were fed into a report produced by the Joint Committee on Human Rights that was titled “Human Rights and Business 2017: Promoting responsibility and ensuring accountability.” The Committee made many recommendations to the government, but in response to a discussion that referred to the ongoing abuse of workers’ rights within Leicester’s textile factories, the report “recommend[ed] that the Government should bring forward legislative proposals to grant powers to local authorities to close down premises which are found to exploit workers through underpayment of wages, lack of employment contracts or significant disregard of health and safety regulations.”[1] It should come as little suprise that our Tory government ignored this recommendation, a rejection which is all the more ironic because 6 of the 12 members of the Joint Committee who made the recommendation were themselves Tories.[2]

148

NOTES [1] The 2017 report explained: ““During our visit to Leicester, we met representatives of Leicester City Council, and discussed what more they could do to clamp down on poor practices in local factories. We noted that local authorities currently have power to close down certain types of premises where anti-social behaviour is occurring, such as nightclubs and drug-dens, and discussed the feasibility of giving the local council powers to close down factories which have been found to breach employment standards. Council representatives, buyers and suppliers were generally in favour of the idea, but pointed out that the council would need extra resourcing to use such a power. Workers also noted that any closure of non-compliant factories would need to be accompanied by some remediation mechanism, so that employees would not be out of pocket.” [2] The six Tories who were members of the Joint Committee on Human Rights were Fiona Bruce MP (Conservative, Congleton), Jeremy Lefroy MP (Conservative, Stafford), Mark Pritchard MP (Conservative, The Wrekin), Amanda Solloway MP (Conservative, Derby North), Baroness O’Cathain (Conservative), and Lord Trimble (Conservative).

149

Is ASOS All That Different to Boohoo When It Comes to Exploiting Workers? July 17 Boohoo has been making headlines recently for its connections to Leicester’s sweatshops. But other players in the fast-fashion sector also deserve closer scrutiny, with ASOS providing another good example of a company that seems to have difficulty treating their employees like humans. ASOS’ main distribution centre in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, seems to be trying to rival Amazon in terms of hammering workers’ rights both before and during this pandemic. And like Leicester, Barnsley has become an area where the deadly virus has been able to spread more freely than others with ASOS acting as the largest private sector employer in the area. Just over a week into the lockdown, workers at the ASOS warehouse were speaking out against the dangerous working conditions and around 500 staff staged an unofficial walk-out to force their management to take their concerns seriously. The Daily Mirror (March 29) reported:

“Terrified staff at web fashion giant ASOS stopped work after claiming it was impossible to keep two metres apart and follow social distancing guidelines at its HQ. They also complained of cramped buses and shortages of alcohol hand sanitiser at the firm’s base in Barnsley, South Yorks.” The following day the Guardian (March 30) then explained how “More than 98% of more than 460 workers who took part in a survey carried out by the GMB union said they felt unsafe at the group’s warehouse in Grimethorpe, Barnsley, even after new safety measures were introduced last week.” Tim Roache, the GMB general secretary, said: “Conditions at ASOS are scarcely believable – workers we’ve spoken to describe it as a ‘cradle of disease’. It’s absolutely horrifying, a real catalogue of shame.” The Guardian article also noted how in addition to a lack of basic PPE and implementation of effective social distancing measures, workers pointed out that “they fear colleagues would come into work while ill because they could claim only statutory sick pay, of just £94.25 a week, which was not enough to pay their bills.” The local press interviewed a worker who pointed out how “playing roulette with people’s lives’” while another said: “I’m currently in isolation as I live with someone who is high risk. However, because I have been told I am not sick myself I will not be entitled to sick pay. So I’m currently off work unpaid.” (March 30, The Star)

150

But the workers found little support from the leader of the local Labour Council, Sir Steve Houghton who took the side of the bosses, saying that his regulatory team found no evidence to substantiate the fears of ASOS’ workers. The same held true for The Community Union which likewise thought that it was the workers who were being unreasonable not the bosses! Fittingly, ASOS only recognises The Community Union for the basis of workplace negotiations. The only local Labour politician to speak out in support of GMB and their members was Stephanie Peacock, MP for Barnsley East, who during a television interview was clear: “I think ASOS need to close their warehouse and put people before their profits.” (March 30, ITV News) Unfortunately, the problems at ASOS’ warehouse did not go away and in mid-May the GMB union wrote to ASOS’ bosses again after a number of workers tested positive for Covid-19 to highlight how the safety measures “that have put into place within the warehouse are insufficient and do not provide protection to workers.” (May 12) GMB concluded their letter saying: “We once again call on you to stop putting profits before people and temporarily close your warehouse at the very least to do a deep clean and take actual steps to make the workplace safe.” Yet still the profit-hungry bosses refused to listen and the following month the GMB wrote on their local facebook page that:

“The GMB Union is continuing to receive reports of the spread of Covid 19 at ASOS.

“ASOS and the local authority say they are satisfied with the provisions that they have in place but we have reports from our members that those provisions are just for show. ASOS still refuses to work with the GMB Union or acknowledge the fears of our members.

“Following dozens of reports of further cases of Covid19 at ASOS the GMB recommend our members submit their concerns to our Covid-19 risk register https://www.gmb.org.uk/covid-19-risk-register “ (June 2) But still the local Labour Council refuse to support the warehouse workers. It is not as if the conditions in the Barnsley warehouse, which is run by XPO Logistics, were good before the pandemic struck. For example, in December 2018 GMB organiser Deanne Ferguson explained in a media statement how their members “tell us about attacks to their terms and conditions, reductions to sick pay, on-site bullying by management and unregulated pick-rates, which mean people have to work until they drop.” These abuses go back even further, with the Daily Mirror publishing an article nearly five years ago titled “ASOS staff say toilet breaks are so short they have to wee in the warehouse drinking fountain.” (September 25, 2015) XPO Logistics, who are the direct managers of ASOS’ warehouse in Barnsley, like ASOS itself, have been consistent in their abuse of workers’ rights across their global logistics empire. In early 2018, Unite the union attended an international press conference in France with “XPO workers and union activists from Belgium, France, Spain, the UK and

151

USA” to coordinate their efforts to oppose the corporations’ abuse of workers. As Unite reported:

“The action is part of an ongoing global campaign against XPO Logistics, which is under fire for accusations of sexual harassment, dangerous working conditions, a death at a XPO site, gender pay discrimination, exploitative employment arrangements and anti-union activity.” It is for such reasons that workers need to organise in trade unions against such exploitative bosses. ASOS may currently be distancing themselves from Boohoo’s routine use of sweatshop labour by dropping Boohoo’s brands from their own web site, but as this article has demonstrated, ASOS are just as willing to endanger their workforce as Boohoo. And we shouldn’t forget that in addition to their ongoing abuse of workers in the UK, ASOS have courted controversy in the past for their willingness to abuse workers in other countries (“M&S and ASOS among British retailers found employing child refugees in factories,” Daily Telegraph, October 24, 2016). Now the task at hand is to organise, organise, and organise; as it is only through workers exerting democratic control over their own workplaces that we can move forward to the sort of socialist society where all capitalist exploitation is eventually brought to an end.

152

Why Lockdown-Leicester is “Angry, frustrated and disappointed but frankly not surprised” July 17 “Angry, frustrated and disappointed but frankly not surprised” pretty much sums up how a lot of people in Leicester feel about our City Mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby. When the membership of the Labour Party elected a socialist to be leader of their party, Sir Peter and his crony councillors instead of supporting this change, chose to regularly and publicly denigrate Jeremy Corbyn. Angry is an understatement for how many socialists felt about Sir Peter antics on this matter, and so many were relieved when an independent investigation threw light upon and criticised Sir Peter’s anti- democratic reign of power in our city. More recently, frustrations were reignited when Sir Peter’s Council insisted that “Public Health England has found no evidence to suggest that the rise in coronavirus cases in the city is linked to the textile industry.” This untruth was quickly rebutted by the regional organiser of the Bakers Union. So, yesterday when we got the bad news that Leicester’s lockdown was being re- imposed, it was odd to hear that Sir Peter was “angry, frustrated and disappointed but frankly not surprised” in the Tories’ latest actions. Sir Peter had voiced these frustrations during a television interview broadcast on Sky News. During this interview he had correctly accused the government of failing to share data about the employers of individuals infected with Covid-19; which happens to be exactly the type of data that would be required to pinpoint any outbreaks to sweatshops. Hence as no accurate employment data is being collected by the government Sir Peter’s Council can in their ignorance pronounce that Public Health England have “no evidence” of a connection!? You might understand why people are angry in Leicester. But despite all Sir Peter’s political shortcomings (and there are many), I do agree with him on one important point and that is that the government needs to take a more localised and targeted approach to implementing regional lockdowns. There would appear to be no good scientific reason why the whole of Leicester should be locked down. So, when Sir Peter suggests that we only need to lockdown 10% of the city he is referring to the information contained in the little local data that we do have – that the government only recently passed on to the Council. This data demonstrates that there are just twenty neighbourhoods in the city where more than 10% of the people who have been tested for Covid-19 have been confirmed to be infected (over the most

153 recent two-week period). These twenty neighbourhoods covering an area of the city whose total population is approximately 36,000 individuals.[1]

https://www.leicester.gov.uk/media/186767/measuring-covid-19-in-leicester-15-july-2020.pdf

However, Matt Hancock is not concerned about helping councils implement localised lockdowns. So when he announced the latest city-wide lockdown for Leicester, Hancock explained that he had delegated the decision for setting the boundaries of

154 new slightly revised lockdown to the Tory leader of Leicestershire Country Council. Speaking in Parliament Hancock said:

“The initial definition of the geography covered by the lockdown was a decision I delegated to Leicestershire County Council and that it made and published. The leader of Leicestershire County Council, Nicholas Rushton, has advised me, based on the data and the best public health advice, that he recommends that the restrictions now apply only to the Oadby and Wigston area of Leicestershire, as well as the city of Leicester itself, and I have accepted his advice.” Labour MP for Leicester South, Jonathan Ashworth, passed on a good opportunity to make a firm case for localised lockdowns, but nevertheless he still posed a good question to Hancock about the Tories delay in imposing the first national lockdown. Ashworth had asked why the government had took seven days to act upon SAGE’s scientific advice, given to them on 16 March, that noted that full lockdown measures should be enforced as soon as possible. And Hancock had responded by stating that 16 March was “precisely when the lockdown was started,” when in reality, as we all know, the lockdown only began on 23 March. Having let this lie slip so easily from his lips, Hancock then went on to muddle matters further when he explained that when the boundaries for Leicester’s new lockdown were being drawn up…

“I gave the Mayor of Leicester the opportunity to put forward any changes he might have wanted to within the city boundary, but he declined to do so.” This of course is patent nonsense, as the City Mayor clearly wanted a limited lockdown that applied only to those limited parts of the city where infection rates were greatest. This is not the first time that the Tories have been caught out lying about Leicester, and no doubt it won’t be the last time. Time and time again the Tories have insisted that Leicester, like other local authorities, had access to all the testing data they needed to act, when this was not the case. But as a recent statement made on 11 July by the Director of Public Health for Sandwell (in the West Midlands) makes absolutely clear, local authorities “are blindfolded by a lack of data”. Demonstrating that Leicester’s problems are the same felt in other areas, Sandwell’s Director of Public Health explained:

“(1) We don’t get timely data on positive COVID-19 cases – it’s usually several days old. So if cases are rising in your local area, we can’t intervene early to prevent outbreaks.

(2) We don’t get data on the workplace of those testing positive. So if an outbreak is emerging where you work – we can’t get in early and prevent it from escalating.

(3) We don’t get data on the positive COVID-19 cases that the Test & Trace system has failed to get in touch with. So if you’ve been in contact with someone who is infected, we can’t work locally to help find you and notify you.

155

(4) We don’t get data on why so many positive cases are not being followed up by Test & Trace. Is the info at testing incomplete? Does it seem to be people in a particular area? Or maybe an age group, ethnicity or language? We know our local population well and could help.

(5) Local public health teams could do so much more to help prevent COVID-19 infections if information was shared with us. Let’s build a system that works seamlessly across national, regional and local levels. And let’s do it soon – because winter is coming.” (Tweets made by Lisa McNally, July 11) The government really needs to get its act together, and quickly! But this seems very unlikely as in the same speech that announced Leicester’s fate, Hancock added that the use of “Randox swab test kits is paused in all settings until further notice” because they were “not up to the usual high standard that we expect”. Just the latest controversy swirling around the Tories testing debacle. Indeed, Ashworth pointed the Tories had given the £133 million testing contract to Randox “without any competitive tender”; although he might also have reminded Parliament that one of Randox’s very well paid consultants is Owen Paterson, the Tory MP for North Shropshire. (For more details about such “cronyism and corruption” read George Monbiot’s “When secret coronavirus contracts are awarded without competition, it’s deadly serious,” Guardian, July 15, 2020.)

NOTE [1] Each of the twenty so-called “Lower Super Output Areas” is a small neighbourhood of about 1,800 people.

156

The Tories Toothless Anti-Slavery Initiatives: The Case of the Gangmasters’ and Labour Abuse Authority July 18 The government like to bleat about the existence of modern-day slavery and labour exploitation, but it is their own anti-union and anti-worker policies that contribute to intensifying those very same problems. One of the Tories flagship bodies in the propaganda war against bad bosses is the Gangmasters’ and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA), but recent reports continue to demonstrate that it is totally toothless in its ability to stamp out modern-day slavery. Just yesterday the Financial Times (July 17) reported:

“The agency responsible for investigating the UK’s worst labour abuses should be handed enhanced powers to carry out regular checks on workplaces, one of the body’s most senior officials has said. Darryl Dixon, head of single enforcement at the Gangmasters’ and Labour Abuse Authority, said “beat policing” powers would make its work more effective after inspectors were unable to oblige textile company managers to admit them to investigate labour standards in Leicester.” So, this month the GLAA undertook 20 visits to Leicester-based textile factories, but in every site visit they undertook they had to obtain the consent of the workplaces’ owners. “It’s a reasonable assumption that a company that gives you consent may be operating legally,” Mr Dixon said, putting the nonsense to the fact that the GLAA has any real enforcement power at all. It turns out that at the moment the GLLA can only force entry into “agricultural and shellfish businesses to check whether they are complying with the terms of their licences to employ casual workers.” This is a longstanding problem that was hiding in full sight of the government, they have just failed to do anything about it, perhaps because of their sensitivity about infringing upon the rights of profiteers to exploit their employees! In May 2018 the GLAA published a report titled “The nature and scale of labour exploitation across all sectors within the United Kingdom” which highlighted the ongoing problems the Agency faced with obtaining prosecutions noting:

“The volume of Modern Slavery Human Trafficking cases referred for prosecution in the UK rose by 10% between 2015/16 and 2016/17, with the highest volume ever recorded in the latter. However, the number of convictions decreased by 6% during this period.” In making this point the GLAA cited an article published in the Independent (October 11, 2017) which once again demonstrated how little the government care about really supporting exploited workers when it noted:

157

“Trafficking and modern slavery campaigners and charity workers said the figures were a sign that victims often do not feel safe enough to give evidence about the crime due to a lack of emotional support and concerns that they will not be guaranteed safety by the Government following the trial.” The following year little had changed, with figures showing “that in the 2017-18 financial year, 239 suspects were charged with modern slavery offences and 185 people were convicted.” That was just 4 extra convictions compared to the previous year, even though the “number of modern slavery prosecutions has risen by more than a quarter” on the previous year. While more recently a report produced by the government’s Office for National Statistics (“Modern slavery in the UK: March 2020”) determined that “there were 205 suspects of modern slavery flagged cases referred from the police to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for a charging decision in England and Wales in the year ending March 2019.” Of these cases 68% resulted in convictions, that is, just 139 convictions! Things appear to be moving backwards.

Here it is worth pointing out that in comparison to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) which has had it funding slashed by the Tories in recent years, the GLAA has received increasing levels of funding over the past decade. That said, the GLAA’s funding is hardly high. In late 2019 the Financial Times cited the opinion of the charitable group Focus on Labour Exploitation (Flex) which…

“…said the UK had allocated an annual budget of only £7.69 per member of the workforce to labour enforcement. The equivalent sum in Ireland was twice that, while Norway spent three times that figure. ‘If the GLAA is to make progress in high-risk sectors it must be

158

properly resourced to extend its licensing regime to meet the challenges Brexit will undoubtedly bring,’ Flex said.” Funding levels were discussed in detail with the government’s “United Kingdom Labour Market Enforcement Strategy 2019/20” which was produced by the Tories Director of Labour Market Enforcement, Sir David Metcalf. The report notes that the “GLAA currently receives £7.1 million each year from the Home Office to undertake its duties. This has risen considerably in the last two years, largely to accommodate the additional staffing required to fulfil the expanded remit resulting from the Immigration Act 2016…”[1] But even with expanded funding and staffing GLAA inspections were still rare. Metcalf went on to explain:

“Discussions I had with a former GLAA licensing compliance officer appeared to corroborate this. Compliance officers were apparently under-utilised, as evidenced by the considerable reduction in compliance inspections and licence revocations over time. Under the current approach, it was felt that it was too easy for rogue gangmasters to evade the necessary scrutiny. Even where licences are revoked there is often evidence of phoenixing. A more effective way of assessing compliance would be to undertake unannounced visits.”[2] Yes, that sounds like a good idea, but it is a shame that it is still not being done. But as most people already know, the most important way of protecting workers from ongoing abuse is by workers collectively fighting to ensure that every worker in this country has the right to organise within trade unions in their workplaces. In recent months the pandemic and local lockdown in Leicester may have drawn attention to Boohoo’s reliance upon sweatshops in our city, but we should be mindful that the problem is far bigger than even this. At the end of the day workers are super- exploited in all manner of industries that dominate our national and global landscape, a point well-made in an article titled “Labour abuses happening ‘at scale’ far beyond Leicester, warn rights groups.” The article lays out the capitalist problem like this:

“Labour and migrant rights groups say that workers in sectors such as furniture, construction, contract cleaning, recycling and domestic work are also being paid less than the minimum wage and experience wage theft, unsafe working conditions, verbal and physical abuse, and unpaid overtime.

‘Exactly the same labour abuses that the government and brands are professing shock and horror over in Leicester are happening at scale across the country,’ said Emily Kenway, a senior adviser at Focus on Labour Exploitation (Flex).

‘It’s not just garments. In the construction sector in London we found a huge amount of abuse, underpayment of wages, verbal and physical intimidation. We know migrant cleaners are having their rights abused. The list goes on. It is not acceptable that action is only taken when the most extreme cases come to light. Basic labour laws are simply not being upheld across the country and that is corrosive and wrong.’”

159

NOTES [1] “Staff numbers at the then-called Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA) peaked at 89 in 2010/11 but fell significantly to 72 in 2011/12 and then further to 66 in subsequent years. According to GLA annual reporting much of this decline occurred on the licensing side, falling from 33 staff in 2009/10 to 21 by 2011/12. Over the same period, enforcement staff increased from 31 to 51. “The recent expansion of GLAA’s remit has seen a marked increase in staffing levels. In 2017/18, the average GLAA headcount was 108 staff (including 16 compliance officers). By September 2018, total staffing stood at 126.” [2] Metcalf defines phoenixing as “The practice of carrying on the same business or trade successively through a series of companies where each becomes insolvent in turn.”

160

EXPOSED: How the Tories Caused Leicester’s Covid Outbreak July 18 Compared to other major cities in the UK that have witnessed significant numbers of people testing positive for Covid-19, Leicester has had a longstanding and persistent problem with high numbers of people testing positive. (And in Leicester since June 18 part of the reason for the high number of people testing positive owed to the ramping- up of local testing.) Nevertheless, it is critical that nearly all other parts of the country had their localised peaks in case numbers (recorded as a 7-day average) take place approximately one month prior to Leicester (who attained their first peak on May 18). We should also bear in mind that the government hid this delayed peak from Leicester City Council until June 1 — the first day the government shared some parts of the private sector testing data with the city. So, when Boris Johnson first started rhetorically loosening the nationwide lockdown in mid-May – which was when the government first announced there would be a partial re-opening of schools as of June 1 – we know that only the government had access to the comprehensive test results that indicated that such an easing of restrictions would have a strong chance of endangering the people of Leicester.

To restate the critical point about who knew what and when. Only the government had access to the full testing data throughout May. The government would have therefore have known that the number of people testing positive in Leicester was significantly higher than the national average and significantly

161 higher than that occurring in comparable cities. And only the government would have known that while most parts of the country had seen declining numbers of cases since early April, Leicester’s numbers had been slowly creeping upwards until May 18. Thus, when the government started talking about their plans for the reopening of schools in mid-May it was always clear that Leicester was more likely to suffer a new spike in infections than were other parts of the country. Either way it was only on June 1 that partial information about the total number of positive tests occurring in Leicester was passed on to Leicester’s City Council. With alarms bells rings the Council therefore requested more detailed information from the government (which they didn’t get for some weeks), and the Council also raised their concerns with Public Health England. (And we should be clear that at this stage City Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby should have followed the advice of trade unionists and parents who had advised him to actively oppose the Tories and their plans to re-open Leicester’s schools, as a number of other local authorities did. In truth, the infection rate in general was still too high to justify a wider re-opening.) Even though only the government had access to the type of testing data that would have allowed them to compare Leicester’s situation to those of other cities, the government only belatedly set-up the first private sector testing centre within Leicester city’s boundaries on June 18. This delay was a mistake of epic proportions. Hence it is not entirely surprising that given the fact that Leicester already had a high number of people testing positive for Covid-19 in mid-May (44.1 cases as a 7-day average), that just over a week later the number started to rise to troubling levels until they reached a new much higher second peak on June 22 (80.9 cases as a 7-day average).

162

Source: https://coronavirus-staging.data.gov.uk/cases

163

Priti Patel Supports Mega Sweatshops in Ethiopia That Pay Workers Just $26 a Month! July 23 The existence of British-based sweatshops is bad enough, but the Tories, while pretending to be concerned about exploitation, are presently using our countries foreign aid budget to help establish “modern sweatshops” in distant lands. Taking sweatshop abuse to a whole other level the Tories are currently supporting the creation of mammoth garment warehouses in Ethiopia where garment workers are paid the lowest wage in the world, just $26 a month!

The Tories master plan aims to create new sweatshops in Africa which will apparently entice workers to gain a living within their own countries. As Priti Patel, the Tories development secretary put it: “If the jobs aren’t there, young Africans who are educated will want to migrate. They will want to have better prospects and futures elsewhere.” Patel made these comments while visiting Ethiopia’s flagship Hawassa Industrial Park in early 2017 — a garment complex located in a “tax-free” zone that aimed to employ 60,000 workers on two shifts. An article carried in The Times uncritically laid out the Tories plans to institutionalise modern slavery on an epic scale:

“Last year, Theresa May pledged £80 million for industrial parks in Ethiopia on the condition that a third of the workforce were refugees. The aim is to provide opportunities in the region and to stop people making the dangerous journey to Europe. Ethiopia hosts

164

about 750,00 refugees from Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea and Yemen.” (“Bigger share of aid budget to be spent supporting business,” The Times, January 31, 2017)

Priti Patel greeted by Nebil Kellow, managing director of Enterprise Partners in early 2017. (The University report introduces Enterprise Partners as “a U.K.-funded Ethiopian nonprofit that has worked on labor issues at Hawassa” – a group which is run by Nebil Kellow who “previously worked for McKinsey & Co. and, prior to this, in the investment industry in the UK.” The report explains that: “The hard reality [of exploitation at Hawassa], according to Enterprise Partners’ Nebil, is that some degree of ‘generational sacrifice needs to take place’ in Ethiopia. By that he meant today’s workers likely will have to endure exceptionally low wages and inhospitable living arrangements while they accumulate industrial skills and achieve productivity levels that in the future will bring them, and their children, higher pay and better circumstances.”) The Hawassa Industrial Park opened for business shortly after Patel’s whistle-stop visit, with the two major multi-national corporations backing the project being PVH, the American fashion group that owns Calvin Klein, and Arvind, the large Indian garment manufacturer. That said, these two powerful corporations did not stump the bill for the construction of the site; instead the “Ethiopian government [with the aid of the Chinese government] built the park for US$250 million as part of a planned surge in economic investment using public funds and cash generated from Eurobond sales.” As any sane person might have expected this brand-new state-of-the-art sweatshop did not make for a happy workforce, quite the opposite as revealed in a report published last year by the New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human

165

Rights. The report titled “Made in Ethiopia: Challenges in the Garment Industry’s New Frontier” noted that the site was “partly filled” employing some 25,000 mostly female workers. “PVH has created an advanced physical plant typically not found in even well- established clothing-manufacturing centers such as Vietnam and Bangladesh,” the report highlighted. Then commenting on the extremely low wages paid the authors added: “It’s common for young women to live four-to-a-room, without indoor plumbing.” The corporations and governmental elites making immense profits from this ongoing abuse however ignore such matters of systemic abuse, and the report explains:

“For its part, PVH maintains that Hawassa ‘show[s] the world there is no conflict between companies doing well and companies doing right by the people, the community, and the environment they operate within.’ In October 2018, the U.S. Department of State gave PVH its annual corporate sustainability award, singling out Hawassa. The park will inspire ‘responsible industrialization across Ethiopia for the betterment of the entire population,’ according to the department.” Yet the conditions are so bad that even the workers who are desperate enough to be recruited for exploitation within these new brightly lit and adequately ventilated satanic mills aren’t sticking around long. So, during the sites first year of operations “overall attrition at the park hovered around 100%, meaning that, on average, factories were replacing all of their workers every 12 months.” On a positive front, the University report demonstrated that workers were fighting back against their exploitation; although the report’s authors assert that Ethiopia’s trade union movement “hasn’t attempted to organize employees at the industrial park.”[1] Nevertheless the workers seem fairly combative, and:

“Stability, or the lack of it, is very much on the minds of the executives overseeing Hawassa factories. Just before we arrived for a visit at Best Corporation, a majority of the India-based supplier’s 950 employees had walked out over a pay dispute. A manager was on the phone imploring a park staff member to come to the factory and talk to the remaining workers.” Best Corporation (P) Limited (BCPL) was, it turns out, just “one of several suppliers in the park hit by strikes” on the day of the visit made by the report’s authors. In the instance of the Best dispute, workers had engaged in a wildcat strike to oppose the loss of three days’ pay from the previous week after a city-wide political shut down of the city stopped them from attending work. And their reactive self-organising paid off, as the report added: “At first, the suppliers indicated that they did not intend to pay [for the three days], but they eventually changed their minds and agreed to compensate their employees as a way of promoting labor peace.”

166

The aforementioned strike actions were described by the Ethiopian trade union movement in the following way:

“On 7 March, thousands of textile and garment workers went on strike at Ethiopia’s biggest industrial park, Hawassa, demanding better wages, safe working conditions and an end to sexual harassment. The workers were not represented by a trade union, because for the past two years, management at the industrial park has refused to allow unions to organize.” The IndustriALL Global Union profile “Organizing in the garment and textile sector in Ethiopia” (May 2019) goes on to add that their local affiliate, the Industrial Federation of Textile, Leather and Garment Workers Union (IFTLGWU), “has hit a brick wall in its attempts to organize at Hawassa, despite the country’s Constitution and labour laws providing for freedom of association.”[2] Yet some such trade union reports don’t give a true reflection of limited nature of the organising efforts taking place at the factories. On this front an interesting 2019 report written by Gifawosen Markos Mitta titled “Labor rights, working conditions, and workers’ power in the emerging textile and apparel industries in Ethiopia: the case of Hawassa Industrial Park” undertakes a more critical evaluation of the union activism that is currently taking place within the oppressive HIP factories. As part of this study, Gifawosen interviewed local workers as well as two trade unionists, one employed by IFETLGWU and the other by the Confederation of Ethiopian Trade Unions (CETU). Gifawosen corroborated the appalling working conditions previously described within the aforementioned report, with one worker arguing that “the working condition in the factory is so bad […] it seems like we (the workers) are working in Arab countries […] It is so sad that we are being enslaved in our own country”.[3] Another employee explained that “the wages are not livable […] the employers need to thank the government because they are getting our labor almost for free”. Gifawosen however, owing to his concern with the lack of effective organizing taking place amongst the 25,000 workers at the Hawassa Industrial Park (HIP) makes the case that “the CETU and IFTGLWTU’s attempts to pressurize the government for the private sector minimum wages are nothing but bureaucratic engagements that are not supported by labor movements at the grassroot level.” When combined with the lack of knowledge and experience of organising effectively within trade unions, this has presented problems as the industrial action that does tend to take place has mostly been concerned with the “timely payment of wages” rather than dealing with strategic questions of promoting power in the workplace.[4] This leads Gifawosen to conclude:

“The assertion of the interviewed unionists regarding the mechanism they are employing to organize the workers at the shop floor level in HIP can explain this very well. Rather than making a large-scale campaign, they have been largely dependent on the good will

167

of the employers and the state agencies in their effort to organize workers, which is literally unlikely at the moment. Whenever they have been denied, they are not able to override employers and state resistance in their effort of reaching out to the workers at the grassroots level. Thus, the unions are virtually lacking the militancy in their campaigns of organizing the workers in the industrial park.” He adds that the lack of militancy on the part of the trade union leaderships “is, therefore, making it easy for the state and employers to neutralize the effort of the unions to organize the unorganized workforce in the industrial park.” This is a problem that faces workers across the world. In the UK the Trade Union Congress (TUC) similarly acts to stymie militant trade union organizing. Such a passive partnership approach to trade union organising stands in stark contrast to social movement organising which has shown time and time again how “workers can militantly confront corporations and government and win.” This method of struggle is well summarised within Jane Mcalevey’s excellent book Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell): My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement (2014). It is exactly this type of militant organising that will allow workers across the world to successfully fightback against all forms of capitalist exploitation. As Mcalevey puts it:

“Whole-worker organizing begins with the recognition that real people do not live two separate lives, one beginning when they arrive at work and punch the clock and another when they punch out at the end of their shift. The pressing concerns that bear down on them every day are not divided into two neat piles, only one of which is of concern to unions. At the end of each shift workers go home, through streets that are sometimes violent, past their kids’ crumbling schools, to their often substandard housing, where the tap water is likely unsafe.

“Whole-worker organizing seeks to engage “whole workers” in the betterment of their lives. To keep them consistently acting in their self interest, while constantly expanding their vision of who that self interest includes, from their immediate peers in their unit, to their shift, their workplace, their street, their kids’ school, their community, their water- shed, their nation and their world.

“Whole-worker organizing is always a face-to-face endeavor, with no intermediary shortcuts: no email, no social networking, no tweeting. It’s not negotiated deals between national unions and giant corporations, and it is certainly not workers waking up one day to find themselves dealt into a thing called a union that sends them glossy mailers telling them how to vote.”

NOTES [1] After noting the lack of a presence of trade union the report adds: “In place of traditional union representation, “workers’ councils” are supposed to promote factory employees’ interests at Hawassa. But according to our inter-views, fully functional

168 councils operate in only several of the 21 manufacturing companies. Moreover, the councils serve under the supervision of company executives and often appear to constitute the eyes and ears of management, as much as the voice of workers.” [2] Teklu Shewarega, IFTLGWTU’s organizing and industrial relations department head said: “The recent strike is not a surprise. With no unions representing workers, low wages and bad working conditions are prevalent. “We have tried to organize the workers for more than two years without a clear permission from the government so far. We continue our efforts and ask our international partners and the global brands and retailers sourcing from the park for support in putting pressure on the government to allow organizing.” [3] In a footnote relating to this interview (carried out in 2018) Gifawosen explains: “5The interviewee mentioned the level of torture women are facing in Arab countries, but she indicated that it is still better to go to Arab countries than working in the factories of the HIP due to the amount of money workers are able to make there. The interviewed unionist also mentioned that most of the women are waiting for their chances to go to the Arab countries due to the alleged better income they would be able to earn.” [4] Gifawosen writes, “these strikes often started in a certain factory and had a contagious effect on others. As the demands have usually been nothing more than a timely payment of their salaries, the strikes quickly settle whenever the management of the factories decides to pay as per the demand of the workers (I5, Personal interview 2018). This shows that strategic questions which have a substantial bearing on the interests of the workers are not being the subject of workers’ strikes in the industrial park.”

169

2 Sisters Food Group: The Worst Kind of Pandemic Profiteers July 26 The UK’s largest chicken producer 2 Sisters Food Group made the headlines recently for failing to take the safety of our country’s key workers seriously. Last month their Llangefni plant in Wales, which employs 560 people, was forced to close for two weeks as a coronavirus outbreak infected nearly 300 people. Of course, actions could have been taken to minimise the threat of such an outbreak but the bosses of 2 Sisters have a long history of treating their employees like disposable commodities. Such poor treatment bears no relations to the profit margins of the company. In fact unlike many other companies 2 Sisters has not suffered financial losses during this pandemic, so they have absolutely no reason to fail to look after the health and safety of their low-paid workers and their families. As the Financial Times (July 24) reported this week, “2 Sisters benefited from a spike in demand for chicken and packaged foods in lockdown, while unexpectedly positive results in June, in which owner Boparan Holdings reported a near 50 per cent jump in earnings for the three months to April”. Throughout the pandemic trade unions have warned that key workers like those employed by 2 Sisters were effectively being forced to come into work sick because the workers knew they their greedy employer would not be paying them any sick pay. The Financial Times noted:

“John (not his real name) works on a 2 Sisters production line and said that like many colleagues, he only receives statutory sick pay of £95.85 a week, making time off financially untenable. In Anglesey, the company agreed to pay full wages while the factory was closed. But John, who works at a different plant, recently had to take several weeks off with coronavirus on the statutory rate. ‘We put ourselves and our families in danger . . . We are still the forgotten key workers,’ he said. ‘Ranjit [the 2 Sisters boss] is earning millions and he can’t afford to pay £250 a week for us when we are ill.’” The article noted that how Unite the union continues to fight “for 2 Sisters to pay all staff full sick pay.” But 2 Sisters continue to ignore such reasonable demands, and so continue to endanger their workforce and the communities they live in. The only time the 2 Sisters bosses have agreed to pay full sick pay for their staff was in the wake of the closure of their Llangefni plant, and even then they had initially planned to just close the site and force their key workers to live off £95 a week! So what happened… On June 17, thirteen workers had tested positive at the Welsh site with 110 being sent home to self-isolate. The following day there were 58 confirmed cases at the Llangefni site, and all workers were sent home. A spokesperson for the company stating: “We will not tolerate any unnecessary risks – however small – for our existing loyal

170 workforce at the facility.” A bland, meaningless press statement that is utter b*******. Nevertheless, just two days after the closure it became public knowledge that 2 Sisters were planning to try to get away with making their staff live off £95 a week for the duration of the closure. Peter Hughes, a Unite regional secretary tweeted:

“So @2SFGofficial, first you neglect H&S of your workforce & food lines expecting members to work through a COVID19 outbreak. And now I learn you intend to punish workers for your mistakes by refusing to offer full pay? Exploitation isn’t a good look.” (June 20) Two days later, the union succeeded in forcing 2 Sisters to treat their employees like humans and got them to promise that all 560 workers would be able to obtain full pay for the duration of the closure. Yet despite this small and important victory 2 Sisters employees across the country are still only entitled to statutory sick pay during any period of self-isolation. Bosses therefore continue to put profits over people, and our government is doing nothing to discourage such appalling behaviour. (2 Sisters bosses were forced by their employees into creating a £1 million welfare fund, which they are using to pay two weeks full pay for the 560 workers in Llangefni. This will of course mean there will be very little left for their other 20,000 employees if any of them need to self-isolate for any reason.) Now is the time for all workers to unite and fight back, whether you are key worker or not. Join a union, and if the bosses continue to pretend that they can’t afford to pay sick pay or afford to top-up the pay of furloughed workers then raise the demand made by the Bakers Union in the context of exploitation of workers by the Greencore Food Group: “If the bosses… say that they don’t have enough money… then they should open their books for financial inspection. If they can’t afford it, we need to see proof!”

171

Why the Morning Star are Wrong to Criticise Claudia Webbe and John McDonnell for Opposing the Chinese Dictatorship July 27 Socialists across the world are opposed to the imperialist dictatorship of the misnamed Chinese ‘Communist’ Party. We stand in solidarity with the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and we oppose the apartheid state that the Chinese regime is currently imposing on Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. In Leicester East, my local MP Claudia Webbe spoke in parliament recently to demand that our government take action to “oppose state-sanctioned violence” in Hong Kong. In a similar vein John McDonnell recently talked about the need to fight for democracy in Hong Kong and to give full solidarity to the pro-democracy protestors. He also explained how in recent years there “has almost been an almost integration of British finance capital with the interests of the Chinese Communist Party”. This was an important point. Likewise, in another important online intervention into Chinese affairs, McDonnell sent a strong message of support to the Uighur people who he said were battling against…

“…the savage repression of the Chinese state, the internment, the brutality being meted out to the Uighur people but also the long sentences for those illegally imprisoned, and the whole attempt to wipe out the culture of the Uighur’s. It is appalling and we have to stand-up in solidarity in condemning the behaviour of the Chinese state, and we have to build now amongst workers movements across the globe that campaign of solidarity, exposing what’s going on, supporting wherever we can the victims and the families of victims of this repression…” Tragically not everyone agrees with such sentiments, and the Communist Party linked Morning Star newspaper immediately jumped to the defence of the Chinese dictatorship by publishing an article titled “Labour should not be parroting Trump’s anti-China cold war rhetoric” (July 15). In this article not only was Webbe castigated for “choosing to ignore the United States-sanctioned violence of separatist [Uighur] protesters”; but McDonnell was also accused of “record[ing] a histrionic (and hopelessly one-sided) denunciation of the Chinese state’s alleged mistreatment of the Uighur Muslims.” The Morning Star are apparently completely blinded to the grotesque repression being undertaken by the Communist dictatorship who are happily working hand-in-hand with China’s extraordinarily wealthy capitalist class. Hence rather than criticise China

172 the newspaper suggests that: “What British people need to do, in the interests of peace and progress, is to push for respectful, friendly and mutually beneficial relations with China.” This democratic problem is of course a longstanding problem that exists with the Morning Star’s uncritical engagement with the repression of workers carried out within so-called Communist states. For example, just last month the Morning Star (June 12) wrote:

“China has faced international criticism over allegations that the country’s Uighur Muslim population face persecution, with claims that as many as three million have been taken to ‘concentration camps.’ It dismisses the accusations as propaganda perpetuated by the World Uighur Congress (WUC), an organisation in receipt of funds from the US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED).” Taking Chinese state propaganda as an article of faith the Morning Star article goes on to say the World Uighur Congress “been accused of links” to a “jihadist terror group” and then describes China’s Orwellian re-education camps as if they were innocuous work training schemes. In a further horrific distortion of reality, the Morning Star perpetually reports that Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement is merely a pro-capitalist ruse, that is, a “coloured revolution” that is being orchestrated by Western elites to attack socialists! On this point last September the Morning Star focused its coverage on the violence of the pro-democracy movement, contrasting their “riots” with the so-called progressive socialist protests that were being ignored by the Western press. They wrote:

“At the same time [as the riots took place], the huge crowds which turned out on Saturday to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Chinese revolution went largely unreported. Backed by the vast majority of Hong Kong citizens, events dwarfing the anti-China protests took place across the territory, as thousands sang the national anthem celebrating the foundation of the People’s Republic of China.” (Morning Star, September 29, 2019) Needless to say there should be no doubting that some organisations have been receiving assistance from foreign governments, but just because this is true does not mean that the mass movements in China and Hong Kong are simply overthrow movements backed by the United States. This argument is firmly rebutted by socialist activist Vincent Kolo in his 2019 article “Is the US behind the protest movement?” which explains how:

“Those who subscribe to the colour revolution scenario focus a lot on the role of pan- democratic politicians like Joshua Wong, Martin Lee, and media mogul Jimmy Lai Chee- Ying, who all have connections with the right-wing political establishment in the US. But these political figures did not initiate the current mass movement and the truth is they’ve been side-lined by the more militant youth since the beginning of the movement. One of the reasons the current Hong Kong movement is ‘leaderless’ — which is problematic as

173

the struggle becomes more complex and drawn out — is precisely because of the backlash against the timid and compromising ‘leadership’ of the pan-democrats in the past.” The fact that Britain’s only daily ‘workers’ newspaper continues to promote such fictions should be something that concerns all socialists.

Make the Bosses Pay for the Crisis July 29 Workers did not cause the global economic crisis caused by the pandemic, so we must not be forced to pay for it! But this is exactly what the Tories and their powerful friends are trying to do. Billionaire Tory donor Sir James Dyson provides the latest example of this, announcing that he is unceremoniously axing the jobs of 600 of his British employees. Dyson was employed as an ‘ingenuity tsar’ by David Cameron in 2012 to make tax changes “giving companies like Dyson Ltd. a corporate tax rate on most, if not all, of its income at 10%.” Tax avoidance for the super-rich and weakened public services for the rest of us has been common practise for the capitalist class. Profiteering from health crises comes naturally to Tory elites. Yet again, the taxpayer is being requested to give another bailout to Transport for London, taking the total cost to an eye-watering £5 billion. When the first bailout was agreed in May, the government only gave the money on the premise that they would privatise TfL in what the rail workers union – the RMT – referred to as a “Government coup”. Senior Assistant General Secretary of the union, Mick Lynch, said in a statement dispatched to the Tories that:

“Privatisation has been a disaster for tax-payers, public and workers alike and we are still living with, and paying for, its consequences… Workers on the tube have put their lives on the line day in, day out to keep the Underground running throughout the worst crisis since the Second World War and they are not going to stand by while [Johnson’s] government exploits this crisis in the interests of big business.” Workers cannot accept any more profiteering at our expense. If more money is needed to bail out any transport organizations then this should only be given on the promise that no corporate profiteers will see a single penny of the money. This means that all the capitalist leaches must be removed from TfL’s infrastructure, and for the service to be publicly owned and run under the democratic control of workers and service users. This should apply equally to all public transport networks, and could lay the basis for

174 expansion and improvement of infrastructure, along with mass investment in renewable energy sources. And while we are at it, let’s ensure that public transport is actually affordable for all by making it free for all!

Wrong Again: Paul Mason Urges Socialists to Campaign for “a new and less toxic form of capitalism”?! July 31

This was written as a quick response to Paul Mason’s very wordy and incoherent essay “The Left, the Party and the Class: An essay on the future of the Labour left” (July 25, 2020).

The world is in crisis and the chance to replace the mayhem of our capitalist political system with a socialist alternative must now be seized upon by the global working- class. Paul Mason however thinks otherwise, now apparently is the time for patient activism with the Labour Party in order to fight for a nicer form of capitalism. Mason says if we succeed in getting a “left government” it could only “usher in a new and less toxic form of capitalism — creating the possibility of further transitions…” Despite his pessimistic predictions for the distant future Mason acknowledges that right now, “for the lowest paid” a system of “pervasive super-exploitation” is all too common. He also explains that going forward it is clear that “we’ll be in a world of mass precarity, youth unemployment and a disintegrating global order.” He adds:

“We are facing a government of the radical right. A failing Johnson administration that will respond by unleashing Trump-level doses of reactionary culture war, against minorities, Scottish nationalists, ‘cultural Marxists’, feminists and trade unionists.” If this wasn’t a reason to campaign to get rid of capitalism right now, I don’t know what would be. Mason also makes it clear that it would be pointless for socialists and trade unionists to campaign to create a brand new democratic and genuinely socialist political organisation. This is because, Mason the pessimist warns, “serious differences on the left…would blow any such party into two fragments immediately.”

175

Yet as many on the left already know, Mason’s crystal-ball gazing has not been accurate in the past and it is most definitely ill-informed right now. He says that if you were of the mind that creating a new political organisation for the working-class might present a way forward you would be simply falling into a trap laid by the ruling-class. He writes: “If you are tempted to leave the party, thinking a new, pristine left one could replace it: that is exactly what the elite and their allies want.” Instead Mason says we must try to persuade Sir Keir Starmer and the Blairites who still dominate the machinery of the Labour Party to embrace the types of socialist ideas that the Blairites have opposed for the past five years (and longer). Mason says we need “to design the alternative [Labour Party program] ourselves and start campaigning for it, to convince the Labour technocrats to move beyond timid critiques of the Tories and advocate economic regime change.” He states that the three key tasks of the Left must be “to (a) define what this big change agenda means (b) start fighting for it independently through our activism; and ( c) extend party democracy.” With regard the latter point about democracy, many people have been trying to do this throughout Corbyn’s time in power, but with very little success. Of course that is precisely why some people on the left are calling for the establishment of a new mass workers party: a party for the entire working-class that is founded upon democratic principles and will be willing to fight for a non-capitalist socialist future right now, now at some unspecified time in the distant future.

176

Andy Burnham’s Lockdown Blame Game Moment August 3 Stoking racist tensions is a longstanding game played by capitalist politicians of all political persuasions; and as we have seen throughout this pandemic, seemingly nothing will put them off from their efforts to divide the working-class. Rather, with the escalation of the crisis shaking their already faltering exploitative political and economic system to its very foundations, many politicians have seized upon this crisis to intensify their own hate-speech. In Britain this grotesque spectacle is currently being played out; last month when it was announced that Leicester would be the only city going back into a tight lockdown, blame for our city’s outbreak was quickly shifted onto issues of ethnicity. As if this was not bad enough when it was pointed out that the outbreaks might be linked to workers being forced to slave away in the hundreds of sweatshops that make up Leicester’s textile industry this idea was quickly swept aside by our Blairite City Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby.

Source: https://coronavirus-staging.data.gov.uk/cases

Now that large parts of the North West have been forced to accept a further ‘lockdown’ you might have thought that Andy Burnham, the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester, would have been prepared for navigating the racial blame game that was likely to intensify in his region. But he betrayed his electorate at the very first hurdle.

177

On the morning of Eid (July 31) Burnham laid the blame for new lockdown on not just young people but as he put it “gatherings in households across the board, gatherings in multi-generational households, that I think is the reason why this action is justified… its gatherings in homes that has been the problem”. The interviewer on BBC Radio 4 then highlighted that others had said that the coronavirus “affects everyone, rich or poor, old or young” and asked Burnham if “when you refer to crowded households you refer to multi-generational households, you do mean predominately the Asian population of Greater Manchester don’t you?” To which Burnham replied: “Yes I do mean that.” Burnham had even been primed by the journalist to think about issues of wealth and how that might effect transmission, which of course it does, but instead Burnham chose to stick to the Tories own talking-point about their concerns with household transmission. Incidentally, this is what Leicester’s Mayor did too when he refused to emphasise socio-economic issues relating to workplace exploitation in his explanations of the viruses spread. In the context of the North West lockdown this then led to a local Tory MP claiming in an interview conducted on LBC Radio just an hour later that some “sections of our community that are not taking the pandemic seriously.” When asked by the interviewer if he was referring to the Muslim community, he replied: “Of course… it is the BAME communities that are not taking this seriously enough.” This divisive nonsense was later correctly criticised by Burnham, “who said it was “never a good idea, ever, to make sweeping generalisations about your constituents, but it is a particularly poor idea to single out a single community within your community for such comments”. “I don’t think those [MP’s] comments are helpful at all” Burnham added, but the damage has already been done by his own sweeping generalisations. But what is clear is that the deadly spread of Covid-19 exacts a much higher death among BAME communities, and it is not spreading amongst certain communities because of ethnicity but precisely because of their relative poverty. Later in the afternoon this phenomena was well-explained by Professor Dominic Harrison, who is the public health director for Blackburn with Darwen, who pointed out that the towns where the latest lockdown measures were introduced were towns…

“…which have more economic and social challenges. And our research on who is being infected in the last ten-day period in Blackburn and Darwen has shown us that 33% of all the confirmed cases in Blackburn and Darwen were amongst the least wealthy 10%, and amongst the most wealth 10% of our residents we have had no cases at all. And so one of the things that we observed from that is that the virus – and this was confirmed incidentally by the Office of National Statistics in relation to deaths earlier in the pandemic – is that those who have high levels of deprivation, high levels of unequal and unfair life

178

chances are certainly being more impacted by this virus, and in terms of the narrative, it is very clear that that’s not because they are necessarily not social distancing, it’s probably because they are finding that their employment conditions, particularly because many are in front-line roles exposes them to more risk of being infected in the first place. And so we need to be very cautious about how we explain the causes of higher rates in these northern towns because to the best of my knowledge there is no evidence that that pattern is any greater in the northern towns than in England as a whole, and what’s therefore driving our increased risk of transmission is our increased risk exposure which is generally driven by higher levels of inequality and exposure to risk.” (BBC Lancashire, July 31) This is not a new or complicated argument and so Andy Burnham has no excuses for not being able to immediately respond to such issues in the media, instead of very belatedly in the relative obscurity of The Observer (July 2). Maybe the influence of Sir Keir Starmer’s new leadership of the Labour Party is already having a detrimental impact on Burnham’s willingness to promote socialism. To take just one example we should remember that under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership Burnham was had been particularly outspoken against the ongoing scapegoating of the Muslim community especially in 2016 when he called for the scrapping for the “toxic” PREVENT strategy – a strategy which was meant to counter extremism but only ever served to demonise Muslims and generate problems. Although after getting elected as Mayor his commitment to scrapping the government’s so-called anti-terror strategy quickly evaporated and he now supports this toxic project. Nevertheless, the case for ditching PREVENT has never been greater. In fact, only last month an important study was published that once again demonstrated how the PREVENT strategy has reinforced negative stereotypes of Muslims making a solid cases for why it should be scrapped with immediate effect. But as with the pandemic itself the government has consistently ignored any evidence that contradicts their self- serving needs, and as far as the Tories are concerned, they “need” to demonise Muslims! That is why we need to fight to rid ourselves of the Tories, and we can do that by fighting back within our workplaces and on the streets. Commenting on the politics of the Tories latest lockdown mayhem, even the British Medical Journal has gone beyond the Labour Party’s leadership in ridiculing the government. In an article published on the day of the Eid celebrations, Manchester GP Siema Iqbal told the Journal that the government’s announcement created only confusion and…

“… seems to suggest that blame incorrectly lies at the south Asian communities. This completely ignores the fact that actually many have adhered to the rules, but due to social deprivation and overcrowded housing it means risk of transmission is higher, especially if two families mix as part of a social bubble.”

179

In a similar vein Hina Shahid, chair of the Muslim Doctors Association, said there is “an overwhelming feeling in BAME communities that we are being scapegoated for systematic government failings in handling the crisis.” As if this was not bad enough Shahid “said that her association had also written multiple policy briefings and letters to the government to ‘highlight the structural inequalities, discrimination, and racism that are the main drivers for covid-19 transmission,’ but had received no response.” Again, none of this should be novel to anyone concerned with fighting back against exploitation and oppression. For example, earlier last month Shahid wrote an impassioned evidence-based opinion-piece for the British Medical Journal where she capably laid out the problems facing Britain’s Muslim community. She highlighted how Muslims have the highest age standardised mortality rate, drew attention to high levels of deprivation facing the Muslim community, their demonisation by both politicians and the mainstream media, and reminded her readers how “over 50% of doctors who have died in the UK have been Muslim, despite constituting 9.1% of the medical workforce.” Yet Andy Burnham when responding to the Tories latest lockdown chose to ignore all these facts and settled for echoing the government’s divisive narrative on the pandemic. The manner in which the Tories have mismanaged this crisis — at every turn — meant that the introduction of localised lockdowns provided the perfect opportunity for Burnham to challenge their absolute failure to protect us, the working- classes, from the ravages of this pandemic. Socialist Alternative believe the working-class need class fighters who will organise to dismantle this deeply oppressive, racist, sexist, violent, utterly bankrupt system of capitalism. What we do not need are so-called political representatives who are not willing to oppose the Tories racist deceits at every opportunity, our class deserves no less.

180

Unethical Exploitation at Greencore Food Group August 5 Across Britain tens of thousands of low-paid factory workers have been furloughed as a result of the pandemic, being forced to accept a 20% pay cut and in doing so try to survive living off less than the national minimum wage – a wage which as everyone already knows is too little to allow workers to really live. On the other hand, corporate CEO’s continued to earn millions, which is why workers continue to demand to see the real total incomes of their bosses so they can decide for themselves who should be entitled to future pay rises. Let the bosses open the books to demonstrate that they can’t pay a real living wage of £15 an hour to all of Britain’s key food workers!

Greencore Food Group provide a good illustration of how a highly profitable industry squeezes profits from key workers while simultaneously failing to treat these workers with any respect. This has been a regular problem throughout the pandemic, and now at Greencore’s Northampton site, unionised workers are in the process of filing another collective grievance with their managers. It seems that now that production is ramping up again, managers have opted to bring in agency staff to fill their production lines rather than giving this work to their furloughed full-time staff.

181

So, Greencore employees, who have been struggling to pay their bills throughout this crisis, and who had previously told their managers they were more than happy to return to work whenever needed, have once again been left on the side-lines. Members of the Bakers Union are however refusing to accept such a disrespectful attitude towards their workers who, of course, are the only workers who make Greencore’s profits. George Atwall, the Regional Organiser for the Bakers Union explained:

“We’re not prepared to sit back and allow blatant breaches of the Ethical Trading Initiative code which is there to protect workers from exploitation. BFAWU is now making a formal complaint to the ETI Board.” Another breach of the ETI Base Code that Greencore has previously signed-up to related to the company refusing to enter into a collective bargaining agreement with the Bakers Union at one of their Northampton factories. While another sign of the companies less than ethical working practices can be seen by the way in which low- paid key food workers who have to self-isolate get just statutory sick pay (£95.85 a week) while managers get full sick pay. But staff at Greencore’s Northampton site are now having to fight back on a new front, as a longstanding worker of some 15 years is being sacked for doing absolutely nothing wrong. The union branch is currently demanding that the worker in question, Wojciech Kalisz, “should be reinstated and now is appealing the company decision.” The union requests that people express your solidarity with Wojciech by commenting on the union’s facebook post which can be found here, and by sharing it across different social media platforms and by using the hashtag: #Justice4WojciechKalisz

182

Test and Trace Systems Must Be Run Locally Under Democratic Workers Control August 5 So far, the Tories have wasted £10 billion of public money on a failing test and trace system that revolves around handing fistfuls of money to unaccountable private corporations like with Serco, Sitel and Capita. As health campaigner Allyson Pollock (July 31) explained, this system is failing…

“…because a key part of it operates not as part of the NHS, but in parallel to it – as a network of commercial, privatised testing labs, drive-through centres and call centres. The chaos this has brought has resulted in huge gaps in information available to local services, causing delays in accessing results and hampering efforts to control the outbreak.” She adds:

“The government’s own emergency science group, Sage, says the target to ensure the virus doesn’t spread further is finding and reaching 80% of all close contacts of symptomatic cases. Yet in Blackburn, where health chiefs are battling a major outbreak, leaked analysis shows that the national tracing service is reaching only 52% of all close contacts.” But there is a solution, and that is to transfer control of our countries test and trace system to public hands which have already been able to trace “far more contacts than the privatised national call centres and online system”; and so far this is being done with just £300 million of government funding! The Tories know this is the best way forward for the public, but their priorities, of course, lay elsewhere. With students about to return to school we know that children spread Covid-19 just as well as adults, yet the government is insisting upon a full-reopening without making sure they have a functioning test and trace system in place. This will endanger the lives of everyone except the very rich who are isolated from all the political decisions they take that continue to endanger health of everyone else. Yesterday (August 4) the British Medical Journal reported that a new study…

“… suggests that reopening schools full time from September alongside relaxation of other social distancing measures, and without scaling up testing, will induce a second wave that would peak in December. If schools reopened on a part time rota basis, this peak is likely to be in February 2021. In both cases the second wave of infections could be between 2 and 2.3 times the size of the original covid-19 wave, say the authors of the study, published in Lancet Child & Adolescent Health.”

183

For school reopenings to be safe the test and trace system must be able to identify at least 68% of all close contacts, a goal which the floundering and wasteful private sector is still far from attaining.

“Study author Chris Bonell, professor of public health sociology at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told a Science Media Centre briefing that currently only about 50% of contacts of people testing positive for coronavirus were being traced through the NHS Test and Trace system. He said that figures for the week to 22 July showed that 4242 people tested positive, of whom 81.4% were interviewed by contact tracers. Of those interviewed, 81.3% reported contacts, and of these contacts 75.1% were traced—giving an overall figure of around 50%. ‘It’s not good enough, basically,’ he said.” In light of such concerns it is welcome news that:

“Councils with the highest Covid infection rates in England have launched their own contact-tracing operations to plug holes in the ‘world-beating’ £10bn government system, with some reaching 98-100% of people who fell through the gaps.

“Blackburn with Darwen council in Lancashire established its own model on Tuesday when its public health chief said national test and trace was ‘simply not tracing enough cases and contacts fast enough’.” In the Guardian article reporting this progress (“English councils with highest Covid rates launch own test-and-trace systems,” August 4) it seems that Leicester City Council has been pushing ahead on this front too. In Leicester the good news is that…

“…the council’s own test-and-trace system has contacted 122 of the 136 people referred to it by the national system, a success rate of 89%, a council spokesman said. ‘Our success rate locally shows that such work can be done far more effectively at a local level, by people who know the communities in which they are working, than by relying on it being done nationally,’ he added.” Labour-led Councils, like that of Leicester, must now demand that the test and trace program be nationalised so it is run under the democratic control of ordinary workers. It is not enough to simply moan that the government should up its game! Under the right wing leadership of Sir Keir Starmer the Labour Party has failed to hold the Tories feet to the fire over the needless covid-bloodbath engulfing society. A bloodbath that can be traced to the Tories political desires to place profit before people. Sir Starmer’s “constructive opposition” was always going to be ignored by the Tories, and yet even Starmer (August 4) recognises that “there is precious little evidence that [Tory] ministers are preparing” our country for the coming second wave of the pandemic. So even though Starmer is able to aknowledge that the Tories care little about our lives he continues with his collaborationist policy of constructive opposition and ignores the critical issue of public control and public funding of the test and trace

184 system. The most he has to say is that the Tories should be “Working closely with authorities, not governing by diktat”. This is no way near enough. But what the working class need now is a fighting socialist opposition to the Tories capitalist mayhem. If Sir Starmer is unwilling to lead a struggle against the Tories then as ever we will need to do it ourselves, in our workplaces, through our trade unions, and on the streets. We must raise the demand that local Labour Councils, whether they want to or not, must join us in leading such a militant class struggle for our lives. And one immediate demand will need to be the full nationalisation of the test and trace program; and if the government refuse to fund such a program (which will be case) then local Councils will need to just plough ahead and set up fully functioning test and trace systems that are independent of the private sector. Simultaneously we will then need to build a mass campaign to demand the money back from central government that we need to keep us all safe. That is the socialist alternative to the nonsense of constructive opposition.

Samworth Brothers’ Bosses Must Support Rights of Key Food Workers August 6 On August 4, Leicestershire’s director of public health Mike Sandys participated in an informative question and answer session undertaken with the local press – an interview which was then distilled into a Leicester Mercury article entitled “Leicestershire public health boss gives update on the coronavirus situation across the county.” In the course of this discussion Sandys was asked what he thought was responsible for the rise in cases in Melton? He answered that it was…

“…more than likely through a workplace, and then the workplace case has then gone and brought it back to the house, and then that’s gone and infected people within the household. So, its always difficult to say definitively what’s caused it but what you are looking at, you know, travel to work, something happening within the workplace and then going back to the household, and so I think it is very important then that we stop it there before it gets into broader community transmission within Melton Mowbray, within the broader Melton borough council area and indeed within Leicestershire.”

185

Indeed, this latest outbreak does seem to be connected to a large food processing factory in Melton that is run by the staunchly anti-union multi-millionaire bosses at Samworth Brothers. However, while the public health director was clear that the rise was most likely due to workplace transmission the Samworth bosses tried to blame community transmission saying that the recent cases arising at their factory were “related to community transmission rather than the workplace.” (“Samworth Brothers food factory in Melton confirms coronavirus cases,” Mercury, August 4) In their weak defence the Samworth spokesperson added “As one would expect we have very comprehensive Covid-secure measures in place.” A point which was partially echoed by Sandys who noted that he was “happier” to work with bigger firms (like Samworth) than with smaller firms like found in the textile industry in Leicester because the bigger firms “do take the necessary precautions and they do at least show when there are cases in their workplace they do expose them.” But as workers explained at the start of the pandemic, Samworth was by no means a model employer before this pandemic nor during it especially when it came to protecting the safety of our country’s key workers. In fact even after the lockdown was first imposted Samworth bosses refused in enact covid-secure operating practices as documented in this article written in early April (see link). What the public and the workers really need to protect everyone’s safety is for the bosses at Samworth to stop opposing the right of their employees to be represented collectively by a trade union. Then Samworth bosses must allow trained representatives from the trade union to confirm for themselves that the working practices at all Samworth sites are covid-secure. We can’t simply take the bosses word for it, especially considering their long track record of bullying their own workers. What we do know is that to this day Samworth still employ hundreds of agency workers at their factories, these being workers who are forced to live off statutory sick pay of just £95 a week if they have to self-isolate. This is why the Bakers Union continue to raise the demand that all Samworth workers should be entitled to full sick pay for the duration of any period of self-isolation. Until the Samworth bosses make even this minimal concession, we know for sure that their sites are a threat to both workers and our communities.

186

Key Food Workers Threaten Strike Action at Greencore August 7 Like many other exploitative employers Greencore’s first priority has never been their workers, which is why it is so important that all workers, especially low paid individuals, join a trade union so they can organise collectively to improve their working conditions. But workers at Greencore are already getting organised and are fighting back. An article published yesterday by the BBC (August 6) noted how:

“Staff at the UK’s largest maker of pre-packed sandwiches could walk out over the use of agency workers while employees were furloughed…” (“Sandwich firm’s Northampton staff ‘may walk out’ in furlough row,” BBC, August 6) The article continued:

“George Atwall, regional officer for the union, said the company’s use of ‘40-50 agency workers’ in like-for-like jobs while 600 of the union’s members at Northampton remained furloughed on 80% pay was ‘unjustified’. ‘The workers want to come back to work,’ he said. ‘We can’t have agency on site. Our members deserve first chance to come back. There could be a walkout in Northampton because this is unfair.’” Food Manufacture newsletter likewise reported on this important developing dispute quoting Atwall as saying:

“’We’ve got 650-plus furloughed workers below the minimum wage and the company has called the agency, even though from the first of August they can bring in staff on flexible furlough,’ he continued. ‘Our workers are below the minimum wage, yet the agency is paying their workers £12–£13 an hour. Our members have been sitting since March below the minimum wage and the next minute it’s a kick in the teeth. We’ve told Greencore to bring back our members first before any agency come on site, but they’ve overridden that decision.’” (“Greencore in trade union row over agency workers,” Food Manufacture, August 6) Likewise, the Northampton Chronicle & Echo explained how the union had “lodged a grievance against Greencore”. The newspaper also spoke to Nicolae Macari, the branch secretary for the union at the Greencore factory in Moulton Park, who

“…told the Chronicle & Echo: ‘We believe that for Greencore to bring agency workers back while our own workers are on furlough is unjustified and a bit upsetting for those workers who do not know when they will get to come back. We have workers who do not understand why they are at home while agency staff are at work.”

187

The Tories “could have stopped lockdown happening [in Leicester] if we had got the data 10 days earlier” August 9 On August 5 the British Medical Journal published “Leicester lockdown: could better data have prevented it?” – an article which once again demonstrated the government’s appalling disregard for protecting human life. Of course one of the main issues causing Leicester’s first lockdown was the unwillingness of the government to share data with local councils, something that is still in the process of being resolved (see “Councils in England to be offered near real-time data on Covid cases,” The Guardian, August 6). As the BMJ reported:

“The Independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies says that the lockdown in Leicester ‘constitutes a foreseeable crisis of the government’s own making.’ It says that the situation arose out of a failure to respond to the increase in infections at an early stage before they reached crisis levels. Kamlesh Khunti, professor of primary care diabetes and vascular medicine at the University of Leicester and a member of Independent SAGE, tells The BMJ, ‘We could have stopped lockdown happening if we had got the data 10 days earlier, if we had the data coming in in real time.’” The BMJ article refers to the work of Sheila Bird, a former programme leader at the MRC Biostatistics Unit at Cambridge University, who on July 23 published “Leicester makes history in testing times” in Significance magazine. She makes some good suggestions that I reproduce in full below:

“As England’s first re-locked city, Leicester has the opportunity to write the public health account of how their city fell back into lockdown and its triumphal re-emergence.

“Methodology matters: not just shaded maps showing Covid-19 case numbers with symbols denoting “complex contexts” (see Figure 1). For each such context, it is important to know: what was Leicester’s investigational plan, how it was delivered, what was discovered, what harm-reduction measures ensued, and which insights are likely to translate to other settings?

188

Figure 1: From PHE’s Leicester report: “Figure 1.10. Map of new cases reported from Pillar 1 (left) and Pillar 2 (right) in Leicester in recent 14 days (June 11 2020 to June 24 2020) and prior 14 days (May 28 2020 to June 10 2020), overlaid with outbreak/cluster information from HPZone”.

“Test and Trace holds key information on swab-positive persons in Leicester, including those not referred to Test and Trace. Leicester’s public health team should investigate those non-referrals. We’d all like to know.

“Understanding transmission networks goes well beyond mapping the geographical location of cases. The immense value and potential of the data collated within Test and Trace can only be unlocked when mapping extends to descriptions of networks: index

189 case A met B in locations L1, L2, L3; A identified B as close contact but did not identify C. Subsequently, C tests positive for Covid-19 and identifies A as having been a close contact in location L2. Location L2, a workplace for clothing manufacture, features also in the Test and Trace accounts of E and F… Readers can begin to imagine how the network expands, including outside of the lockdown area, and the scientific method needed to encompass it.

“During its re-lock and emergence, Leicester’s local public health team should offer additional swab-testing (on one or two randomly but purposefully selected days) to a random sample of: a) household members of index positive cases during their 14-day quarantine; b) quarantined close contacts of index positive cases during their 14-day quarantine.

“These random visits also allow quarantine-adherence to be checked, which Test and Trace currently overlooks. Comparing the above random swab-positive results with symptomatology at the time of random tests (and subsequently) allows documentation of asymptomatic infections.

“For those who are not randomly selected, Leicester would document: c) how many household members of non-complex index positive cases sought a swab- test during their 14-day quarantine; and how many of them tested positive for SARS- CoV-2; d) how many quarantined close contacts of non-complex index positive cases sought a swab-test during their 14-day quarantine; and how many of them tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.

“Up to now, Test and Trace has not reported on the Covid-positive rates during 14-day quarantine for other members of index cases’ own household or for quarantined close contacts – but it must do so urgently for all-England.”

190

Test-and-Trace Must Be Operating Effectively to Allow Safe Return to Schools in September August 9 Schools are set to reopen next month and the government has still yet to assure the public or education unions that it is willing or capable of getting an effective test and trace program in place. In the latest statement from the National Education Union (NEU) the union explains that they…

“…wants schools and colleges to open to all students as soon as it is safe to do so. Your safety, that of your students, their families and society as a whole, must be our priority.

“The NEU is proud to have led a campaign which has forced the Government to acknowledge the risks inherent in wider opening of schools and colleges. We will continue to press the Government with regard to our five tests and work with our members and reps to ensure the safest possible return.” Two of these five safe return tests revolve around test and trace strategies. The NEU states that to keep our communities safe “the Government must have extensive arrangements for testing and contact tracing”. Under the heading “Testing, testing, testing!” the union adds that the government must provide: “Comprehensive access to regular testing for children and staff to ensure our schools and colleges don’t become hot spots for Covid-19.” Furthermore, in terms of minimising the spread of the virus amongst our schools, Kamlesh Khunti, professor of vascular medicine at the University of Leicester and a member of the Independent Sage panel…

“…has suggested that UK schools should follow the example of some of the Nordic nations. ‘In Denmark, the average class sizes were around 20 students prior to Covid-19, but now they are dividing classes into two to three smaller groups,’ he said. ‘They have recommended pupils sit six feet apart and wash hands every two hours.’

At the moment, Public Health England does not recommend the use of face coverings in schools even at secondary level, despite the evidence suggesting that older children are at greater risk of transmitting Covid-19. In contrast, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US have recently published recommendations that all children should wear face coverings in schools except those under two years old.

“‘There is very little evidence on the use of face masks in schools, but, overall, children should be encouraged to wear face coverings while the population levels of positive cases are high,’ says Khunti. ‘In countries like China, South Korea, Japan, wearing masks in schools is widely accepted and even worn during the flu season.’” (“What we are learning about Covid-19 and kids,” The Observer, August 9)

191

Back on the issue of testing, Independent Sage recently released a briefing titled “An Independent SAGE discussion document on contact tracing and self-isolation” which concluded that the Tories onoing failure to take isolation seriously “is nothing short of public health malpractice.” Their report thus makes five recommendations for correcting this dire situation (which tragically the government are ignoring), these are:

1. The central call centre system should be scrapped and contracts with SERCO and others cancelled. On 23rd August the government will decide whether to extend the current deal worth £108 million up to a maximum of £410 million. The Table shows that SERCO contact tracers had 91,785 contacts of newly infected people transferred from the test system over 9 weeks. They reached just 56% of them (51,524 contacts) during the same period, less than 2 contacts per tracer in more than two months. A fifth of contacts had no contact details and another fifth did not respond to contact attempts. The centralized system has no recourse to check details or find other ways of making contact (e.g. home visits). Call centre tracers also treat each individual contact separately. So with four children and two parents in a household of contacts, up to six different contact tracers might call the family, causing annoyance and confusion and charging separately for each contract. These features make it highly unlikely that the SERCO contract is cost-effective. Budgets should be shifted so contact tracers are recruited and trained by local authority public health teams.

2. The Deloitte testing contract for community tests in car parks should be ended. In the most recent week’s statistics, only 72% of home test results were received within 48 hours of the test being sent out.

3. Home testing should be ended and every person in England should have access to a test within a short distance from where they live. Local public health and primary care doctors should get real time information about test results and patient details.

4. A national framework should be agreed whereby local authorities can make their own decisions about new community restrictions, and set up community centres for quarantine and support of mild cases who cannot isolate effectively at home.

5. Central government should focus on a) strategic guidance based on evidence, b) financial support to local authorities, and c) financial support guaranteed to all cases and contacts (not just those employed on PAYE) to offset wage losses.

192

Greencore’s Covid-19 Outbreak: A Logical Consequence of Pandemic Profiteering August 16 Throughout this pandemic the Baker’s Union have been busy representing workers based at Greencore Food Group’s production site in Northampton. The union have been attempting to ensure that key workers have a safe working environment. Sadly, but not expectantly, this is something that the bosses don’t seem to agree on. One of the key demands that has been raised by the Baker’s Union nationally, and locally in Northampton, is that all workers should be entitled to full sick pay if staff have to self-isolate for any reason relating to the pandemic. Greencore’s bosses disagree, they believe that most of their workers who have to stay away from work should be doubly punished by having to look after their families by surviving (barely) with just a measly £95.85 a week statutory sick pay. Having learned no positive lessons from previous factory-based outbreaks Greencore management are trying to blame workers for the ongoing outbreak in Northampton. A similar and very related outbreak occurred at a Welsh chicken factory owned by 2 Sisters Food Group a couple of months ago. In that case 2 Sisters workers had likewise only had access to SSP when suffering from Covid-19. So, when the 2 Sisters factory in Wales was finally forced to close down for two weeks in response so they could deal with the outbreak the workers were initially told they would have to “make do” and starve on just £95 a week. In that instance a robust response from the trade union members quickly forced the hand of their exploitative employer and the greedy 2 Sisters bosses were ‘encouraged’ to pay all their workers full sick pay. So, what do we know about the Greencore outbreak In Northampton? Well, first of all we know that eight staff tested positive in the last week of July, and it was subsequently reported that a further nine people (mostly over-social BBQ-ing managers) tested positive on August 3. These infections were however not a one-off for the Northampton workplace, as some months ago a few Greencore managers tested positive for the virus and the Northampton-based management initially refused to keep the rest of their staff safe. For more on this see “COVID-19 Infects Greencore Factory, But Bosses Say Only Managers Need to be Tested!” At this stage, the spread of Covid-19 had remained low in Northampton — an area which is home to around 225,000 people — with a grand total of just 1,340 people testing positive from the start of the pandemic up to August 3. Yet rather than believe that the virus might be spreading in their own factory it seems that Greencore

193 managers convinced themselves (and Public Health England) that the virus was not being passed on between their own staff working at their own site.

Data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/cases

Having adopted such a lax attitude towards safety Greencore managers simply directed staff to get tested by the NHS, which surprise, surprise revealed further cases: thus “By August 10, 24 positive cases had been reported through NHS testing.” Managers however must have realised that Greencore had a serious problem on its hands, as on August 10, 11 and 12 Greencore supervised the workplace testing of around 1,200 of their employees. Subsequently it was reported to be press (by August 14) that the total number of workers testing positive at the Northampton site was now a massive 292. Of the total 292 positive cases 79 individuals were identified by NHS testing and 213 cases by the on-site workplace testing. Interestingly the total number of positive cases reported across all of Northampton during this three-day testing period was 238, which shows how the viruses spread seems to have been limited to the Greencore site. What is clear is that all workers must from now on be able to obtain full sick pay throughout the rest of this pandemic. As the Baker’s Union puts it, the…

194

“Union demands full sick pay for those impacted by Covid-19! There is only a handful of employees getting full sick pay at Greencore. The vast majority is forced to survive on £95.85 per week Statutory Sick Pay (SSP). This is a kick in the teeth for hard-working employees who caught the virus while working for one of the biggest employers in Northampton.” (August 15, Facebook) Further questions also need to be answered by Public Health England as to the safety protocols adopted on Greencore’s site. It would appear that it is only logical that the Northampton factory should be temporarily closed until the full extent of the viruses spread has been ascertained by a through-going test-and-trace program – something that does not seem to be happening with any degree of effectiveness at present.

195

Greencore’s Exploitation Makes National Headlines August 17 The exploitative reputation of Greencore Food Group is now being exposed in the mainstream press as a result of some 300 workers testing positive for Covid-19 at their Northampton food processing site. The latest article on this revealing subject matter was published by The Guardian newspaper as “Makers of M&S sandwiches faced pay dock if they self-isolated, says union” (August 16). The report noted how:

“Workers at a factory in Northampton at the centre of a coronavirus outbreak were told they would be paid less than £100 per week if they had to self-isolate, making it difficult for many to comply, their representatives have claimed.

Bosses at the Greencore site, where M&S sandwiches are prepared, acknowledged that many staff were entitled to no more than the statutory sick pay rate of £95.85, as at countless workplaces around the UK, if they followed instructions to self-isolate.

“Statutory sick pay does not support people and, in a crisis like this, you can’t expect people to try to survive on £95 per week,” said Ian Hodson, the national president of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union, which represents staff at the site.

He said the policy of only paying statutory sick pay applied to many people who were on minimum wage and unable to build up any savings that would help them through, while more generous company sick pay terms were available to some of their colleagues.”

196

Greencore’s dangerous response (so far) has been to refuse to pay infected workers their full salaries during any periods of self-isolation. This means that only a small handful of workers employed on Greencore’s old contracts (which for newer employees have been replaced by more exploitative contracts) are entitled to full sick pay, with the majority of Greencore’s workers having to suffer on statutory sick pay of £95.85 a week. Greencore has attempted to oppose such negative media coverage with their own bizarre propaganda offensive — a PR effort that resulted in a headline in NorthantsLive titled “Greencore staff would only have got statutory sick pay if self- isolating previously” (August 16). This article begins by stating:

“Greencore staff would have only been eligible for statutory sick pay if they self-isolated due to fears that had coronavirus prior to the outbreak at the facility.

The company changed the policy last week and Greencore employees will receive full pay (on medical suspension) for any new instances where they need to go into self-isolation in advance of them getting test results.” So what does this mean? What it means is that if a worker is told to self-isolate because Greencore’s test-and-trace program suggests they might be infected, this worker will now be entitled to full pay while awaiting the results of their Covid-19 test. If the test turns out to be positive the worker will then have to self-isolate for ten days with an entitlement to only £95.85 a week in SSP. This is hardly a positive step forward for Greencore’s already low-paid key workers. Furthermore, although NorthantsLive attempt to sell this minor contractual alteration as an important step forward it really just provides further proof of the contempt with which Greencore’s millionaire bosses have for their employees. Thus prior to this ongoing outbreak workers who acted responsibly by staying away from work were financially punished while awaiting their test results. For example, a conscientious worker who feared they might be infected would have stayed away from work and immediately got tested; but if the test result took three days to be returned negative, the worker in question would have effectively lost three days’ pay, with no additional support from their multi-millionaire employer! The full details of Greencore’s so-called helpful policy were published on the company’s website on August 7 – although this post now seems to have mysteriously disappeared. The post retrieved from the Internet Archive can be read in full here “Coronavirus Testing For All Greencore Colleagues in Northampton.” Greencore’s confusing statement explains:

“To support us in ensuring we manage the risks associated with COVID-19, we have decided to implement full pay (on medical suspension) for any new instances where colleagues need to go into self-isolation in advance of them getting test results. Medical

197

suspension is defined as the time between day one of absence and the receipt of the test result.

Full pay is dependent upon the colleague having a test immediately and then providing the test result evidence to their manager within 48 hours from day one of absence. Failure to adhere to this will result in only statutory sick pay being paid.” No explanation was given as to what would happen if the negative test took more than 48 hours to come back from NHS testing facilities. Furthermore, Greencore adds:

“This process has been put in place due to the abnormal and precedented circumstances at site and will only be relevant for the next week (until Friday 14th August 2020). There will be no retrospective payment for any colleagues who have previously isolated.” Hence as of Saturday (August 15) – at the peak of the outbreak at the Northampton site — any worker who was told to self-isolate and get a test for Covid-19 would be back to square one, and would only be entitled to claim SSP. Little wonder the Baker’s Union refers to such actions on the part of Greencore as a “kick in the teeth” of their members. It is also easy to understand why workers are so frustrated with their employer when in the same staff briefing Greencore pretends they are on the side of their employees stating:

“As an employer, we want to continue to keep our people safe, as we have been doing throughout the crisis, and also play our part in helping to reduce the risk of the virus across our local community.

…We realise that this is a difficult and worrying time and it is important we all continue to work together and support each other.” Too right! Why not start supporting your employees by guaranteeing that all Greencore workers are entitled to full sick throughout any periods of self-isolation. If the bosses at Greencore do anything less they will be engaging in exactly the type of pandemic profiteering that increases the risk of the virus spreading throughout the local community in Northampton. This is certainly a difficult and worrying time for all workers and Greencore must do their bit by immediately ending their exploitative working practices!

198

Sundip Meghani Resigns from Labour Even Though He Says Sir Keir Starmer is “a respectable man who is not a deluded Marxist” August 17 Up until 2015 former Leicester Labour Councillor Sundip Meghani thought he had found a place his could call home in a thoroughly pro-capitalist Labour Party – a party in which he had been active member since the time that Tony Blair was first elected. This however all changed in 2015 with Jeremy Corbyn’s election to the leadership of the Labour Party, even though most of the leadership positions of the party were (and still are) dominated by rightwingers. Yet Meghani couldn’t ever work out how to combine his support for far-right politicians like India’s Narendra Modi with the simple fact that the majority of Labour’s rank and file membership chose a socialist to lead their party. So Meghani has spent the past five years trying to eradicate the threat that socialist ideas posed to his own right-wing worldview. But even getting a fellow capitalist back in charge of the Labour Party was not good enough for Meghani, and on August 15, 2020, on India’s Independence Day, he chose to resign from the Labour Party – a political organization that he alleges is “anti-Indian, anti-Semitic” and apparently dominated by “bigotry and intolerance”. As he asserted in his resignation letter:

“Post-Jeremy Corbyn I have come to realise the problem was not merely Corbynism, it was socialism. Socialism was the toxic oil spill that washed ashore, polluting the party with hatefulness and division.” Indeed, as Meghani sees it:

“Despite the election of Sir Keir Starmer, a respectable man who is not a deluded Marxist, I have seen no evidence that sensible values will be restored; and that socialism, as an oppressive totalitarian ideology, will be ditched forever.” It was his thoroughgoing repulsion to basic socialist ideas that helps us understand how deeply hollowed-out the Labour Party had become in the decades prior to Corbyn’s time at the helm of the party. It also explains why in the weeks running up to last years General Election Meghani busied himself with smearing the Labour Party with claims of anti-Indian racism. Of course the mainstream media were happy to allow Meghani to loudly air his nonsensical charges of anti-Indian racism, a case in point being the so-called investigation undertaken by the BBC that was aired in mid- November (see below).

199

The BBC ‘investigation’ shown above begins by interviewing Meghani, letting him moan about the selection of Claudia Webbe (a socialist) to represent the constituency of Leicester East following the last-minute resignation of Keith Vaz, a well-known BJP- supporter and all-round war-monger. Following in Vaz’s right-wing political footsteps, Meghani was particularly aghast that Webbe had acted as the chair of the Labour Party conference which had democratically passed a motion that dared to criticise the Indian government over their ongoing violations of human rights in Kashmir. After the BBC introduced some background to this motion — subtly undermining the motions legitimacy by stating that it was only “claiming” that there was a humanitarian crisis in Kashmir — the BBC cut back to Meghani who moaned that Webbe now “had the audacity to want to stand-up for what, for the Indian community in Leicester?” The reporter then asked him if he was the only person to feel this way, and Meghani kindly pointed him in the direction of Belgrave Road, saying that people there agreed with him: by which Meghani meant that leading rightwing Labour members (his political allies) agreed with him. Surprise, surprise the first person that the BBC interviewed on Belgrave Road was the longstanding chairman of the Belgrave Business Association, Dharmesh Lakhani, who is the owner of Bobby’s Restaurant. But Lakhani is not just any old shop keeper, as in 2017 he had served as one of Keith Vaz’s Parliamentary Agents for Belgrave, while the previous year Vaz had used his restaurant to host an invitation only meeting where the guest speaker was none other than the now little-remembered Labour leadership contender Owen Smith. During the BBC interview Lakhani explained how he had obtained viral whatsapp messages on his mobile phone warning him not to vote Labour. Lakhani then showed the reporter a message he had received from his cousin in Canada scrolling to an anti-Corbyn news item originating from India which was attached to a message that said: “Please forward this to as many Indians in UK as possible so you vote Labour out.” Yet it was the message prior to this one, that Lakhani quickly scrolled past, that proved even more revealing in its explicit embrace of far- right talking points. It said:

“I hope you forward on this message to as many people in Britain as you can. If Muslims are not stopped they will rule Britain in the future and your children will suffer.”

200

Screen shot from BBC investigation

The reporter then stated that he had interviewed a variety of people on Belgrave Road “for a good few hours”. But it turned out that the only other person who would appear on screen in the BBC ‘investigation’ was another Vaz ally. This Labour Party member happened to be another wealthy businessman (the owner of Anokhi House of Sarees) named Karan Modha who explained that he was “angry, frustrated, and slightly hurt” and that he would not be voting for Labour in the General Election. In fact during the General Election, Modha actually distributed his own anti-Labour leaflet, and probably ditched Labour for the Conservative Party, as this was the party from which he had been a former member before being persuaded to join Vaz’s anti-democratic operations in 2015. Other right-wing Labour councillors who no doubt would have been happy to stick the knife into the Labour Party if given a chance by the BBC would have included the former chairman of Leicester East CLP, John Thomas, a “key ally” of Vaz who quit the Labour Party just before the election,[1] or any of the six Leicester councillors who published an open letter just before the election that led to an article in the local press titled “Labour Leicester East councillors accuse Jeremy Corbyn of being ‘anti-Indian’ and ‘anti-Hindu’” (Leicester Mercury, December 11).[2]

201

202

NOTES [1] As I wrote at the time: “It took thirty odd years but Mr Thomas has just worked out that he was in the wrong party. Another victim of Keith Vaz’s destructive legacy in the Labour Party. “Bizarrely in the resignation letter he sent to the General Secretary of the Labour Party Mr Thomas added: ‘Please cancel the direct debit made in favour of your party by me and return all money’s taken by you through Leicester City Council Labour Group to me.’ I wonder what money he is talking about?” (November 18, Facebook) [2] In this letter the six Labour councillors signed an open letter addressed to the Labour Party that noted that the Labour Party “appears to have a proactive policy of keeping British Hindus out of parliamentary seats”. The right-wing BJP-supporting councillors ended their letter to Corbyn threatening: “We are currently considering whether we can any longer remain in the Labour Party that has become both anti- Hindu and anti-Indian.” The six signatures to this letter were Ratilal Govind, Rashmi Joshi, Hemant Bhatia, Nita Solanki, Padmini Chamund, and Mahendra Valand (the last three being Labour councillors for Belgrave).

203

Pandemic Killers Announce the Axing of Public Health England August 18 Matt Hancock’s announcement that he plans to dismantle Public Health England to establish a corporate orientated alternative is totally in keeping with the Tories willingness to stand reality upon its head. As always the Tories plans might as well be those of the fraudulent corporate profiteers that they recruited to mismanage their track and trace programs — plans whose real aim appears to be to simply enrich corporate profiteers like SERCO and SITEL while undermining our country’s already criminally underfunded public health system. Professor Christina Marriott, the chief executive of the Royal Society for Public Health fears that the changes will mean “we are in danger of losing really good staff when we need them most” (BBC Radio 4, August 18). Yet she continued…

“…my biggest concern is that this decision has been made ahead of the inquiry the Prime Minster has promised us into what has gone so badly wrong in England’s response to Covid. And without inquiry in a complex system like pandemic response, we cannot learn that lessons that will allow us to protect the publics health better in any future wave. So just abolishing, or amalgamating, or merging in one organisation doesn’t address the multiple failings across different organisations that led to our incredibly high mortality rate, the highest in Western Europe.” Professor Marriott’s cool, calm, and scathing criticism of Hancock’s latest act of flagrant pandemic profiteering (my words not hers), led her to go on to state:

“I would question whether this is a response to all of the problems that we have had in our Covid-response. We have had problems around the timing of lockdown, we’ve had problems around messaging, we’ve had problems around our testing capacity, we’ve had problems actually very much in that the track and trace system that is branded as the NHS but is actually SERCO is still massively underperforming, it is not as effective as it should be.

“So, it would strike me that you would rather sort those problems out before going into a system reorganisation. We need to learn the lessons of what’s happened in the past, and one of the lessons that we need to learn is to fund public health well, because between 2015-16 and today, Public Health [England] in real terms lost £800 million in annual budget, which is 22 per cent, and you can’t do world-beating pandemic responses when you just don’t have the budget; and you don’t find out about your budget until two weeks before the end of the financial year which is what happened to Public Health [England] earlier this year. So, the government should more be concentrating on establishing under their spending review a substantial medium-term settlement for all of Public Health and allowing it to do its job.”

204

Enough is enough. This government has been killing the working-class for years and are now implementing changes that will only intensify the carnage for both health workers and for the general public! As a member of Socialist Alternative I actively support the demands for pay rises for NHS and care workers. But we also need to protect our NHS and care workers by putting in place a fully functioning test and trace programme. That is why Socialist Alternative say:

• Bring all test and trace services in house. No compensation for SERCO or SITEL • For an immediate public inquiry independent of government and composed of trade union representatives and health experts into the Tories’ mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic • Renationalise the NHS, under democratic control and ownership of workers. Don’t repeat the mistakes of the past by leaving representatives of capitalism in control. Kick out ALL the profiteers • Bring the pharmaceutical industry under public ownership to ensure an efficient and joined up response to producing a vaccine • Pay NHS and care workers what they deserve. For an immediate 15% pay rise as a step toward correcting the loss of pay over the last decade

205

Workers Win Massive Victory in Face of Covid- Outbreak at Greencore Factory August 21 Greencore Food Group’s bosses literally live on another planet from the key workers who make all their profits. Greencore’s bosses treat their workers like so many disposable units; they work them hard when they’re healthy, and then toss them aside whenever they get ill. There is a reason why the vast majority of Greencore’s staff don’t get paid sick leave, it is because their abusive bosses are always hungry for profits as all capitalists are. So when nearly 300 of Greencore’s Northampton workforce recently tested positive for Covid-19 the simpleton bosses felt they should release a public statement (August 13) on their web site that described what was in reality a dangerous outbreak in their factory as simply a “rising number of COVID-19 cases in the Northampton area”. The Greencore exploiters added “we are doing everything that we can to keep our people safe. As ever, the health and well-being of our colleagues is our number one priority.” This was all a sick joke as far as Greencore key workers were concerned! The only thing more ludicrous than this statement from the Greencore bosses’ was the adjoining statement issued by Northampton Borough Council and Public Health Northamptonshire Joint Media Statement. This joint statement once again shifted the blame for the outbreak to workers not the bosses and laughably it explained that “Greencore has highly effective measures in place and they continue to work extremely hard to exceed the requirements needed to be COVID-19 secure within the workplace.” The workers and anyone who was paying the slightest attention to the matter knew differently. Things change, and yesterday, one week after the first public statement was released, Greencore — the epicentre of Northampton’s gigantic pandemic outbreak — was open as usual, and many workers were living in fear of their own and their families lives. Despite most of Greencore’s self-isolating workers now being forced to live off just £96 a week (Statutory Sick Pay), the bosses kept up the pretence that that cared about their profit-makers (ie. their employees), explaining in a new statement (August 20) that: “All those colleagues who have tested positive for the virus are still self-isolating, and our occupational health and HR teams are in close contact with them in order to monitor their welfare.” “As ever, the health and well-being of our colleagues is our number one priority.” In yesterday’s public statement Greencore even half-heartedly admitted that forcing their staff to claim Statutory Sick Pay when ill was not appropriate saying they

206 recognise “the financial impact that those on Statutory Sick Pay are facing”. Too right they should. But instead of looking after the welfare of their workers and paying their employees full sick pay in line with the small handful of workers on old contracts Greencore simply tried to buy some positive media coverage by giving “all weekly paid colleagues at the site an additional payment of £400.” The reason they provided this so-called ‘bonus’ instead of simply paying their workers what they were justly entitled too is particularly galling as most Greencore workers were probably going to get this bonus at the end of the year anyway. Greencore acknowledge this and say this so- called ‘bonus’ “would normally be paid based on attendance at the end of the year”. To repeat the point: if Greencore were really committed to doing “everything that we can to reduce the spread of the virus, keep our colleagues safe, and provide support to those who are unwell” (their words) they would just change the contracts of all their workers so they were entitled to sick pay during the pandemic, and afterwards too! Yesterday’s Greencore statement being delivered on the same day as NorthantsLive ran an extremely disturbing article titled “Greencore staff lift lid on fears over working in coronavirus-hit factory.” As this article explained:

“Staff members, who spoke to NorthantsLive on condition of anonymity, said workers felt they had little choice but to continue to come to work even though many felt unsafe doing so… One worker said: ‘It’s unbelievable. It’s very scary there at the moment. I was told I could wear a mask, but it was up to me. They have introduced shields on the production line and social distancing. But not everyone is sticking to it, and there is no social distancing in the locker room, canteen or where you clock out. Everyone just crowds together.’” Today, however, after months of hard work by all the Bakers Union’s workplace reps and their organisers, Greencore have finally been forced to see the light in two important respects. Firstly, Greencore have announced that “in consultation with the Department of Health & Social Care, Public Health England and other government bodies, it has taken the decision to temporarily cease production at its Northampton facility from the end of today as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak” (August 21). This was a decision that was forced upon Greencore’s bosses as if they chose not to close their site then the government would have simply closed it down for them! This closure is a little late to say the least, but better late than never. And still refusing to treat their worker fairly, this latest public statement from Meancore made no mention of the fact that Meancore’s bosses were now planning to dump on their workers yet again, consigning a thousand plus workers to suffer with just £96 a week for their period of self-isolation. Yet this would all change by the afternoon when the Bakers Union and the local media reported that the “company in charge of a food production factory at the centre of a Northampton Covid-19 outbreak has announced a pay U-turn.” This U-turn, which critically was forced upon Greencore’s greedy bosses by the workers and their trade

207 union, meant that “All employees will receive 80 percent of their usual wages and those who have had to self-isolate from August 1 onwards will receive back-dated pay.” A spokesman for Greencore said: “We can confirm that all colleagues who have been required to self-isolate during the months of August and September at our Northampton site and are contractually on Statutory Sick Pay will now receive 80percent of their basic pay.” (Northampton Chronicle & Echo, August 21) This is a good start on the part of Greencore’s multi-millionaire bosses to make small amends for their abusive of workers throughout this pandemic, but we all know that Greencore can afford to go further than this, and they can easily afford to pay 100 per cent of their workers’ salaries during any periods of self-isolation. The same would be true outside of the pandemic too. So why don’t Greencore’s bosses do the right thing now and give all their employees humane contracts that give them full entitlement to sick pay whenever they get ill in the future!

208

Profits Before Safety: Over 200 Greencore employees with no symptoms of infection tested positive for Covid-19 and management still kept their factory open as usual August 22 Greencore’s factory in Northampton is presently closed, but the big story that has so- far been side-lined in all media reporting on their outbreak is that the vast majority of the workers found to be infected with Covid-19 were showing absolutely no symptoms when they tested positive. So, initially, in early August, we have the outrageous situation where a food manufacturer refused to close down their operations despite knowing they had a large outbreak on their hands. Then when Greencore belatedly tested 1,140 staff who were at work between August 10 and August 12, a further 213 staff tested positive — all of whom were asymptomatic for any outward manifestation of infection. Now anybody who understands the nature of Covid-19 can see that if the a sixth of your workforce tests positive when the vast majority of them rely on car-shares to get to work (with the remainder using cramped public transport), but none of the infected workers showed any outward symptoms of infection, then any sane manager would immediately close down their factory. Not so with Greencore’s greedy bosses who only closed their factory nine days later on August 21. At the very least, as a means of saying sorry to their staff and families, Greencore should now commit to paying all their staff full pay throughout the two- week period that the factory is closed, and the managers should also ensure that in the future all staff should be entitled to full pay during any periods of sickness.

209

Greencore’s World-beating Covid Outbreak: Bosses Profit While Workers Suffer August 24 A key lesson to learn from the globes ongoing pandemic nightmare is that where workers have low-paid insecure contracts, which render them vulnerable to exploitation, then individuals are more likely to attend work when ill or attend work even if their working conditions remain unsafe. This problem is intensified when key workers have no access to proper sick pay during periods of covid self-isolation. After all no worker, especially key workers should ever be forced to try to live-off statutory sick pay of just £96 a week. Yet these were exactly the conditions facing hundreds of key workers employed at Greencore’s food manufacturing site in Northampton that specialises in producing overpriced sandwiches for Marks & Spencer. In the wake of a recent factory closure that was forced upon Greencore after nearly 300 confirmed cases of Covid-19 combined with massive criticism from workers and the Bakers Union, Greencore’s profit-obsessed bosses were eventually forced to guarantee workers 80% of their normal pay instead of the normal statutory sick pay. But this is still not good enough and workers are demanding proper sick pay so they can pay their bills. After all why should key workers be punished because their bosses couldn’t keep them safe? In a recent viral video made by the Bakers Union, we find out that: “Hundreds of workers at Greencore in Northampton were tipped into poverty when they were sent home to self-isolate after a Covid-19 outbreak.” Workers were forced “to use food banks since being sent home to self-isolate,” which led to the union and their members “calling on Greencore to pay 100% sick pay to all staff.” If Greencore’s multi-millionaire ruling-class CEO, Patrick Coveney, can earn millions a year, then surely he shouldn’t treat his workers like shit! Bakers Union health and safety rep at Greencore’s Northampton site, Dimitru Manole explains in the video:

“I’m urging all the workers to sign the petition to get full sick pay for all the workers at the Greencore Northampton site… Almost 60% of the workforce in the Greencore Northampton site are getting below minimum wage which is unfair to the workers and it’s unfair to everybody.” That is why Manole is encouraging people to sign the workers’ petition which can be found here (which has nearly reached 500 signatories in just one day!): https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/justice-for-greencore-northampton- workers As the petition notes:

210

“The Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union calls on Greencore to pay 100% sick pay to all 2,100 Greencore employees in Northampton who have been sent home to self-isolate in the Covid19 crisis. The company, Europe’s leading sandwich maker, supplier to M&S, has put staff on furlough. So the government is paying 80% of the salary bill. The company has refused to provide the 20% top-up. This despite posting £56.4 million pre-tax profits last year. 292 of the Northampton workforce tested positive for Covid-19 last week, resulting in the factory’s temporary closure. Employees were furloughed and sent home to self-isolate for 14 days. They’re carrying the burden of the Covid-19 outbreak.” So, sign the petition; share the petition on social media, and then consider donating a few pounds to the workers hardship fund here: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/greencoreoutbreak?utm_id=108

211

Face Coverings and their Use in Preventing the Spread of Covid-19 in Schools and Colleges August 25

Michael Barker submitted the following report which makes the case for students wearing face coverings in schools and colleges to the Education Convenor of his trade union branch for consideration last Friday (August 21, 2020). Michael works as a support worker in Leicester, is a Unison steward, a delegate to the campaigning group Save Our NHS Leicestershire, and is an Assistant Secretary of the Leicester and District Trades Union Council. Updates to this report will be added to the top of this blog post in the coming days. Please feel free to download this report and amend as you see fit and request that your own trade union branches vote to support this document and back the call for the safe reopening of educational facilities in the coming weeks. (Union report on Covid19 and masks August 21 2020.)

Education providers have a duty of care to maintain the health and safety of those students who are placed under their supervision, and if they deem it safe to reopen their premises to students then they must ensure that suitable precautions have been taken to safeguard both students and staff. The main way that education providers can keep students, staff and the local community safe is by taking every reasonable measure to minimise the spread of Covid-19. In the government’s official guidance, the Department for Education (DfE) makes various recommendations to “prevent the spread of the virus”. Most prominently the DfE state that:

“Transmission of coronavirus (COVID-19) mainly occurs through respiratory droplets generated during breathing, talking, coughing and sneezing. These droplets can directly infect the respiratory tracts of other people if there is close contact.”[1] However, although the government have made it compulsory for wearing of face coverings on buses and in supermarkets, and in “public spaces where social distancing is not always possible” they assert that face coverings are not required in most instances for both students and staff in our schools/colleges. At present the DfE guidance states that pupils should remove any face coverings on arrival at school (although that said, they have not made such a forceful statement in their guidance for post-16 education providers).[2] By way of a contrast, some examples of the indoor settings where the government say “you must wear a face covering” include buses, bus stations, shops and shopping centres, community centres, youth centres and social clubs.[3] [XXXXXX insert union branch here] therefore believe that schools and colleges should be added to the list of indoor settings at which face coverings must be worn, unless there is a reasonable excuse for removing it or if an individual has specific health issues that prohibit them from wearing face coverings.

212

Owing to the reckless manner in which the government has responded to this pandemic — from the late imposition of the national lock-down to the botched test and trace program — England has, as reported in the British Medical Journal (July 31), “had the longest period of excess mortality of any European country during the covid- 19 pandemic and an excess mortality peak second only to Spain”.[4] At the same time many other European countries have considered the scientific evidence relating to school transmission and come to the conclusion that students should wear face coverings in schools and colleges. For example, the Daily Telegraph (August 2) reported:

“Three German states [of a total of 16], Berlin, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, have announced mask requirements will be put in place when school resumes in mid-August.

“… In France masks have been required in schools for all pupils 11 and older since April and have also been compulsory for several months in China, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam and Israel.”[5] Taking precautions like wearing masks is important but as an article in the leading scientific journal Nature (August 18) observed, “researchers say that if schools are opened before community transmission reaches low levels, cases will surge.” The article warned:

“Earlier in the pandemic, it appeared that the virus might affect children differently from adults. Because children had milder symptoms, it was assumed they might be less infectious. But now there is evidence that children can spread the virus to other people, especially those living in the same household. Several studies show that once children are infected, they are no less infectious than adults.”[6] Although not widely reported in the media, on May 14 the government’s Office for National Statistics made it perfectly clear that “There is no evidence suggesting age has an impact on the likelihood of an individual having COVID-19.” The age categories that showed no statistical difference in infection rates were between 2-19 year olds, 20-49 year olds, 50-69 year olds, and those over 70 years old.[7] However, this basic finding has become confused in media reporting in recent months because the vast majority of revealed Covid-19 infections — particularly after lockdown began and schools were largely closed – occurred in either the working adult population (who were the individuals usually referred for testing) or in those older or more vulnerable communities (those most likely to need hospitalisation with Covid-19 infections). Children for the most part exhibit minor symptoms and often transmit the virus asymptomatically and so are referred to testing less regularly. It is for the aforementioned reasons why many workers and trade unions remain critical of the government’s decision not to promote the use of face coverings in educational facilities. Indeed, this has already led a small number of schools stating

213 that they will defy the government by making face coverings compulsory or “strongly encouraged” when pupils return in September. As Patrick Roach, the general secretary of the NASUWT teachers’ union, has pointed out, children over the age of 11 are required to wear coverings when they visit “a range” of facilities such as shops: “So there is a strong argument that face masks should also be made compulsory for children when they return to secondary schools in September.” Further emphasising this point Roach explained:

“The Government’s guidance for schools is now out of step with wider public health guidance and guidance to other employers where it is recognised that, where physical distancing cannot be assured, face masks should be worn.

“Teachers and other staff working in schools also want to be assured that, when they return to the workplace in September, they will be afforded the same level of protection as other workers, and that the guidance for schools will be brought into line with guidance for other workplaces.”[8] We should also note that the legitimacy of the most important (apparently conclusive) evidence that the government and Public Health England (PHE) are citing to inform their decision for stopping students wearing face coverings has already been challenged by plenty of scientists. These experts conclude that the science the government is referring to cannot be used to justify the arguments they are making regarding masks. Perhaps the most serious study investigating transmission rates in English schools was initiated in May, and is in the process of collecting detailed comparative date from approximately 140 schools. The chief investigator for this project is Dr Shamez Ladhani and in May the “sKIDs COVID-19 surveillance in school children” project which he runs initially set about testing infection rates on as many students as possible in the participating schools. The researchers then retested all those students at the end of the summer term, and will be testing them again around the end of the autumn half- term.[9] Dr Ladhani is also the main researcher responsible for other aspects of surveillance of COVID-19 in children at PHE, and it is his latest research paper titled “COVID-19 in children: analysis of the first pandemic peak in England” that is currently informing government decision-making regarding the need to disregard face coverings for school students.[10] Despite the positive reception Dr Ladhani’s research paper has received amongst less critical scientists, the journal article remains fundamentally floored and its limited findings are currently being mis-used to make arguments that cannot be substantiated, and are in fact contradicted by other studies. This government state that this study proves that transmission of Covid-19 does not occur at any significant level between students, however the study does not show this finding. Commenting on the journal article Professor Jonathan Ball, Professor of Molecular Virology at University of

214

Nottingham, makes it clear that “the study doesn’t look at the infectiousness of children.” He explains that the data used within the study…

“…is heavily skewed by the very fact that the only children tested were those presenting at a GP clinic with well-defined respiratory illness and fever. We know from other studies that children, particularly young children, show minimal symptoms of SARS2 infection and often have no symptoms at all. Therefore, the fact that children weren’t often amongst confirmed cases of COVID-19 isn’t so surprising. To imply that children aren’t an important source of the infection isn’t really fully supported by the evidence here – the study doesn’t look at the infectiousness of children.”[11] Professor Sheila Bird, former programme lead at the MRC Biostatistics Unit at likewise remained unimpressed, highlighting the fact that “Data from England in this report do not address transmission by children.” While Professor Paul Hunter, Professor in Medicine at the University of East Anglia, critiques the PHE study noting:

“Based largely on the finding that children represented only 6.6% of all people tested and that only 4% of children tested were positive compared to 34.9% of adults testing positive, the authors conclude that their findings “provide further evidence against the role of children in infection and transmission of SARS-CoV-2”. This is repeated in the press release: “The findings confirm that, unlike adults, children aren’t an important source of COVID-19 infection, say the researchers”.

“Whilst it is generally accepted that children even when infected are unlikely to become ill with COVID-19 and very unlikely to die, this is not evidence against the role of children in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. I do not think the authors of this study can use their data to draw such an apparently firm conclusion.” Nevertheless, it is exactly this academic report and the apparent evidence contained within it that the government are using to assert that transmission by children is not significant! Yet even the PHE researchers are in disagreement with this abuse of their study, thus a number of PHE scientists who were involved in this research have spoken out to the press because the “are unhappy with the way their findings, which have not yet been fully analysed, have been used by ministers.”[12] Professor Hunter, who is currently engaged in related research examining the spread of Covid-19 however goes further in his criticisms stating that his own research groups’ ongoing studies which are examining infection rates across Europe has found that “closing schools was the single factor most strongly associated with drops in infection rates.”[13] It is for such reasons that Professor Kamlesh Khunti, a specialist in Vascular Medicine at the University of Leicester…

“…has suggested that UK schools should follow the example of some of the Nordic nations. ‘In Denmark, the average class sizes were around 20 students prior to Covid-19, but now

215

they are dividing classes into two to three smaller groups,’ he said. ‘They have recommended pupils sit six feet apart and wash hands every two hours.’

“At the moment, Public Health England does not recommend the use of face coverings in schools even at secondary level, despite the evidence suggesting that older children are at greater risk of transmitting Covid-19. In contrast, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US have recently published recommendations that all children should wear face coverings in schools except those under two years old.

“‘There is very little evidence on the use of face masks in schools, but, overall, children should be encouraged to wear face coverings while the population levels of positive cases are high,’ says Khunti. ‘In countries like China, South Korea, Japan, wearing masks in schools is widely accepted and even worn during the flu season.’”[14] Finally, we should observe that even if we put the issue of face coverings aside, the extreme limitation of the government’s current test and trace program means that the risks to community safety related to the proposed full reopening of schools in September is very high. A recent article published in the British Medical Journal (August 4) reported that a new scientific study…

“… suggests that reopening schools full time from September alongside relaxation of other social distancing measures, and without scaling up testing, will induce a second wave that would peak in December. If schools reopened on a part time rota basis, this peak is likely to be in February 2021. In both cases the second wave of infections could be between 2 and 2.3 times the size of the original covid-19 wave, say the authors of the study, published in Lancet Child & Adolescent Health.”[15] As if this was not bad enough, Boris Johnson is currently arguing that local authorities should keep schools open even when community rates of infection are high such that a local lockdown is imposed.[16] In fact as the residents of Leicester are well aware a lockdown is still in force in our city, with the most up-to-date infection information putting Leicester at 52.5 cases per 100,000 population.[17] Students in Leicester are therefore being asked to sit in packed classes of students all day long without wearing any PPE, and in most instances with little opportunity for appropriate social distancing. At the same time, according to current government guidance, when those students go home they are not allowed to meet even one member of their class in the safety of their own garden![18] The Independent SAGE group contradicts the government and recommends that face coverings should be worn by students. The diagram (reproduced below) makes a number of preliminary proposals noting that: “We can significantly reduce the risk of closing schools again due to local outbreaks If proper steps are taken now to reduce transmission of COVID-19.” On the most basic level the Independent SAGE advice suggests that if the local infection rate is 10-50 infections per 100,000 population then with limited class sizes face coverings should be worn by all secondary age students,

216 while if the infection rate exceeded 50 per 100,000 population they suggest that face coverings should also be worn by primary school children.[19] Figure reproduced from Independent SAGE report on schools (August 14):

Recommendations [XXXXXX insert union branch here] believe that the reopening of schools and colleges is vital, but we believe that this should only be done if reopening can be achieved in a safe manner. This briefing paper is primarily concerned with examining the relevance of face coverings in minimising the threats posed by the reopening of schools, and hence our recommendation is that educational facilities should be included amongst the indoor venues and workplaces where face coverings must be worn. As in other areas there will be exceptions where students and staff will not be able to wear face

217 coverings and in those instances other additional precautions will need to be made to accommodate the delivery of a safer educational environment.[20]

APPENDIX: Related Unison safety campaigns National campaigns that Unison are currently supporting to help create safer schools include:

• Unison are running a campaign called “Clean schools, safe schools” which is demanding that the government “urgently fund the provision of an army of cleaners in schools so that safety standards are met.” Part this campaign relates to the fact that lots of school cleaners “are employed by private firms, many of whom pay only the minimum wage and do not provide contractual sick pay. Isolating will be an impossible decision for these staff, who’ll have to rely on statutory sick pay of just £95.85 per week, if they earn enough to qualify for it at all.” Therefore, Unison is “campaigning to get private contractors in schools to pay their staff proper contractual sick pay and at least the real Living Wage (£9.30 across the UK and £10.75 in London) so they can afford to isolate to protect the school community and prevent further closures.” https://www.unison.org.uk/our-campaigns/clean-schools-safer- schools/

• On August 12 Unison General Secretary Dave Prentis wrote to members saying that “UNISON is backing a campaign to get money that is being wasted on private companies’ failings diverted to locally-led track and trace.”[21] This campaign involved supporting a petition that called upon members to contact local council leaders to ask them to contact the government “to call for safe, publicly led contact tracing.” https://weownit.org.uk/tell-your-council-leader- you-want-safe-locally-led-test-and-trace

REFERENCES [1] “Effective infection protection and control,” Last updated July 21, 2020: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/safe-working-in-education- childcare-and-childrens-social-care/safe-working-in-education-childcare-and- childrens-social-care-settings-including-the-use-of-personal-protective-equipment- ppe [2] The DfE advice outlined in “Guidance for full opening: schools” (Update August 7, 2020) notes that: “Schools should also have a process for removing face coverings

218 when pupils and staff who use them arrive at school and communicate it clearly to them.” https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/actions-for-schools-during- the-coronavirus-outbreak/guidance-for-full-opening-schools [3] Guidance: Face coverings: when to wear one and how to make your own (Updated 14 August 2020): https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/face-coverings- when-to-wear-one-and-how-to-make-your-own/face-coverings-when-to-wear-one- and-how-to-make-your-own [4] Shaun Griffin, “Covid-19: England had worst excess mortality in Europe in April,” British Medical Journal, July 31, 2020: https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3058 [5] Daniel Wighton, “Germany pushes for compulsory mask requirement in all schools as summer holidays end,” Daily Telegraph, August 2, 2020: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/02/germany-pushes-compulsory- mask-requirement-schools-summer-holidays/ [6] Smriti Mallapaty, “How schools can reopen safely during the pandemic,” Nature, August 18, 2020: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02403-4 [7] “Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey pilot: England, 14 May 2020,” Office for National Statistics: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocial care/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/englan d14may2020?fbclid=IwAR1fRuYMbStdwmExA9AyHvYrP- LnWDAYRxnb4Cba16zyvc4oofak6kwmOnA [8] Amy Jones, “Teachers’ unions call for compulsory face masks for schoolchildren,” Daily Telegraph, July 26, 2020: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/26/unions-urge-ministers- consider-making-face-masks-compulsory/ [9] “COVID-19 Surveillance in Children attending preschool, primary and secondary schools,” Version 1.4, June 28, 2020: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/904207/sKIDS_protocol_v1.4.pdf [10] Shamez Ladhani et al., “COVID-19 in children: analysis of the first pandemic peak in England,” Archives of Disease in Childhood, August 12, 2020: https://adc.bmj.com/content/archdischild/early/2020/07/28/archdischild- 2020-320042.full.pdf

219

[11] Professor Ball goes on to add: “What the paper does highlight however, is how poor our testing capacity was as the first wave was about to hit the UK. The fact that we weren’t able to perform wider surveillance in mid- to late- February meant that the UK was hit with lots of separate introductions of the virus, mainly from supposedly unaffected countries and regions. By the time we realised we had a problem it was too late. This is a stark reminder of the importance of timely and efficient test, track and trace as we try to stave off a second wave.” Science Media Centre, August 12, 2020: https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-study-looking-at- covid-19-cases-in-children-in-the-first-wave-in-england/ [12] Harriet Brewis, “Older kids ‘spread coronavirus like adults’, researchers warn as Boris Johnson insists schools will reopen next month,” Evening Standard, August 11, 2020: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/older-kids-spread-coronavirus-adults- schools-a4521416.html [13] Toby Helm and Robin McKie, “Teachers and scientists sound alarm over plans to reopen schools in England,” The Observer, August 2, 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/aug/01/now-teachers-sound- alarm-over-plans-to-reopen-schools Professor Hunter gave an interesting talk on June 26 called “COVID-19, When experts disagree” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jw6e01d-eo [14] David Cox, “What we are learning about Covid-19 and kids,” The Observer, August 9, 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/aug/09/what-we-are-learning- about-covid-19-and-kids?CMP=share_btn_fb&fbclid=IwAR11oMp_AL- vTzHiivseBOMVs0Ffe-SZyWAf78bVIdyam0IuxPdYSn0vXC4 [15] Jacqui Wise, “Covid-19: NHS Test and Trace must improve for schools to reopen safely, say researchers,” British Medical Journal, August 4, 2020: https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3083 [16] Sarah Newey Jordan Kelly-Linden Global Health Security Team, “PM urges authorities to keep schools open even if local lockdowns are imposed,” Daily Telegraph, August 10, 2020: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and- disease/coronavirus-news-uk-deaths-cases-second-lockdown/ [17] Dan Martin, “More than 50 new coronavirus cases confirmed in Leicester today,” Leicester Mercury, August 20, 2020: https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/leicester-news/more-50-new- coronavirus-cases-4444113 [18] Dan Martin, “Why city council health bosses say Leicester Lockdown garden gatherings should be allowed,” Leicester Mercury, August 20,

220

2020: https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/leicester-news/city-council-health- bosses-say-4442783 [19] “Preliminary consultation document to inform an updated Independent SAGE schools report: What do we have to do to keep schools open?,” The Independent SAGE Report 8, August 14, 2020: https://www.independentsage.org/wp- content/uploads/2020/08/Schools-v-short-consultation-v3-1.pdf [20] For example, where teachers are at least 2m away from students (ie. when teaching) they might not need to wear a mask if they were wearing a plastic face visor. [21] Also see “Councils forced to pick up the pieces from failing test and trace,” UNISON, August 4, 2020: https://www.unison.org.uk/news/article/2020/08/councils- forced-pick-pieces-failing-test- trace/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Activist%20120820&utm_source=Com munications&utm_content=button%20link

221

Leicester City Council Are Wrong to State that “children are very unlikely” to Get Covid-19 August 25 Despite getting attacked in the Tory tabloid rags, the Education Solidarity Network organised a national day of action last Friday (August 21) as part of an ongoing campaign demanding the safe reopening of schools in England. Funnily the most heinous statement the tabloid press could marshal against the socialist grouping was something said by Socialist Alternative member James Kerr who had explained:

“We have already lost colleagues to the virus and will lose more if there is not action. It’s not the Victorian era anymore. Every worker should be able to go to work in the knowledge that they will return alive and well.” Supporters of the Education Solidarity Network are however concerned about a lot more than stopping the Tories taking us back in time. In fact the leaflet distributed at the protest in Leicester, which was organised by the locally-based “Safety First” campaign, demanded that schools must open in a way that “avoid[s] a further acceleration of infection within our communities”. And some of the very reasonable demands listed on the Network’s leaflet included that…

• “Schools should reopen at the start of term with no classes larger that 15 school students.” • “Wider opening should only be considered when the evidence of the effects of school opening on infection rates confirms that it is safe to do so.” • “Staff and school students over the age of 11 should wear face coverings while indoors.” • “There must be no fines on those who opt for their children to learn at home.” • “Where local infection rates exceed the internationally recognised threshold of 50 new cases per 100,000 over seven days, schools should close to all but priority children.” • “Weekly onsite testing of staff to be provided, and for children whose parents request it too.” Demonstrating that such demands are actually completely reasonable the government is already in the process of backtracking on the wearing of face coverings. But even on national day of action itself the Leicester protest had the effect of encouraging the education lead at our city council to make a statement that represented a significant first victory for the “Safety First” campaign. Thus in an online interview carried out with Leicester Mercury reporter (Dan Martin) the city council’s strategic director of education and social care Martin Samuels responded to a question asked by a member of the public which asked “How does it work if you are shielding but have to take child to school and pick them up?” In response Samuels stated:

“If you are shielding you shouldn’t be taking your child to school. Ideally if the child can take themselves to school or somebody else can take them, then that is what they should

222

do. If you are shielding you shouldn’t take them. And if it is impossible for anyone else to take the child or the child isn’t able to take themselves to school then that is a completely legitimate reason for them not attending school. The person who is shielding shouldn’t be putting themselves at risk.

“In addition to that if a child is living in a household with someone who is shielding then they should only go to school if they can then socially distance there. I think realistically it is going to be quite tricky for children who are living with someone who is still shielding for them to go to school; we absolutely understand that. Schools are being set up so they can provide the remote learning experience and there is no question of any kind of enforcement action being taken. That is completely reasonable for why that should be the case.” This is a good start, but worried parents would be more reassured if the Council simply came out with a categorical statement that they will refuse to fine parents who keep their children away from school. We will wait to see if Labour leader Sir Peter Soulsby ever makes such a reasonable commitment. I suspect not. Tragically, but not unexpectantly, Samuels didn’t help improve communication with concerned parents when he went on to repeat the government’s misinformed covid talking points. He stated:

“There has not been a single child in Leicester who has died from the virus. There have been only a very, very small number who have had to be admitted to hospital from the virus. Actually, the numbers, I was looking at the numbers today, there are something like 80,000 children across the city, a couple of hundred of them have had recorded infections. So really these are very small numbers indeed and the evidence suggests that children are very unlikely to get the virus and if they do they tend not to get it very badly.” He starts with the obvious truism when he says that children are not dying because of Covid-19, but what we also know is that the family members of children do die because of the virus. Moreover, Samuels is wrong to assert that only a couple of hundred children have been infected in our city. The only reason such low numbers have been recorded is because generally children are not being tested, which is partly because when they do get infected they do not present with symptoms. This fact, running contrary to Samuels’ assertion, was made clear on May 14 when the government’s Office for National Statistics stated: “There is no evidence suggesting age has an impact on the likelihood of an individual having COVID-19.” (The age categories that showed no statistical difference in infection rates were between 2-19 year olds, 20-49 year olds, 50-69 year olds, and those over 70 years old.) Samuels repeats the distortion about children not getting infected later in the same interview when he says:

“I think it is important to repeat that the evidence we have been looking at is that children are much less likely than adults to pick up the virus in the first place, and if they do pick

223

up the virus they are much less likely to experience significant symptoms from it, and they are much less likely to be infectious to others than are adults.” The only point that is definitely true in this statement is that children are much less likely to experience significant symptoms from Covid-19. But to be clear, the scientific evidence regarding how infectious children are still remains highly disputed. Either way Samuels doubles down on his own misunderstanding of Covid-19 when he says:

“We are actually much less concerned about the risk of infection to the children because our experience is that doesn’t happen and that is born out elsewhere. So when the schools were open we didn’t have a single case where we could find any evidence of child- to-child transmission, and we found only a couple of cases where we thought a teacher might have passed it on to a pupil. But essentially, as far as we can tell, when the schools were open earlier, actually the cases that we were finding in schools, and there weren’t many, the few cases we were finding in schools, these were people who had picked up the infection in the community, and then we spotted them in school.” Samuels repeats himself again adding:

“We start from the position that the evidence that we’ve got internationally and from elsewhere in the country is that children are pretty unlikely to catch the virus, even if they are exposed to it, they are pretty unlikely to catch it. If they do catch it, they are pretty unlikely to get ill from it, and they are pretty unlikely to be infectious.” Again, the best evidence suggests that this is simply not true. If you don’t trust me then why not read the government’s official “Statement from the UK Chief Medical Officers on schools and childcare reopening” (August 23) which points out that:

“There is reasonable, but not yet conclusive, evidence that primary school age children have a significantly lower rate of infection than adults (they are less likely to catch it).

“Evidence that older children and teenagers are at lower risk of catching COVID-19 is mixed. They are either less likely to catch COVID-19 than adults or have the same risk as adults.” This later point is key, as the government believes it is possible that “older children and teenagers” may be just as likely to catch Covid-19 as adults. The critical difference however is that when children contract Covid-19 they tend not to present symptoms and so are able to pass it to family members without ever realising they were ever infected.

224

Photo from https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/leicester-news/coronavirus-protest-held- leicester-children-4446951

225

Boohoo to Check Up on Boohoo: Billionaire Boss Funds Investigation into His Own Role in Exploiting Workers August 26 Boohoo the well-known serial sweatshop abuser recently “instigated and commissioned” a so-called Independent Review of their ongoing profiteering. In establishing the review they set themselves four core objectives:

1. To investigate the allegations made in relation to the Leicester supply chain and determine whether they are well-founded; 2. If they are, to consider the extent to which the boohoo Group monitored its Leicester supply chain and had knowledge of the allegations; 3. To consider the boohoo Group’s compliance with the relevant law; and 4. To make recommendations for the future in response to those findings. Many people of course are right to believe that such a Review will only serve as another smokescreen to distract attention from Boohoo’s enduring commitment to exploitation. In a further effort to look good at the expense of ordinary workers, early last month the chairman of the government’s Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) wrote to the owners of Boohoo noting…

“We recently asked Usdaw whether Boohoo now formally recognise trade unions, including themselves. Usdaw stated that: ‘Boohoo will not formally recognise Usdaw, have refused to meet union representatives and will not engage with Usdaw despite [EAC’s] recommendations.’ Usdaw has said it is ‘absolutely clear that employees feel intimidated’ and that Boohoo has instructed staff not to speak to union representatives. Usdaw also believe that Boohoo has misconstrued its presence at Boohoo’s sites: ‘Union representatives visit sites only to represent individuals at grievance or disciplinary meetings.’ Usdaw continued that it is simply ‘untrue’ that union representatives can feely visit Boohoo’s sites and engage with employees openly.

Usdaw also raised concerns with us over Boohoo’s operations during the COVID-19 pandemic, noting they had repeatedly asked Boohoo to ‘close its warehouses, furlough the staff and apply to the government’s coronavirus job retention scheme so that its employees get the support they need at this time of unprecedented worry.’ Usdaw reported that they had explained to Boohoo at the time that businesses that remained open, even though they were not essential, were putting employees at risk and that Usdaw had received calls from people ‘who were terrified they may become infected with Coronavirus and put their loved ones at risk.’

Concerns were also raised during the Fixing Fashion inquiry that Boohoo had not signed up to the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) like some of its competitors. On the subject of joining the ETI, in July 2019 Boohoo stated that it was ‘taking steps to gain membership’, had submitted an initial application to join and were meeting with the ETI in August 2019.

226

Almost a year since this correspondence, we asked the ETI whether Boohoo is now a full member. Peter McAllister, ETI’s Executive Director responded that although ETI had several exploratory conversations with Boohoo, Boohoo were not yet members, and furthermore the ETI ‘are not convinced that [Boohoo] would meet a number of critical aspects essential to ETI membership.’

ETI further stated that Boohoo have since joined an alternative organisation to ETI. ETI’s understanding is that ‘this alternative is an audit-based body that does not have a progression framework and does not hold its members to account.’

It is disappointing that Boohoo has not formally recognised a trade union and has chosen not to be a part of the Ethical Trading Initiative.” (July 15) Around the same time Mike Aylward – Usdaw Divisional Officer for the North West pointed out that...

“While Boohoo markets itself as a modern and trendy retailer, their attitude towards industrial relations is Dickensian. The least we expect from an ethical employer is that the staff are able to be fully represented by an independent trade union. Stopping Usdaw from speaking to Boohoo workers, refusing to meet with us and telling their staff to bin our leaflets is not acceptable or ethical… We continue to be inundated with calls from Boohoo staff concerned about working conditions.” (July 9) It is for such reasons that the Ethical Trading Initiative after being invited to reply to a questionnaire as part of the public call for evidence relating to the Levitt QC Review of the boohoo Group’s Leicester Supply Chain, “decided to decline to respond to this invitation.” The ETI added:

“Tackling these challenges through a questionnaire focusing upon individual factories and incidents in one city is not the best way to take forward a full investigation into these matters. This is a supply chain issue that begins with corporate business practices around purchasing and costing, but includes workplace & community exploitation and in this scenario it is often the workers that suffer as businesses avoid taking responsibility.

We are working with responsible business members to eradicate these issues throughout their businesses and supply chains in a meaningful and long-lasting manner, but this does mean making significant changes to existing practices. One of those changes will mean assessing whether the price paid for a low-cost item feeds modern slavery. So far, we have not seen a willingness from boohoo to engage in this process.

We have made the decision not to respond to this questionnaire for a number of reasons. Firstly, we do not believe that an enquiry commissioned by boohoo and paid for by boohoo can be fully independent. We would expect a wide number of stakeholders who understand the complexities of the UK garment industry to be involved in a truly independent enquiry. Many of those stakeholders have been working for some time to develop positive changes to the industry.

Secondly, the narrow questions in the survey appear to be designed to focus us on individual factories and suppliers, rather than looking at the business practices that feed

227 this environment. We are concerned that no reference is made to the responsibilities of business set out in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human rights which look at the broader influence of a business than just its legal obligations.

Thirdly, there is no mention of the other locations where boohoo face criticism, such as Burnley.

And finally, while we would expect to see transparency with the findings and any final report in the public domain, we would be concerned if names of individuals or workplaces were disclosed in an environment where people regularly talk about being ruled by fear.

We believe improvement is possible, but are unconvinced that this enquiry will make the required contribution to the wider dialogue needed.” (August 25)

228

Why Trade Unions Should Actively Promote the Wearing of Face Coverings in Schools/Colleges August 27 The Tories were forced into their latest U-turn on the wearing of face coverings within schools despite the fact that it contradicts their own previous assertion that students should not be allowed to wear face coverings — apparently because adequate measures were already in place to keep students safe. But as I outlined in a previous post there are plenty of scientific reasons why face coverings should be worn by students while at school/college, especially for older children. And, even with the U- turn, we still have the problem that the new government advice on face coverings is mostly focused on areas of the country where infection rates are highest and still only encourages mask wearing in communal parts of schools, not in the classrooms where students sit packed-in shoulder-to-shoulder. It would of course help us protect our students and communities from Covid-19 if we had a functioning opposition party in Parliament. But the Labour Party have simply tail- ended the Tories and have failed to play a positive role in ensuring that our schools can be reopened safely. It is also worth adding that it doesn’t help matters that the National Education Union (NEU) and Unison are not insisting that students (particularly older ones) should be wearing face coverings or plastic visors while at school. Nevertheless, in the past few weeks the unions have at least been challenging the government to say that students and staff should have the option of wearing face coverings if they want to wear them. Thus, on July 28, the deputy general secretary of the NEU Avis Gilmore said:

“It remains our view that no member of staff or pupil should be prevented from wearing a face mask if they wish to do so and we anticipate that the majority of schools and colleges will respect this.” This mild view was supported by other educational unions including Unison, but medical professionals were correct in going further than the unions. For example, as reported a Guardian article titled “Unions call for teachers in England to be able to wear face masks” (July 28) it was reported that:

“Dr David Strain, a senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter Medical School and the co-chair of the medical academic staff committee of the British Medical Association (BMA), did not advocate face masks in primary schools but agreed that masks for teenagers in secondary school – in situations where they could not keep their distance – were a sensible precaution.

229

The BMA, which is one of the top representative bodies for doctors, has said that wherever 2-metre social distancing cannot be observed, including in schools, masks should be worn as a way of limiting transmission.

‘When it comes to teenagers in secondary school, they are very unlikely to be badly affected by Covid, but there is some evidence that they can be carriers and spread it on,’ said Strain. ‘Therefore the idea of them wearing masks to stop spread around the school – enabling them to potentially take it home to older relatives and also risking teachers – is a sensible precaution.’” Yet bizarrely even the mild view on face coverings that was being promoted by the trade unions was opposed by Kate Green, the Labour Party’s Shadow Education Secretary. In an interview with Sky News (July 30) Green stated that the Labour Party will “follow the advice of the chief medical officer, the scientists, who have said that masks are not necessary in school settings”. The following week however, Labour Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth strayed — seeminly accidentally — from the party line on the need for masks. In an interview on BBC Breakfast (August 5) Ashworth first made it clear that “Our scientific advice for the moment is that they’re not necessary in our schools.” But when pressed if he would support mask wearing if school principals deemed it appropriate, he stated: “If schools think that is appropriate then I would support that.” That was a generally positive temporary extension to Labour’s otherwise Tory policy on face masks, but it was not the official policy, and at no point in later weeks did Ashworth repeat his off-message support for the broader wearing of face coverings in schools. Here in lockdown Leicester the Labour-run city council also went slightly against the grain of the Labour Party’s official policy and at least in council-maintained schools agreed that they would support anyone who wants to wear a face covering. But this limited support was never made public through press releases or social media statement, and the support was not extended to our city’s many privately-run schools which in some instances wrote to students warning them that:

“The government does not recommend face coverings or masks in schools. So you will not be allowed to wear one once you enter school and will be told to remove it.” Moreover, we should be clear that despite pressure being brought to bear upon City Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby by concerned parents and trade unionists (and even a small number of Labour councillors), the City Mayor refused to either support the widespread wearing of face coverings or to make any promises not to fine parents who keep their children away from school because they have reasonable fears that the reopening process will not be safe. (This latter concern is not just held by parents in Leicester (where the rate of community infection is still very high), and an opinion poll carried out last weekend found that one-third of parents in England were not

230 going to send their children back to school because they remain unconvinced that schools are safe.) The fact that Sir Peter Soulsby has done nothing to allay the fears of parents regarding school reopenings is even more reprehensible, as yesterday, while speaking at a hearing organised by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on coronavirus he highlighted how the government’s test and trace program was utterly useless. Surely if this is the case it really is potentially dangerous to reopen schools, especially in Leicester?

“Sir Peter said data provision [on testing results provided to the Local Authority] was ‘better than it was’, but added: ‘It is still inconsistent, it’s still erratic, it still comes through after a very significant time delay.’ He added: ‘It, of course, does mean that although we do the follow-up testing – now very effectively in a complex process – it is happening far too late.’ Asked how long the delays were, he said he was aware of one case where it was a week, but said he intended to provide more analysis on the issue.” (Daily Telegraph, August 26) What is needed now is for the trade unions to go further in their demands for ensuring a safe reopening of our schools and colleges. It is not good enough to simply demand that staff and students should have the right to wear face coverings if they want to wear them; the unions should be saying that the wearing of face coverings (paid for by the government) should be positively encouraged in classrooms if we want to prevent the spread of virus (although for those who cannot wear masks a plastic visor may be more suitable). It would be a huge step forward if the Labour Party also took up such demands, but under Sir Keir Stamer’s national leadership this may be simply too much to expect. Hence this ongoing inaction (or worse) on the part of Labour is arguably a good reason for the working-class to demand the creation of a new socialist political organisation that actually wants to represent our collective needs in Parliament.

231

How Not to Handle a Covid-19 Outbreak: The Example of Greencore Food Group August 29 Since the start of the pandemic Greencore as an employer has failed to take the safety of their employees seriously. Profits always seem to trump human life in the case of Greencore, otherwise known to their employees as Meancore. So, while Northamptonshire’s director of Public Health, Lucy Wightman, may have been impressed with the measures apparently taken by Greencore to make their Northampton site covid-safe, the workers have remained wholly unimpressed. Let’s start at the beginning of Greencore’s latest outbreak fiasco. The first important date in Greencore’s enormous cock-up was July 27. As Lucy Wightman explained:

“We had 4 staff test positive on the 27th July, as I said this is not unusual, this is a huge manufacturer which employs within that site 2,100 staff, so these are very small numbers at that point, and that wouldn’t be a worry… We then found that there were a further 4 staff who tested positive, again after a social event, so that was two days later.” Rather than close the factory, Greencore then sent dozens of their employees to get tested. On 4th August at Wightman’s “weekly outbreak meeting” with Greencore she recalled how “at that point we ended up realising that through various testing sites that we had 24 staff positives”. Again rather than close the factory, Greencore simply arranged for a private company to come in and test all their manufacturing staff, that is, almost a week after Greencore identified they had at least 24 infections. Thus, with reported infections now rising by the day, the decision was taken for on-site testing of manufacturing staff to take place on three days (on 10, 11, and 12th August). As Wightman notes, unlike office-based staff who had been working from home…

“Clearly people in the production areas at Greencore aren’t able to work from home, and therefore we tested all of those that have been present over the period that we considered to be infectious and that was around nearly 1,300 employees who were tested. Just over 1,100 through a private company and then around 152 had gone through some kind of NHS testing portal between the 27th July and the 9th August. Obviously, it was some of those results that brought our attention to the challenge in Greencore itself.” Notably “the total number of positives up until 13th August was 287,” which represented just over 1 in 5 of all staff who worked in the factory floor! Yet still the decision was taken to keep the factory open, with workers who had tested positive being sent home to self-isolate for 10 days – most being told that they would have to somehow pay their bills with an income of just £96 a week (statutory sick pay).

232

An important factor to highlight in this outbreak is that the vast majority of Greencore’s low-paid workforce are forced to save money on living expenses by house- sharing and car-sharing (to get to work), or if no cars are available they travel to work on the local public buses which throughout the pandemic have frequently been packed and offer no opportunities for safe social distancing. The workers’ trade union reps had previously raised these safety concerns with management but to no avail, as managers had come to the conclusion that how their employees travel to work should not be considered as part of any efforts to create a covid-secure workplace. With the outbreak growing by the day, workers who had tested positive (most of them showing no outward symptoms) were then sent home to self-isolate, as were all Greencore employees residing in their households. But in implementing this process of self-isolation, Greencore did nothing to make sure that those individuals who travelled together to work in car shares with other infected individuals were informed that they too should self-isolate. Instead Greencore washed their hands of any efforts they could have taken to minimize the viruses spread and left the task of tracing who their employees had been in contact with in the hands of the government’s utterly useless contact-tracing program. The obvious faults in the governments contact-tracing protocol were further revealed by a question asked of Wightman by a journalist on August 14, that is, 48 hours after the three days of on-site testing had been completed. The journalist asked:

“Do you know how many contacts, that is family and friends of the employees, have tested positive? Obviously the figure we have at the moment, the 292 is for the employees, do you know how many contacts have tested positive or how many are being tested?” Wightman responded by making it clear that she had no idea how many contacts had been traced – I say this because she totally ignored responding to the main content of the question. Instead she said:

“As of next Wednesday [August 19] we will be undertaking our own contact-tracing and where the national [NHS] team obviously follow-up in the first 48 hours, because of the current situation we are now going to be getting data downloads for all of those cases that they have been unable to contact and follow-up. As obviously their [the NHS] process ceases after 48 hours. Because of the situation, because we understand the high likelihood of community transmission, we think it is imperative that we follow-up those people ourselves.” But this was too little way too late. Nearly 300 people had already tested positive by August 12, and NHS contact-tracers would then have spent the next two days trying to do their job of contact-tracing. It therefore beggars’ belief that Wightman and her public health team chose to wait a further week before they started their own contact- tracing to fill in the apparent gaps left by the NHS contract tracers.

233

So on August 14 Wightman had acknowledged the “high likelihood of community transmission” but had remained happy to advise that the Greencore site should continue operating as normal. In many ways this is so bizarre it is hard to believe this happened, but of course it did. Later, mainly as a result of the public campaigning undertaken by the Bakers Union, on August 21 Greencore’s Northampton site was forced to close, with all employees sent home to self-isolate for two weeks. Another factor that played an important role in the closure was the fact that Greencore had just started retesting all those staff members who had previously tested negative (as a so-called “precautionary measure”) and surprise, surprise, had started to discover that many of these staff were now infected. Although this retesting had still not been completed at the time of closure, by August 27 it was reported that of the 834 workers who had been re-tested, 37 were confirmed positive for covid-19. But while the factory was temporarily closed between August 21 and August 26, it soon became public knowledge that certain staff like the security guards and those working in the dispatch unit had been kept on-site throughout the ‘closure’. This issue, as the Bakers Union pointed out, was particularly problematic as some of the staff who were kept at work had “previously been travelling in with production workers in the same cars, they have been sharing smoking areas, canteens. Some families even work together—husband in dispatch, wife in production.” So, with staff who had gone into self-isolation prior to August 12 now allowed to return to work, it remains unclear whether they are returning to a site where covid-19 is still present and spreading. The only way to have confirmed this before the reopening would have been to make such all the dispatch and security staff had been tested the day before manufacturing had resumed – something that sadly did not happen. In an attempt to respond to the Bakers Unions (correct) accusation that workers are now being exposed to unnecessary dangers yesterday (August 28) Greencore uploaded a series of answers to “frequently asked questions” that was meant to make their employees feel better. Instead, the company’s vague and contradictory ANSWERS should raise even more concerns amongst workers and the local community. So, for instance, if a worker tested positive for covid-19 and asks the following question:

“Do my family members or people I share a house with have to isolate as well?” Greencore’s answer is:

“Yes, unless you are part of a small exemption list agreed with the management team and have a letter of authorisation to continue to work.”

234

Apparently the company are saying that they have created an exemption list of workers who are apparently unable to transmit covid-19 in the workplace. This miracle surely needs more explanation!

Another question that is equally confusing deals with a scenario whereby a worker who had undergone a period of self-isolation — perhaps because they live in the same household as another worker who tested positive – and then ended up returning to work in the days prior to the closure. The question asks:

“I completed my period of self-isolation and returned to work between 19th August and 21st August 2020, do I need to complete a further period of isolation?” Greencore’s answer is that…

“If…you are showing no symptoms… you do not need to re-isolate. You can return to work once contacted by a member of the site team.”

235

This again makes no sense. Allowing workers who were on site just prior to the site ‘closure’ to return to work immediately without any period of self-isolation totally undermines the purpose the closure. The guidance should be that if you were in work between 19th August and 21st August then you should self-isolate like everyone else (for a further two weeks)! From start to finish, Greencore and the local public health authorities involved have been totally incompetent. They have taken completely unnecessary risks with the lives of thousands of key workers and only after a massive campaign by the Bakers Union were Greencore’s greedy bosses forced to pay their key workers 80% of their normal salary during any periods that workers had to self-isolate. While obviously such pay is a step-up from statutory sick pay, in reality this offer still represents a pay-cut which is why the union is still demanding full pay for all workers during any periods of self- isolation. This is not an unpopular demand, and an online petition that was launched just days ago has already obtained the signatories of just short of 25,000 people – so if you agree then please share it from here https://actions.sumofus.org/a/ms-covid- scandal

236

Covid-19 Infection and Transmission in Educational Settings: A Socialist Response to Public Health England September 3 Public Health England’s primary expert on the transmission of Covid-19 amongst students, Dr Shamez Ladhani, recently released a report that is now being abused by the government to justify the unsafe opening of schools in England. The report, which was published on the government’s web site on August 23 under the title “SARS-CoV- 2 infection and transmission in educational settings: cross-sectional analysis of clusters and outbreaks in England,” reported on the findings of “infection and outbreak rates… for staff and students attending early year settings, primary and secondary schools during June 2020.” Ironically, the text of the report drew attention to some of its own extreme limitations, but to date politicians and government scientific advisors alike have ignored such warnings. Thus, the report explains:

“There are… important limitations when considering the generalisability of our findings. Educational settings opened after national lockdown when SARS-CoV-2 incidence was low and only in regions with low community transmission. Settings that opened had stringent social distancing and infection control measures in place and, in addition to school attendance not being mandatory, there were strict protocols for class and bubble sizes, which may not be achievable when schools open fully in the next academic year (and indeed, updated schools guidance now recognises that bubble size may need to be increased from September to ensure that a full range of activities is feasible). Only 1.6 million of the 8.9 million students nationally attended any educational setting during the summer mini-term. Additionally, very few secondary schools opened (and those that did, did so with small class sizes) during the summer mini-term and our results, therefore, are not likely to be generalisable to secondary schools, especially since the risk of infection, disease and transmission is likely to be higher in older than younger children.” The critical point to take from this quote is that very few students attended educational settings during June, with just short of a quarter of the normal number attending schools by the end of the month. These low attendance levels were also accompanied with high levels of social distancing. Although not discussed in the text of the PHE study, the authors provide data (in Table 1) which shows exactly how few students were in each school (this information is summarised below). Even more interesting, while there were 1.6 million students in schools by the end of June, there were just over 0.5 million staff members working in the same schools – which of course makes for a very high staff to student ratio.[1] Furthermore, an average of just 6.2 students were present in each premises

237 catering for early years learning (<5 year olds); while primary schools held an average of 37.5 students, and secondary schools an average of 26.7 students. These very low attendance rates are similar to the average number of students contained in a single classroom, but during June these students were able to be spread out across entire schools. Clearly this is not something students and teachers will have the luxury of doing with the full reopening of our schools in the coming weeks.

So, considering the very low numbers of students in education throughout June, it is fairly predictable that that the spread of Covid-19 between students was always going to be low, and this is exactly the conclusion reached by PHE’s study. This low transmission rate owes much to the fact that throughout June students were contained in very, very small bubbles with contact in most cases being limited to a single teacher. Teachers, on the other hand, were exposed to larger bubbles than their students, as they would still have potentially come into close physical contact with other teachers, members of their Senior Leadership Team and with support workers, cleaners, and

238 members of their school’s administrative staff. It makes sense, therefore, that of the small number of education-related outbreaks that occurred during June (a total of 30 outbreaks),[2] that 50 per cent of those outbreaks occurred because of staff-to-staff transmission. This result is not unexpected, but what is highly significant is that even with so few students in educational settings, of the 30 confirmed outbreaks more than 26 per cent could be traced to either student to staff transmission (in six outbreaks) or from student-to-student transmission (in two outbreaks). Students evidently do transmit the virus even when class sizes are tiny and where social distancing norms are stringently applied.[3] In addition to the 30 recorded outbreaks during June, there were single instances of Covid-19 infections recorded at a total of 71 additional educational settings (4 of which were linked to a co-primary source – that is people living in the same household). In an attempt to prove that student transmission poses little risk to safety, the PHE report then emphasises the point that when outbreaks were caused by a student index case, “the maximum number of secondary cases was 2”. This low number is of course good news, but this is unlikely to be the norm in the coming weeks. There is a good reason for this as well: secondary cases remained low because “Most school children [linked to school outbreaks] with SARS-CoV-2 infection were identified as part of contact tracing after their parent, often a healthcare worker, was diagnosed with COVID- 19.”[4] This is critical for understanding how student-induced outbreaks, which largely spread asymptomatically, remained so small. It seems that the only reason why the infectious students were identified at all was because their infections were picked up early owing to the more intensive testing regime being applied to their key worker parents. In ordinary circumstances, like in the coming weeks and months, there will unfortunately be no system in place that will enable the rapid identification of children who are transmitting Covid-19 asymptomatically. “Reassuringly,” the PHE report then states, “our findings indicated that early detection and isolation of staff and students can prevent progression to an outbreak in most cases, highlighting the importance of the ‘test, track, and trace’ approach.” But if there is one thing that is clear it is that the government’s test, track and trace system is totally unprepared to be able to deal with the rapid reopening of all educational settings. June was a completely anomalous situation. Since then we have seen the government fail to keep up the necessary regular testing health care providers, and they have no program in place to start the regular testing of hundreds-of-thousands of teachers and their students. One final and highly significant problem with the PHE report on childhood infection rates appears when the authors repeat the hoary myth that “young children” have “a significantly lower incidence of COVID-19 compared to adults”. Of course, one reason why this falsehood persists is because young children tend not to get tested as often

239 as adults – arguably because they don’t tend to show symptoms. Nevertheless, on May 14 the government’s Office for National Statistics busted this myth wide open when they made it perfectly clear that the results of their “infection survey pilot” found “There is no evidence suggesting age has an impact on the likelihood of an individual having COVID-19.” One of the two scientific papers cited by PHE to promote their myth of low incidence rates in children is worth briefly examining in more detail. The paper in question is titled “Susceptibility to and transmission of COVID-19 amongst children and adolescents compared with adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis” concludes that their study found “preliminary evidence that children and young people have lower susceptibility to SARS-CoV2, with a 43% lower odds of being an infected contact.” This figure, if correct, means some children are less likely to get infected by the virus, but a 43% difference is not all that great really – especially considering issues related to asymptomatic spread, common in young people. The study itself confirms this latter point, noting that:

“Children and young people account for 1-3% of reported cases across countries… Children appear more likely to have asymptomatic infection than adults and analyses based upon symptom-based series underestimate infections in children.” This study also noted that within the existing academic literature, there existed a wide variation of estimates of infection rates for children. They said that of the 18 contact tracing studies included in their review, lower cross household infection (secondary attack rates SAR) for children compared to adults had been illustrated in 11 of those studies, but “No significant differences in SAR by age were reported in four studies… with one [additional] study from South Korea reporting high SAR in <19 year olds.”[5] This led the study’s authors to conclude:

“The findings from the CTS [contact tracing studies] and prevalence studies are largely consistent in suggesting that children below approximately 12-14 years are less susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection, resulting in lower prevalence and seroprevalence than adults. Data specifically on adolescents are sparse although consistent with susceptibility and prevalence more similar to adults.” This is surely a significant conclusion that is worth drawing attention to especially as a large proportion of students whose schools are now reopening in England are doing so following government advice that the spread of the coronavirus among all children is nothing to worry about! For more on this see “Leicester City Council are wrong to state that ‘children are very unlikely’ to Get Covid-19.” Finally, the second now famous scientific paper that PHE cited to support the myth that “young children” have “a significantly lower incidence of COVID-19 compared to adults” has already served as an important function in helping the government justify

240 the reopening of schools. The article in question, authored by Alasdair Munro and Saul Faust in May, was titled “Children are not COVID-19 super spreaders: time to go back to school.” Significantly when the two authors published an “Addendum” to this article in July, which again marshalled more evidence to support their contention that schools should reopen, this time they included a word of warning noting that not all children should be considered equal when it comes to the spread of Covid-19. Munro and Faust explained how a study undertaken within French primary schools demonstrated “no evidence of spread within the schools” but then went on to warn that…

“…an equivalent study in a high school setting from the same area found very high levels of positivity among pupils aged 14 years and above, highlighting the need for increased vigilance and infection prevention measures in teenagers compared to younger children.”[6] This result is in keeping with the warning made by the PHE study under discussion here, which as noted earlier, had acknowledged that their own analyses “are not likely to be generalisable to secondary schools, especially since the risk of infection, disease and transmission is likely to be higher in older than younger children.” That is why it is a shame that this message is now being ignored by the government, public health advisors, and school principals who are pushing ahead with the unsafe opening of all schools without implementing adequate social distancing or encouraging the wearing of face coverings on the basis on a low risk of infection. This point has also been made in a blog post written by recent London Regional Secretary for the National Education Union, Martin Powell-Davies, who in dissecting the same PHE study discussed in this article concludes that:

“Parents and school staff are being bombarded with an official narrative that schools will be safe to open with all children present in September. However, those claims are being based on questionable evidence.

“Having read the actual content of the latest much-publicised schools survey from Public Health England I would go further and suggest that their claims are actually contradicted by their own facts.” (August 25) This is correct. Similarly, Paul Hunter, a Professor in Medicine at the University of East Anglia, concludes:

“whilst there is still uncertainty over the science we certainly cannot discount schools as a likely accelerator of the epidemic in the wider community. In my view the balance of evidence is that older children (>10 years) may be the more important age group.” Professor Hunter then explains that he agrees that students benefit from being at school (what child doesn’t?), but refuses to comment on the absolutely useless and contradictory guidance that the government is giving to schools which is making it all be inevitable that schools will fail to be opened safety. Although not raising these

241 criticisms, it is interesting that Professor Hunter still ends his response by stating that “once schools return and if the general incidence in the UK increases we are likely to see many more school-based outbreaks with considerable disruption this autumn.” That is a very polite way of saying that many more people, as before, will likely die in the coming months because of the failure of our government to listen to the very reasonable demands of its critics, particularly the trade unions. It goes without saying that the government is first and foremost committed to the interests of big business. However, public health acts as a limit on their callousness: if the Tories go too far in promoting capitalist interests over that of the working class, they could face a social insurrection. But this class bias is also reflected in their understanding of science itself, and this is unfortunately also reflected in important elements of the official ‘science’ today. This is nothing new. As Marx famously said, “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.” Their approach to re-opening schools is flawed precisely because it lacks an approach and understanding of science which always bases the information it works with in the real living context from which it is drawn. Marxism, and practitioners of genuine science, on the other hand, does precisely this.

NOTES [1] As a side point there appear to be problems with the accuracy of some of the data presented in the study as in the text the authors write:

“From 01 to 30 June 2020, the number of open educational settings in England rose from 20,500 to 23,400 and the number of children attending any educational setting increased from 475,000 to 1,646,000 (Supplement Table S3).” However, the information presented in FigS1 and TableS3 of their study shows that on June 1 there were 28,000 early years’ education settings open (41% of the normal number) without considering primary and secondary schools. This figure for early years’ settings goes some way towards further highlighting the limitations of the study as by June 1 41% of venues were open but only 11% of the normal numbers of children were present. The study states that 475,000 students were in an educational setting on June 1, but the data presented in Table S3 shows that just considered primary school children alone then there were 567,000 students in attendance. The figure of 1,646,000 for June 30 also does not add up, as the if we assume the total number of key workers’ children in school was 103,000 (accurate as of May 29), and the total number of students in early years (using July 2 data), primary and second schools (using June 30 data) at the end of June would come to on that date were 1,330,000.

242

[2] “An outbreak was defined as ≥2 epidemiologically linked cases, where sequential cases were diagnosed within a 14-day period.” [3] The report notes: “Staff members had an increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infections compared to students in any educational setting, and the majority of cases linked to outbreaks were in staff. The probable transmission direction for the 30 confirmed outbreaks was: staff-to-staff (n=15), staff-to-student (n=7), student-to-staff (n=6) and student-to-student (n=2).” [4] This significant fact is repeated elsewhere in the report: “Students, on the other hand, mostly acquired SARS-CoV-2 infection at home, usually from a keyworker or healthcare worker parent. Most children were asymptomatic and only identified as part of contact tracing after their parent developed COVID-19, highlighting the importance of access to rapid testing, reporting and contact tracing for individuals to protect the wider community.” [5] For details of the South Korean study, see Young Joon Park et al., “Contact tracing during coronavirus disease outbreak, South Korea,” Emerging Infectious Diseases;26(10), 2020. [6] This French study (titled “Cluster of COVID-19 in northern France: a retrospective closed cohort study”) found that 40% of the 15-17 year olds tested were seropositive, which compared to a similar rate amongst teachers (43%), with only support staff (which included administrative staff and cleaners) testing higher (59%).

243

How to Open Our Schools Safely to Avoid Future Lockdowns: Covid-Lessons From Scotland September 4 Under a hapless Tory decree, schools across England are now being opened in a reckless and largely uncoordinated manner with students once again being forced to sit all day long in over-full and underfunded schools. To make things worse, students are only being encouraged to wear face covering if they happen to live in an area where lockdown restrictions apply – in areas where arguably schools shouldn’t be opening at all. And as if that were not bad enough, the Tories are reopening the rest of the economy at exactly the same time, a move which will make it near on impossible to understand the root causes of any future spikes in infection rates. Nevertheless, as Scotland reopened their schools some weeks ago (on August 11), there are plenty of lessons that can be gleaned from their experience. To start with rather wisely the Scottish parliament did not open schools and businesses simultaneously. “In Scotland, the government is committed to a strategy of maximum suppression, and has continued to encourage people to work from home in order to keep schools open…” Also, it is important to note that while the wearing of face coverings was not initially encouraged in Scotland, since August 31 all children who are 12 years of age or older have been wearing face coverings in all communal areas (but not in classrooms). Until we know more about the pandemic this would seem to be a sensible precaution that should be encouraged in England too. It is true that detected Covid-19 cases have been gradually increasing since schools were reopened in Scotland, with the number of cases being detected being similar as those that were identified just prior to the first lockdown in March. But the important difference between today and the pre-lockdown infection rates is that in the past month there has been a massive expansion of testing in Scotland and across the UK. Hence the relatively high numbers of cases can be interpreted as a predictable artefact of increased testing, and for now at least, data pertaining to the percentage of tests resulting in positive results (in both Scotland and England) is remaining fairly constant (and low) at around 1%.

@Adriel_KH_Chen on our @GlobalHealthGP team has been tracking positivity (# of people testing positive/ # of people tested) over weeks in Scotland. @TravellingTabby also has accessible stats. WHO says under 5% is decent, 1-2% is good. pic.twitter.com/o0l0qXPWwl

— (@devisridhar) August 27, 2020

244

Source: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk

So although we are lucky that we are not yet seeing a surge in either adult or children infection rates in Scotland, we should be clear that the main reason why this is the case is because infection rates in the wider community is still actually quite low; and the primary reason why infection rates are low is linked to the preceding lockdown. In the coming weeks it is therefore very likely that we will see a quick growth in Covid-19 cases in Scotland, and it is only then that the lack of mask wearing in schools

245

(particularly in the classrooms themselves) will no doubt allow the coronavirus to spread asymptomatically amongst children and then onwards to their families. Another significant point to understand about what is happening in Scotland is that for the first time since the start of the pandemic huge numbers of students have been tested – over the past three weeks alone some 40,000 students were tested which resulted in around 100 positive cases. As reported in the Times Education Supplement (September 1):

“Some 11,208 pupils aged 12-17 tested negative, meaning the proportion who were positive was 0.7 per cent. The number of pupils aged 5-11 who tested negative was 28,664, meaning 0.1 per cent were positive.”[1] The other good news is that infection numbers do not appear to be increasing rapidly in either Scotland or England (although we should be wary as they are now increasing quicker in Scotland than in England). This welcome news means we now have time to embed the type of measures within our education system that can help ensure that when infection rates do pick-up (and such an increase seems almost inevitable) that the spread of the deadly coronavirus can be limited and contained. Introducing such changes will be especially important in England considering the extra infection problems that will flow from the rapid reopening of the economy at the same time as our schools. So, if England is to learn any lessons from Scotland it should be to encourage the widespread wearing of face coverings in our schools, which as a meaningful preventative measure should also include encouraging the wearing of face coverings in classrooms too. In addition, in order to protect everyone the Tories must be forced to invest in an effective mass testing program which meets the following criterial that were helpfully laid out in the British Medical Journal (August 20):

“It needs clear purpose and policy based on best available evidence, uniform case definitions, and consistent testing standards nationwide. It needs clarity about who is eligible for testing and who is responsible for communicating, interpreting, and acting on test results. Systematic coordinated delivery using the experience, community connections, and knowledge of local primary care, public health, and laboratory services is essential.” Tragically, as we all know, this type of well-planned health intervention is not going to be delivered by our dangerously incompetent government unless, that is, massive pressure is brought to bear upon them by the organised working-class. This after all is a government that embarked upon a so-called ‘herd immunity’ pandemic response that they knew would end up killing hundreds of thousands of people; and the Tories were only stopped from following this through by the mass organised response from trade unions and a furious public.

246

Any type of planned intervention to keep our communities safe must involve the testing of all close contacts of infected cases, which is all the more important with students where the virus is transmitted asymptomatically. It is simply not true, as the government would have us believe, that student transmission does not pose a significant threat to the safety of our communities. Indeed just the other day the New York Times (August 31) published an article titled “U.S. coronavirus rates are rising fast among children” which explained:

“Since the beginning of the summer, every state in the country has had an increase in the number of young people who have tested positive for the coronavirus, as a share of all cases. In late May, about 5 percent of the nation’s cases were documented in minors. By Aug. 20, that number had risen to more than 9 percent.” Again this growth in positive cases is reflective of the increased testing of students. Moreover, we knew right from the start of the pandemic that students were getting infected, it was just that they weren’t for the most part being tested. This warning from America also demonstrates that there can be no room for complacency when it comes to the ability of Covid-19 to spread amongst the young. But rather than take heed of such concerning evidence right-wing governments across the world continue to endanger us all with their wilful distortions of pandemic science. Here in the UK the Tories continue to assure concerned parents and staff that students don’t really spread the virus, while on the other side of the Atlantic Trump has just forced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to change their guidelines “to advise against testing asymptomatic people.” This latest anti-scientific move by Trump (which was first reported in the press on August 26) highlights the president’s fresh embrace of ‘herd immunity’ – an approach which if not resisted can only wreak devastation on the American population. Unfortunately it seems that Boris Johnson and his Eton chums were watching Trump’s ongoing attacks on science with an enviable eye as their latest advice to schools and colleges is that “only” symptomatic students “should be tested”! This new backwards guidance was released by the government on September 3. The government seems to have learned only bad lessons from Scotland writing: “It is vital that we learn from the recent Scottish experience, where the return of schools saw a huge increase in demand for tests from people without coronavirus symptoms.” Hence their advice is offered as a means to reduce such a demand! Capitalist governments of the world have never cared about meeting their citizen’s real needs, something that is becoming clearer to more and more people by the day, and too much is now at stake for the working-classes and their trade unions to stand by and allow such criminal government actions to remained unpunished.

247

We know that the elitist likes of the Johnson and Trump care only for one thing, and that is looking after their rich friends in the ruling-class; and here in the UK we know that the Tories are already weak having been forced into a series of humiliating U-turns by the British public. So, the only solution to such deadly actions is to make sure, like them, that we are organised to protect our classes own interests. This will entail building the democratic strength of our trade unions at the grassroots, although part of the transformation of our unions will involve electing new leaders who will take the fight directly to our abusive governments. There has never been a more important time to have socialist trade union leaders who will be willing to organise coordinated strike action to defend the public’s safety. It is only through the undertaking of such collective democratic action that will can then ensure that it is the needs of the working-class that determine the future actions of our governments and not, as currently stands, the relentless profit-seeking interests of the billionaire-class.

NOTES [1] Of course, until we have more detailed information than the raw figures this information does not really mean very much, other than indicating how the infection rates in Scotland are presently low. To really move forward the type of detailed information that would help scientists make better sense of the Scottish data would include knowing how the students who ended up testing positive for Covid-19 were located in the first place; was it because they were exhibiting symptoms, or were their cases simply picked-up because some of their parents were key workers? (The regular testing of key workers’ children was actually the main reason for infected students being identified when schools had been partially re-opened in June.)

248

Source: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk

249

Leading Scientist Uses Greencore as a Prime Example of a Bad Employer Risking Peoples Lives During the Covid Crisis September 4 Greencore Food Group continue to live up to their Meancore nickname in their ongoing refusal to pay our county’s key food workers 100% of their pay during any periods of self-isolation, something that the Bakers Union has been arguing for since the start of the pandemic. But now even Britain’s leading scientists are holding- up the poor practices of Greencore as an example of what businesses should avoid doing if they care about people’s lives. Earlier today Stephen Reicher, a professor of Social Psychology at the , addressed a panel of prestigious health experts making up the Independent SAGE advisory board, and reminded the world of the dire consequences of Greencore’s exploitation of our country’s key workers. He said:

“If workplaces aren’t safe it obviously puts the workforce at risk, and with infections going up at the moment there is a reasonable probability of bringing an infection into the workplace and sharing it, and thereby costing peoples health, and possibly costing peoples lives. So, on the one hand foreseeable problems have cost workers their health and sometimes their lives. On the other hand, of course, if the workplace becomes a site in which there is transmission it can then be brought back into the community and lead to community spikes, increases in community infection, as we saw in Leicester.

Now the key point is this, most employers are responsible, and most employers will be putting mitigations in place, as most employers should be talking to their workers. But it is not good enough that most employers are doing this, we need all employers to do this, and we need to make sure that even the bad employers are doing this because as we know there are instances where they have not done this and there are instances where that has had major costs.

There are many examples one could give, for instance when there was the Greencore outbreak there is evidence that in part that was due to the fact that workers who were ill could not afford to leave work and self-isolate because they would have their pay docked. So sometimes its an issue of not supporting your workers in self-isolating, and sometimes its an issue of appalling conditions where there isn’t social distancing, and where there isn’t ventilation, and again we saw evidence from Leicester where poor working conditions led to spikes of infection within the workforce which led to higher community transmission.” Following from this logical attack on the appalling actions of Greencore’s management, the professor then went on to argue the need for a regulatory framework to enforce the good treatment of workers during the pandemic, and he supported urgent

250 investment in the Health and Safety Executive — a body which has seen its funding dramatically cut over the past decade by the Tories.

Schools Open in Parts of Leicester Where Infection Rates are as High as 115 Cases Per 100,000 Population! September 6 It is widely known that when covid-infection rates are high then it is not safe to continue life as normal, and thankfully at present we know that infection rates (although rising) are relatively low in the UK and stand at 15 new cases a week per 100,000 population. However, we should be clear that in certain parts of the country infection rates are still high enough to pose a significant risk to community safety. Leicester remains in lockdown, and until at least September 11 people are not even allowed to meet up with a single member of another household in their own back yards… even if they keep 2m apart and wear face coverings. In Leicester, infection rates peaked on June 22 at a massive 171 cases per 100,000 population. Although not known at the time, the infection rate in Leicester was similarly high when the government encouraged a partial reopening of schools at the start of June — with Leicester having an infection rate of 77 per 100,000 on the first day of reopening! When the dangerous decision to reopen Leicester’s schools was taken in June our City Mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, knew full well that the government were withholding critical data about local infection rates (the pillar 2 community testing data), and as such the Mayor should have supported the city’s trade unions in delaying the reopening of schools until this hidden data was shared with the city. The City Mayor’s decision to reopen our schools without this vital evidence therefore only acted to help spread the coronavirus around our city. Nevertheless, since the pandemics Leicester peak on June 22 the infection rate across our city has been gradually declining – hence the government has now loosened some lockdown rules to allow the opening of pubs and, as of Tuesday (September 8), the reopening of gyms. But it remains the case that we still can’t meet people from outside our own households in our own backyards. Amazingly despite remaining in a local

251 lockdown, as of September 1 students have been returning to school to sit in packed classrooms and in most cases are being actively discouraged from wearing face coverings in classrooms. Yet we should be mindful that the infection rate in Leicester still remains high. As of September 2, Leicester presented 27 cases per 100,000 population even though the overall number of tests being undertaken has been reducing (see diagram below). Most critically infection rates continue to vary considerably across our city between different areas. In terms of Leicester’s 41 “Middle Layer Super Output Areas” (MSOA’s) – which are used to track various demographic trends in our city, whether it be rates of poverty or rates of infection – we know that in some areas there have been zero new cases in recent weeks while in others the infection rates remain extremely high. This is vital information that needs to be considered if we are to ensure that our city is to ever emerge from lockdown.

252

In this past week, in addition to encouraging the reopening of all Leicester’s schools, the City Council also published detailed demographic data on their website that showed exactly where infection rates remained very high. The data they released (covering the two week period up to August 28) revealed that the part of the city which still had the highest infection rate was in the Spinney Hill ward, or more precisely that part of it which is covered by MSOA Leicester 017 (shown below). This part of the city is not only one of the most deprived, but it is also one of the most densely populated and is well-known for housing the majority of our city’s notorious sweatshops.

This means that Leicester City Council knew exactly which parts of the city had the highest covid-infection rates and yet they did nothing to prevent the schools in these areas from opening, or at least making sure their students wore face coverings in the classrooms. To take two examples, the Council’s data show that MSOA Leicester 017 had an infection rate of 115 cases per 100,000 population! This huge number being comparable to the current infection rate in Spain and more than Bolton, an area of the country where schools remained completely closed to stop the spread of the virus! Another significant area in where infection rates remain high is West Knighton (MSOA Leicester 038), a comparatively wealthy area where most of the houses are semi- detached. In West Knighton the infection rate is 51 cases per 100,000 population.[1] So, given that the city had a good number of areas where infection rates remain extremely high you might have imagined that the Council would have advised schools in those areas to remain closed for the time being. But this was not the case. In the MSOA of the Spinney Hill ward, the area of our city with the highest rate of infection,

253 there lie two primary schools, Spinney Hill Primary School and Green Lane Infant School, [2] both of which opened for returning students on September 1. Spinney Hill Primary School presents a particularly worrying case as far as community safety is concerned as this school, which is already overcapacity, catering to the needs of 959 students, actually took the decision to fully reopen to all their year groups on September 1 — with all students being asked to arrive at the premises on the first day back at school within a 15 minute time slot! (either 8.30am or 8.45am). Such actions clearly make crowding and bottlenecks outside the school all but inevitable.[3] The principal of this primary school even managed to mangle official government guidance when she mistakenly wrote to parents to tell them that: “As it is hoped that all shielding for extremely critical vulnerable people will have ended, all staff and children will be expected back at school.” This wrong advice ignores the fact that shielding was, at the time, still in place until September 7, although this date has now been delayed and of course it should and must be extended for areas of the city where infection rates remain so high.

We should be clear that most of the blame for these serious shortcomings lies with the Tory government and our Labour City Mayor who both continue to play dangerous games with all our lives. That is why we must continue to demand a safety-first approach from our Labour City Council and City Mayor. If you are a school worker make sure you organise within your trade union to demand that your school closes unless

254 the Council can prove that it is safe to remain open. And if you are a parent, student, or just a concerned resident then contact the City Council and demand that they take the adequate actions to protect our city residents from this deadly pandemic. Also, if you haven’t done so already, join the local “Safety First” campaign that aims to unite parents and school workers in ensuring that our Council prioritises safety before all else.

NOTES [1] Charnwood had 33 cases in past 14 days which is approximately 16.5 cases in 7 days. The total population of the MSOA is 14,274, which means infection rate per 100,000 over seven days is 115. West Knighton had 9 cases in the past 14 days, so 4.5 cases in 7 days. The total population of this second MSOA is 8,792, so the infection rate is 51 per 100,000 population. [2] Green Lane Infant School which is part of the Attenborough Learning Trust whose board of trustees includes longstanding Tory activist Hanif Asmal who supervised a racist election campaign in Leicester East that targeted Claudia Webbe. [3] I say overfull because the school currently educates 959 students even though the listed recommended capacity of the building appears to be 689 students.

255

How Can We Avoid Another National Lockdown? A Socialist View September 7 Right from the beginning of this pandemic the issue of implementing social and economic lockdowns has remained a contentious issue; we have experience of this living in Leicester, a city that has been under near perpetual lockdown since March. In our case it was the Tories private sector blundering that hung our city out to dry, with the government escalating our predicament by then deploying a racially-charged narrative (with some success) that scapegoated Leicester’s most deprived residents, thereby shifting media headlines away from the government’s own gross ineptitude.

Lessons from Leicester But many lessons can be learned from Leicester’s plight and our ongoing struggles under lockdown. The first is that the privatised Covid-19 testing facilities have proved totally inadequate to the task at hand, with vital infection data withheld from local authorities, which made managing the pandemics spread effectively nigh on impossible. The ongoing debacle surrounding testing however grows more visible by the day, with billions now wasted on a corporate-run test and trace program. Proffered solutions for improving this dire situation have been plentiful, but the government prefers to ignore common sense in favour of further enhancing even more corporate plunder. The second lesson to learn from Leicester is that where workers have low-paid insecure contracts, which render them particularly vulnerable to exploitation, then individuals are more likely to attend work when ill or attend work even if their working conditions remain unsafe. This problem is intensified when key workers have no access to proper sick pay during periods of covid self-isolation. After all, no worker, especially key workers, should ever be forced to try to live-off statutory sick pay of just £96 a week. The third critical point is that people testing positive for Covid-19 should never be propelled into environments (like care homes) where they are likely to come into contact with the very people most likely to die. Likewise, it should have been clear from the start of the pandemic that there should have been regular testing of all health staff who were treating Covid-19 patients, and regular testing of all those caring for the elderly in all care settings – something which even now is not being properly done. And for individuals testing positive who cohabit with other individuals who are more likely to die from infection, be it age-related or because of their ethnicity or existing

256 medical conditions, then quarantine facilities should be provided so that infected individuals weren’t forced to endanger vulnerable members of their own household.

Under this government profit comes before people But the main thing to be learned is that lockdowns past, present and future would have been avoidable if those making the political decisions were motivated by a desire to protect their citizens not corporate profits. Instead, the Tories, having spent the past decade underfunding and privatising our already stretched health infrastructure – therefore rendering our country particularly vulnerable to a pandemic – are now pushing forward with more of the same, as seen by their latest decision to axe Public Health England. That is why the Tories are all but guaranteeing that the public will have to endure the pain of future lockdowns. This disregard for our lives makes it all the more urgent to push aside this hapless and ruthless government so we can implement the type of socialist planning that is guided by the direct democratic control of workers and local authorities who will then be able to act to protect society as a whole. One of the most outspoken critics of lockdowns from the start of the pandemic has been professor John Ioannidis, a respected statistician and medical epidemiologist based at Stanford University in the United States. Professor Ioannidis was however initially demonised in much of the mainstream media, primarily because he favoured a scientific response to the pandemic. He was especially maligned for publicly arguing that the threat posed by Covid-19 needn’t have required lockdowns if only governments around the world had prioritised the health needs of ordinary people. In an interview undertaken in early July, commenting on the US context professor Ioannidis explained:

“By February, we missed the window for nipping the novel coronavirus in the bud. Had we acted earlier, with aggressive testing, tracing, and isolating, like the South Koreans, the Taiwanese and the Singaporeans did, the virus wouldn’t have spread as wildly as it did. The biggest lesson from this pandemic is that the costs of delaying controlling the infection can be substantial. Act decisively in haste or repent at leisure.

“Once we missed the boat, the lockdown was inevitable. I say ‘inevitable’ grudgingly because I don’t think it should have reached that eventuality.”

Tories won’t protect the vulnerable This analysis of course applies as much to the pandemic approach taken in Britain, which, as has been said before, is defined by its commitment to delays and the Tories ongoing refusal to take the necessary actions to protect the vulnerable.

257

In a more recent debate on the social and economic impact of lockdowns (conducted on August 12), Professor Ioannidis again repeated his argument that other solutions to destructive lockdowns were available. He pointed out:

“Handwashing works, wearing masks in proper situations works, social distancing has some benefits in given settings, avoiding mass gatherings has a benefit, but as you say none of them is implemented one hundred per cent with perfection. But the very same thing applies to shut-downs, when we are saying shut-down or lock-down or complete lock-down, in fact a very large segment of society continues to work and be actually exposed to very high risk, and it is usually disadvantaged people. Essential workers are heroes who are working for us, they get exposed in high risk jobs and we can’t really live without them.” Amidst the perpetual promise that a vaccine for Covid-19 might be ready by the end of the year, Ioannidis responds to such false optimism saying:

“I believe that vaccines are one of the greatest achievements of humans, of science, but despite some promising results we are not going to have a vaccine in six weeks. We are not going to have one for wide distribution even in six months. We will be lucky if we have it within a year or within two years. So, what are we going to do? Are we going to go for shut-downs, for how long, as even a few weeks [of shut-downs] can be devastating? Doing [a national lockdown] again, I think will be more devastating than the first time. We just need to focus where we need to focus — it is unacceptable for example not to test all the personnel in nursing homes and all the people who are residents there. It is unacceptable not to test our health care workers in hospitals when we know that they can have devastating impacts through asymptomatic infections on people who are hospitalised and are at a very severe risk of having a severe outcome.” But the American government like the British one has chosen to ignore such sage advice and are refusing to use proactive testing to keep their populations safe. This ongoing failure will make future lockdowns all but inevitable.

Reckless This reckless approach to public health has been duplicated across the world by most capitalist governments who are pushing ahead with the reopening of schools without taking the most basic measures to ensure that such changes can be done safely. In the US, at the very least the government is advising that students wear face coverings, but not so in the UK, where the government and their advisors are downplaying the role that children may play in transmitting the coronavirus. Yet the science on this matter of transmission is still highly contested. Even the “Statement from the UK Chief Medical Officers on schools and childcare reopening” (August 23) highlights such confusion noting:

258

“There is reasonable, but not yet conclusive, evidence that primary school age children have a significantly lower rate of infection than adults (they are less likely to catch it).

“Evidence that older children and teenagers are at lower risk of catching COVID-19 is mixed. They are either less likely to catch COVID-19 than adults or have the same risk as adults.

“Transmission of COVID-19 to children in schools does occur. On current evidence it is probably not a common route of transmission. It may be lower in primary age children than secondary age children.” To be clear, very few people are arguing that schools should not reopen at all, but one can understand why people are scared about the reopening and have no trust in the government. Instead what most people want from our schools is some assurance that they are reopened in a way that minimises the death toll inflicted upon our communities. The workforce through their trade unions must be the ones to decide when a school is safe or not and this is what Socialist Alternative members have been putting forward in the National Education Union. The promotion of face coverings within schools seems to present an obvious short-term solution to limit the spread of the virus until we have clear scientific evidence regarding transmission rates between children and between children and adults. So while in the bigger scheme of things Ioannidis is of the belief that the threat posed by student transmission is low, contrary to the British government he still thinks that “the main issue we need to debate is to what extent kids could possibly infect vulnerable adults and therefore lead to a higher death load.” And on this score Ioannidis states that schools should reopen but only in a way that takes account of precautionary measures to prevent unnecessary deaths. He states:

“I recognize that we need to allow for the maybe five or 10 per cent of kids who have highly vulnerable individuals within their immediate environment. We should have some way that we can allow for a small proportion to join the class remotely. I think that we can be precise about that. The same applies also to the few kids who may be at high risk themselves.” This is entirely sensible and does not preclude the wearing of face coverings. And such life-affirming safety measures are far removed from Boris Johnson’s money-grabbing mind, and instead Johnson is threatening to fine parents if they deem it unsafe to allow their children to return to school. Until their latest partial U-turn the Tories were even making sure that face coverings were re-moved as students entered school. Bizarrely a mask-free zone in schools was even going to applied in lockdown-Leicester at the same time that those same students were not allowed to even meet up with a single friend in their backyard… even if they are wearing face coverings and remain 2m apart! Now the guidance for areas with high infection rates is simply that face coverings should be worn in communal areas but not in classrooms which is a little strange to

259 say the least; although unfortunately at the present time the main education trade unions are not pressing on this issue, and are simply saying that students and staff should be allowed to wear a mask if they want to. This illogical approach to public safety is of course duplicated in the way that Johnson and other capitalist politicians across the world continue to undermine public health services in their own countries – opposing exactly the type of investment in publicly run infrastructure that would make future lockdowns less likely. Thus, it is important to note that when Professor Ioannidis was asked what would need to happen to better prepare the US for any future new pandemic threat he explained:

“If we have a new pathogen, I think that we need to mobilise science as quickly as possible. We need to mobilise public health. To mobilise public health, we need to have public health. And unfortunately, public health has really not been given enough attention over the years. I think that we need to strengthen our public health institutions, they should be given priority. Our prioritisation in medicine so far over the years is to spend 20 percent (almost) of our GDP in this country trying to create medicines that are extremely expensive and are not really helping that many people. It is medicine that is not offering help to everyone, it leaves many people outside with no health care, with no access to minimum preventative and therapeutic options. So, we need to buttress public health, we should see more preparedness, we should see our hospitals really be ready to deal with it.”

The need for socialism Spending on public health now not later is going to be the main way that governments can protect their populations. And although the health situation is not as bad in the UK, the same basic profiteering principles apply. In the UK we see NHS and care workers campaigning for a 15% pay rise being openly ignored by the government, while more and more of our health services are being turned over to the same profiteers who are bungling the pandemic response. This has to end now. That is why political groups like Socialist Alternative (of which I am a member) campaigns for a socialist health system where in which there would be the nationalisation of all health services, kicking out the private companies and bringing all staff in house. Only a system based on public ownership and democratic control of key sectors of the economy will we be able to guarantee decent healthcare for all. This will enable us all to work collectively to create a society able to protect life in the midst of this pandemic and any future ones.

260

Students Get Infected By, and Transmit, Covid-19 September 8 If we had a government in this country that cared about ordinary people, then we could have avoided the first national lockdown and we could have avoided the now looming second national lockdown. But instead we have a government of heroically incompetent liars, and once again it will be ordinary people who pay the price for the Tories mishandling of this crisis. For the past month, the public been inundated with the lie that it is safe for students to return to school because there is limited evidence that they transmit the virus. This lie was always contradicted by the government’s own evidence, but small matters like evidence never stopped the Tories from forcing the rapid reopening of schools. On Sunday Matt Hancock had the nerve to start blaming young people for spreading the coronavirus in our communities. He is now “concerned” about a rise in cases among “predominantly among young people,” and said to them “don’t pass the disease on to your grandparents if you’re a young person”. This of course is a real worry, but one that, until now, the government have ignored. The following day the government then updated their official guidance for schools. To quote the part relating to youth transmission the government report states:

“In relation to working in schools, whilst it is not possible to ensure a totally risk-free environment, the Office of National Statistics’ analysis on coronavirus (COVID-19) related deaths linked to occupations suggests that staff in educational settings tend not to be at any greater risk from the disease than many other occupations. There is no evidence that children transmit the disease any more than adults.” Here there are two things to highlight. Firstly, this represents the government’s only reference to student transmission rates in their document and the best they can say is that the evidence states that students don’t transmit it more than adults. This means that the evidence they have is that students are likely transmitting the virus at least as much as adults. The key difference though is that adults don’t have to sit shoulder-to- shoulder in packed rooms all day long without access to any PPE. The second point to pick out from the latest government nonsense is that “staff in educational settings tend” are not at greater risk from infection. But significantly the study they refer to examined “deaths registered between 9 March and 25 May 2020”: that is, they counted deaths during a period when most educational facilities were closed or nearly completely emptied of students!

261

Making matters worse in the two weeks running up to August 30, the data from Public Health England is clear that 10-19 year olds happened to be the age range that had the third highest number of positive cases. Only 20-29 and 30-39 year olds had more cases.

Thus, the evidence presented shows that students not only transmit the virus as much as adults, but they also exhibit higher rates of infection than most other age categories! From this the government have assumed that we can open our schools safely and that they can refuse to give any extra money to our already underfunded schools to help them take the necessary actions to ensure they open safely. As the government happily explain:

“We are expecting schools to welcome all children back this autumn. …There are no plans at present to reimburse additional costs incurred as part of that process.”

NOTES When schools reopened in Leicester and Leicestershire last month Boris Johnson visited a packed classroom (on August 26) at Castle Rock School and told students that “statistically speaking your chances of suffering from [Covid-19] are very very low”… he repeated time after time that “schools are safe”. Low and behold a just a few days ago a teacher tested positive for Covid-19. For more on this see “Staff member at Coalville school visited by Boris Johnson tests positive for coronavirus,” Leicester Mercury, September 7, 2020.

262

“Leicester’s top education boss” Mangles the Truth Again on the Dangers Posed by Covid-19 to our City September 9 Earlier this week I asked “Leicester’s top education boss” Martin Samuels if he thought it was safe to fully reopen schools in parts of our city where the rate of infections was as high as 115 cases per 100,000 population. Samuels, top-boss that he is, simply ignored my question. Now in today’s Leicester Mercury (September 9) Samuels was quoted at tedious length regarding his joy that lockdown-Leicester was able to get “57,000 students back into the classroom for the new term.” He said:

“We are talking about 57,000 school-age age young people across the city and if you do a simple calculation with a certain rate of people per 100,000 with the virus and by definition you would expect there to be a number of cases among school age children.” But unlike Samuels I believe that there are few reasons to be excited about packing students pack into our city’s schools while infection rates remain so high. On this point, in another article in today’s Mercury we find out that:

“Leicester’s seven-day coronavirus infection rate has almost doubled in the last week. The rate, which was dropping steadily, increased in the latest figures for the seven days up until September 5 to 42.8 cases per 100,000 people. In the week before, which ran up to August 28, the rate was 23.6 cases per 100,000 people.” So, if we do the calculation that Samuels believes will make us feel safer we find that in the last week which we have data approximately 24 students in Leicester would be infected with Covid-19 (up from 12 the week before). If we assume those students were each attending different schools in Leicester, then Samuels has (with the support of the Council) just sent back infected students to around ten per cent of Leicester’s schools. Of course in most cases students show no outward symptoms of infection — even though they may be spreading the virus — which explains why Samuels is only “aware of one positive case” among students in our city. Having learnt nothing from the science of the pandemic Samuels, attempting to reassure the public that schools are safe, goes on to distort the truth when he says “we know school age children are much less likely to test positive” for Covid-19. Like most mistruths this statement is partly true because testing is only being done on individuals who show symptoms. This means even if a student lives with an adult who tests positive for Covid-19 then the student will not get tested unless they present symptoms (which they tend not to do). But even knowing this, the latest national data

263 from Public Health England has just revealed that students aged between 10 and 19 actually have a very high rate of infection compared to other age groups (see the diagram below).

As a school worker myself I want schools to be open for our city’s thousands of students, but only when it is safe to do so. And it seems to me (and many others) that there is little reason to believe that sufficient precautions are currently being taken to ensure that Leicester’s schools can open safety. To take just one of many concerning examples, yesterday the Leicester Mercury reported that “People in Leicester trying to book coronavirus tests online are being met with a message saying that the service is currently unavailable.” Surely the government and Council should ensure that basic things like testing are possible before rushing to open our city’s schools, especially given the concerning upturn in our city’s infection rate!

264

Rising Coronavirus Infection Rates Across Leicester September 10 Sadly, the latest news about the pandemics spread in Leicester is not good. For the past couple of weeks’ infection rates have been slowly increasing, reversing the previous healthy trend that had seen our city exhibit ever-declining rates of infection from Leicester’s deadly peak on June 22. Based on the most recent data, which was collected between August 31 and September 6, the area of the city with the highest rate of infection was Latimer North which had an extremely troubling rate of infection that was equivalent to 190 cases per 100,000 people. This area was closely followed by Humberstone, St Saviours, Stoneygate, Rowley Fields, and Evington — all areas of the city displaying a rate of infection that was in excess of 108 cases per 100,000 people.

Source: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=47574f7a6e454dc6a42c5f691 2ed7076

But instead of drawing attention to the rising rates of infection in some of the poorest parts of our city our Labour City Mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, continues to moan about Leicester being treated differently to the rest of the country. In today’s Leicester Mercury (September 10) Soulsby states:

“Our figures are now not alarmingly high in comparison to some other places in the country and making the case for keeping a set of Leicester restrictions that are different to elsewhere is increasingly difficult. It is confusing and it is frustrating.”

265

In the past, like last month, there might have been a good case for moaning and lifting the unfair restrictions imposed upon Leicester, but with infection rates now rising this seems like a pretty bad time to be repeating this argument. One apparent reason for Soulsby’s evident confusion is that he hasn’t kept up with the latest news regarding infection rate across our city, whether that be in Rowley Fields in the west or Evington in the east. This deep confusion was starkly illustrated in a tweet that he made two days ago in which Soulsby said:

“Pleased that gyms and sports facilities can finally open. But puzzled why people can’t meet in gardens. Case numbers continue to fall so this doesn’t make sense. I will continue to push for answers.” (September 8) Of course, case numbers are no longer falling in Leicester, so there is no reason to be pleased that gyms can now open, let alone our schools. We must demand more from the so-called representatives of the left, and in the future that will involve fighting to replace such misleaders with actual socialists who will fight tooth-and-nail to protect the lives of the people of Leicester.

266

How Testing for Covid-19 Can Be Made to Work September 12 The promotion of mass testing as currently proposed by the Tories is endangering us all. This is not just a personal opinion but also the view of longstanding health campaigner Professor Allyson Pollock, a member of Independent SAGE and author of the excellent book NHS Plc: The Privatisation of Our Health Care (Verso, 2005). Pollock correctly warns us that without the determined intervention of public health campaigners, testing regimes are likely to continue to be “chaotic, wasteful, ineffective, and harmful.” Throughout the pandemic Pollock, other health professionals, socialists, and trade unionists have all offered many sensible proposals for responding to this pandemic, but as we know all too well the Tories have never been keen on listening to ordinary people. We need to be clear that although the rate of detection of Covid-19 cases is increasing by the day, infection rates are not yet at a scale comparable to the figures seen in March when only a limited amount of testing was taking place. However, with a gradual and worrying increase in positivity rates (that is, detected infections considered in relation to the number of tests carried out), it seems very likely that a second serious wave of infections is on the way. This situation could have been avoided if it wasn’t for the reckless way in which schools were opened in England at exactly the same time as businesses. One health expert that Professor Pollock often refers to is Professor Carl Heneghan, the Director of Oxford University’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine. Like many critics of the government, Heneghan’s arguments are also popular among more conservative media outlets who like to make-believe that the threat posed by the pandemic is over, but this does not mean they are not of value. In mid-July, Professor Heneghan penned an important article for The Spectator (“How many Covid diagnoses are false positives?”) which demonstrated the troubling limitations of the current testing regime which was most evident when prevalence of Covid-19 in the community was low (as it was at that time). Hence, he demanded that the government needed a better understanding of the accuracy of the testing process so they could correct for its serious weaknesses. As he wrote:

“The thinking goes: turn up, have your test, and if positive, you must have the disease. But that’s far from the truth. When virus levels in the population are very low, the chances of a test accurately detecting Covid-19 could be even less than 50 per cent – for reasons that are not widely understood.”

267

The predictable consequence of the ongoing misinterpretation of infection rates – particularly during periods of generally low prevalence — is that local lockdowns are too easily imposed on those areas of the country which already suffer from higher rates of deprivation. This point was well-made by Heneghan in an opinion-piece that he published a few weeks ago in the Guardian (“Local lockdowns based on arbitrary figures are punishing England’s poorest”). Professor Pollock also highlighted similar concerns about testing earlier this month when she tweeted:

“Worried about mass testing? Local Lockdowns, self isolation and quarantine decisions are made on the back of positive PCR tests. Tests do not distinguish between those who are infectious and those with recent but past infection.” (Tweet, September 3) In fact, Pollock had already raised these issues in an editorial she had co-authored in the British Medical Journal titled “Covid-19 mass testing programmes” (August 20). In this piece she succinctly explained:

“Cases are currently defined as someone in whom polymerase chain reaction testing detects viral RNA, whether active or not. This, and open access testing for anyone who self-refers, mean that ‘cases’ inevitably include people with past infections and those with active infection who are identified too late to make much difference to onward transmission.” On the same day a public health physician named Dr Peter English then responded to this article, making a series of important points. He pointed out that the widely used PCR tests are…

“… only as good as the sample; and in the real world, roughly 30% of samples from people who are ill with Covid-19 give (false-) negative results (test sensitivity is about 70%). It will be much lower in people who are asymptomatic sensitivity; and the tests will not detect people in the pre-infectious stage of their incubation period. It is, therefore, unwise to rely on a test to ‘rule out’ infection; and tests will miss a significant proportion of people who subsequently become infectious if used eg to screen returning travellers.” In (fairly) simple terms he then added:

“PCR tests work by repeatedly doubling the amount of genetic material in the original sample, until there is a detectable quantity of it. Each doubling is referred to as a ‘cycle’; and the number of cycles or doublings before there is a detectable quantity of genetic material is called the ‘cycle threshold’ (CT or Ct). The larger the amount of viral RNA there is in the sample, the smaller the number of cycles that are required before it can be detected. And since the number of cycles is the CT value, the lower the CT value, the more virus there was in the original sample, and the more likely it is thought to be that the case was actually infectious, rather than still carrying leftover RNA, which is not clinically significant.

“Sadly, not all forms of PCR testing provide a measurable cycle threshold; and the privatised labs used for ‘pillar 2’ testing in England cannot or will not routinely share CT

268

values, making it much harder to assess the likelihood that an positive result represents infection is a repeat infection.” He then concluded that knowing the limitations of PCR testing is essential to prevent unnecessary recommendations being made for self-isolation. More information was thus needed so that health professionals could know when they “can dismiss ‘positive’ results as being due to leftover RNA, rather than current infection.” This is vital additional information that is still not being collected. More recently in another article published in the British Medical Journal as “Covid-19: the problems with case counting” (September 3) another science writer focused on this same problem noting that a single positive PCR test alone does not “necessarily equate to someone being infected or infectious.” In making this point the author quoted Professor Heneghan as saying:

“If you go into a community population you are going to pick up more SARS-CoV-2 RNA for which you don’t understand the importance of what that means, particularly if you don’t interpret it in the context of symptoms or viral load. Many of these people might have had an active infection some weeks ago and are still carrying the RNA in their nasal swabs: it might not actually be live virus that you are picking up.”[1] Tragically in the real world these warning are still being ignored. And with the bulk of most testing still being undertaken by the private sector in the community (as pillar 2 testing), only single swabs are being analysed to test for infection rates. However, unbeknownst to most people – including it seems to the staff at testing centres – on September 7 the government released a report compiled by Public Health England that (informed by Heneghan’s research) making very clear recommendations that single swabs are not adequate to confirm a positive infection. This as yet little-known report which was published as “Assurance of SARS-CoV-2 RNA positive results during periods of low prevalence” and it provided a useful diagram (reproduced below) which illustrated how:

“Positive results at the limit of detection can be seen in the early stages of infection (before the person becomes capable of transmission of the infection) or late in infection when the risk of transmission is low or very low (periods indicated by the dotted red line).

“Positive test results at the limit of detection that occur early in the cycle of infection are important as these represent individuals who may go on to transmit infection. Positive test results at the limit of detection that occur late in the cycle of infection represent individuals with a low or very low risk of transmission, as a result of the decline in infectious virus production or remnants of viral RNA in respiratory secretions.”

269

The Public Health England report in question then goes on to make a number of critical recommendations that must be acted upon by the government and their privatised testing centres. The report thus advised that when a positive test comes back through community testing which is determined to lie at one of the two ends of the limits of detection, then before the person is asked to self-isolate they should be asked to provide another swab test, and only if that repeat test then shows an increased viral load should they self-isolate. The actual recommendation in the PHE report states: “A positive result at the limit of detection from the repeat sample is suggestive of the late stage cycle of infection and therefore contact tracing and further self isolation is not advised.” The Tories, of course, seem to be ignoring this critical advice and evidently have other priorities on they mind, not least the threatened roll-out of “Operation Moonshot” – their testing plan which will see them transfer £100 billion to the same private sector vultures who have already proven their own ineptitude in handling testing. That is why it is critical why we continue to raise the following demands that aim to bring an end to such dangerous pandemic profiteering:

• Democratic workers control over health decisions taken at both a governmental level and at a local level

270

• An end to the testing chaos. As a first step we demand that PCR tests are evaluated in line with the latest guidance from Public Health England. • A functioning test and trace program, properly funded and overseen by local public health authorities with the democratic involvement of the trade union movement • An end to the private sector profiteering from this pandemic. This will involve widespread nationalisations and increased funding of all public health bodies. • Full sick pay for all workers who have to self-isolate for any period of time during this pandemic. • Construction of emergency quarantine facilities to allow workers to self-isolate safely without endangering other members of their household. This should involve the expropriation and upgrading of appropriate buildings from the private sector.

NOTE [1] On September 5 the BBC published a rare article (written clearly) that drew attention to these serious problems, see Rachel Schraer, “Coronavirus: Tests ‘could be picking up dead virus’.”

271

Unison Schools Safety Motion September 16

At the monthly meeting of the Leicester City UNISON branch (September 16), I proposed the following motion which called upon our branch to support a local schools’ safety campaign that is already being supported by the local branch of the National Education Union (NEU). Unfortunately the motion I proposed (see below) received no support from anyone else on our branch committee and so it fell. I will however continue to do what I can to support the work of the “Safety First” campaign in a personal capacity and through my role as the Assistant Secretary of the Trades Council.

Schools Safety Motion Leicester City UNISON branch acknowledges the following points: UNISON has always been clear that we want to see a full return to schools as soon as possible, but the safety of staff, pupils, parents and our communities must come first. In July the government issued its guidance for schools on planning for a full return of pupils in England at the beginning of the autumn term. We believe the guidance falls short. Nationally our union has told the government that test and trace must improve; that vulnerable pupils should be a priority; that we need more cleaners; that teaching assistants mustn’t become substitute teachers; that high risk staff need to be safe; and that schools need more funding. To protect pupils, staff, parents and the wider community – and to help avoid more local or national lockdowns – the government must put its money where its mouth is and fund proper school cleaning. UNISON therefore continues to call upon school employers to require contractors to pay full sick pay and the real Living Wage as a minimum as part of our Clean Schools, Safer Schools campaign. This is so financial barriers are removed to enable outsourced staff to self-isolate in cases of local COVID outbreaks. On May 8, UNISON backed the National Education Union’s (NEU) “five tests” that aimed to ensure the safe reopening of schools. The principles and tests include:

• Safety and welfare of pupils and staff as the paramount principle

• No increase in pupil numbers until full rollout of a national test and trace scheme

• A national Covid-19 education taskforce with government, unions and education stakeholders to agree statutory guidance for safe reopening of schools

• Consideration of the specific needs of vulnerable students and families facing economic disadvantage

272

• Additional resources for enhanced school cleaning, PPE and risk assessments

• Local autonomy to close schools where testing indicates clusters of new covid- 19 cases We note that on July 1 the Leicester District branch of the NEU held a meeting (of 65 members) which passed a motion which called on Leicester NEU to organise “a joint union and parent Covid defence campaign to support workers defending their rights to a safe workplace. The NEU to coordinate with the Safety First parents’, carers’ and students’ group, and other unions.” This led to UNISON City Branch sending a delegate to a subsequent online public meeting held on July 11 which discussed how trade unions could support a local NEU-backed campaign called “Safety First: Parents, Carers, School Staff and Students together – Leicestershire.” The Safety First campaign describe themselves like this:

“We are a campaign group fighting against the premature re-opening of schools who stand in solidarity with all workers fighting for safety at work. As parents we should support any teachers who don’t want to risk going to work and potentially spreading or becoming ill due to Covid-19. Whilst it isn’t easy homeschooling a teenager, the safety of all our children, and the teachers and other staff, must come first.

“Join us to fight for safety, for the NEU five tests being passed before children go back to school, and for the prioritisation of children and workers’ health before the economy!” https://www.facebook.com/groups/schoolsafetyfirstleics Leicester City UNISON Branch resolves to: 1. Help support the Safety First campaign which acts as a joint union and parent campaign to support workers defending their rights to a safe workplace. 2. Work alongside the NEU to coordinate with the Safety First, Parents, Carers and Students group and other unions. 3. Elect a delegate to serve on the steering committee of the Safety First campaign.

273

Rising Covid-19 Deaths in England: Some Context September 20 We can be sure of two things: infection rates have now started to rise again, and the Tories are unwilling to protect us from this pandemic. Compared to the Tories ongoing bluster, a recent editorial in the British Medical Journal (September 17) titled “Rising numbers of positive covid-19 tests in the UK” puts the matter of infection incidence into perspective. The article observes how infection incidence in England (based on modelling data) peaked on 23 March at around 352,000. Later estimates were subsequently derived from community-based surveys that were carried out by the Office for National Statistics. These surveys estimated that on any given day in early May just short of 40,000 people had covid-19 which by late June/early July dropped to a low of approximately 14,000. Since July the infection incidence has fluctuated somewhat but has remained at a fairly low level going up to 36,000 at the end of July and then back down to 25,000 in early August; but by early September the estimated rate of infection had increased to just short of 40,000. This led the BMJ editorial to conclude “the rising numbers of positive test results are a real cause for concern”. Lending further weight to this concern just a week later the estimated incidence rate had increased by another 20,000 to approximately 59,800 people. In terms of understanding the scale of the problem facing our country two commentators who have made particularly useful public interventions, although not without serious problems, are Professor Carl Heneghan and Dr Tom Jefferson – it is perhaps a symptom of their flaws that they have chosen to make their most publicised statements within the pages of Britain’s leading conservative magazine, The Spectator. On September 13 the two evidence-based scientists published an article in The Spectator titled “Boris Johnson needs to bin the rule of six” which pointed out that since April “the PM has made one cautious, catastrophic error after another.” They added that the government, evidently unwilling to accept any liability for their own gross incompetence, “has decided to blame young people for the latest restrictions, having spent August asking them to revive the economy.” Heneghan and Jefferson were scathing about the so-called “rule of six” arguing that…

“Intervening with restrictive measures at the first sign of an upturn in cases means we are in for a long hard winter. The government’s modelling predicts catastrophe. Yet this is

274

wide of the mark. Cases will rise, as they will in winter for all acute respiratory pathogens, but this will not necessarily translate into excess deaths.” In attempting to provide some context for current infection rates, and their belief that covid-19 death rates might not be as catastrophic as predicted, they explained how:

“Admissions for Covid, critical care bed occupancies and deaths are now at an all-time low. There are currently 600 patients in hospital with Covid compared to over 17,000 at the height of the epidemic. An average of ten patients a day die with Covid registered on their death certificate, compared to over 1,000 at the peak.” Yet the timing for making such an argument was particularly unfortunate because at around the time their article had been published the spread of covid-19 had just started rising. Thus, the all-time low of covid-19 hospital patients had actually occurred on September 2 (with 425 patients), which had gradually increased to 600 (on September 11 – the date that Heneghan and Jefferson had submitted their article for publication), and then patient numbers continued to increase by the day, to 1,048 patients (on September 19). This is obviously a long way off from the peak of 17,047 patients (on April 4), but is also not far from the 1,541 patients registered on March 20 – that is, just prior to the implementation of the first lockdown. Yet the critical difference between now and the days before the first lockdown is that the number of daily deaths currently remains fairly low (discussed below). With regards deaths, on March 20 there were 102 covid-19 deaths – a death rate that at the time was increasing exponentially, such that one week later there were 374 deaths (on March 27). Compare this to the average daily deaths in the week running up to September 11 which was just 10 people, which has still barely increased. (In the week running up to September 17, the average was 12 daily deaths — September 17 being the latest date for which there is data on daily deaths.) In their Spectator article Heneghan and Jefferson are way off base when they conclude that “Most important of all, life should return to as close as possible to normality.” This is because a return to normality would simply mean that the poorest in society (the working-class) will continue to pay the cost of this pandemic with their own lives and the lives of their loved ones. This argument also plays into the covid denying hands of the far right. Certainly, there can be no return to a normality if it means that millions of workers continue to be employed on insecure contracts with no access to sick pay, as these are exactly the conditions which mean that covid-19 will spread within poor communities. Heneghan and Jefferson are on the other hand spot on in forcefully arguing that the government’s “overly simplistic testing approach has… resulted in large numbers of people being incorrectly labelled as a threat to public health.” (In a previous post I discussed their arguments, see “How testing for covid-19 can be made to work.”) And

275 the two scientists correctly add that “We must ensure that we have adequate supplies of PPE equipment and our frontline staff are supported physically and mentally.” Now some seven months into the pandemic the government have been forced to acknowledge that workers living in poverty don’t have the financial means to be able to self-isolate for two weeks. This represents a self-explanatory argument that has been made by socialists since the start of the pandemic. This latest U-turn on the part of the government means that they are now promising Britain’s poorest 4 million workers the ability to claim a one-off payment of £500. But not only is this payment still too low, the government say their scheme to ensure this is paid to workers will only be “in place by 12 October” (with back payments available from September 28 onwards). So, assuming the government get this scheme running on time – which is by no means assured — the question still remains with death rates rising how are low-paid workers going to pay their bills over the coming month which looks likely to be a critical month in terms of limiting the deaths caused by covid-19?

276

277