Britain: The Covid pandemic five years on

On March 23, 2020, Britain’s first lockdown in response to the global Covid pandemic began. By the end of the year, death figures in Britain were the worst in Europe. By the end of the final lockdown in 2021, over 7 million had died globally and Britain had passed through an unprecedented period of political, economic and social convulsions. Boris Johnson and the Tories would pay the price.

Undoubtedly, a key factor in the crushing defeat of the Tories in the 2024 general election was a verdict on its Covid failings. Five years on, looking back at the huge historic events, what are the lessons of the Covid pandemic for the new period of struggle that lies ahead?

News of the pandemic began to surface from Wuhan in China at the end of 2019. Europe faced its first outbreak by January, in Italy. Cases appeared not long after in Britain. All governments, political parties and the workers’ movement were confronted with the sharp question of what to do to protect life and manage the economic and social consequences of the pandemic.

Workers faced the immediate danger from the Covid virus, health workers faced a mass influx of patients into the NHS already devastated by a decade of austerity. Thousands of students were trapped on campuses. Enormous uncertainty grew about the economic impact of the pandemic and lockdowns.

From day one, the Socialist Party argued for an independent response from the working class and its mass organisations, the trade unions. For us there was no common interest with the bosses and their capitalist politicians who had carried out a decade of cuts to jobs, pay and funding for public services in response to the financial crisis of 2007-08. The working class could have no trust in Boris Johnson and the Tories.

The Socialist Party published its Workers’ Charter in the first weeks of Covid lockdown, outlining socialist measures to save lives and maintain the fabric of day-to-day life.

Writing in advance of the first Covid lockdown, 4 March 2020, the Socialist made the case that “nationalisation of big corporations, including the pharmaceutical industry; democratic planning by the working class, and international cooperation – in a word, socialism – could prevent new diseases like Covid-19 becoming disasters.”

We developed a programme of demands including emergency funding for services and safety measures, for nationalisation of big pharma and investment in vaccine production, for full pay from day one for any worker unable to attend work, including for benefit claimants, and workers’ control of workplace safety including for the trade unions to organise coordinated national strike action if necessary. This was further developed and published in the workers’ charter (see ‘Coronavirus – a workers’ charter 2020’ at socialistparty.org.uk)

Sharp crisis

The capitalists in Britain and internationally faced a sharp crisis. How could governments keep the economy breathing to maintain the bosses’ profits, and limit the number of deaths for fear of social upheaval?

British capitalism was already in crisis, entering into the pandemic on the back of nine years of cruel austerity undermining public services, and the NHS in particular which faced a severe test. Politically, the capitalists had had to weather the political upheavals of the Scottish independence and Brexit referendums – the consequences including the unprecedented demise of two Tory prime ministers, David Cameron and Theresa May – as well as the mass enthusiasm, particularly from young people, for Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-austerity ideas in the leadership of the Labour Party. Entitled Etonian buffoon Johnson was tasked with defeating Corbyn, assisted by the treacherous Blairite right wing in Labour.

As prime minister, Johnson first argued for life to carry on as normal, for “herd immunity”, developing natural immunity, to triumph. In truth, he was reflecting his and the Tories’ class interests to defend the profits of the capitalists and keep the economy running. But the brutal reality of hundreds of deaths in care homes forced Johnson into a series of sharp U-turns and lockdowns.

What happened next was an unprecedented abandonment of neoliberal free market economics. Faced with the economic challenge of lockdown, who was going to pay the wages of workers who were kept at home? As big sections of the economy came to a halt, what would the consequences be and how would the government respond?

Undoubtedly, the capitalist class was fearful of the fury of the mass of the working class. Drawing on the lessons of past crises, they whipped up a mood of ‘national unity’, consciously drawing in the Labour Party and, unfortunately, trade unions too. In doing so they attempted to give all forces common responsibility for the measures that were taken, and to use the authority of the trade unions to gain support for their implementation. Ultimately, the steps taken by the capitalist class were done not with the primary objective to save lives but to save their system.

Recently elected Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer was keen to show his pro-capitalist credentials and break from Corbyn’s anti-austerity programme. Unfortunately the leaders of the trade unions also gave full support to the Tories’ emergency bill, rather than taking an independent stance in the interests of the working class by leading a struggle to ensure necessary measures for safety and income.

However, the following months would reveal the real class relations and balance of forces in the battle to tackle the Covid pandemic.

The leaders of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) had given reassuring consent to Johnson’s measures, calling for the government to “bring together a taskforce of unions and employers to help coordinate the national effort.” Other trade union leaders held back struggle, including then general secretary of the PCS civil service union, previously on the left, Mark Serwotka who ‘parked’ the union’s pay claim. But reality forced the best of the working class to fight back, literally for their lives.

The statistics show dramatically the dangers frontline workers faced, for example the higher incidence of deaths of BAME workers more likely to be frontline workers. Bus drivers and health workers were forced to take action, and pushed their leaders to reflect the issues at concern, especially the lack of PPE for health workers and insufficient protection with screens for bus drivers. Refuse, postal and construction workers staged walkouts demanding protection.

The war on Covid revealed the true nature of the battle fought out heroically by health, transport, education and shop workers who kept society running. Meanwhile the masters of industry sat at home as spectators. Even Johnson was forced to eat some humble pie and join weekly claps from the steps of Number 10, in recognition of the role of frontline key workers from the beginning of April. Such a cynical display was to be magnified ever larger when it was revealed that while workers died, the prime minister had partied.

The Covid measures the government was forced to implement reflected the real balance of forces in society. Through the furlough scheme, however inadequate, the government paid 80% of the wages of over 9 million workers. However insufficiently, it was compelled to try to organise aspects of society to meet social needs. Emergency hospitals were built. The homeless were housed. As the economy shrank by 35% from April to June, 2 million applied for Universal Credit, £400 billion was pledged by the government to prop up business, with the Bank of England reducing interest rates to historic lows. What did this demonstrate in practice? That planning, not the marvels of the free market, was required to meet social need – and that this is entirely possible.

However, in the hands of the capitalists, this became a free for all for government contracts to deliver PPE and other requirements. While many of these contracts failed to deliver, friends of the government pocketed the money, anger at the government grew and their failings revealed, as we argued at the time, that effective services could only be delivered by democratic planning through elected representatives of the working class in every aspect of society.

Workers’ response

Throughout, the Socialist Party fought for a workers’ response to the pandemic, putting forward a programme in the interests of the working class. From below, workers organised and fought for their safety and the effective delivery of services, especially in the NHS, education and transport. Where Socialist Party members had a presence we played a key role in advancing those struggles.

One of the most significant examples came as Johnson, under pressure from the capitalists to get the economy running, attempted to reopen schools. For schools, Covid was an unrelenting daily pressure to support children of key workers and others who came in, as well as supporting those who didn’t.

Unsurprisingly, when Johnson’s announcement was made in Winter 2020-21, there was real fear of the consequences. The National Education Union was pushed by its members to respond and an online meeting attracted over 400,000 participants. It was Socialist Party activists in the union who intervened with proposals to refuse to return under their contractual rights, using safety legislation. Such a view was carried, and Johnson’s assertion to reopen schools became another U-turn as the power of the working class bore down.

This was just one example of many where, with decisive leadership from the trade unions, the working class could have pushed back harder to secure greater measures to protect lives, jobs and incomes. If a mass workers’ party had existed at this time, its role would have been critical in consolidating the radicalisation of the working class, and it could have grown massively during the pandemic, posing a way out of the capitalist crisis.

Despite all the restrictions society faced under the emergency powers of lockdown, class struggle continued. Not only in the shape of strikes against ‘fire and rehire’ by GMB gas workers and others, but also in social movements. School students forced another Tory U-turn on A-level exam grades. University students forced concessions through rent strikes on campuses. Significantly, the protests that followed a police officer’s rape and murder of Sarah Everard, and the huge Black Lives Matter protests that spread from the US following the police murder of George Floyd showed all the underlying anger at injustice, discrimination and inequality under capitalism.

It was the brutal self-interest of the capitalist class – represented in government by the Tory party with docile allies in the leadership of the Labour Party and the TUC – that bears the blame for Britain’s disastrous response to Covid. The pandemic exposed both the weaknesses of the capitalists and their political leaders. It also showed the enormous potential power of the working class to lead a movement not only for its immediate needs but to challenge the system and pose the question of a new socialist society where the huge resources of capitalism could be used to meet the needs of all.

‘The great accelerator’

Covid – ‘the great accelerator’ –  revealed many of the real features of class society, hidden during times of relative social peace. The end gave way to brief relief. Then a new economic crisis developed as the world returned to normal, inflation rose sharply and provoked the biggest strike wave in Britain for thirty years. The frequent chorus on every picket line was, “they clapped us under Covid now we want our pay back!” All the underlying economic, political and social crises had been magnified and accelerated by Covid. Reflecting that, the deepening political crisis in the Tory party saw Truss rapidly replaced by Sunak, who took the Tories to their worst defeat in their 300-year history.

The struggles through the Covid crisis demonstrated how the working class can be compelled to struggle, even when the leaders of their mass organisations do not offer a lead. They also showed the important role of a socialist organisation with our own consistent analysis and programme, developed through our weekly paper, branch meetings and leadership bodies. Socialist Party members were able to stand firm against ‘national unity’, and where possible organise in our workplaces and communities.

Following Johnson’s victory in 2019, we stated from day one, due to the continued economic crisis, his government would be one of crisis. No one could have predicted the Covid pandemic would follow – although scientists had warned that it was the single biggest threat to the state – but we were prepared that it would accelerate the capitalist crisis and open the door to the class struggle and political volatility.

The lessons of the Covid pandemic revealed the real class nature of every aspect of society and the need for the working class to organise itself independently; industrially, developing fighting, democratic trade unions; and also politically, to build new mass workers’ parties to defend its interests and build support for a socialist alternative to capitalism in Britain and internationally.

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