Covid-19, the press and the government

The British people have been seriously let down during the current pandemic by the dithering of the Government and its reluctance to take decisive action earlier. This indecisiveness will undoubtedly cost lives. And, whilst it may seem that this was more a consequence of the speed with which the crisis developed than any malignant intent on the part of the Tory Government, that is a very generous interpretation of events. 

The Government adopted, and continue to adopt a strategy, which runs counter to the best scientific advice. They have been supported in this cavalier attitude to your life by their own scientific advisers but mainly by a compliant press corps who still see their main function as providing cover for the inadequacies of the people they worked so hard to put into Government. 

Whether the real scandal is that people will die, including health workers, as a result of the Government failing to act appropriately. Or, that the British people have been kept in the dark about much of what is happening by a press corps, particularly the Westminster pack, who have resorted to lying for the Government in order to hide their inadequacies, depends on your perspective. 

The fact that most news organisations have continued to treat this public health crisis as a political rather than scientific story tells us much about the status of science in our society. 

At the time of writing (Fiday 27^th) the coronavirus has been responsible for 25,427 deaths worldwide, including 578 in the UK. The virus is active in virtually every country of the World, meaning that there is literally no hiding place. The largest number of deaths, so far, have been in Italy (8,215), Spain (4,934), China (3,292), Iran (2,378), and France (1,696). South Korea which was hit by the virus shortly after China, from where it emanated, has had 139 deaths. It is interesting that countries in Europe, Germany has also had 304 deaths to date, seem to be coping so badly with a pandemic they should have been prepared for.

As others have pointed out this is a failure of neo-liberal economics, and the policies of austerity imposed and supported by the World Bank, the European Community, and nowhere more enthusiastically than by the Tory Governments of the UK since 2010. Whether it is, as some have suggested, the end of neo-liberalism we have yet to see. Too many people, but particularly the Government and big business, just want this over with so they can get back to life as normal. Even those without a political interest in maintaining the status quo are talking of taking to the streets to party rather than demand a settlement that protects us from the next virus. 

At the moment Johnson and his government are enjoying something of a honeymoon period in terms of public support. Of course, people are criticising aspects of the ‘lockdown’, definitions of essential workers, and lack of financial support for some workers, but overall Johnson’s poll ratings remain high. He is not seen, by the general public, as responsible for the virus which, to be fair, would have presented a considerable challenge for any Prime Minister.

Whether this public support will be maintained as the death rate rises and the lockdown is potentially extended into and beyond the summer is still to be seen. Though the fact that he has tested positive for the virus will play well for him with the public, who rather than seeing him as having been reckless with both his own health and ours will see him as a heroic sufferer, a role that will be popularised through the normal channels.

One thing that Johnson and his henchmen can rely upon is that the press, particularly the Westminster lobby, will continue to provide him with cover. It really is incredible that so-called journalists some three months into a pandemic seem to have developed so little actual knowledge of either the disease or the way in which it is being dealt with elsewhere. 

I would have thought that it was the job of any self-respecting journalist to prepare for briefings. That might be expected to consist of rather more than having a coffee with a minister to get the inside track, and actually doing a little bit of independent reading. The public are certainly being let down in a major way by the politicians who are supposed to protect their interests but they are also being let down by a press corps who are failing in their duty to hold those politicians to account.

Now it might be said that given my antipathy to the Government and my previously expressed frustrations at the press, this is exactly what I might be expected to say. It is worth reminding ourselves how this crisis has developed and how Governments across Europe, but particularly the UK because that is where I live, have reacted. 

Let’s be clear this crisis has occurred relatively quickly, but nonetheless, it was first identified as a potential pandemic by the World Health Organisation, on January 10^th 2020. In other words, the UK Government have had over 3 months to prepare. Moreover, they have had access to both the gene sequence and the good practice provided by Chinese researchers since January 12^th. At that stage, the disease was clearly viewed as something happening overseas. In short, they did very little because they didn’t expect it to get here.

As the virus hit China domestic issues dominated

At a time when the Government could have been making preparations they were focused only on domestic issues. By February 15^th The WHO were calling on Governments everywhere to start preparing for what was coming. Our Government did nothing constructive at all. Indeed, Boris Johnson joked about the virus and refused to engage with the scientific evidence as it emerged. 

Allegedly, according to Politico website, during a conference call with 60 British manufacturers which took place on March 10^th, about securing more ventilators Johnson said that the task of building more desperately needed ventilators could be known as ‘operation last gasp’.  It’s not the funniest joke of all time and was stupid and insensitive, but it is typical of Johnson’s attitude to politics and life generally. It is easy to be flippant when virtually everything you have has been handed to you on a plate.

If by early March the Government was preparing to take fairly drastic action it had already wasted as Richard Horton, Editor of The Lancet, has pointed out the whole of February. On February 27^th The WHO issued a list of 9 questions for Governments. They included questions about dealing with the first case, having vital equipment (including ventilators), ensuring health workers had protective equipment and the training to use it, and the knowledge and capacity to deal with the number of cases that were likely to occur.  

It is now March 27^th, a complete month later, and the answers to some of those questions are still not known. That can only be described as a dereliction of duty. I am not saying that there was nothing happening in February at all, but it was not happening at Governmental level, where the policy can best be summed up as a state of denial. As Richard Horton writes in this week’s Lancet:

“February should have been used to expand coronavirus testing capacity, ensure the distribution of WHO-approved PPE, and establish training programmes and guidelines to protect NHS staff. They didn't take any of those actions. The result has been chaos and panic across the NHS. Patients will die unnecessarily. NHS staff will die unnecessarily. It is, indeed, as one health worker wrote last week, “a national scandal”. The gravity of that scandal has yet to be understood.”

Moreover, given this list of questions was publicly available it is absolutely incredible that Peston, Kuennsberg et al did not raise these questions at every opportunity, but then that would have meant lifing their heads out of the Westminster trough for long enough to actually act like journalists. Far easier to simply repeat whatever inane briefing was fed to them for the day.

As one minor example of how poor these “award winning” journalists are, when the UK Government committed its U-turn on March 16^th Laura Kuenssberg justified it on the main BBC News by saying that “the science had changed”. That was simply untrue. 

There had been no change at all in either the science or the advice coming from the WHO about what needed to be done. What had happened was that Imperial College had modelled the science and come up with a figure. 

The UK press dutifully report the changing science

Something that they could have done weeks before, and something, in fact, that may or may not turn out to be either an over or under-estimate of the actual death rate. For the BBC to keep repeating the lie that “the science has changed” is not just misleading it turns them into government propagandists not independent journalists capable of holding the government to account.

We now know that we do not have enough ventilators, that health workers lack the equipment they need, that we have woefully inadequate supplies of test kits, that we are likely to very quickly run out of critical care beds and that the information being given to the public has been confused and ambiguous. 

As for procedures to deal with an infectious disease, I have a unique insight into this. I was in hospital from February 11^th until March 18^th. Early in that time I found myself in a ward with a man who had flu. I saw first hand the lack of adequate procedures for dealing with flu, an infectious disease don’t forget, let alone Covid-19 for which there is currently no vaccine. 

It was clear that the hospital had no isolation room available (I was left in a ward with somebody with an infectious disease for three days), that the procedures changed from shift to shift largely dependent on how averse the nurse was to catching flu themselves. I knew that Covid-19 was on its way and raised the issue with a doctor that if they couldn’t cope with one patient with flu, how on earth were they going to cope with a major epidemic? I can’t say I received a very expansive answer and many of the health professionals clearly did not believe that the virus was coming their way. This, in part, was because there appeared to be no urgency at Governmental level and as Richard Horton notes no planning or training.

One of these men is elected, the other is running the
country

What the Government, and their advisers could have done was study very carefully what was happening elsewhere. This would have required members of the Johnson entourage, particularly the odious but highly influential Dominic Cummings to remove their heads from their own rectums for long enough to realise that ideological purity had no answers. That an Eton education alone does not give you all the answers. They needed to do something they remain reluctant to do and that is listen to people who actually know what they are talking about. Until March 15^th their policy was the unscientific and highly dangerous ‘herd immunity’ strategy which had been attempted in Italy. 

Italy’s death rate started to rise exponentially throughout February after a period in which they had failed to act decisively. Their first Covid-19 death was on February 21^st. At first they did very little, much like the UK authorities. A policy that was based more on hope than science. Moreover, a policy that was driven by keeping the Italian economy running not protecting the workers who are the backbone of that economy. After 10 days the death rate had risen to 52, after 17 days it was 463, reaching 1,441 on March 14^th. It continues to rise and at the time of writing it is 8,215. 

Italy should be of great interest to the UK because it is a country with roughly the same population. It is also close enough to us that it does not appear, like China say, a distant and strange place. People in this country go on holiday to Italy, many of us have Italian friends or neighbours, we have established sporting rivalries. Indeed, we have far more that binds us to Italy than divides us. Despite what some Brexiteers (remember that?) would have you believe. 

The Coronavirus is like a storm moving across continents. You can be sure it is coming your way and you can be sure it will reach you having already visited all your near neighbours. What you can’t be sure of is exactly when it will arrive. The UK was somewhat behind Italy. Given that it makes sense to start battoning down the hatches as soon as you hear about it. 

Our first Covid-19 death was on March 5^th. Nine days later Covid-19 had claimed 55 lives, and after 18 days that figure had risen to 465. Very similar to Italy. Indeed, uncannily like Italy. Today (Friday) the number of UK deaths stand at 578, having risen by 113 in 24 hours. This is much the same pattern as was seen in Italy, Spain and is also now happening in the USA. 

There is not a unique and clever way of combatting Covid-19. It is highly contagious regardless of where you are and how good you might think your health system is relevant to others. The advice to contain it has always been the same, no change of science, just good advice being ignored. 

Jenny Harris, spreading misinformation fir the government

Jenny Harries, one of the Government’s advisers and Deputy Chief Medical Officer, said on Thursday evening in relation to the WHO’s urging to ‘test, test, test’ that the UK was not the same as other countries. Her claim that “They are addressing every country, including low and middle income countries” seems absurd and it is also untrue. The claim is that the UK does not have the same public health systems as other countries. That is true, the majority of developed countries have better health systems than we do.

I have studied the World Health Organisation advice very carefully. They do not distinguish between countries based on wealth or income. Indeed, they have been urging a rigorous testing regime since February. To  claim that the WHO advice does not apply to the UK based on the spurious claim that our health system is better prepared is not only wrong it is dangerous. And, it shows how the scientists flanking the PM see, at least part of their role, as justifying the inactivity of the government rather than protecting the citizens of this country.

In terms of the claim that our health service is somehow better prepared than elsewhere it is worth noting that in common with most of Europe we have spent the past 10 years, possibly more, chipping away at the NHS. The goal has always been to privatise the profitable parts, hand the funding to insurance companies and to leave a charity sector to mop up the rest. 

That this policy of slash and burn has been enthusiastically adopted by the UK Government can be seen by how much we spend, relative to others on our system. If you use percentage of GDP the UK is 10^th among 32 countries in Europe. We invest 9.7% behind Switzerland (12.3%) or France (11.5%). Also behind Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Belgium. Who are we above? Italy (8.9%) and Spain (9%) both in the epicentre of the Covid crisis.

It is not just GDP which, to be fair, means nothing to most people, but more significantly the spending per head of population. Now unless you happen to believe that you are worth less than German, French or Irish citizens, or that healthcare is not worth spending on, you should feel angry at the way that successive governments have been allowed to get away with this.

In terms of per person spending the UK comes in a dismal 16^th out of 32 countries. The UK spends just €3,566 per person. This compares to €4,271 in Germany, €4,242 in Ireland or €3,847 in France. These figures are not accidents but part of a deliberate policy to reduce public spending of which in the UK the NHS takes £129 billion per year.

In January 2019 the National Audit Office (NAO) said that “Spending in [areas of the Department of Health’s budget aside from the NHS] could affect the NHS’s ability to deliver the priorities of the long-term plan, especially if funding for these areas reduces. It also said “There is a risk that the NHS will be unable to use the extra funding optimally because of staff shortages.”

In other words, even before this current crisis the NHS was facing staff shortages and reduced spending. My own recent stay in hospital was revealing. On most shifts it was obvious that there was a shortage of nursing staff. Very often staff were overwhelmed by the demands on them and often agency nurses who barely knew the ward or how to use some of the equipment were plugging the gaps. Given that the NHS is, by design, underfunded it is hardly surprising that they had not stockpiled masks, or sanitiser, let alone ventilators. Yet, since 2002 epidemiologists and virologists (again people who actually know what they are talking about) have been warning that a pandemic was imminent.

As the New York Times editorial put it on February 29^th:

“Back in 2002, when the SARS virus made its fateful leap from bats to civet cats to humans, global health experts warned that the ensuing outbreak was a harbinger of things to come: Climate change and globalization were conspiring with an array of other forces to make it much easier for old animal diseases to morph into new human ones. It was only a matter of time before one of those diseases proved truly catastrophic. The world could avert the worst consequences if it started planning.”

Yet SARS was contained and it was business as usual for those who dominate our political life. In the UK successive governments have obfuscated about the amount spent on the NHS. But, you don’t have to be involved with the NHS for long to realise that if it was indeed true that huge sums were being spent on the NHS that the money was neither going to staff (remember stories of nurses needing food banks?) nor frontline services.

One way in which extra monies were spent was by transferring them to large multinational (Tory donating) pharmaceutical companies. Another story from my own recent sojourn in hospital. When the flu outbreak occurred in my ward I was given Tamiflu a drug produced by Roche. Never having heard of this I looked it up to see whether I could trust it. 

I found out that Tamiflu had been bought in massive amounts by the NHS in preparation for a flu pandemic. A Cochrane Review, which is a review of all the studies on a drug or procedure, was carried out and published in 2014. The bottom line was that the £424 million spent on Tamiflu could have been saved since the drug was actually no more effective at stopping flu than over the counter paracetamol. 

The British Medical Journal reported recently that a regular contributor to the BMJ, Tom Jefferson was suing Roche for falsely claiming that Tamiflu could stop a pandemic. I did my bit to clear some of that stockpile by taking it for 10 days and although I never got flu, I was never going to. 

NHS Heroes are being let down by government

During this pandemic we have been quick to condemn ordinary people who have panicked, but those who are a real drain on our resources are not people taking 10 packs of toilet rolls but large multinationals who have too close a relationship with the architects of a system which seeks to both undermine and rip off our NHS. And, to come full circle, how do they get away with this? Journalists who should be scrutinising government, who should be providing us with international comparisons, who should ask questions of politicians have become merely mouthpieces for government repeating briefings as fact and, as we have seen lying to cover their mistakes.

In normal times, the too cosy relationship between broadcast and national print journalists and the Conservative Party is scandalous. Right now it is dangerous to all of us. There has been no proper analysis of what happened in a Italy because to do so would expose the Government to criticism that it is desperate to avoid.

According to Wired Magazine it was a failure to realise that the virus could be present in people who were not showing symptoms but were circulating freely that is the root of the current situation throughout Italy. “At the moment, it looks like the outbreak started in early January, so it had time to grow to a considerable size,” says Christian Althaus, a computational epidemiologist at the University of Bern.  And, what was happening here during February?

In other words, the Governments decision not to isolate and suppress the virus earlier allowed the virus the freedom to circulate among the healthy population and find its way to the most vulnerable. By the time, Italy instituted a lockdown, it was too late. The opportunity had been missed. Sadly, it looks as though the very same strategy was adopted by the UK government. We do not know yet whether the results will be the same, but the signs are ominous. And, the Government and the media must accept their share of the blame.

Covid-19 some stats

Please note I have now moved this information to a public Facebook page.
I update it daily. You can find it here:

https://www.facebook.com/dave.middleton.1232760/posts/584122958870050


On my Twitter feed I am producing a daily statistical digest. I am going to put it here in case people want a quick but accurate (based on official statistics) overview of what is currently happening particularly in the UK. I will, however, unlike most of the Britis media use other countries for comparison.

Statistical update 27th March 2020

This is an updated thread based on UK government stats. It is a summary of the current position. As of yesterday 578 people have died from the virus. That is a rise of 25% on the previous day. This is serious.

104,866 people have been tested. Of these, 88.8% are negative. However the percent of positive tests is increasing from 9.8% to 11.1%  a total of 11,658 people who have the virus. The death rate for those who test positive is currently 4.96% up slightly from the previous day.

It is now 21 days since the UK had its first death from the virus. On 27^th February the @WHO called for an extensive testing regime. So far 0.15% of the UK population have been tested. Germany has been testing 120,000 people a week since late February (https://www.npr.org/2020/03/25/820595489/why-germanys-coronavirus-death-rate-is-far-lower-than-in-other-countries) Yesterday the UK tested 7,847 people, so less than 56,000 a week.

Those test figures are increasing daily which is good but they show how far behind a country like Germany we are. Germany recorded its first death on March 9^th (just 4 days after the UK) and has had 281 deaths after 18 days. After the same number of days we had 422 deaths.

Public Health England is advising people to avoid self-testing as the kits on general sale are not believed to be accurate. 

The total number of deaths worldwide now stands at 24,117. The number of cases is 537,017 (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/)

Solidarity With Women

This Sunday (March 8^th) is International Women’s Day. Two weeks after is “Mothering Sunday”. Guess which one will have reams of newsprint devoted to it? Guess on which one at least one woman in your life (perhaps you) will receive flowers, chocolates, a meal out, or a card? 

According to the International Woman’s Day website the first celebration of women’s role was in 1908 when 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights. But it was probably 1917 that gave birth to the modern version of IWD, when Russian women began a strike for "bread and peace" in response to the death of over 2 million Russian soldiers in World War 1. This strike was the prelude to the February Revolution and took place on March 8^th (according to the Gregorian calendar. The Julian calendar used in Russia at the time made it February).

The UK version of “Mothering Sunday” has its origins not in political struggle but in the Christian Church. A large clue to its religious origins is that in the UK it falls on the fourth Sunday of Lent. It seems to have its origins in a tradition whereby  people returned to their home or 'mother' church once a year. Of course I’m not suggesting any readers of this blog ignore Mothering Sunday, I don’t want to be responsible for any family rows, but it is worth remembering that the event we all (or nearly all) celebrate is an establishment date now taken over by the confectionary and greeting card industries.

International Womens’ Day is an opportunity to reflect on the role of women, both within our movement, but within wider society. There is little doubt that whilst the position of women generally has improved in recent years, that women still face discrimination in so many areas. Outside of the UK the position of women in many societies continues to be inferior to the men who dominate their societies. But, in this post I want to talk mainly about women in the UK. I apologise for being parochial. Acknowledging that the struggle for women’s equality has some way to go is not a case of pointing the finger at men and saying “it’s all your fault”. Seeing women and men on opposite sides is, in my view, a mistake. Women’s struggles are men’s struggles and only through unity can they stand any chance of success.

In promoting womens’ equality the socialist movement has had both successes and setbacks. But, it is hardly a case of job done. At least not yet. 

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the average pay of women in full-time employment is still 8.9% lower than men. The average man can expect to receive £609 per week, whilst the average woman is getting £100 per week less. There is, however, good news for younger women (those under 40) where the gender pay gap has fallen to zero. Of course, many women under 40 will look at their take home pay, compare it to their male partners and conclude that the ONS doesn’t know what it is talking about.

Pay is, obviously, related to occupation. We all know, for example, that barristers earn more than solicitors, that doctors earn more than nurses and that all of those occupations earn more than the people who clean their workplaces. So the gender pay gap is not just about pay it is also, perhaps, crucially so, related to opportunity.

Let’s take a couple of examples. ONS allows you to compare the gender pay gap amongst different occupational groups. Among “legal professionals”, the average full-time pay for men is over £60,000 per year. For women, it is £46k, a whopping 21% difference. Among health professionals men “earn” on average £56k, whilst women struggle by on £52k. Among part-time cleaners and domestics women do tend to earn more than men. A mouth-watering (is there a sarcasm emoji) £8.57 per hour compared to men’s £8.50. But, even here when we look at full-time rates men earn £9.13 per hour compared to women’s £8.80. Reports that the gender pay gap has closed appear slightly premature it seems.

Of course, these averages are only a part of the picture, it is not just how much you get paid but what jobs you are getting paid to do. The House of Commons library produced a useful review in 2018. It’s findings show why women’s pay lags behind men’s. Women are more likely than men to be working part-time, and they are still overwhelmingly in sectors that are less well paid. 41% of women in employment were working part-time in 2018, compared to just 13% of men.

Often, women’s work is still a reflection of “traditional” ideas around women’s domestic and maternal role. Women and men still work in different sectors.  Actually I need to qualify that. There are few, if any, sectors of the economy that are not gender mixed. There are no longer jobs that women simply cannot do, or vice versa. But, and this is the point, women and men are disproportionately represented within different occupational sectors. Women are most likely to be found in health and social work (accounting for 21% of all jobs held by women at September 2018), the wholesale and retail trade (14%) and education (12%). Meanwhile, men are most likely to be in the wholesale and retail trade (14% of all jobs held by men), followed by manufacturing and construction (both 11%). There are still some areas where women hold only a small proportion of jobs. These include construction (14%), transportation and storage (23%) and manufacturing (25%).

If women want better pay and “access to all areas” then the best thing they can do is join a union, join with other union members (including men) and take on employers who think that women represent a cheap labour force. There is good news and bad news on this front. The bad news is that union membership has been on the decline. A TUC report from 2018 reports that union membership in the UK stood at 6.23 million workers, down from 13.5 million in 1979. This means that just 23% of workers are in a union, with only 13% of private sector workers unionised. 

Incidentally, the reason all the figures I am quoting are from 2018 is not because I was too lazy to look up the current ones, but because they are all based on official statistics compiled by the government. Unfortunately, the stats tend to have a time lag of two years meaning that figures for 2018 are actually the bang up-to-date figures. In most cases given the rate of pay rises and the slow movement in the economy nothing much is likely to have changed, unless things have got slightly worse.

The position of women as far as trade unions are concerned is rather mixed. Numerous articles in the popular press pointed out on the back of this report that “the average British trade unionist is a young, degree-educated, white woman working in the professions”. It’s not entirely clear from the articles whether the writers are happy with this development which is, in large part, a function of changes in the economy which have seen the destruction of traditionally male-dominated industries such as mining, steel and ship building. 

More female trade unionists and an end to some of the old sexist attitudes toward women workers is certainly to be welcomed. But, many of those sexist men were supporting families and the jobs which have replaced theirs, which may well be filled by their wives and daughters, pay less than the one’s they are replacing. And, this is supposing that there are any jobs at all. As the TUC point out:

“Once again women were more likely to be union members than men, with just over a quarter of all female employees now in a union compared to just over one fifth of their male counterparts. At the same time, the total number of women trade union members fell by 10,000.”

These statistics hide as much as they reveal. If women are losing jobs but are still a greater proportion of trade unionists, this means that unionised women’s jobs are disappearing although at a slightly slower rate than unionised men’s jobs. Most working class households rely on two wages just to survive. If either the woman or the man lose their income this can have devastating effects on the whole family. And, yes, I do realise that not all households are heterosexual, and that many people live on their own. The point is that in many households, particularly those containing children, two incomes are essential to keep the household ticking over. 

So, personally, I take no pleasure in seeing any worker losing their job. It is not an issue of whether that worker is a nice person or not, but when working class people lose their jobs (and their income) it is not just one person who is affected, but entire families. Indeed, that can also be the case for those who we (and they) regard as middle class. So, on International Womens Day 2020 I want to pay tribute to every woman in a trade union, and every man too. The socialism that I hold to does not see a distinction of female and male workers, but rather workers and bosses. That is the place where our struggles for a better future take place.

It is great that we have a woman as Head of the TUC and women trade union leaders such as Jo Grady the head of my old union UCU and Mary Bousted, the Joint head of the National Education Union, but as important as getting the top job may be, it is the work of grassroots members that is the bread and butter of Union life. People may never have heard of Shen Batmaz who has the date 4 September 2017 tattooed on her arm. “It was the best day of my life,” she explains. “It was the first day in my life that I felt I had power.”

This was the day she and her fellow McDonald’s workers first went on strike in what would become the start of widespread industrial action against McDonald’s, JD Wetherspoon and TGI Fridays in the fight for better working conditions, job security and living wages. Dubbed ‘McStrike’, the campaign has so far resulted in the biggest pay rise in 10 years for McDonald’s staff. Batmaz is now a union official with the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU), having spent two years at McDonald’s.

As Owen Jones reported in The Guardian, the strike which was international united low paid workers across continents. Most of the strikers were young and many were female. “Wetherspoons worker Katie Southworth, 22, speaks for many of Britain’s youth when she describes her impression of a union: “Old men sitting in a room debating issues that were out of date a generation ago.” When she saw young McDonald’s workers fighting for basic rights, it was an education: “They were under 30, we could relate to them.””

Of course, young people will emulate other young people. Just look at the climate strikes inspired by Greta Thunberg, but it is not just their youth that is inspiring but their vision of fairness and justice. That so many of this new generation of rebels are young women can give us hope for the future. That they perceived the unions as dominated by “old men” is hardly surprising. Just think about the media coverage of trade unions in the recent past and it can be boiled down to one man: Len McCluskey. And, he is usually reeled out to deny the latest allegations against Jeremy Corbyn.

Trade unions and trade union struggle has been presented to an entire generation as old fashioned and no longer necessary. It does not take long if you are on a picket line for a young worker to hustle past you. If you manage to talk to them at all they will tell you that as they are low paid they can’t afford union fees, or for that matter a pension. No amount of explaining will convince them that it is precisely because they are low paid that they need a union.

Women are not the worst culprits, if anything in recent times they have been keener on trade unions than men. But, this is simply following in a long tradition of women workers being prepared to take action to defend their jobs and their incomes. As Nicole Busby and Rebecca Zahn point out the first strike for equal pay was organised by 1,500 women card-setters in Yorkshire in 1832. We shouldn’t over-egg the story of women’s militancy because of a few well known examples, but women striking has always been a cause of concern for those who believe in women’s natural inferiority. “A commentator on a female mill workers’ strike in 1835 wrote that female militancy was ‘more menacing to established institutions even than the education of the lower orders.’” 

The idea that ‘a woman’s place is in the home’ was a convenient fiction for working class women for whom paid employment was about feeding a family not earning pin money. In recent times, some middle class “feminist” women, particularly academic feminists, have tended to see women as a homogenous whole universally oppressed by a patriarchal order which always places men’s concerns first. Whilst there is no doubt some truth in this claim the reality has always been slightly more complex than that analysis allows. If feminism has failed to take a hold in working class communities it is because those women do not necessarily see men as the enemy. Of course, male violence and sexual assault is a feature of working class life, as it is of middle class life, but the concentration on what divides women and men has always failed to resonate in communities that see employers, or government as the one’s doing the real damage.

Just to be clear here. Feminism has been an important social force, but as there is no one true socialism, there is also a considerable range of views which fall under the rubric of feminism. I have learned much from those at the socialist-feminism end of the scale. I am thinking of people like Hilary Wainwright and Sheila Rowbotham. So in ascribing to feminism a particular view I am aware that feminists come in all shades and sizes and on a sliding scale of where they place class struggle vis-à-vis patriarchy. My own take on this is that achieving equality for women is part of, but not subsumed by, a wider struggle which as a socialist I see rooted in working class struggle. Workers, regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexuality or other arbitrary characteristics win when they are united. Women have often been at the forefront of that struggle, but have been stronger working with men rather than seeing them as part of the problem.

At Grunwicks a strike led by Asian women, male trade unionists turned up, often in their thousands to lend their support. At Dagenham, whilst women were the leaders of the strike, men played a supporting role. Management tried to undermine their strike by smuggling their work out through back fences, which the women organised to prevent. The women’s action was helped by solidarity from their male colleagues. Dora, one of the strikers, said, “They had train loads (of work) coming in. But the men wouldn’t do it. Give ‘em their due. They did stand by us.” During the miners strike, whilst there were no female miners women formed Women Against Pit Closures and emerged as some of the most powerful grassroots speakers at the numerous support meetings held throughout the country. And, the McStrike movement is a movement of women and men acting in solidarity against unethical employers.

I am not saying that there are no instances where men are entirely insensitive to women or that on occasions issues that are seen as “women’s issues” are not actually caused by men. But, what I am arguing is that if you are a worker, or reliant upon a workers wage to live, your strength is not in your gender but your workmates. And, yes, you may work in a place dominated by women or men, but the job you do is almost certainly done by both. We have come a long way from the days of women throwing themselves under horses merely to get the vote. As Engels once remarked to Marx, and here I paraphrase, we now have a society in which women can both vote and be voted for. But, for all that progress, there are still battles to be won, we still live in a class based society. We may want to believe otherwise, but working class women still have far more in common with working class men than they do with upper class women. On International Womens Day I salute women everywhere who stand up for peace, justice, equality and social progress. I salute them not as women but as socialists and stand shoulder to shoulder with them in the fight for a better future for all of us.