This is the last article you can read this month
You can read more article this month
You can read more articles this month
Sorry your limit is up for this month
Reset on:
Please help support the Morning Star by subscribing here
BORIS JOHNSON has been accused of presiding over a “profits before public health” policy.
Communist Party general secretary Robert Griffiths told its political committee on Wednesday night that the Prime Minister had “caved in to business interests” over public health.
“With more than 900 new cases of Covid-19 still being reported in Britain every day, this week was not the time to announce a major relaxation of the lockdown measures in England,” he argued.
Mr Griffiths urged the Welsh and Scottish governments not to be “stampeded into following suit.”
He pointed to the recent upsurge in coronavirus infections in parts of Germany and Australia where anti-virus measures had been relaxed prematurely and urged workers and trade unions to be vigilant against a rushed return to work.
“It is essential for everyone’s safety that Covid-19 risk assessments are carried out with workers’ involvement in every workplace before work recommences,” Mr Griffiths insisted.
The CP political committee also warned that the Tory government might soon present workers and their families with a bill of up to £470 billion to pay for its package of business support measures.
“For the second time in a generation, we will be asked to pay for a massive bailout of British capitalism in tax rises, wage freezes and swingeing cuts in social benefits and public services,” Mr Griffiths declared.
Britain’s communists called upon the labour movement and campaigning bodies such as the People’s Assembly, CND and the National Assembly of Women to prepare for a mass campaign against a new bout of austerity.
The CP political committee also welcomed the upsurge in Black Lives Matter campaigning, advised compliance with social distancing rules and demanded that statues of supporters and beneficiaries of slavery and the slave trade be removed from places of honour across Britain.
“They should be relocated to where they can be used to help educate people about the real foundations of British capitalism and imperialism,” CP anti-racism organiser Tony Conway suggested.
