Roundtable discussion: Organising cleaners in the context of Covid-19

People working as cleaners represent a substantial part of the modern British working class. Low-paid, often part-time, disproportionately female and, more recently, from black and minority ethnic and migrant communities, this workforce has historically been seen as hard to organise. Yet the Covid-19 crisis has elevated the status of cleaning as a key part of maintaining public health. In this article, trade union organisers with experience of working with cleaners discuss the possibilities of the current conjuncture for effecting a step change in both unionisation and the reconstruction of public services.

Cuba and the Covid-19 pandemic

For the UK struggling to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, the experience of Cuba’s Ministry of Public Health over the past six decades provides the clearest case for a single, universal health system constituting an underlying national grid dedicated to prevention and care; an abundance of health professionals, accessible everywhere; a world-renowned science and biotech capability; and an educated public schooled in public health. All this was achieved despite being under a vicious blockade by the United States for all of that time.

Food, diet and the pandemic

This article is concerned with the ways that diet-related health outcomes (including increased incidence and severity of Covid-19) are linked to the system of provision for food. Worldwide obesity has tripled in the past three decades, creating an immense strain on health services, with poor diet associated with 22 per cent of global deaths in 2017. We show that neoliberal and financialised global systems of food production have intensified dysfunctional practices such as land grabs and price speculation. Moreover, capitalist expansion of production inevitably creates pressures to increase consumption such that malnutrition from overeating runs neck and neck with undernutrition on a global scale. It is shown how food corporates (producers, retailers, and so on) are instrumental in creating avenues to affect our diets in ways that are far more effective than government campaigns to promote healthy eating. It is these powerful systemic corporate interests that need to be addressed in order to improve diets and consequent health outcomes.

The potential for a progressive paradigm shift

The banking crisis and the pandemic have both demonstrated the potential for a progressive paradigm shift that could break with the hegemony of neoliberalism over Britain’s political economy. The Covid pandemic has demonstrated how many of the ideas and policies that formed the basis of the Labour Party manifestos of 2017 and 2019 are essential to tackling the current crisis of the pandemic and also for tackling the next crisis, which is the existential threat of climate change. For those on the left and progressives, the task is to discuss and plan the economy and society that will translate these lessons into a vision for the future of our society and into the concrete policy programme needed to achieve that vision. This article is based on a lecture given at the Marx Memorial Library on 23 June 2020 and we are pleased to reproduce it here.

Historical memory and the fight against fascism

In June and November 2020, the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School and the Society for Co-operation in Russian and Soviet Studies organised two online panel discussions on the subject of historical memory and the fight against fascism. Recordings of both discussions are available on the library’s website. This article reflects on these two panel sessions.

The 2020 turning point: Towards a new cold war or a new era of multipolarity?

The contest between the United States and China is entering a decisive phase, with the world configured between a new cold war and a multipolar order with the five big powers more evenly balanced. Discussion of the situation proceeds from an examination of the US trade war against China, revealing the underlying structural inequality in the relationship, moving on to a review of China’s recently adopted ‘dual circulation strategy’. This strategy maps out a new development phase to 2035, looking to achieve technological self-reliance so as to escape the US hegemonic reach, as well as to promote China’s own global economic and political influence. The strategy involves further market reforms and a wider opening to international markets, as well as the extension of the role of the state to manage circulation and production together, raising new perspectives in the application of Marxist analysis and understanding of socialism. Similarly, the new regional arrangements — the EU-China Investment treaty (CAI) and the regional economic partnership for East Asia (RCEP), intended to serve as a bridge between China’s domestic market and the US-dominated international markets — present a challenge in analysis of the contradictions shaping the five-power multipolar dynamics. Finally, bearing in mind possible modifications in US strategy towards China under President Joe Biden, the discussion considers the implications of the new developments for the advance of the multipolar trend with the rise of regionalism in the developing world, as well as for the advance of the world’s progressive movements.

Wal Hannington and the unemployed workers’ struggles in Britain in the 1930s

Wal Hannington’s hallmark leadership of the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement (NUWM) in the UK in the 1930s was built on a clear understanding of the causes of unemployment and therefore possible remedies; a highly sensitive and morally profound awareness of the consequences of unemployment for both the unemployed and their families and for those still in work; and a realisation that the struggle was political in the true sense — a question of the abuse of power by those in charge and the need to mobilise countervailing power of the people in struggle. It was this communist emphasis on class struggle that enabled the movement to be effective at every level — in the labour exchanges, in the streets and homes, in the trade union offices, and in the council and parliamentary chambers.