Campaigners agitate for ‘network of solidarity’ as Michael Rosen and Diane Abbott speak out

Trade unionists from across different sectors came together under the banner of People Before Profit last week, supported by renowned children’s poet Michael Rosen and Hackney North MP Diane Abbott, with the aim of building a “network of solidarity” in the community.

A socially-distanced protest on the Town Hall steps by Hackney’s Covid-19 Collective is planned this Wednesday at 6pm, with speakers at an online meeting last week slamming the government’s approach to fighting the pandemic and calling for collective action to “overcome the systems that we are in”.

The meeting, chaired by Dalston Labour Cllr Soraya Adejare, heard from both Rosen and Abbott, trade unionists from the worlds of health, transport, education, local government and the arts, as well as activists from Stand Up To Racism and Black Lives Matter.

One of the first speakers of the night was Rosen, who, having survived Covid, has warned of the “hidden iceberg” of the disease’s after-effects, telling listeners that after he came out of an induced coma, he was unable to stand or walk, is left with vision and hearing difficulties, and has blood clots on his lungs.

Slamming “detrimental” conspiracy theories about Covid and praising the often overwhelmed NHS staff who he credited with saving his life, Rosen said: “The reason why I got ill was that the government knew this was coming. It is not a mystery. Viruses behave in highly predictable ways. Medical professionals all over the world know how this works, and governments can inform themselves if they want to.

“We weren’t masking or socially distanced in March. The lockdown came a week, possibly two weeks too late. I can date it that the reason I got ill was that none of these things were in place. They were almost certainly flirting with this idea of herd immunity, allowing thousands of people to die.

“The hidden iceberg that is going on around Covid [is that] there is the awful tragic disaster of losing so many lives, and then there is the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of us with the consequences.”

According to Rosen, around 40 per cent of those in the intensive care ward in which he was treated died, with the poet extolling the “self-sacrifice and amazing care and tenderness that I received in spite of the incredible pressures [my nurses] were under”.

Those listening heard directly from workers at the Homerton, at London Bridge station and at Stoke Newington School, with health workers warning of burnout, transport workers calling for a fairer pay settlement, and the government called out across the board for what Cllr Adejare described as “a clear narrative of an attack on the public sector”.

The meeting heard calls for further actions in standing up for different campaigns in solidarity with each other, with the drive to save the Clapton Delivery Office from closure, Stand Up To Racism’s campaign to remove the statue of Sir Robert Geffrye from the Museum of the Home and pledges to support workers in the creative industries and local government all mentioned.

Abbott said: “One of the things about coronavirus is, on the one hand it has generated community activity and solidarity, which is very important. On the other hand, it has shed a light, if we needed a light being shed on it, on the institutional racism and class-based inequality that so many people suffer.

“I am astonished to hear people debating why Black and minority ethnic persons are suffering the most harshly from coronavirus, the most likely to be infected and to die. The reason is institutional racism. There is a slightly confused debate going on, with the government saying it is not institutional racism, it is poor housing and poverty.

“Why on earth do they think Black and minority ethnic people are in poor housing and are poor? It is because of institutional racism. We must not allow persons to deflect us from continuing to campaign on this issue. Many people are going to die because of the second wave, and many will be Black and minority ethnic.”

The Hackney North MP argued that failings in the government’s test-and-trace system would have been avoided if responsibility had been handed directly to local directors of public health and GPs instead of private sector organisations.

Abbott also went on to stress the importance of an independent public inquiry into coronavirus, including into its disproportionate impact on Black and ethnic minority people, criticising the current administration for “privileging the private sector even over proven expertise in the public sector on public health.”

While the meeting took place ahead of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Saturday evening announcement at a second lockdown for England, listeners heard warnings from Hackney National Education Union (NEU) secretary Dave Davis on schools acting as “drivers” for the virus, warnings now being repeated by the NEU in light of the decision to keep schools and colleges open.

According to Davis, there were 16 schools in Hackney that had people isolating or with incidences of Covid-19 in the last week of term, with the speaker pointing to union figures suggesting that there are now “well over 1,000 schools with clusters and outbreaks”.

Davis said: “This has probably been the toughest term in our teachers’ and support staff’s experience, but teachers and support staff have welcomed students back. It was always a lie, pushed by the government, that the NEU did not want or did not care about students going to school.

“We wanted students to come back as safely as possible, and gave the government a ten-point plan on how to do that, and of course the government studiously took that plan and completely ignored it. We’re obviously well into the second wave of Covid now.

“Michael is right – it was all predictable the first time round, as we were two or three weeks behind other countries, and we spectacularly failed to learn the lessons then. The same thing is happening now.”

Davis added that his union remained “very concerned” at clinically vulnerable members of staff still having to go to school, adding that while social distancing restrictions in education settings notionally make schools Covid-secure, that “anyone who works in a school will know they are anything but”.

The teacher went on to speak of colleagues at “breaking point” attempting to deal with students who are off as well as delivering face to face teaching, while calling for a rota system to allow educators to plan more effectively.

Davis added: “We won’t take any lessons from this government about the importance of education for the poor and vulnerable students in our society when they will not even pay the extra few million to provide them free school meals during the holiday.”