The policy adopted by the Johnson-led Tory government to the Covid-19 pandemic, has inflicted a heavy toll on the British people. Thousands of lives have been lost and the rise in the number of cases recorded has been inexorable. The government has ignored the advice of the WHO and pursued policies which run counter to the basic principles of combating the epidemic. It failed to act promptly, neither engaging the personnel nor ordering the equipment for tackling Covid-19. There is no systematic program of testing and isolating cases and their contacts. Many of the frontline NHS staff, doctors, nurses, cleaners and porters are dying needlessly because there has been no proper provision for their personal protection equipment (PPE).
The Johnson government pursued a policy of deliberately allowing more people to be infected, creating a so called ‘herd immunity’. Implicit in this policy is the death of large numbers of the most vulnerable and older sections of the population. This policy was calculated by the Tory government to cause the least damage to the British economy. Johnson was forced to change his policy when he came into increasing conflict with the British people and had to order a lockdown, shutting down non-essential industry and confining people to their homes. Parents had been faced with many teachers absent from school because of illness, having to take their children out of school. The professional football association had to cancel their league football because of Premier League footballers falling ill.
Tory governments and the one led by the Tories in coalition with the Liberals, operated neoliberal policies, inflicting harsh austerity measures on the workers, while rewarding the bosses with handouts and tax breaks. The NHS, like other public services had been starved of funds. Faced with the epidemic, it was the frontline staff of the NHS, against all odds, who treated tens of thousands of patients with Covid-19 and saved the lives of many thousands. The figures provided in mid-April for the number of Covid-19 cases in Britain since the beginning of the epidemic were more than 98,000 and the number of deaths, more than 12,000. Britain has the highest death rate in Europe for the epidemic. The Institute of Health and Metric Evaluation, Washington University estimated that Britain will have 37,000 deaths by 4th August this year with Italy 20,000, the second highest and Spain and the Netherlands 18,000 each. There is a crisis in care homes which are mainly run by the private sector. Covid-19 has spread to over half of the care homes and there are more than 4,000 deaths. The crisis is aggravated by hospitals discharging Covid-19 patients into care homes full of frail people and the staff woefully short of PPE.
The British government is intent on making the working class pay for the costs of the epidemic. In opposing government policies, the working class has discovered that the status quo is not tolerable. Movements of volunteers sprang up during the epidemic to shop for and help the vulnerable members of the community living in isolation. The self organisation of the workers and the movements of volunteers as well as other resistance groups is important in the struggle against the Tories.
The crisis in health created by the Tory and other capitalist governments during the pandemic arises from the ecological crisis and global warming. Capitalist governments are incapable of coming to grips with the ecological crisis and global warming. The working class is faced with the task of tackling the ecological crisis and global warming. It needs to discover that it has to turn to ecosocialism to deal with this crisis and the overthrow of capitalism.