Fri 3 Apr 2020, 03:40 AM | Posted by editor
LETTER from Tom Smith, Newport West Labour Party
About 3.9 billion people are now in lockdowns throughout the world. However, the question is, can capitalism control the situation for months and months? Here are a few small points that allowed me to speculate on this.
I asked a neighbour to do some shopping for me. I asked him how did it go. He said that in a local park a large number of people had taken their kids out for the day. There was a football match going on and families playing with their children. After all the warnings by authorities I was astounded. This neighbour told me that there was heavy traffic!
The danger is that some people, cooped up all day, with no money and fed up to the back teeth, will not take it any more. One young lad I know has lost his job and has been told to leave the flat where he lived. I even felt sorry for his landlady: the poor girl needed his rent money as she could not afford to keep two people any more. Another I know cannot pay the rent to a housing association. Although he is safe for the time being, he just completed his application for financial support and he might get a payment in May.
Armed guards in Italy
Italy has armed guards protecting the supermarkets because of raids for food from those who are broke. There are reports in the media of women and children suffering domestic abuse due to the epidemic, and similar increases are taking place all over the world. In India, the media shows the very poorest people breaking all laws trying to get back to their villages where they might find food.
Under Thatcher there was dreadful unemployment and in the factory where I worked everyone kept their heads down, fearing the sack. However there comes a time when you cannot take it anymore. With the bullying, the company taking advantage, the constant worries of ‘will I have a job tomorrow’, you get to a point when people get fed up of being pushed around. You are prepared to strike and ‘be damned’ to the consequence.
I will clap the NHS workers at eight o’clock tonight. But I know there are a lot of stressed-out people, locked behind bricks and mortar, worried sick about survival. So I repeat can capitalism control the situation for months and months?
