In the UK, the COVID-19 pandemic is disproportionately affecting Black and other racialised communities, working class communities, those with existing health conditions, people in precarious employment or legal status and those in overcrowded housing. Lockdown has had a massive effect on people with mental health problems, special educational needs or living in homes with domestic abuse.
COVID-19 is exacerbating the existing inequalities and injustices in our society – even if the health pandemic ends, the pandemic of inequality and racism cannot continue.
Over 120,000 people have lost their lives as a result of COVID-19 in the UK. Black and other racialised minorities are between 10 and 50% more likely die from Covid-19 than their white counterparts. So many of these deaths were preventable and came as a result of gross criminal negligence by the government and employers. The slow reaction to lock down and lack of PPE put the lives of health, care and other frontline workers at risk. The shambolic response to the crisis also highlighted the corruption which exists at the highest level of government, with a collusion of ‘science’ and politics, and contracts given to companies with track records of failures and abuses.
We can’t go back to ‘business as usual’. Instead we believe we have to come out of the pandemic and ‘build back better’.
We want:
- The cancelling of all rent arrears for low-income families and ending all evictions
- Free PPE for all lower-income households and strict regulations for workplaces
- Make COVID and antibody testing free and available on the NHS
- An end the privatisation of NHS services
- The scrapping of the Coronavirus Act and allow proper consultation and scrutiny
- Increased investment in mental health provision, domestic violence services, community-led social care and care for differently abled people
- Investment for schools to bring pupils back safely