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The People’s Covid Inquiry

Why we launched a People’s Covid Inquiry and how you can take part


24/03/2021

 

Launch video for the People’s Covid Inquiry

The People’s Covid Inquiry has been launched in England by Keep Our NHS Public, an organisation with groups in cities all around the country, campaigning for the National Health Service to be re-established on the basis of its founding principles, providing comprehensive services free at the time of use, publically provided and financed, and accountable to the public. A key aim is to remove private companies and the market in health care as well as restoring the extensive cuts in funding over the last decade and boosting current funding to meet demand.

Why now?

In mid-March 2021, the total of excess deaths from COVID-19 in the UK since the start of the pandemic exceeded 126,000, giving us the highest number of deaths in relation to population. We believe the shocking scale of this tragic loss of life was avoidable and that we all deserve to know how and why this happened. The government has thus far failed to learn from its mistakes and has not agreed to a public inquiry other than at some unspecified point in the future – despite considerable pressure in some sections of the press, bereaved families, the medical profession and from many others. While we continue to support the calls for an official public inquiry, the scale of the ongoing crisis led us to believe that we had to launch our own ‘People’s Covid Inquiry’. This held its first of nine two-weekly on-line sessions on 24th February.

The People’s Covid Inquiry aims to examine the events of the pandemic and look at them in the context of the state of the NHS and social care at the outset, from January 2020. Both the successes and the failures are being explored. The purpose is that the right lessons can be learned given the likely protracted nature of the current pandemic, together with the certainty of future pandemics. It is also important that the government is held to account for its actions by the public before recent history is rewritten or swept aside. We already have our Health Secretary (Matt Hancock) wrongly claiming there was never any shortage of Personal Protective Equipment for health workers, and that the amazing vaccination rollout by NHS staff somehow represents a triumph not for public services but for the private sector. Meanwhile, official bodies such as the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee continue to tear into government for mismanagement and misuse of public funds.

How will the Inquiry work?

The Inquiry will look at the extent to which the NHS, including public health, would have been enabled to respond differently if it had been properly funded and wholly in public hands. It will examine issues of health inequalities, community and GP services, mental health, disability, social care, health and safety at work, the extent to which at-risk sectors of society have been protected or let down, and much more.The evidence gathered will provide the basis for conclusions and recommendations on the provision of health and social care in the UK, including the future funding and organisation of the NHS and the urgent need for a national service for care, support and independent living.

Our People’s Covid Inquiry is comprised of various forms of evidence-gathering, as well as collation of already existing work done by other bodies. We are working with Bereaved Families for Justice and have launched new surveys of NHS staff and frontline workers, commissioning video testimonials from ordinary people as well as experts. We feel it is essential that those affected by the pandemic have their voices heard and a record added to our Inquiry archive from up and down the country. The sessions are broadcast live via social media and then made available recordings.

The renowned human rights lawyer, Michael Mansfield QC, is chairing the Inquiry. Each session covers a different aspect of the pandemic (see below) and is held on-line for two hours. Two expert and two citizen witnesses provide written testimony in advance, and are then questioned on this by a barrister for the Inquiry. The evidence is heard each session by a panel consisting of senior academics and clinicians. Filmed testimony from people presenting their experience of the pandemic is also made available to the panel, which will complete a report on its finding and the lessons to be learned at the conclusion of the Inquiry. The Inquiry has already attracted very high profile figures to give testimony including internationally known experts. In addition, it has given a voice to those who have been bereaved, frontline workers and others impacted by this disaster.

Sessions:

(Note: some sessions have already taken place. In this case, we have posted a video of the session here. You can register for the other sessions by following the link below. You can find more general information about the People’s Covid Inquiry here).

1. How well prepared was the NHS?

https://youtu.be/UVIPRxdRx7Y

2. How did the government respond?

https://youtu.be/ReR5LtgyPxk

3. Did the government adopt the right public health strategy?

https://youtu.be/g1z6PNCGL5I

4. Impact on the population (including families, social care, disability)

https://youtu.be/Tb0UNPPlGlk

5. Impact on frontline staff and key workers

https://youtu.be/Tb0UNPPlGlk

6. Inequalities and discrimination

7. Privatisation of the public’s health

8. Impact on the population (including schools young people, women, and mental health

9. Conclusions. What will the future be?

Closing statement

The huge death toll in the UK has been described as ‘social murder’ and demands a timely investigation into government management of the pandemic. With 126,000 deaths, those left bereaved require answers; lessons learned and applied could reduce the ongoing death toll (for example re-organising ‘test and trace’ so that it is made effective). The government needs to be held to account for its actions but currently refuses to respond to the growing pressure from a wide cross-section of opinion for a comprehensive official inquiry. Faced with what are perceived as serious crimes perpetrated by governments, civil society has devised the concept of a “Citizen’s Tribunal” – part legal proceedings, part theatre and part publicly speaking “truth to power”. This is the basis for our ‘People’s Covid Inquiry’.

Dr John Puntis, Co-chair Keep Our NHS Public

SCANDALS, ELECTIONS, EMERGENCIES

Germany, once viewed as an exaggerated model of exactitude and discipline, is currently in a muddle


23/03/2021

BERLIN BULLETIN NO. 187 March 22, 2021

Above all it’s the Covid mess. Seen last spring as a model of swift, effective response, Germany is now torn by controversy, with its sixteen states and dozens of politicians squabbling about when to send which kids (if any) back to school, the 1st, 5th or 9th graders, with or without masks, with or without self-testing. Shopkeepers and restaurant owners protest: “When can we open our doors or at least serve outdoor tables?” But if they can open in April, why can’t hotels do the same? What about the tourist trade? At Easter, but mostly in the summer, huge waves of Germans surge toward the surf at the Baltic and North Sea and the warmer waters (and mostly hotter nightlife) along Mediterranean coasts in Spain, Turkey, the Balearics. What about theater people and musicians, solo or in ensemble? Or the sex workers, also solo or in legal establishments known as “Eros Centers”? All are clamoring for more government funds for survival.

All hopes were based on vaccines, first for old folks and medical staff. But who next? Teachers, cops? Secretive arrangements for vaccine purchases were in turmoil, both financially and medically. Just as Europe seemed to be under control, there were unpleasant rumors about AstraZeneca shots. Then the Minister of Health announced an “All clear, (nearly) all safe.” But some of the unvaccinated masses, skeptical anyway, decided against penetration of their arm muscles.

Some people joined motley groups marching on weekends to claim the whole virus story was phony, aimed at curtailing freedoms, increasing the world power of Bill and Melinda Gates, or compelling world vaccination. Some threw in QAnon accusations or carried rightist flags. Often rejecting legally-required distancing and masks, they occasionally got dragged away and registered by masked (often visored) police. Guesses were on as to where such groups would head politically: right, left, up or down.

A new question arose, hitherto unthinkable: might Germany copy India, Mexico, Hungary, Slovakia and others and resort to Russian vaccines – or even Chinese ones?!

Into this Kuddelmuddel (a nice German word hardly requiring translation) plopped some scandals, nice juicy ones, though without the erotic edges of many in the USA; unless you include the pedophilia cover -up scandals now embarrassing the Catholic Church in Cologne, their malodor defying the fabled eau-de perfumes of that city.

But these scandals, despite their party names, did not rip into the poor church but into its close allies, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister, the Christian Social Union (CSU). Two legislators’ hands were caught deep in the cookie jar – contracts for supplying anti-virus face masks. It seems that they were moved so deeply by early shortages that they used their business connections, cultivated despite public service in the Bunderstag, to arrange very lucrative deals from friendly producers. Friendly enough for little “Thank you” gestures for the sales – 250,000 euros for Nikolas Löbel, 35, CDU, and 660,000 for Georg Nüsslein, 52, CSU.

Of course, party leaders were “totally shocked” at such nefarious doings, almost inconceivable for members of their double party which has been foremost in running Germany for all these years. They hastened to undo the damage, ejecting the two from their Bundestag seats and demanding that all their colleagues swear in writing – by the following Friday – that they were not involved in any such bribery (at least not in Covid connected business). All of them solemnly signed.

But before the ink had quite dried another CSU man, this time in the state legislature (luckily not again in the Bundestag ), was also caught. Alfred Sauter, 71, once Minister of Justice in Bavaria, was unable to account properly for the handy sum of 1,200,000 million euros – also for overcharged face-masks! As yet unclarified: how much went into his pockets, how much to his party, how much was not paid in taxes. All three gentlemen had to resign from their party and all posts, but will hardly face greater harm than to their reputations – if that.

Scandals were not new to the Federal Republic. But this one had an almost comical side, hitting just days before two important elections, in a year to be studded with elections. Despite almost frantic assurances that only a few “bad apples” had been involved, the CDU got hit hard twice, not only due to the scandals, no doubt, but also to dismay about the Covid mess and growing woes and fears of current and potentially future jobless, moneyless, maybe homeless persons when (and if) the disease has run its course. Then too, in both state elections a key role was played by personalities.

Rheinland-Pfalz (or Rhineland-Palatinate in English) is known for three things. In Mainz, its capital, Johannes Gutenberg printed his famous Bible and initiated printing in Europe. Trier was the birthplace of Karl Marx. And Martin Luther’s epochal refusal to recant, getting the Reformation going against the Catholic Church (thus already under attack way back in 1521) was at a meeting, named for the town, deliciously called the Diet of Worms.

In the March election its present-day celebrity, Malu Dreyer – she’s a Social Democrat – is so well-liked by her constituents, less for party policies than for her friendly, down-to-earth way of chatting with them, that in a race with many participants she won with almost 36%, leaving the once-proud CDU with only 27.6%, their worst result in that state’s history, and affording them five years to digest what might be called a new “diet of worms”. Malu, as she is often called, will almost certainly continue her coalition with the Greens, weak here, and the even more business-friendly Free Democrats. Since their symbol-color is yellow, and Malu’s SPD claims red, this is called a traffic light coalition – red-yellow-green.

In neighboring Baden-Württemberg the leading personality – and only Green premier in Germany – is the elderly Winfried Kretschmann, 72, with bristly white hair and a croaky Swabish-accented speech. On the right edge of his once seemingly radical left, now right-tending Green party, and a close friend of the two auto giants dominating his state, Daimler-Benz and Porsche. Kretschmann’s loud aggressiveness and the relative, auto-based, prosperity in his state got him a 32.7% vote , his party’s best result anywhere. And here too the CDU was handed the worst result in its history (24.1%) in a state it had dominated for decades. In the past 10 years they had been humble junior partners to Kretschmann’s Greens. After this fiasco he might ditch them and form a three-party traffic-light coalition. like Malu in his neighbor state.

Two other election items need mentioning. The good news first: the fascistic Alternative for Germany (AfD), once an expanding menace, remains a threat but a rather reduced one. Rent by factional strife, it skidded downward, missing its 10% goal in both elections with 9.7% (2016: 15.1%) in Rhineland-P. and even less – 8.3% (2016: 12.7%) – in Baden-W.

The bad news: the results for the LINKE were not surprising – but disappointing. A paltry 2.5% in Rheinland-P – even a bit less than five years ago – was hardly balanced in Baden-W by a 3.6% vote – just 0.7% more than five years ago. Both results were far from the 5% needed to gain a single seat in their state legislatures. The national party congress two weeks earlier was unable to give more boost in southwest Germany, where the LINKE has always been weakest. Aside from the rent ceiling law in Berlin and a current attempt per referendum to force big real estate blood-suckers out of that city, the party has not been able as yet to lead any popular struggles or catch many crowds’ imagination. Perhaps the new leadership will have more success.

It is badly needed. Understandably, the Covid pandemic worries people immensely; not only due to the chances of illness or death, but the job and financial troubles awaiting so many. But, earnest as these problems are, they are dwarfed by an overriding, far greater menace about which far too few are concerned – in Germany, the USA, everywhere; the danger of war, even atomic war. How many good souls will be marching two weeks from now in Germany’s traditional Easter peace marches? Maybe more than in recent years, maybe less, but certainly far too few – even though about two-thirds of the population favor a policy of peace with Russia (and China). Many others are undecided or disinterested.

But the belligerent remainder is powerful. It includes those who dream again of Germany’s power and glory, of its “proper place in the sun”, of high returns on African cotton, coffee, cocoa for its good chocolate, for coltan, uranium and gold diggings. Maybe even of once German-owned breweries for “coolies” near naval piers for warships in Tsingtao. And some dream of boots and guns like those which once advanced and blasted to within 19 miles of Moscow’s Red Square.

Others with related goals – the Atlanticists – are closely bound up with strong-arm power people in Washington; the Boltons and Pompeos but also a wolf pack of Democrats, in politics and the media, orating about “our adversaries” and pushing their “freedom” campaigns about election meddling, Navalny, or the Uigurs. It is hard not to think of bad past decades – or not to smell names like Raytheon and Rheinmetall, Lockheed-Martin and Krauss-Maffei!

One can approve of Putin and Xi Jinping or hate them, but their policies must basically be supported or opposed by their own people, especially if we wish the same. Denouncing or attacking them on the international stage can invoke far too many fearful memories, unforgotten in the lands where they were felt: 27 million Soviet citizens, mostly civilians, murdered by those whose descendants now join in calling them “adversaries”. Or 200,000-300,000 mostly civilians massacred in 1937 in Nanking. And many in the world still recall the two to three million killed in North Korea, later in Vietnam, mostly civilians, often with flesh-burning napalm. Or at least half a million who died in Iraq, and over 200,000 in Guatemala after a CIA coup in 1954. They come to mind when “freedom and democracy” are cited as our motivation.

“Navalny sentenced” – “Navalny imprisoned”. The poisoning of this right-wing racist filled the German media with angry articles and editorials. How many have there been about new attempts to rescue Mumia Abu-Jamal, 66, a gifted Black journalist and leftist essayist, locked away since 1981 after a frame-up trial – and now fighting death from prison-induced Covid?

When did the mass media report on another political prisoner, Leonard Peltier, 76, arrested in 1975, acquitted, then framed, repeatedly denied either a fair trial or a pardon. We read and hear so much about the Uigurs, always from clearly one-sided sources. Is there an equivalent amount about more than 2 million Americans behind bars – the world’s record – with Blacks still getting locked up five times as easily and often as whites.

What do media consumers know about the prisoners at Guantanamo, many tortured beyond description, never given trials, some only 14 or 15 when imprisoned, many hopeless suicides. Forty are still encaged there. Injustice is always wrong and should be castigated. But hypocrisy and elastic moral standards can also be dangerous sins.

Many elderly people recall their shock at learning the facts about over 100,000 Japanese women, children and seniors incinerated within minutes in 1945, with others suffering the effects until today. How many feel shock that, also until today, fifteen or twenty US atomic bombs are stored near the small German town of Büchel – next to special German planes ready to speed them eastward. Each bomb has an explosive power four to thirteen times as murderous as the Hiroshima bomb.

In a world pocked with 700 or 800 US bases, from Poland and Estonia to the Ukraine and Okinawa, with US aircraft carriers sailing through the Persian Gulf and the South China Sea, where risky “training maneuvers” face threatened borders, with mistakes or accidents all too common; any talk of asserting “American world leadership against its adversaries” would seem to border on insanity.

Will Biden’s Cabinet heads and generals choose this path? In Germany, will those hoping for peace or at least mutually advantageous business connections, weaken and succumb to those (the loudest, sadly, are often the strengthening Greens) who angrily denounce pipelines or any other peaceful lines, preferring warplanes, tanks and armed drones instead?

Every country is important, but the USA and Germany may well be the most important. That is why the forces of sanity, the pressure on the Biden government and on whichever forces win out in Berlin next fall are so crucially important. In Germany, the LINKE must always play a forceful role (despite some weakening around its edges). It must learn to grow and reach out in popular ways to all those who desire peace. It still has a voice!

With or without masks and vaccines, with a new government in the USA and one in Germany after September, two things will remain important: vigilance and action!

The Radical Left in Serbia – Unity in Action, Not in a Party

How can the left unite to win? Lessons from Serbia


22/03/2021

Last September, a new political party was founded in Serbia. The Party of the Radical Left (PRL) came about as a merger of the Social Democratic Union (SDU), originally an anti-war party founded in the 1990s, several different organisations, mostly left NGOs, and a number of individuals rooted in social movements. Based on a broad party model it is now, however, collapsing under the weight of its own internal contradictions and interpersonal disputes.

What lessons can be drawn from its experience? Where next for the left in Serbia? Anja Ilić, an activist from the revolutionary socialist organisation Marks21, argues that the left’s unity should be in action and that the way forward lies in movement-orientated politics.

Anyone who for the past six months sincerely hoped for the Party of the radical left (PRL) to become a long awaited, truly workers’ political option in Serbia will not take lightly the split that we have witnessed last week.

It started with the resignation of sociologist Jovo Bakić, until then the most recognizable face of PRL, and continued with the communique of the Presidency about Bakić’s violation of the PRL’s program, and the open letter of now former party members revealing that the party is being bankrolled by the Chinese Communist Party. Ever since, the remaining and former members of the party have been hurling criticisms and accusations at each other.

Such an outcome of yet another attempt at unifying the Serbian left – following a similarly unsuccessful effort with the Left Summit of Serbia – will without a doubt disappoint many who entered PRL wholeheartedly and eager to build a political alternative. In the short run, the split in PRL will not contribute to the left’s move from the political margins. But does this also hold for the long-term prospects?

We should not be so convinced of it. No matter how poorly it has been put in practice, PRL was established with the idea that we are stronger together. So, let’s look back at when we were strongest and what kind of collective action is needed now.

Throughout the last decade, starting with the global financial crisis in 2007, the Serbian left was at its strongest when it united in action. Recall the successful student occupations and protests in early 2000s that gave rise to the contemporary radical left. Recall the wave of protests after the 2017 presidential elections, when the extreme right attempted to co-opt the popular uprising only to be chased away by a united action of left organizations and individuals. Recall also the series of workers’ strikes during the same year. The strikes were connected with each other and some even won with the united support of the left. Recall that the United Action The Roof that struggles for everyone’s right to a home and against the debt collectors’ mafia is probably the epitome of leftists cooperating regardless of their organizational (non-)affiliation.

None of the cases of unity of action above nor many others ever entailed papering over or ignoring the political differences among those involved. Quite the opposite. Open and comradely discussion on differing strategies and tactics of struggle is necessary if any struggle is to advance – and win. However, the key to successful unity in action is that none of the organizations or individuals involved monopolize the broader movement.

Meanwhile, PRL attempted to unite a plurality of diverse political visions within one organization by dismissing and silencing disagreements. PRL’s participation in broader social struggles was primarily for the sake of boosting their media presence. As we have seen, this is a recipe for a failure – of both the party itself and of the struggle more broadly. The latter can be victorious only through acting collectively and attracting broader social forces, the working class in particular.

PRL was established with the goal of not only uniting the whole of the left in one organization, but also of giving the social struggles a voice in parliament. In this intention it comes close to what Syriza attempted in Greece or what Jeremy Corbyn strived for within the British Labour Party.

But can the parliamentary left be built into a powerful force if it is not strongly rooted in social movements? Let’s see what happened elsewhere. In 2015, Syriza won the parliamentary elections thus finally paving the way to power for a European radical left. It succeeded thanks to the support and the trust of the Greek working class, exhausted by the austerity measures imposed by European creditors. Yet, once in power Syriza rapidly caved to the creditors’ demands despite promising that a vote for Syriza meant a definite break with the politics of austerity.

In 2015, Jeremy Corbyn took over the Labour Party and reoriented it towards the radical left. His success came after hundreds of thousands of activists from different social movements entered the party. While Corbyn was and remained a “man of the movement”, his parliamentary party did not. What is more, the parliamentary wing kept distancing him from the movement that strengthened him, thus transforming the radical opposition to Tory rule into a mere “government in waiting” – one that never came to be.

Despite their differences, both examples lead to the same conclusion. If the left does not gain a strong presence in workers’ and other social movements, it will not be strong in parliamentary politics. If it remains focused primarily on parliamentary politics instead of on the struggles of the exploited and oppressed, it will lose its source of fighting potential, it will lose what makes it the left.

Countless fines for the activists of United Action The Roof as well as the recent revelation that those targeted by the state as “protest leaders” in 2017 – including our then member Jelena Bogdanović – had their phones bugged reveal one thing. The state perceives us as the biggest threat when regardless of our organizational ties, we build our collective resistance through movements. Only through building unity in concrete struggles can we overcome the existing differences and establish qualitatively new politics. For this reason, the left’s unity in action is a springboard from the political margins and towards a broad-based struggle of the working class.

This article first appeared in the Serbian daily ,Danas. Translation: Jaša Veselinovič

End violence against women

Sue Talbot has been threatened with a £10,000 fine for writing an article about male violence. She tells her story.


19/03/2021

The murder of Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old woman walking home along main roads in London, throws into sharp relief the continuing reality of sexual harassment and abuse and, ultimately, the possibility of murder, faced by every woman, every day of our lives. It happens everywhere: at work or socially as “banter”; at home in the rising incidences of domestic violence; in flats, “health clubs”, in palaces and alleyways as victims of trafficking from men of all classes. It also happens on the streets, by opportunistic abusers who could be anyone from a passing pre-teen, a drunk, or a member of the diplomatic protection corps.

In 1973, as a 15-year-old schoolgirl, waiting for my bus in genteel Lytham-St Anne’s, a man muttered horrible words to me. As children, we girls learned to avoid a local sweet shop, where “that man lifts you up to look at your knickers”; baffled and embarrassed I avoided my elderly next door neighbour on the bus who took it upon himself to berate me, age 12, for “the effect [I had] on men”. These are only the least of my experiences; I really do understand how frightening it is to be a girl, a young woman, and an adult woman— for these experiences don’t stop with advancing age.

I reached adulthood in the late 1970s at the time of the “Yorkshire Ripper,” but also at the time of mass feminist protests. Inspired by the equal pay strikes of women Ford workers and the Grunwick women (Asian women, memorably supported by Yorkshire miners) by protests against Miss World in 1970, we campaigned for abortion rights, for equal pay, for maternity pay, for employment rights, against domestic violence, against racism, for the right to refuge from domestic violence, for the housing rights of women fleeing violence, for LGBT rights. We supported the Miners’ Great Strike whilst arguing with them that their sexism undermined united working-class fightback against the bosses.

Decade after decade, women have been told that we should not wear short skirts or tight jeans; that we should “stay at home after dark”, “walk in pairs”, “stay sober”, “take the safe route”. We’re told that we ”asked for it”, that “it” doesn’t happen to “respectable women”, and conversely that sex workers “can’t be raped”. Sarah Everard, a professional woman in her 30s, was walking home, sober, dressed in loose trousers and an anorak at 21:00h on a main road. And yet a man felt entitled to kidnap and kill her.

In south Leeds, where I live, opponents of a Managed Zone of sex work, demand “more police on the streets”, but it appears that it was a policeman who killed Sarah Everard. So the issue isn’t police presence or absence. And it isn’t what women wear or don’t wear. It isn’t how we walk, whether we’re drunk or sober, whether we wear high heels, tight jeans, flat shoes or trousers, whether we are “respectable women” or sex workers. The issue appears to be an ingrained attitude among some, too many, men who think women of any age, any shape, and any class are “fair game” and that sexual harassment and abuse of women is just fine.

Like thousands of other women, I was outraged when police first attempted to ban the vigils called to honour the memory of Sarah Everard. Hearing of plans for a local, socially distanced and masked vigil, I wrote an article for a local news site, expressing these sentiments and telling readers about the event. I said I’d be attending, that no woman is “fair game”. There is no excuse for male violence against women. No excuse for rape or sexual assault. No excuse for sexual abuse. No excuse for physical or verbal sexual harassment. Banter is not funny.

Overnight, the Courts delivered an ambiguous judgment and local RTS groups began to back down, telling protestors to stay at home and protest online. The Leeds demo was replaced by an online vigil. But we don’t reclaim streets and the night by going online the moment the police and government challenge the right to protest. We reclaim by being on the streets. Look at Hong Kong. Look at Myanmar.

Home is the most dangerous place for women: 118 women in the UK have been killed during lockdown this year alone, and you don’t reclaim the streets by staying at home. We cannot “end male violence” by cowering in our homes WHERE MOST MALE VIOLENCE HAPPENS!

In Clapham Common in London, thousands peacefully attended the vigil for Sarah Everard. Despite media claims that people observing the vigil caused trouble, the real trouble came from the police wading in and disrespecting the lived experience and repressed grief of women who were blamed.

Meanwhile, in Leeds, I was woken on the following morning by a visit from the police who “advised” me that under the Coronavirus Act I was liable to be perceived to be an organiser of an illegal demonstration and to be fined £10,000. He conceded, however, that it was legal for me to take my 1-hour state-sanctioned exercise in the park where the vigil was to have been held, at 18:00h, and to speak – socially distanced – to anyone I met there. There were to be “no speeches” though. So that’s what I did, and so did 20 other people from our small area of Leeds, laying tributes in memory of Sarah and all the women killed by an institutionally sexist society.

Three days after the vigils, the British government voted in favour of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. The bill would give cops the power to block protests that cause “serious disruption” to an organisation or have a “relevant impact” on people nearby. These vague clauses give the cops a green light to stop any action that has an effect – and it’s clear that protests such as ours will be targeted.

We should not live our lives in fear, for a life lived in fear is a life half-lived. I refuse to live in fear.

Greece: Repression, resistance and a hunger strike

A combination of police repression and Covid-19 has provoked strikes and demonstrations which threaten the Greek government


18/03/2021

Last weekend (March 13-14), thousands of Greeks gathered in the main squares of the neighborhoods of Athens and other cities with one main focus point: Stop police repression! The slogan “Πονάω” (it hurts) is a free translation of “I can’t breathe”. The protests were called by grassroots organizations of the radical and anti-capitalist left and found broad support at the localities, in some occasions they were even called just via social media! All were peaceful, militant and political and sent a strong message to the right wing government of New Democracy (ND) and PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis, that his strategy of using the pandemic to repress civil rights is not tolerated any more. The slogan “Down with New Democracy” was heard all over the country.

A calendar of protests

These mobilizations did not fall from the sky. They are the culmination of resistance to the attacks of ND and, for the first time since the start of the pandemic one year ago, they seem to bring different movements together and cause damage not just to the image of Hellenic Police, but also to the prestige of the government and its ability to go on with its policies.

The spark for calling the weekend’s protests was one (more) incident of police brutality, which took place last Sunday at the square of Nea Smyrni in Athens, after policemen attacked and leveled a family with 300 € fines for simply drinking their coffee sat on a bench! Passers-by defended the family, only to be beaten with iron bars and arrested, while the media were claiming that “policemen were attacked by a mob of 30 people in Nea Smyrni”!

Following an impromptu protest on Sunday evening, Tuesday saw an organized massive demonstration of more than 10.000 marching around the streets of the neighborhood. At the end of the protest and using the injury of a policeman as a pretext, the notorious riot police special forces (MAT) unleashed a violent pursuit through the streets, beat and arrested dozens of young people. Some face now charges of attempted homicide.

One day earlier, the 8th of March was a successful day of strike and work stoppages for women’s rights and demonstrations took place in the city center, reinforced by the Greek #metoo moment, young people, feminist groups and left organizations.

One day later, on Wednesday morning, thousands of students and teachers took the streets to protest against the reactionary reforms that the government has just voted. The most provocative is the establishment of special police units in campuses, to impose “law and order”, which is allegedly lost in Greek universities.

This is a symbolic as well as substantial gesture. Greek universities have historically been bastions of resistance and left-wing thought and action. The fall of the military junta which ruled the country from 1967 until 1974 started with the uprising of the Technical University (Polytechnio) on the 17th November 1973. After regime change, campuses have been police – free, offering a sort of political asylum to citizens.

This principle was banned by ND, together with a bunch of neoliberal reforms, such as the introduction of private higher education and binding university studies with big business. The reforms provoked massive student demonstrations and squats, they braved repression by MAT, but were so massive, that finally broke the government bans on public gatherings in the context of covid -19 measures. They are repeated almost every week since early February.

Finally, on Thursday afternoon, one more massive demonstration took place outside the parliament, calling for defending democratic rights and in solidarity with the hunger strike of life imprisoned Dimitris Koufontinas.

Mass struggle and individual terrorism

Koufontinas had been second in rank and hitman of the defunct urban guerilla group “17 November”. He went on hunger strike for 66 days to protest the government’s refusal to his just demand to serve prison in Korydallos, at the special section for members of terrorist groups. This is a case which under different circumstances may have nothing to do with the mass movements, as 17 November, even at its most influential days would always act as an agent of the people and was never connected with rank and file struggles. However, at this political timing, Koufontinas’s call found a resonance not narrowly in anarchist groups, but in wider audiences, human rights groups, even sections of the center right expressed their wish for a fair handling of his case.

17 November was dismantled in 2002 after an explosion that exposed one of its cadres, Savvas Xiros. Shortly after, Koufondinas turned himself voluntarily to the police, undertaking the political responsibility for the actions of the group, including 22 executions of (in)famous politicians, of which he had conducted 11. Among the targets were officers of the military regime who had been torturing political prisoners, British and U.S. embassies military attaches, capitalists and politicians. The brother in law of Kyriakos Mitsotakis was one of the latter.

The government therefore had personal motives to want to smash him, but it was more than this: For the narrow minded think-tanks of New Democracy, Koufontinas represents mistakenly not a particular political practice, but the entire Left. By smashing him, they fantasized themselves and their more conservative voters that they can impose law and order, which had promised to do and also marginalize the Left. They caused the opposite: Sympathy for Koufontinas and deep concern for sustaining the democratic rights in the country.

The Hellenic League for human rights, Amnesty International, observatories and socialist lawyers managed to raise the issue, not on the ground of any sort of political agreement with terrorism, but on the case of human rights to be defended when arbitrarily and revengefully denied. At the end of the day, people made comparisons with Bobby Sands and the Irish freedom fighters in British jails in 1981! This dynamic is connected with the resistance to the government and the state and constitutes the real alternative to the undemocratic methods of ND.

The government of New Democracy has failed completely

Last June Greece exited the first wave of Covid-19 with low number of casualties. The main reason is that the vast majority of the population respected willingly the lockdown measures, demanding though that the government would keep its promises for strengthening the National Health System and support the people who had been redundant, or even lost their jobs during the Covid crises. On the contrary, Mitsotakis’s government arrogantly concluded that they had the consensus to impose any policies they and their friends, the Greek capitalists wished. They counted on tourism, the country’s “heavy industry” for a recovery of the economy and failed to deliver to the working class.

The result was that by the arrival of the second wave in October, the country was still completely unprepared, but this time the virus was in. Despite stricter and occasionally ridiculously hard lockdown restrictions (e.g. a curfew at 21.00 on weekdays and on 18.00 in weekends), this time infections and deaths are soaring (4 digit numbers daily), the sparse ICU units are all full, the economy is in a deep slump (10% at least), thousands of jobs have been lost and working people in redundancy have to survive on a mere 530 € subsidy per month.

Discontent has been rising and several sectors have been striking despite restrictions. The response of the government was more repression: They banned all public meetings and encouraged the policemen to issue fines and arrest citizens, allegedly for failing to meet the measures. People are squeezed inside crowded metro wagons to go to work, while the government spokespersons insist that this is ok, but sitting on a park bench is infectious, and so is laughing and speaking loudly!

All these failings constitute the ground on which anger is building up and, although ND controls all mainstream media and injects more and more state money to them, resistance keeps growing. Social media have provided an alternative to the lies and cover-ups of the media, as activists publicize through them not only criticism and opinions, but also facts and proves of police brutality, like in the events in Nea Smyrni.

Mitsotakis attacked publicly the use of social media as one-sided, but he and his family would soon be exposed by the following incident which leaked through social media: A video outside the house of parliament shows a police driver serving in the security of Dora Bakoyannis (sister of Mitsotakis) behind the wheel of a car that collided with a motorcycle on Friday March 12, leaving the 23-year-old rider brain dead at the hospital. For 48 hours, mainstream media were silent, until the leaked video became viral, showing that, not only did the driver abandon the victim unconscious, but also traffic police at the location intimidated protesting passers-by and sent them away. Dora Bakoyiannis tried to make up for the awfulness, but only after the events had gone around the country. Patience for the government is being exhausted and more and more people are infuriated.

The only good news for ND is that Koufontinas ended the 66 day hunger strike on March 14, but it’s doubtful whether the government can rejoice on this. On the contrary, he made his legal demand visible, so his lawyers speak of a clear ethical and political victory over ND. I would add that it was a good timing that his just cause managed to merge with the on-going political battles.

Most importantly, the long struggle goes on inside Greek society, trade unions, universities, neighborhoods. On the 17th and 18th of March, hospital workers are on strike once more, students are still in mobilization and on the 20th we take the streets together with immigrants and refugees against the racist policies of the government.