Tony Conway, the Communist Party’s Anti-Racism Anti-Fascism Officer, launched a stinging all-round attack on the Tory government’s record at a meeting of the Party’s Political Committee yesterday evening (2 December 2020). After welcoming the swift development and approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, he said it should not divert attention from the government’s “deadly mismanagement” of the coronavirus crisis.
“As fatalities in Britain approach 60,000 – the fifth highest death rate in the world – the government hopes the vaccine roll-out will rescue it from the shambles of its test-and-trace and multi-tiered systems“, Mr Conway commented. He pointed out that only Labour’s abstention in Tuesday’s crucial Commons vote had prevented Tory rebels from scuppering the government’s latest emergency plans.
“The Labour leadership could have extracted vital concessions such as a public sector find-test-trace-isolate policy, Covid-safe plans and workers’ rights in every workplace, a real-terms public sector pay rise, a freeze on Universal Credit repayments, adequate sick pay for all working people who need it and comprehensive financial support for small businesses“, he insisted.
Mr Conway said the elements are emerging for a “popular front” against unemployment, poverty and imminent cuts in funding to local government and the Welsh and Scottish parliaments.
Britain’s Communists welcomed action by trade unionists, Unite Community branches and Young Communist League students and their allies in Manchester against Tory policies, pointing to the People’s Assembly and its ‘Zero-Covid Charter’ as a basis for growing solidarity and unity.
The CP Political Committee called for Covid vaccines to be distributed cheaply and fairly through the World Health Organisation and attacked the ‘anti-vaxx’ movement for ignoring the “game-changing impact” of vaccinations in the fight against smallpox, measles, polio, rubella, TB, hepatitis B, flu, tetanus, meningitis, Diptheria, whooping cough and other crippling or lethal diseases.
A former PCS union national officer, Mr Conway also slammed the new Immigration Act and the latest deportation flights from Britain as “imprecise, callous and biased in favour of the wealthy“. He announced that the Communist Party was discussing plans with other bodies to launch a campaign against Britain’s racist immigration and nationality laws.
Challenge News Desk
