Britain has announced the first publicly confirmed death globally from the Omicron variant of COVID-19.
Speaking Monday at the Stowe Health Vaccination centre in West London, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, said, “Sadly yes Omicron is producing hospitalisations and sadly at least one patient has been confirmed to have died with Omicron.”
“The idea that this is somehow a milder version of the virus, I think that's something we need to set on one side,” he admitted.
It has taken just 16 days since the Omicron variant was first detected in Britain, two people in Chelmsford and Nottingham on November 27, for it to be almost dominant in London, with a population of 10 million, and to claim its first life.
On Sunday evening, Johnson confirmed in a televised address that there were hospitalisations due to Omicron in Britain. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said on Monday that 10 people were in hospital with the variant in England and that the individuals had been diagnosed on or before admission.
The UKHSA said those hospitalised come from across the UK with ages ranging between 18 and 85 years. Confirming how dangerous Omicron is, it said that the majority of the 10 people in hospital had already received two vaccination doses. With another 1,576 Omicron cases reported Monday, there were 4,713 confirmed cases of the variant in Britain.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid told BBC Radio’s Today show, “This variant is growing at a phenomenal rate. We haven’t seen anything like this before. We expect 1 million infections by the end of this month.”
He later told Parliament that the variant already accounted for 44 percent of cases of COVID in London and 20 percent of cases throughout England, and that “we expect it to become the dominant COVID-19 variant in the capital in the next 48 hours.”
Even these figures do not accurately represent the spread of the most virulent strain of COVID yet detected. Javid told Parliament that it is estimated, based on modelling, that the current number of daily Omicron infections is around 200,000, equating to 1.4 million a week, or at least 6 million a month at the present rate of infection.
People queue up at a vaccination centre in Romford, east London on December 13, 2021. Estimated waiting times to receive a booster vaccination jab at the centre were estimated at 120 minutes. (WSWS Media)
The Daily Mail reported that government data show that “cases are growing by up to 48 per cent a week in the worst-hit boroughs of the capital, which include Barking and Dagenham, Hackney and City of London and Greenwich. Meanwhile, the highest infection rates, where 0.7 percent of the local population has tested positive in the past week, have been recorded in Sutton, Richmond upon Thames and Bromley.”
While the UK death from Omicron is the first announced by a government, such is the spread of the variant globally that it is very likely many people have already died from it elsewhere in the world. The variant is present in at least 57 countries on every continent, including 11 in Africa.
In South Africa, there has been a sharp rise in excess deaths in the country since Omicron was detected. South Africa first reported the Omicron variant (B.1.1.529) to the World Health Organisation (WHO) on November 24, 2021. According to a South African Medical Research Council report published last week, excess deaths nearly doubled in the week beginning November 28. Some 2,076 weekly excess deaths from natural causes were recorded, compared with 1,091 excess deaths from natural causes the week before. The data showing the huge increase is taken from a week that began just four days after the variant was first reported to the WHO, having been circulating within the population prior to that.
Though the African National Congress government has not acknowledged any Omicron deaths in a hospital setting, the marked increase in excess deaths points to many being killed by the variant at home.
In response to the staggering spread of COVID in Britain, Johnson’s Conservative government is acting as it has done throughout the pandemic in pursuing a herd immunity policy that has already cost almost 170,000 lives. When the virus was first detected, Johnson said there was no need to even impose limited “Plan B” measures and that the situation would be reviewed in three weeks. With nothing done, the virus spread unhindered throughout the population, exacerbated by the busy pre-Christmas shopping period. Predictably Omicron claimed the life of the first Briton well before the three weeks were up.
Under Plan B, masks are mandatory in most indoor venues, including theatres and cinemas but not pubs, clubs and restaurants, from Friday. A vaccine pass or proof of a negative test will be required to enter nightclubs and other venues where large groups of people can continue to gather, including at outside venues with more than 10,000 people. Neither Plan B nor Johnson’s announcement Sunday of an escalation in the vaccination booster rollout will stop the spread of the variant, with the economy remaining fully open, including all public transport networks, and schools kept open.
The football season is being allowed to continue, despite clubs reporting a record number of COVID cases among regularly tested players and staff, with tens of thousands of fans being herded into stadiums. Manchester United, who have so many COVID cases that they have been forced to postpone an away fixture this week in London, have a stadium capacity of 75,000 with the venue full every game.
Despite it being known for months that a surge in COVID cases was to be expected in the winter, even without a new variant, the government put nothing in place. National Health Service (NHS) leaders who had previously been told that all those above the age of 30 should be vaccinated within seven weeks were suddenly informed over the weekend that they must inoculate everyone aged over 18 in just three weeks—more than 20 million people.
Predictably, the booster acceleration plan was thrown into crisis on its first day, Monday, with the dedicated NHS website crashing as millions tried to book appointments. Huge queues formed outside vaccination centres, with people waiting hours in the winter cold, including hundreds at St Thomas’ Hospital in London which is adjacent to the National Covid Memorial Wall.
People queue for coronavirus booster jabs at St Thomas' Hospital, with the National COVID Memorial Wall in the foreground, in London, Monday, Dec. 13, 2021. Long lines formed at vaccination centers in Britain as people heeded the government's call for all adults to get booster shots to protect against the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, which the prime minister said Monday has caused at least one death. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)
Due to a substantial section of the ruling Conservative Party’s MPs having secured a concession from Johnson months ago that any COVID measures impacting the economy must be approved by Parliament, Johnson’s Plan B will not even be voted on until Tuesday evening. According to reports, up to 75 Tory MPs are prepared to vote against some or all the limited measures, with the government having to rely on the support of the Labour opposition to pass the legislation.
To reassure the Tory rebels and the corporations ahead of the vote, Javid stressed that “Even with Plan B, we still have far fewer restrictions in place than Europe.”
That the government remains committed to a herd immunity agenda and COVID becoming endemic in the population was confirmed in Downing Street’s maniacal statement Monday that schools must remain open for the rest of term and that it would only order them closed in the “direst emergency”.
Yesterday, Labour doubled down on supporting a government it has kept in power throughout the pandemic through a policy of “constructive criticism”. Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the government target of 1 million booster vaccinations per day over the next weeks may be impossible, “but we applaud the ambition”. He added of the under resourced National Health Service, whose staff cannot cope and who still don’t have full and routine access to the highest standard of PPE necessary to treat COVID victims, “If anyone can do it, the NHS can and the whole country will be willing them on and will not knock them for trying.”
Labour provided another service for the government on Monday, facilitating its drive to end all travel restrictions for those arriving in Britain, with Labour MP Ben Bradshaw complaining in Parliament that they were “very draconian, costly and complex”. Javid replied, “I think [Bradshaw] makes a very good point, given that we already know that the Omicron variant is fast becoming the dominant variant in our capital city, spreading rapidly throughout the country, the justification for having those rules is minimised. It’s something that I’ve already raised with my colleagues in the Department for Transport, and I do hope that we can act quickly.”
Dame Sandra Mason, Barbados’ governor-general since 2018, was sworn in as president of the Caribbean island of Barbados on November 30, replacing Britain’s Queen Elizabeth as the head of state.
Her swearing-in ceremony marking the 55th anniversary of formal independence from Britain came 396 years after Barbados became a British colony and nearly 250 years after the American colonies threw off the yoke of King George III.
Barbados, which announced its plan to become a republic last year, is to remain within the Commonwealth, a loose association of 54 member states, almost all of which are former British colonies and current dependencies, aimed at preserving Britain’s declining economic, political and military influence. Just 15 countries still have the queen as their head of state, including Australia, Canada, Jamaica, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, puncturing Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s vain boasting in the wake of Brexit that “global Britain” would reinvigorate its ties with Commonwealth countries.
Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, was the guest of honour at the event in the capital Bridgetown, along with singer Rihanna and cricketer Sir Garfield Sobers. Amid much pomp and ceremony, a final salute was made to the monarchy, the Royal Standard flag was lowered and replaced, and Charles was awarded the Order of Freedom of Barbados. Mason announced, unctuously, “Vessel Republic Barbados has set sail on her maiden voyage. May she weather all storms and land our country and citizens safely on the horizons and shores which are ahead of us.”
Barbados' new President Sandra Mason, center right, awards Prince Charles with the Order of Freedom of Barbados during the presidential inauguration ceremony in Bridgetown, Barbados on Tuesday Nov. 30, 2021. Barbados stopped pledging allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II on Tuesday as it shed another vestige of its colonial past and became a republic for the first time in history (AP Photo / David McD Crichlow)
Charles paid a fleeting reference to Britain’s horrific role in Barbados’ history, saying, “From the darkest days of our past, and the appalling atrocity of slavery, which forever stains our history, the people of this island forged their path with extraordinary fortitude.”
But no matter how Charles might like to portray slavery and the colonization of Barbados as a “blot” on Britain’s otherwise pristine record, the bloody crimes of British imperialism are legion, including those in Ireland, encompassing the Great Famine of 1845-6, the plundering and later brutal partition of India, the opium wars in China and the Mau Mau atrocities in Kenya to name but a few.
Barbados and slavery
Barbados was England’s first truly profitable slave society that provided what Marx described as primitive capitalist accumulation. It became the launchpad for the colonization of America and its modus operandi was replicated across its colonial possessions in the Western Hemisphere.
Professor Hilary Beckles, a Barbadian historian and head of the University of the West Indies, wrote, “Barbados was the birthplace of British slave society and the most ruthlessly colonised by Britain’s ruling elites. They made their fortunes from sugar produced by an enslaved, ‘disposable’ workforce, and this great wealth secured Britain’s place as an imperial superpower and caused untold suffering.”
The first British settlers arrived in Barbados in 1625. It was largely uninhabited as a result of prior murderous encounters with Spanish explorers and disease. A coral island, it is generally flat and arable, unlike the mountainous volcanic islands in the region. While the British initially used indentured servants or prisoners to work on the plantations, slaves soon became the dominant workforce.
Anti-slavery illustration by William Blake, 1793
Captain John Powell brought the first slaves to the island from West Africa in 1627, as part of the Triangle Trade whereby ships from Western Europe sold guns and manufactured goods in exchange for slaves from what is now Nigeria and Ghana, who were transported to Barbados and other Caribbean islands—the infamous “Middle Passage.” There, the slaves were sold, with the ships returning to England with Caribbean exports, protected against rival powers by the Royal Navy that grew as the direct result of the slave trade.
The conditions of the slaves’ capture, the forced marches to the dungeons in West Africa and their detention while they awaited transport to the West Indies were horrific, with many dying in their cells. Between 10 and 30 percent died aboard the slave vessels, where men, women and children were chained together during the 100-day voyage amid their own vomit and excrement, with sick or dead slaves thrown overboard. When they arrived in the West Indies, they would be cleaned and fattened up like cattle for sale, and then auctioned, with those deemed unsaleable left to die. In 1636, British officials in Barbados passed legislation declaring all slaves, later extended to include their children, to be enslaved for life. These laws were later adopted by Britain’s other slave-owning colonies.
Broadside publication of John Greenleaf Whittiers poem Our Countrymen in Chains
Conditions were just as murderous on the plantations, with even more men, women and children dying as they laboured 18 hours a day in the fields, growing cotton, tobacco, ginger or indigo, under the whip of their overseers. One slave ship captain Thomas Phillips later wrote of the slaves who threw themselves into the sea to avoid transportation, “they have a more dreadful apprehension of Barbados than we have of hell.”
In the 1640s, Dutch merchants introduced sugar to Barbados and with the knowledge and technology gained from Brazilian plantations showed the Barbadian planters how to grow and process sugarcane to make molasses and rum. When tobacco cultivation became unprofitable after the glut of Virginia-produced tobacco in the 1650s, the island was given over to sugar production. An industry unique in combining both a large labour force with industrial production in the form of the sugar mills, it entailed Barbados’ almost complete deforestation. Requiring vast quantities of labourers, the industry provided 93 percent of its exports. By the latter part of the 17th century, it had turned Britain into a major player in the slave trade.
By 1750, sugar became the most valuable commodity in European trade, making up one fifth of all European imports as production was extended throughout the Caribbean during the 18th and 19th centuries, of which around three quarters was shipped to London, with Barbados becoming the richest of all the European colonies in the region.
With few surviving more than nine years in Britain’s “islands in the sun,” the plantation owners required ever more shipments of slaves to renew the labour force. The conditions on the plantations in Barbados were so horrendous that rebellions and the fear of rebellions were a key feature of colonial life. There were three major slave rebellions in the 17th century, in 1649, 1675 and 1692, all suppressed with utmost brutality. In Jamaica, runaway slaves, known as the Maroons, held out for decades in the mountains against the British, farming where they could and raiding the plantations. There were frequent rebellions on the crossings and at the African slave ports as well as at the ports where they landed. These rebellions became widespread, destabilizing colonial society.
England’s monarchs were involved in the slave trade from the start, renting out their ships and taking a share of the proceeds, about which the current heir to the throne maintained a discreet silence. This involvement grew in the 17th century when Royalist supporters sought refuge in Barbados after their defeat in the English Civil War. Later, parliament, with the backing of the restored monarch King Charles II and his brother, the Duke of York who later became James II, granted a new patent to the Company of Royal Adventurers, the Royal Gambia Society and later the Royal African Company (RAC)—companies in which the monarchy had major stakes. It gave them a monopoly over most of the West African trade, which included gold as well as slaves, from which the ports of London, Bristol and Liverpool prospered, and the monarchy profited directly. The gold these companies supplied to the Royal Mint was called the guinea, after the West African country from which the gold was taken.
In 1797, the poet and Reverend William Bagshaw Stevens was struck by the 1,200 ships at anchor while visiting Liverpool’s massive docks. He wrote in his diary that “this large-built town, every Brick is cemented ... by the blood and sweat of Negroes”—a phrase later adopted by many opponents of slavery.
The intense rivalry between the European powers was to lead to a series of wars that ultimately enabled Britain to predominate at the expense of her Dutch, Portuguese, French and Danish rivals. Britain was responsible for the largest share of the 9-15 million slaves taken across the Atlantic by the European traders, dominating the trade by the mid-18th century to the extent that, in 1776, when Britain’s 13 American colonies declared independence, it accounted for more than half of all the slaves transported across the Atlantic.
Some 18 percent of the total went to the Caribbean islands, nearly double the number that went to the North American colonies. Estimates of the number of slaves shipped to Barbados between 1627 and 1807, when Britain abolished the slave trade, range between 387,000 and 600,000. It is estimated that Britain’s slave merchants made profits of about £12 million on the purchase and sale of African people between 1630 and 1807, perhaps £16 billion in today’s money.
To put it another way, Britain’s Caribbean islands had about one million slaves working 3,000 hours a year, without a penny in wages, producing, sugar, coffee and cotton, at a time when England’s own population was just five million.
The highly profitable sugar trade soon made Barbados Britain’s most populated colony and possibly one of the most densely populated places on earth. It became the launch pad for the colonisation of the Americas, particularly in relation to Jamaica and the Carolinas in North America, transplanting their West Indian model of plantations and slavery to the new colonies, and the flow of settlers to other parts of the New World. It became a powerful political force as the British merchants and West Indian plantation owners joined forces to form the West India Interest in the 1740s to lobby Parliament on behalf of the Caribbean sugar trade. Plantation owners or their representatives were able to purchase rotten boroughs, nominally a town or borough but with only two or three electors, giving them 40 to 50 seats in Parliament.
The plantation owners became the nexus of the most reactionary politics, the “old corruption,” with the British West Indies, including Barbados, among the staunchest supporters of King George III in the American War of Independence, and later providing refuge for the defeated American Loyalists.
The slave trade played a crucial role in developing Britain’s wider economy, providing its factories and workshops with access to raw materials. Financial, commercial, legal and insurance institutions emerged to support the trade, including Lloyds Insurance, Barclays Bank and Barings, with some merchants becoming bankers and the profits from slave-trading financing the development of new businesses and industries, enabling the vast expansion of manufactured goods that was to make Britain the “workshop of the world” in the 19th century.
The abolition of slavery
The ideas of the Enlightenment—freedom, equality and democratic rights—embodied in the American and French revolutions inspired widespread anti-slavery sentiment, both in the colonies and in Britain, where slavery had become a symbol of the Old Corruption. Abolition became a transatlantic movement. Economically, the American Revolution undermined the British mercantilist system, strengthening the rising industrial class even as its industry became increasingly intertwined with the American South’s cotton-slave economy, growing apace after the invention of the cotton gin in 1793.
A portrait of Toussaint Louverture Oil on Canvas
The French Revolution was to lead to the 1791 slave revolt led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, a former Haitian slave and military leader of an army of former slaves and deserters from the French and Spanish armies, who fought to end slavery and gain Haiti’s independence from France and Spain, successfully ending slavery there in 1804.
In Britain, William Wilberforce set up the Abolition Committee and began a campaign in Parliament in 1787. Support for the abolitionists grew rapidly. Their emblem and motto, designed by Josiah Wedgwood in 1787, depicting an African man kneeling and asking, “Am I not a man and a brother?”, became ubiquitous.
Petitions supporting abolition attracting thousands of signatures multiplied, becoming a political weapon for workers reflecting their increasing radicalisation, with Manchester, a city of some 75,000 people, providing 10,639 signatures in more than 100 petitions in 1788 and 20,000 in 519 petitions in 1792 in support of Wilberforce’s anti-slavery bill.
William Wilberforce (creative commons)
With London home to around 20,000 people of African origin, including former slaves, Black activists like Robert Mandeville, Thomas Cooper, Jasper Goree, William Greene and Ottobah Cugoano played a crucial role in the anti-slavery movement. The most well-known is Olaudah Equiano, a journalist and former slave, whose autobiography exposing the sufferings of the Middle Passage journey—the first such book about slavery by a slave—sold 50,000 copies within two months of publication in 1788.
Equiano also publicized the infamous Zong massacre of November 1781, when the crew of the British slave ship threw more than 130 enslaved Africans overboard after running low on drinking water. The Zong’s owners made a claim to their insurers for the loss of the slaves, resulting in a series of court cases, one of which upheld the legality of murdering enslaved people in some circumstances and required the insurers to compensate the owners for those who had died. A subsequent court ruled against the owners because of evidence showing the captain and crew were at fault.
The Zong massacre became a symbol of the horrors of the Middle Passage and gave a powerful impetus to the abolitionist movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It led to legislation banning insurance companies from reimbursing ship owners when enslaved people were thrown overboard. It also inspired poets and artists, including J M W Turner, who painted The Slave Ship that was exhibited at the Royal academy in 1840 , and William Blake, who illustrated Narrative of a Five Year's Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam 1791, John Stedman’s account of the brutal suppression of a slave revolt in South America, depicting the terrible suffering of slaves tortured for rebelling.
Olaudah Equiano
Nevertheless, it was to take years of struggle before Wilberforce secured the end of the slave trade in 1807, initially disguised as a measure aimed at undermining the French economy. He expected this would improve conditions on the plantations and lead to the end of slavery. Further uprisings, including the three-day revolt led by Bussa of Bayley’s plantation in Barbados in 1816 that saw the colonial militia kill more than 800 slaves in the fighting and at least another 100 executed, and the Demarara (now Guyana) revolt of 1823, made clear that slavery could only be maintained if Britain were to send in the troops, which Parliament was not prepared to do.
In 1824, Robert Wedderburn, a Jamaican Unitarian minister, who had come to Britain in 1778, published The Horrors of Slavery, whose revolutionary appeal reached the colonies. His impassioned and abiding motto to his fellow blacks was “It is degrading to human nature to petition your oppressors.” The unrest continued, culminating in the Jamaica Revolt of Christmas 1831 that saw more than 400 slaves killed in its suppression and several British non-conformist ministers beaten, tarred and feathered for their involvement in the uprising.
Sketch of Blake from circa 1804 by John Flaxman
These events further inflamed public opinion in Britain against the plantation owners amid the ongoing mass mobilization of the working class demanding electoral reforms and the alleviation of their own miserable living conditions, reigniting the demand for an end to slavery. The resurgence of the abolition movement was accompanied by an outpouring of anti-slavery literature and pamphlets and renewed petitioning. In 1814, there were 1.5 million signatures on more than 800 anti-slavery petitions in a single month. Between 1826 and 1832, the House of Lords received more than 3,500 petitions.
It was the reformed Parliament, established after the Great Reform Act of 1832, that, while not ushering in a democratic system or enfranchising the working class, did wound the old political order, bringing new political interests into Parliament. As one of its first acts, it passed legislation in 1833 abolishing slavery in all the territories under British rule.
The Abolition of Slavery Act, however, included measures designed to keep the slaves bound to the plantations, limiting their right to own land and in effect providing a form of indentured labour for a period of six years as a form of “apprenticeship.” Furthermore, unlike the American Civil War that freed the slaves without a penny compensation to their former owners, the 1837 Slave Compensation Act, in response to pressure from the West India Interest lobby group, authorised the payment of about £20 million compensation (about £17 billion in today’s money) to 40,000 slave owners, many of whom had never set foot in their Caribbean plantations. This was equal to around 40 percent of the Treasury’s tax receipts at the time. Not a penny was provided to the former slaves in what was the largest bailout in British history until Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s bailout of the banks in 2008-9.
The slave owners used the money to invest in the growing bond market, buy property in Britain and patronize the arts and architecture as way of laundering their image and buying respectability back home.
The British ruling class, never one to miss an opportunity to score against its rivals, used the Abolition Act to pose as the anti-slavery watchdog, policing the West African coast, blockading its ports, seizing slaving ships and protecting Britain’s commercial interests as a prelude to the later colonization of Africa.
The legacy of slavery and the impact of imperialist rule today
The end of slavery left the former slaves as indentured servants under 12-year labour contracts, the longest such period in the Caribbean, receiving in return some of the lowest wages in the region. Some worked 45-hour weeks without pay in order to retain their family accommodation in tiny huts, while others left the plantations, forcing the owners to search for labourers in Spain, Portugal, India and China. With inadequate rights to own land, few tilled their own fields. Taxes were high and many became unemployed as the plantation owners brought in mechanized equipment.
The abuse and deprivation continued, courtesy of the state on the plantation owners’ behalf rather than directly by the former slave owners, enabling the plantation owners and merchants of British descent to continue their domination of the island’s politics.
Staggeringly, the high-income qualification required for voting that excluded more than 70 percent of the population was not amended until 1942.
Emancipation Statue in Bridgetown, Barbados
While the descendants of the emancipated slaves began a movement for political rights in the 1930s, this was dominated by the Barbados Progressive league, later to become the Barbados Labour Party, whose leader, Grantley Adams, was a staunch anti-communist and supporter of the British monarchy. He went on to become prime minister in 1953, a post he held until 1961, and was later knighted by Her Majesty for services rendered. His son later became Barbados’ second premier since independence in 1966, between 1976 and 1985.
None of the island’s governments have been able to redress British imperialism’s legacy of underdevelopment, dependency and above all economic hardship and social inequality. Today, the economic and social conditions prevailing in this “paradise” island in the sun, reliant upon tourism (accounting for 17 percent of GDP in 2019), financial services for the world’s corporations and kleptocrats that use Barbados as a tax haven, and remittances from migrants, are replicated across the Caribbean and all the imperialist powers’ former colonial possessions.
A recent World Bank Report pointed to the impact of the 2008-9 global financial crisis, precipitated by the criminal practices of the world’s major financial institutions, from which Barbados has never recovered. Government borrowings rose from 55 percent of GDP in 2008 to 158 percent in 2017, leading to a major recession, the suspension of its debt payments in 2018, and a restructuring plan aimed at reducing government spending and securing a loan from the International Monetary Fund. Even before this, the proportion of Barbadians living in poverty had risen from 15.1 percent in 2010 to 17.2 percent in 2016. Both the restructuring plan and more recently the pandemic have massively impacted workers’ livelihoods, with the economy projected to have contracted by 17 percent in 2020. According to the World Bank, about one in five households reported losing their main source of income in the first quarter of 2020, with a massive 40 percent unable to meet their most basic needs.
The International Monetary Fund noted that the impact of the pandemic on economic and social conditions has been greater in Latin America and the Caribbean than in any other emerging or developed region. As a recent OECD report pointed out, the region entered the COVID-19 crisis with most of these countries experiencing increasing social discontent, following five years of the weakest growth since the 1950s. In 2019, growth was virtually zero, with protests erupting throughout the region. The pandemic has touched every aspect of people’s lives, widening inequalities. Despite the pandemic being in its most deadly phase since the beginning of 2020, the government, like its counterparts elsewhere, has implemented token restrictions in order to keep the profits flowing.
These terrible conditions provide the context for the Barbados government’s decision to become a republic after 396 years of allegiance to the British Crown. It is nothing more than an attempt to shore up its vanishing credibility in the face of rising social discontent as it prepares to combat any movement against capitalism and unleash state repression to maintain the wealth and privileges of a tiny elite. It hopes to chloroform workers and their families with talk of a “new beginning”, a cynical euphemism for yet more market-based reforms in the service of the international banks.
Barbados’ history provides a powerful refutation of the central thesis of the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which claims that the American Revolution, far from being an attempt to throw off the tyranny of King George III, was a counterrevolution waged to defend the institution of slavery against Britain’s more enlightened rule.
This brief review shows that Britain was a major player in the slave trade and the system of slave-owning plantations. It suppressed all efforts on the part of the slaves themselves to throw off their shackles with the utmost brutality, until a combination of economic interests, a mass movement of the working class and the efforts of former slaves and the slaves themselves overthrew the hated institution.
A government crisis in Sweden that began earlier this year with the temporary resignation of then Prime Minister Stefan Löfven has gained intensity over recent weeks.
Behind parliamentary horse-trading and posturing, which has led to new Social Democrat leader Magdelena Andersson being elected twice as the new Prime Minister within a week, the crisis has produced a sharp shift to the right within official politics. This development is a product of the Swedish ruling elite’s homicidal “herd immunity” pandemic policy, which served as the model for the most viciously anti-worker governments around the world to let the deadly virus run rampant.
The latest stage of the crisis began when Löfven announced his departure as prime minister and Social Democrat leader, claiming that he wanted to give his successor time to build up their authority ahead of next September’s parliamentary elections. Andersson, who served as finance minister under Löfven, was chosen in early November to lead the Social Democrats. The party has headed Sweden’s government since 2014 in coalition with the Green Party.
Sweden's Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, left, is welcomed by European Commission President Ursula van der Leyen at the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium, Friday, Dec. 10, 2021. (Johanna Geron/Pool Photo via AP)
When Andersson secured the support of parliament to become prime minister on November 24, she was backed only by the Social Democrats and Greens, giving her just 117 votes in the 349-seat parliament. The Centre and Left parties, which have helped the Social Democrat/Green coalition secure a majority over recent years, abstained. The remaining parties–the Liberals, Moderates, Christian Democrats, and Sweden Democrats–voted against Andersson.
Parliamentary tradition has it that a prime minister does not require a majority to be elected. They only need to ensure that a majority of deputies do not vote against them. The four right-wing parties’ votes amounted to 174, one seat shy of the majority necessary to block Andersson’s election.
Later that day, parliament debated two budget proposals for 2022, one drafted by the Social Democrats and another by the right-wing Moderates and Christian Democrats, and far-right Sweden Democrats. Andersson’s budget, backed by the Social Democrats, Greens, and Left Party, was defeated before parliament accepted the Moderate-led proposal after the Centre party voted with the other right-wing parties. This marked the first time ever that a budget put together with the involvement of the Sweden Democrats was adopted. The Greens, claiming to be opposed to implementing a budget partly drafted by the fascistic party, withdrew from the government, forcing Andersson to resign just hours after being elected prime minister.
Andersson insisted that she would stand for re-election as prime minister at the head of a minority government composed of the Social Democrats alone. She vowed to impose the 2022 budget drafted by the Moderates, Christian Democrats, and Sweden Democrats. On this basis, she secured re-election on November 29, with the Greens, Centre, and Left parties abstaining to prevent a parliamentary majority against Andersson from emerging.
The interminable manoeuvring is merely the latest expression of the steady march of official politics to the right. The process has been dramatically accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the ruling class’s criminal response, but it has been ongoing for decades thanks above all to the combined efforts of the Social Democrats, Left Party and trade unions to block the working class from intervening independently into political affairs.
Primary political responsibility lies with the ex-Stalinist Left Party, which has invoked the threat of the far-right to justify extending support to right-wing Social Democrat-led governments. “It has played a critical role in propping up every Social Democrat government over the past three decades, helping to dismantle the ‘social model’ and turn Sweden into a paradise for private investors,” the World Socialist Web Site wrote of the Left Party in June. “It backed the Social Democrats as they carried out sweeping privatisations, business deregulation, the gutting of workers’ rights, and attacks on social programmes. This is the product of the Left Party’s acceptance of Sweden’s official political setup, identifying the establishment parties as two opposed blocs: the ‘left’, which includes the Social Democrats, Greens, and Left Party; and the right-wing ‘Alliance,’ composed of the Moderates, Centre, Liberal, and Christian Democrat parties.”
Since the Social Democrats returned to power in 2014 following eight years of Moderate-led rule, they and their “left” partners have facilitated the steady growth in the Sweden Democrats’ political influence.
In the name of stopping the Sweden Democrats coming to power, the Social Democrat/Green minority coalition struck a deal with the Alliance parties in 2014 to ensure Löfven could govern for a full parliamentary term so long as he accepted the Alliance’s budgetary framework. After the Sweden Democrats gained further ground at the 2018 election, the Social Democrats shifted even further right, reaching a formal agreement with the Centre and Liberal parties to keep Löfven in power. The Left Party continued to back the Social Democrat government throughout.
Even now, when it is clear to everyone that the “left” parties’ claim to be blocking the rise of the far-right has produced the opposite effect, the Left Party continues to insist on backing the Social Democrats. With its decision to abstain in the vote on Andersson’s re-election, it has allowed a Social Democrat government to come to power pledged to implementing a budget backed by the Sweden Democrats.
The Social Democrats, Greens, and Left Party are paving the way for the fascists to enter government after the September 2022 election. The budget just adopted lays out a series of anti-immigrant and law-and-order measures they intend to accomplish. These include salary increases for police officers, additional funds for surveillance technology, a commitment to carry out “more deportations and asylum rejections,” and a pledge to “combat illegal immigration as well as those who live in Sweden illegally.”
More than any other country, Sweden was associated in the pandemic’s early stages with a “herd immunity” policy, i.e., the refusal by the government to adopt any serious public health measures as the virus ran rampant. State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell became the poster boy for far-right figures around the world, including Donald Trump in the United States and Boris Johnson in Britain, who wished to emulate Sweden’s brutal “profits before life” agenda. Tegnell provided advice to Johnson just weeks before the British prime minister made his infamous “No more f***ing lockdowns! Let the bodies pile high in their thousands!” declaration.
Sweden’s policy included ordering care homes not to send people aged over 80 to hospital, leaving them to die if they got infected. COVID-19 infection and death rates were much higher in immigrant and other low-income communities. To date, with a population of just over 10 million, Sweden has registered more than 1.2 million infections and 15,100 deaths.
The enforcement of such a ruthless policy necessitates the encouragement of the most reactionary political forces. When governments around the world adopted in all essentials Sweden’s “herd immunity” strategy by reopening their economies after temporary lockdowns in early 2020, their ruling classes relied on far-right protesters to spearhead the dismantling of public health restrictions. In the United States, Trump and his fascistic followers mobilized violent anti-lockdown demonstrations and threatened to assassinate politicians associated with COVID-19 measures, like Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. In Germany, the political establishment and media built up the “Lateral Thinkers” protests led by right-wing extremists and outright fascists. In August 2020, protesters mounted the steps of the Reichstag building to wave the old flag of the German Empire.
The threat of a Swedish government coming to power with the support of a right-wing extremist party comes as bourgeois democracy across Europe enters ever deeper crisis. In France, Germany, and Spain, the army, security forces, and police are riddled with fascist terror networks that are plotting coups and the assassinations of political opponents. Two far-right candidates, National Rally’s Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, are being boosted in the media as the main challengers in next spring’s French presidential election to the hated Emmanuel Macron. Austria’s government collapsed last month amid allegations of corruption and criminality on the part of former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and his allies.
On Sunday, the Austrian government ended the limited lockdown, which had brought about a slight reduction in the number of infections after less than three weeks, in almost all provinces. In view of the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, the new chancellor Karl Nehammer (Austrian Peoples Party, ÖVP) is continuing the herd immunity strategy of his predecessors Sebastian Kurz and Alexander Schallenberg.
Wolfgang Mückstein (left) and Karl Nehammer (Photo: BKA/Dragan Tatic)
In mid-November, the ÖVP and Green Party coalition government had decided on a lockdown for the unvaccinated, extending it to everyone a week later because the infection incidence levels had run completely out of control. The situation in Austria’s hospitals was catastrophic. The high number of cases meant a system of triage was introduced, deciding who would receive life-saving treatment and who did not. Morgues were completely full. The seven-day incidence rate per 100,000 inhabitants rose above 1,000, and in several states and among children and adolescents it was far higher.
The lockdown was limited to the same regulations that had been applied earlier: restrictions on leaving the home, closure of stores not serving daily needs, closure of indoor cultural and sports venues. Schools and businesses, on the other hand, remained open without restrictions.
Although the measures came far too late and were insufficient to stop the rising levels of infection in the first place, the contact restrictions did lead to a drop in infections from over 15,000 a day in mid-November to 5,016 at last count. The incidence rate is still just under 400 per 100,000. Since a drop in hospitalisations is only noticeable after about two weeks, there has only been a slight drop in the number of coronavirus admissions in the last few days.
In this situation, the government is now essentially lifting all measures. People with proof of being vaccinated or recovered can once again frequent restaurants, hotels, theatres, cinemas and other establishments. Parties are permitted with up to 25 people indoors, and far more outdoors. Cinemas and theatres are allowed to seat up to 2,000 people. Ski resorts are also resuming tourist operations.
The public prosecutor's office has closed the criminal investigation into the spread of coronavirus in Ischgl, which with other Tyrolean winter sports resorts had seen more than 6,000 people from 45 countries been proven to be infected in a single month at the beginning of the pandemic. Some 32 of those infected died, and the virus spread from there throughout Europe.
“No charges will be brought,” the public prosecutor's office in Innsbruck announced. There was no evidence “that anyone had culpably done or omitted to do anything that would have led to an increase in the risk of infection.” Investigations had been conducted against five officials from the competent authorities.
The provinces where incidence and hospitalization rates are still dramatically high are extending the measures by only a few days: Upper Austria by a week, Vienna, Salzburg, Lower Austria and Styria by a few days.
From February next year, vaccination will be compulsory for everyone over the age of 14. Vaccination refusers face fines of up to 3,600 euros. So far, the vaccination rate of around 67 percent is far too low.
Compulsory vaccination is necessary, but the government is not backing away from its criminal policies. For one thing, the February deadline is far too late. For another, the emergence of the Omicron variant underscores that vaccination alone cannot stop the pandemic. Nor is that the government's goal.
According to Health Minister Wolfgang Mückstein (Greens), himself a medical doctor, the law should remain valid for two years. In this way, the government wants to be prepared for further waves of the pandemic. Until now, Mückstein had always been an opponent of compulsory vaccination. Now he declares that no more predictions will be made about the course of the pandemic and about procedures for its containment.
Scientists and physicians have strongly criticized the relaxation of measures to contain the spread of infection. The predicted “breathing space” is likely to be a short one, according to Katharina Reich, director general for public health.
The Coronavirus Commission, an expert advisory panel, expects the situation to soon worsen again because of the spread of the Omicron variant. Several commission members point to the continuing critical situation in intensive care units. So many operations have been postponed that it would be extremely difficult to catch up with them all, they said.
In view of the relaxations, molecular biologist Ulrich Elling, who welcomes both mandatory vaccination and the lockdown from a medical point of view, sees a danger that a fifth wave could develop as early as January or February, which would be far worse than the previous ones. According to initial models, Omicron is expected to have a broad impact starting in that time frame. Experts assume that the occupancy rate in intensive care units will then still be too high to cope with a new wave of infections.
The People’s Party and the Greens are fully aware of this. Mückstein stated in parliament at the beginning of the month that the infection figures were still at a very high level and that the situation in hospitals was dire. Triage is being employed not only in regard to minor operations, but also in operations for cancer patients. In some cases, he said, decisions have to be made about which patient has more chance of survival.
The callousness with which Mückstein speaks about the brutal effects of his own policies is characteristic of the entire government. The new chancellor, Karl Nehammer, a former professional soldier, is regarded as a domestic policy hardliner and has been called the “deportation king” in the press, and not without reason.
The fact that Nehammer’s successor at the Interior Ministry is Gerhard Karner (ÖVP) shows that the government is preparing for a confrontation with the working class in view of its unscrupulous policies. Karner is considered a supporter and defender of Austro-fascism. In Texingtal, Lower Austria, where Karner was mayor, there is a museum honouring Engelbert Dollfuss, the Austrian chancellor who paved the way for fascism.
Dollfuss dissolved parliament in 1933 and established an authoritarian regime modelled on Mussolini's Italian fascism and based on the Catholic Church and the Heimwehr (Home Guard), recruited from fascist circles in the military and declassed elements from rural areas. Like German and Italian fascism, Dollfuss’s regime was directed against the working class and its social democratic and communist representatives.
The museum has long been criticized by historians for its “homage” to the fascist corporate state. As mayor, Karner supported and promoted the museum, refusing to accept any criticism. Even as Interior Minister, he refused to comment on it.
Recent reports show that the response of the Labour Party-led government in New Zealand to the economic crisis triggered by the pandemic has further widened the already vast gulf between rich and poor.
A composite image showing a typical mansion on Paratai Drive, one of Auckland's richest streets, next to a typical flat in a working class neighbourhood of Porirua, north of Wellington. (Credit: WSWS media / Google Street View)
Like governments throughout the world, the Ardern government’s policies are dictated, not by public health and welfare concerns, but by the interests of the super-rich, the banks and major corporations.
In October, it bowed to the big business demands to ditch its elimination strategy for COVID-19. With the assistance of the union bureaucracy, all businesses and schools in Auckland, the country’s largest city and centre of the country’s Delta outbreak, have now reopened, setting the stage for a further surge in cases.
While workers are suffering considerable hardship, including wage cuts and job losses, and the risk of exposure to the coronavirus, the rich have increased their fortunes significantly.
In an article for The Spinoff on December 6, economist Bernard Hickey said the owners of capital and assets had received a total of $20 billion in public money, in the form of subsidies and other handouts, since the onset of the pandemic. “The cash balances of transaction and term deposit bank accounts of non-financial businesses and households owning property have risen by a net $45b since Feb 2020 to $319b at the end of September,” he noted.
Hickey also pointed to “a $257b increase in the value of shares, bonds and other non-bank financial assets to $954b” and a $608 billion increase in housing equity. Altogether, he estimated that “asset owners’ wealth is on track to rise by $872 billion or 50 percent to $2.63 trillion within two years of the outbreak.”
Property investors and the banks are profiting from an out-of-control housing bubble. According to the latest valuations data, the average national house price is $1.03 million, up more than 50 percent since the 2017 election at which Labour and its coalition partners, the Greens and NZ First, falsely promised to address the housing affordability crisis.
The four major banks—ANZ, ASB, BNZ and Westpac—reported $5.575 billion in profits in New Zealand during the 2021 financial year, an increase of 50 percent year-on-year, largely driven by strong mortgage growth. As Stuff pointed out, this is about $1,115 for every person in the country.
The housing bubble has been exacerbated over the past two years by the Reserve Bank’s monetary policies. The central bank printed $55 billion to purchase government bonds from the private sector, propping up the banks’ fortunes and suppressing interest rates.
The vast accumulation of wealth at one pole of society is inseparably connected with deepening attacks on working people, whose incomes are falling amid a surge in the cost of living, especially for housing.
According to the ANZ Bank, real wages have fallen in the past year by the largest amount since the former National Party government raised the goods and services tax in 2010. Inflation stood at 4.9 percent in the year to September. Wage rates increased by less than half that amount, just 2.4 percent. The Reserve Bank predicts annual inflation will reach 5.7 percent in the December quarter.
Interest.co.nz reports that the average residential rent reached $497 a week in the September quarter, up $43 or 9.6 percent in the space of just 12 months, placing extraordinary pressure on the 35 percent of households who do not own their own home. Rents are even higher in parts of Auckland, at $613 a week in the working class area of Manukau.
The number of applicants on the public housing waiting list has increased by two thirds since the pandemic to 24,536. Overall, more than 2 percent of people are homeless or in substandard housing.
The Child Poverty Monitor (CPM), produced by Otago University and the Children’s Commissioner, was released this month, showing that 18.4 percent of children are in households that earn less than half the median income after housing costs. Measuring household poverty in terms of the median income inevitably understates the crisis, given that real median wages are stagnant or declining.
The CPM is only based on statistics for the year ending June 2020, and the situation has dramatically worsened since then. According to Stuff, “Auckland foodbanks are coping with demand 12 times higher than last year.” Auckland City Mission told Radio NZ in November that it was distributing 1,600 food parcels per week and demand was the highest in its 100-year history.
According to inequality researcher Max Rashbrooke, before the pandemic the wealthiest 1 percent of New Zealanders owned a quarter of all assets, up from 16-18 percent in the early 1980s, before the pro-market deregulation by David Lange’s Labour Party government. The poorest 50 percent of the population owned less than 2 percent of assets.
Some members of the ruling class are nervous about the consequences of the extreme inequality that has built up under successive governments. Former National Party Prime Minister Jim Bolger—whose government in the 1990s attacked workers’ rights and slashed welfare benefits—warned on TVNZ last month that “some are getting obscenely rich and others are going to the food kitchens. That’s a dangerous position for a society… that’s the root cause of revolution.”
None of the parliamentary parties, however, is offering any progressive solution. Far from it. The billions of dollars handed to the rich will be paid for by the working class, through deepening austerity measures, including attacks on public services, jobs and wages.
The trade unions are playing a key role in stifling opposition to the government and corporate attacks. These pro-capitalist organisations have collaborated in imposing redundancies and wage cuts, and in enforcing the reopening of schools and businesses while COVID-19 is spreading.
Speaking to RNZ on December 6, the Council of Trade Unions’ economist Craig Renney hailed the Reserve Bank’s response to the crisis, including quantitative easing. He said it had “done a really good job… financial stability is really strong in New Zealand. The bank has helped, along with fiscal policy, to manage the economy really well through Covid.”
The unions’ enthusiastic support for giving billions to the rich lays bare the role of these bureaucratic organisations: to maintain the “stability” of the profit system at the expense of the working class.
