PATRICK SIKORSKI
Only an international phenomenon as powerful as Covid19 could kick open the doors of the sweatshops of Leicester and throw a shaft of light on the reality of inequality and class exploitation in twenty first century Britain.
The spotlight has fallen on subcontractors to the clothes manufacturer Boohoo. Previously the darling of the on-line, wear-it today and throw-it-away tomorrow end of today's fashion business, it now stands accused of relying on a business model which has seen it's suppliers in Leicester operating in a way that would have been instantly recognisable to Engels in his book "The Condition of the Working Class in England"(1844) and to Charles Booth the chronicler of the condition of the London working class later in the nineteenth century.
So far the "charge" sheet, from the campaign group Labour Behind the Label and others, reads as follows; workers being "asked" to continue working alongside others despite outbreaks of the virus in the plant or of course in reality facing instant dismissal if they were to refuse; wholesale absence of social distancing or hand sanitiser pumps; claims of modern slavery, illegally low wages, VAT fraud and little or no basic Health and Safety - windows boarded up and fire escapes blocked.
One Human Rights researcher, who went into Leicester garment factories earlier this year stated " I've been inside garment factories in Bangladesh, China and Sri Lanka and I can honestly say that what I saw in the middle of the UK was worse than anything I've witnessed overseas."
In April, announcing year on year pretax profits of £92.2 million Boohoo's CEO, John Lyttle, noted the crisis had highlighted the company's "ability to be agile and flexible". Year on year turn over to February this year rose 44% to £1.2 billion.
Using sweatshops in the Midlands means very short supply chains and helps towards Boohoo having a turn around time, from concept and design to delivery of a new range to customers, of just two weeks - leaving other brands in the dust. It also helps that average pay in Boohoo suppliers is £3.50 per hour as against a "legal" National Minimum Wage for 25 year olds of £8.72. Boohoo cofounders are Carol Kane and Mahmud Kamani - in fact it's made him a billionaire.
Last week reports indicated that the Health and Safety Executive had contacted 17 textile businesses in Leicester, was actively investigating three, and was taking enforcement action against just one. By this week it seemed that Boohoo was only thinking of acting against one of it's Leicester suppliers. Estimates suggest that 75% - 80% of the city's total garment output goes to Boohoo.
Of course the HSE, and local Public Health departments, along with all public services has been cut to the bone. The HSE is so short staffed that it can't intervene in a factory unless they are made aware of breaches from whistle blowers. None of these plants are unionised.
The high - liberal commentariat of The Guardian of course cannot quite understand why workers in these plants won't speak to them or become "whistleblowers" - after all the worker is equal to the sweatshop boss and formally, in British law, even to Ms Kane and Mr Kamani? So, ever so gently and discreetly, the Guardian story shifts, via quotes from powerless local government service providers and an HSE with no legal powers to prosecute as individuals those who are blatantly enriching themselves from human misery, and who now force people to continue to work in life threatening conditions; the story shifts the blame to the workers themselves - after all, as the management speak says - "Happy to stay - Happy to go!"
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Early this June officials in the Australian state of Victoria were congratulating themselves on having contained the Covid virus and hoping that, after no new cases had been registered on two days, that it might be possible to lift the lockdown.
But a week ago last Monday the story abruptly did a viscious handbrake turn. 300,000 citizens were put back into lockdown in a military assisted operation to ring fence ten postcodes in Melbourne the state capital and, it was announced that the state border with New South Wales - Australia's most populous state - was to be sealed.
That Monday Victoria had recorded 127 new infections, its highest daily figure since the pandemic began. The military, together with assistance from other neighbouring states began a test and trace blitz aimed at testing 20,000 tests per day.
Last Saturday the situation worsened with nine housing estate tower blocks in suburbs in the north of Melbourne put into what state officials dubbed a "hard lockdown" confining 3,000 residents to their flats for at least 5 days. A cluster of Covid cases had been found. The towers not only have common lifts but are joined by walkways to adjoining blocks on the estates. Comprehensive testing was scheduled to take five days.
But tower block residents were increasingly angry with what turned out to be the uniquely harsh measures they were enduring. They'd been given no notice whatsoever of the "hard lockdown" which was being enforced by police patrols at the entrances and the lifts and along all the corridors and walkways. Critics pointed out that this effectively targets a racially diverse and already marginalised community. Furthermore the enforcement measures operating in the towers is in stark contrast to the lockdown measures in 36 other hotspots in the suburbs. Unlike those in the tower blocks, they can leave home for work, exercise, care and grocery shopping.
Now at the time of writing, five million people in and around Melbourne will be put back into lockdown for the next six weeks.
Previously, most cases were coming from travellers returning from overseas. Australia's curve flattened rapidly three months ago with the enforcement of lockdowns and mandatory hotel quarantines for people entering the country.
Victoria's State Premier David Andrews has pin-pointed the origin of many infections to workers overseeing hotel quarantines allegedly "breaking the rules". Up to that point more than 20,000 people had been through the fourteen day, hotel based quarantine procedure. A separate report which had traced Covid19's mutation in Victoria found that hotel staff cases were "ancestors" of ones found later in suburban homes. Premier Andrews has levelled blame at the private security firms policing the lockdown in the quarantine hotels - neighbouring New South Wales deployed it's regular full time police force for this task. Victoria has faced accusations of system failures such as guards being improperly trained or not being adequate PPE. Mr. Andrews has also described cases of illegal socialising between staff, listing examples of workers sharing a cigarette lighter and car pooling to and from shifts. Local media also reported claims of sex between guards and quarantined travellers. The Labour controlled state government has ordered a judicial inquiry into their quarantine operation and fired the contractors.
It's also relevant to throw another cluster into the mix. In early May authorities expressed concern about a virus "hot spot" among workers at an abattoir in west Melbourne. About 111 cases were linked to the site. However lockdown restrictions were eased a month later allowing people to again visit friends and family, and enjoy other freedoms such as eating out at restaurants. Officials still exhorted social distancing, but group limits were expanded. Large family groups reconnected and some cases stemmed from people with mild symptoms attending those gatherings, authorities reported.
"Once the feeling got around that it was over - when it really wasn't - Victoria copped it" said Professor John Matthews at the University of Melbourne.
Those "hotspots" mentioned above, in Melbourne's north and west suburbs are also home to large migrant communities. A language other than English is spoken in almost 35% of households in Melbourne - a remarkably similar percentage to that of the BAME community in the city of Leicester.
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Migrant communities the world over cling together for solidarity in the "hostile environments" openly or covertly imposed on them by officialdom; while working day to day wherever they can, for as long as they're told and for as little as they are recompensed in order to pay off the debts to traffickers or for dodgy papers and to the slum landlord for the rent. Very often they are preyed upon most severely by the business owners, capitalists and landlords in their own communities. Periodic crackdowns by state immigration agents backed up by police, at the workplaces serve to "crack the whip", weed out trouble makers and drive the community back under the control of the sweatshop owner, the landlord and the religious leaders.
When these poorer communities are singled out for the re-application of a lockdown following a period during which the whole of a country has previously been locked down, and, when other parts of the country with similar spikes - but much less diverse communities are not - then this means that a process of discrimination and ghettoisation of the pandemic is taking place. Some of the most deprived are being singled for yet more isolation and blame - especially from racists and fascists - for their own oppression.
It is all the more insupportable that it these same BAME communities who, populating, as they do, some of the poorest paid jobs in the health and social care services - and making proportionally the greatest ultimate sacrifice in the pandemic so far - are then told by the cowardly racist Johnson that the responsibility for the 30,000 excess deaths in the care sector are down to care homes "not following the right procedures".
None of all this should be allowed to stand.