by Eóin Dawson Over the course of the pandemic, there has been speculation about what impact the lockdown and other measures have had on people’s mental health. While some services have seen a reduction in referrals, with life’s ordinary pressures eased for some, certain groups have been left vulnerable by the lockdown.  Emergency services in crisis  Phone counselling service Childline ...

By Eddie McCabe & Keishia Taylor, from the Summer 2020 edition of Socialist Alternative, the political journal of the Socialist Party. Capitalism must go. Virtually everything about the world today screams this. Take for example that in the midst of a global pandemic, when 1.6 billion people are in “immediate danger of having their livelihoods destroyed”, according to the International ...

By Dean O’Donnell While responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have varied from country to country, one common thread to all is the near uniform refrain from governments, the mainstream media and the super-rich: ‘we are all in this together’. Yet as the figures for infections and deaths continue to climb, the evidence mounts as to the disproportionate and devastating impact ...

By Sam Belton While the world reels in the face of the current Covid-19 pandemic, the climate change crisis ominously looms in the background as an ever-developing existential threat. Both crises are of course interconnected, as the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 – the coronavirus responsible for Covid-19 – was in part driven by global biodiversity loss and the destruction of finely-tuned ...

By Tony Wilsdon, Socialist Alternative (our sister organisation in the US) The threat posed by COVID-19 was not a secret. The devastating spread of the virus in China, and the fact that it could be transmitted person-to-person was world news by the middle of January. The science of virus transmission and the steps to minimize its reach was also well ...

By Robert Cosgrave The horrific Covid-19 crisis has graphically exposed the multiple inequalities and forms of oppression that lie at the heart of capitalism. Working-class people find themselves out of work and down on income. For those workers deemed essential, the same unacceptable workloads continue, with a lack of sufficient PPE provision or any increase in their wages from bosses ...

By Andrea Murray As the outbreak of Covid-19 began to take hold, experts warned of the risk of increased gender based violence and abuse of children. Intimate partner violence increased significantly during the HIV / AIDS pandemic, Ebola and Zika virus outbreaks. Research from previous pandemics and disease outbreaks align with what we’re now seeing emerging from Covid-19. Economic insecurity ...

Interview with Eljeer Hawkins, New York City surgical technician & socialist activist NYC is at the epicentre of the Covid-19 pandemic. What are conditions like for health workers there? EH: The conditions throughout our for-profit healthcare system and for the workers has been an utter disaster with unconscionable consequences as we try to take care of our patients and the ...

By Mick Barry Today, Debenhams workers at 7 stores throughout the state staged protests at the company’s decision to go into liquidation with the loss of 2,000 plus jobs. Debenhams may go into full liquidation in just nine days time and the workers therefore left with bare minimum statutory redundancy from the state’s social insurance fund. Companies such as Debenhams, ...

Now pressure is building in many countries across the world for an ‘’exit strategy’’ from the shutdown. This pressure is not coming from working-class people.