The metaphor of the invisible enemy; the Churchillian posing
of leaders like Boris Johnson; Trump presenting himself as a war time
President; and the new rhetoric about heroes have become part of the way many
people speak about the Covid 19 crisis. But we have to stop. This is not a war;
Covid 19 is not an enemy power. It’s a disease – a virus. It isn’t interested
in building or destroying Empires. It makes no calculations about cost/gain
ratios. It has no industrial-military complex to use. There is nothing
rational; or planned or even irrational and unplanned about where it attacks,
who it strikes down and who escapes. There can’t be – because its not even
technically alive!
The war metaphor; on the surface; looks like it makes sense.
Lots of people are being injured and lots of people are dying. There needs to
be a massive mobilisation within our communities to fight back. Ordinary people
are being asked to make enormous sacrifices – their freedoms; their livelihoods
and in many cases their lives.
But there’s a terrible danger lurking in this apparently
harmless metaphor. And its exactly those sacrifices that ordinary people are
being asked to make which should alert us to it.
The working class have always paid the highest price for the
ruling class’s wars. Its us who provide the frontline cannon fodder; us who
provide the medical staff who patch up the wounded and carry away the dead; us
who fill the factories turned over to wartime production; us who are thrown
back onto the scrap heap when “normalcy” returns; and us who take the brunt of
wartime rationing and shortages.
And so its also us who are asked to make the glorious
sacrifices for our nations good. Us, who get to be un-named heroes for a few
seconds. Us whose families get the letters edged in black and the posthumous
medals for bravery – when we’d much prefer a real living loved one to a dead
hero.
This has come home to me recently in trying to argue for
what seems to me to be a very basic demand – schools should close and stay
closed. If there’s a need to run a skeleton staff for the most vulnerable and
the children of emergency workers – then there has to be through-going
provision of cleaning; PPE and a salary loading to recognise that these people
are going well beyond the requirements of their job.
I have sat in amazement as the barrage of emails came in.
People telling me that it’s our job, why should we get paid more? People
telling me that PPE should be saved for the healthcare heroes. People implying
I might be somewhat selfish in not wanting to “do my bit” – presumably for the “war
effort”.
Let’s look at these ideas closer. Let’s start with the basic
call for PPE. Right across the globe right now essential workers – and that now
means the folk who work the checkout at the supermarket; the people who drive
the trams, buses and trains; the rubbish collectors; the pharmacists and their
assistants and retail staff; as well as health care workers right in the thick
of it – have been demanding better protection for themselves. And well they should
– they’ve been catching the disease in alarming numbers and dying in alarming
numbers too. Amazon workers have struck; Coles workers have threatened to walk
off and in multiple places around the globe those health care heroes have
walked off the job too – because without proper PPE, they can’t save anyone’s
life – not even their own.
For teachers (and childcare workers and anyone else who is
trying to keep some semblance of normalcy for the nation’s children) to ask for
appropriate PPE is not selfish; its not taking it away from anyone else who
needs it – it’s a basic demand to keep people – those children included – safe.
But the war time rhetoric means that rather than people being able to
acknowledge that a public service can’t take place unless it can take place
safely – they are lining up to make the ultimate sacrifice!
The same goes for demanding proper pay. I’ve been told that
at a time when lots of people are suffering job losses and pay cuts – that its
terribly selfish to want extra pay. But what this fails to recognise is that
those of us who now find ourselves essential are also often some of the most
poorly paid. That’s certainly true for all the supermarket workers; but its
also true in education and in healthcare. Child care workers are at the bottom
of education pay ladder – and yet suddenly their services become vital to the
running of society. It’s only if you buy into the “war-footing” rhetoric that
you’d be able to argue that they should not be being properly recompensed for
the huge risk they are placing themselves and their families in.
As for “doing my bit”. That’s probably the argument that
makes me the angriest – and the one that the war metaphor is most responsible for.
I wouldn’t enlist to fight and die in an imperialist war; and I won’t be
signing up to die for a crisis caused by the capitalist classes failure to take
WHO advice seriously. Add to that its failure to maintain a health system that
could cope with such a crisis. Its failure to have a proper stock of PPE. Its
failure to fund research sufficiently. Its failure to house the population
safely. Its failure to prevent violence against women and children in their
homes and in society. The list goes on. The working class didn’t cause this
crisis. And damned if we’re going to pay for it.
The thing the do-gooders and those with a matyr complex miss
– is that its workers demanding safe and properly paid working conditions who
are actually the ones really “doing their bit”. By demanding proper hand
sanitiser, gloves and masks – workers in food distribution are protecting all
of us from virus transmission. By demanding that schools and child care centres
close; we’re actually doing our bit to protect not just ourselves and our
families, but our students and their families too. By demanding proper pay and
loadings where we’re doing extra; we’re protecting the future of our jobs and
our economy and in fact taking the steps which will build a better world out of
the chaos this virus has created.
A final word on the concept of the hero. I am in awe of the
men and women working in hospitals and other healthcare roles right now. And I
think that words like brave absolutely apply to them. But those workers
themselves have been very clear. They are afraid. They are anxious. They are
exhausted. When we start to use the war rhetoric of heroes – we miss the
humanity and we allow ourselves to justify their sacrifice as glorious and
necessary. What health care workers need isn’t praise, applause or empty phrases
of thanks – they need massive funding; the urgent manufacture of PPE,
ventilators and other medical equipment; they need extra staff so they can have
shifts that don’t exhaust them; they need new hospitals built immediately; they
need free, safe accommodation if they want to isolate from their families.
These real, practical needs are the ones that are covered up by the glorious
sacrifice rhetoric that comes with the war metaphor.
In Homer’s epic, The Odyssey, Odysseus travels to the
underworld and there meets the shade of the great hero Achilles. Achilles had a
choice – a long, happy but inglorious life or a brief shining moment of glory
and an early death. He chose the latter. But asked by Odysseus whether he made
the right choice he replies, chillingly – that he’d rather be the slave of the
poorest man on earth than be a king in Hades.
No one really wants to be a hero – they want to do their job
and go home safe and well to their families. Let’s leave behind the empty
rhetoric about invisible enemies and war-time resilience. Let’s build a better
world out of the chaos that that the ruling class have lead us into – rather than
being taken in by their empty weasel words.
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