First of all, my deepest condolences to everyone who is struggling and suffering through this crisis, through poverty, mental strain, stress, fear, sickness and of course bereavement.
My experience of living in lockdown has been one of huge privilege.
As one of the extremely lucky ones, I’ve been thinking a lot about the inequalities that exist already in our society, and how much worse they are now, because our society is built on a system that RELIES on inequality.
Extortionate rents on privately owned, badly maintained properties where families live in cramped conditions. Hard always, unbearable now.
The strain of paying the bills, feeding your family, when your zero hours job with (of course) no furlough has disappeared, leaving you broke and without any employment protection, especially if your only access to shops is by expensive and now barely running privatised public transport, staffed by unprotected, underpaid workers.
Families trying to support their kids, some with Special Educational Needs, through home school with no tech.
Isolated people with various additional needs and Mental Health issues who have been lobbying for years for support in working and educating remotely,
only to be constantly knocked back, now finding that support is being rolled out with impunity because the economy needs it.
Over and over, cash-strapped charities and not-for-profits trying to pick up the pieces of the broken state: food banks, Home Start, Domestic Violence organisations, needing more and more money to help more and more desperate people.
And this insidious culture of being brainwashed into thinking that poverty and hardship can be overcome by a bit of blitz spirit and charity.
A bit of neighbourly kindness, a bit of community, a bit of fundraising for our favourite charity of the day: the NHS.
But do not, whatever you do, talk about the myriad ways in which our communities have been decimated.
We have to have a plan for our society, post-virus. The powers that be know that we’re starting to notice. That there are huge inequalities.
People who have never had to apply for Universal Credit now know what a disaster that is, and how it IS IMPOSSIBLE to live on so little.
For some people, their eyes have been opened to the hypocrisy of a government that cheers the capping of nurses’ pay one week, then our glorious NHS the next.
We don’t know what the world will look like after lockdown, but one thing is for sure, those who were suffering before, who are suffering now, will suffer more.
We are, even during this crisis, one of the richest nations in the world. There’s enough to go round if the rich play their part. And, as the pandemic has shown s, they ain’t going to do that without a fight.
When you cheer for our NHS heroes, please also remember how this incompetent, self-serving government that has put them all at risk by putting profit before people, by treating them as fodder.
If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention. Cheer with gratitude, but also roar with rage.
■■ Former Coronation Street star Julie Hesmondhalgh was writing for a People’s Assembly event.
