Footballer Marcus Rashford was right when he wrote to MPs on 15 June that “the system was not built for families like mine to succeed, regardless of how hard my mum worked.” He asked the government to continue to provide its £15/week food vouchers for the poorest children during the summer. As Rashford pointed out, 200,000 children have missed meals due to poverty, during the lockdown.

    But he was also right that almost a third of all children were living in poverty even before the pandemic. This virus did not cause, but merely exposed and exacerbated, the social and racial inequalities in a system which is designed to work against the interests of the working class majority.

    After the government’s U-turn, Rashford tweeted: “Just look at what we can do when we come together”. True enough!

    But as always, it will have to be the working class itself which comes together, if those who are most vulnerable to the virus, are to be protected.

    Indeed, Public Health England has now published a second report on the effect of coronavirus on black and minority ethnic (BAME) people this week. It showed that black men had a mortality rate from Covid-19 almost 4 times higher than white men; in women, rate of death is three times higher if you’re black.

    During the pandemic, it has been the lowest-paid, “essential” workers, who have had to go into work every day. BAME people make up 11% of the workforce, but account for 18% of supermarket checkout staff and postal and delivery workers; 20% of nurses, care workers and bus drivers and 32% of security guards.

    The report made recommendations to protect those BAME workers most exposed to the virus. One of these was to have more detailed "risk assessments" for BAME front line workers. It is these workers who are, and have been, keeping society running, at the sharp end of capitalist exploitation.

    The logical outcome would be to pay them in full to stay at home, safely away from these risky jobs! Neither the government nor the bosses are going to make any such recommendation, of course. No, as Rashford's tweet went, the working class will have to “come together” in order to ensure it!