Adam Harmsworth, Coventry Socialist Party
‘Operation London Bridge’ – the immediate state plan for funeral, coronation, and other arrangements when the monarch dies – includes cancelling virtually every public event until the funeral.
Thousands of people will have been depending on these events for income, as direct employees taking on extra hours, agency or zero-hour staff, self-employed workers, or small business owners counting on annual events that may have been cancelled since 2020.
The TUC Congress in Brighton was suspended. That alone is a venue’s hosting cancelled, coaches cancelled, hotel bookings cancelled, reams of material wasted and any incomplete orders also cancelled. Each event like that wasting tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Coventry Motofest was due just this weekend, intended as the ‘biggest ever’ following a scaled-down 2021 and no event the year before. A good portion of Coventry’s city centre workers will see their hours cut. Small cafes around town may have been relying on a weekend boom in customers to stave off cuts to hours, pay, and jobs, or outright closure. Repeat that for every major event in or near a town or city.
The state may have declared a period of ‘mourning’, but for the rest of us, lives carry on as normal. Or they would have if our lives hadn’t been made more desperate at short notice!
On a quick trip to a corner shop in Charterhouse estate, Coventry, I see nothing different; bins being hurriedly collected; parents in a hurry to drop off kids at school through the traffic, all to get to work on time. In the shop it’s no less busy than usual; shelves need stacking and those not working 9-5 are grabbing bits and pieces. The cashier started to chat with me, not about the monarchy, but about work. He tells me, quite bitterly, that he has a masters degree but “here I am”.
