Lindsey Morgan, Leicester Socialist Party
Leicester has been under some form of lockdown since March. We were the first city to go into local lockdown, and it has been difficult for lots of us dealing with periods of isolation, businesses going under, and people losing jobs.
Leicester is consistently one of the most underfunded cities in the country. Due to a combination of poor-quality housing, sweatshop workplaces, workers who can’t take time off sick (especially migrants), and piss-poor financial support from the government, we have had high infection rates.
The local Socialist Party has encountered mixed moods on the streets. Various people are enraged by the hypocrisy of local politicians flouting the lockdown rules then telling us how to behave. For many who have stuck to the rules and not seen friends or family, particularly in the early stages, it has been painful.
The length of the lockdown has meant, though, that many are making their own sense of the restrictions. They see the barefaced profit-first rules as lacking sense. The fact that the lockdown meant, basically, ‘do what you like as long as you’re spending money’, wasn’t missed by many of my friends and family, or by locals speaking to us on Socialist Party campaign stalls.
Parents who have had to send their children back to school increasingly understand how unsafe it is, but often feel they have no choice but to take the risk or lose their job.
The anger, though, hasn’t always resulted in people rushing to chat with us. Over a decade of austerity and local service cuts by the city’s Labour council have meant disillusionment, and sometimes a flat mood in the city. But when you do get talking to people, you find the need for proper working-class political representation and a fightback is understood.
The anger is bubbling under at the moment, but it will find expression. We are fighting to channel that into building for a socialist future.