The brutality of the police who murdered George Floyd in Minneapolis goes far beyond the kind of racism which has always been “normal” in this sick society.  But this time, the hundreds of thousands of protesters out in the streets, all over the US, are determined not to take this latest cop-killing of a black man, lying down.

    We need to take a leaf from their book.  They show that they can fight; indeed they show that there is no other choice but to fight - even in the middle of this global pandemic, which, in the US has killed over 100,000 and pushed over 40 million into unemployment.

Yes, there has to be a fight - not just to get rid of the plague of racism, but to get rid of the class-based capitalist system which spawns it, dividing us, to control us.

    In fact the US and British politicians presiding over this rotten system today, share in common an utter incompetence and nationalist US/Britain “first” bigotry.  These have fuelled racism in both societies.  And resulted in the highest number of Covid-19 deaths in the world as well as unprecedented social catastrophes for the working class - and the black working class in particular.

    Of course, all over the world, governments have failed to control the virus.  Worse, they’ve been incapable of using the world’s combined resources to do so, coming up with all kinds of inward-looking, competitive rhetoric.  And in every country in the world, bar none, the poorest sections of the working class are paying the highest price for the dual crisis that capitalism has brought upon itself.

    But here in Britain we can fight back.  We MUST fight back.  We should demand that not one job is cut!  That work is shared out among all of us.  And that shareholders dig into the record dividends paid last year - £110.5bn - to pay the cost of this crisis and to pay us all decent, living wages!

    Of course the virus of greed which infects the bosses and their decrepit, outdated system, has only one ultimate cure:  the revolution which many of the protesters in America are talking about today.  For them it may just be words, said in fury.  But the truth is that there is no way to reform this system.  That has been tried over and over - and in much better circumstances than today - to no avail.  It will have to be overthrown.