As the coronavirus crisis rips through society, International Workers' Memorial Day on 28 April is more important than ever.

The UK government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed not only the ineptitude of the current government but the sorry state of our National Health Service, which has been pushed to breaking point by successive administrations

In the last two weeks of March, 950,000 people successfully applied for the income support part of Universal Credit. The DWP has moved 10,000 backroom staff onto the frontline to cope with the 10-fold surge in demand

Since the implementation of COVID-19 quarantines on an international scale, life has become more dangerous for people trapped in households with abusive relatives, partners or housemates.

While the ballot is on hold, postal workers’ health concerns have come to the fore as offices in Bridgewater and Alloa walk out

Coronavirus is demonstrating the essential basis upon which our society exists: the working class and the necessity of labour. Workers and their unions must take the lead and control this lockdown.

A motion passed by Lambeth Unison's branch committee

A programme of action published in the early weeks of the pandemic.

In the DWP we should veto work that sanctions or penalises claimants and demand Universal Credit is paid on the first day, in advance, not six weeks in arrears. In the Home Office – end deportations and close the detention centres

The vulnerable will suffer most in any social – and economic – lockdown. We must insist schools apply a broad definition to the terms of which students and families are ‘vulnerable’ based on need, not the dictates of an uncaring, neoliberal government seeking to protect business over workers and the poor.

To the surprise of many, when CWU leaders Dave Ward and Terry Pullinger announced the ballot result to members on Facebook,[2] they said they would not set dates for a strike, explaining that “it’s not the right moment for us at this particular point to take industrial action”. Since then Terry has said “we’ve got no choice in the matter”, citing the “unprecedented circumstances” of the coronavirus crisis.

In the ballot result announcement on Tuesday, Dave Ward and Terry Pullinger reported on growing anger in the workforce against lack of management action to protect staff against coronavirus. Royal Mail have done little to provide gloves, hand sanitiser or sympathy despite the vulnerability of staff who work among the public every day.

Our era is indeed facing ever more regular and more severe crises from global heating to financial meltdowns to pandemic diseases. Yet these global, social problems are being dealt with along rival national lines and under competing capitalist property rights