Scotland: Sturgeon Government Imposes more Bonapartist Restrictions on People attending Events
by Laurence Humphries, RCIT Britain, 03.01.2022, www.thecommunists.net
Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister in Scotland, has announced some stricter restrictions which are part of the COVID Counterrevolution. They are Bonapartist in essence attacking democratic rights and the rights of basic assembly. In all the countries of Britain, governments have used the pandemic to lockdown, restrict rights and establish conditions of Bonapartist rule moving towards police state conditions.
“Strict limits on crowd numbers at football matches have been announced for Scotland and Hogmanay events will be cancelled as part of new COVID restrictions from Boxing Day. Making a statement in the Scottish parliament, the first minister Nicola Sturgeon said crowds at outdoor public events will be capped at 500 from 26 December for at least three weeks, while numbers at indoor public events are to be limited to 100 standing or 200 seated”. [1]
Comparisons with Wales and Northern Ireland
Comparisons can be made with the situation in Wales and Northern Ireland where there are similar restrictions being imposed. Mark Drakeford, the First Minister in Wales, and the joint Democratic Unionist / Sinn Fein Government in Northern Ireland have always used restrictions for their political goals. Both Drakeford and Sturgeon have imposed restrictions insisting that people take these lateral flow tests which are fundamentally very unreliable. If you test positive you will find yourself under house arrest and quarantined or under isolation for at least 10 days. While quarantined they will receive no medical attention.
These house arrests show that the governments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are moving towards a police state with more surveillance using IT and security drones and applications on phones to trace what a person is and where he or she is going. It makes no difference of the political composition. In Wales it is a Labour administration and in Northern Ireland Sinn Fein a bourgeois-nationalist party is part of the government. They are all part of the forces of the COVID Counterrevolution which support Lockdowns and attacks on democratic rights.
Is Omicron a new dangerous variant of the pandemic?
The ruling class have been using the discovery of a new variant called Omicron in Southern Africa to create conditions of fear and hysteria. As the RCIT has previously stated there has been no scientific evidence to prove that Omicron is a dangerous variant, but it is being used to create panic.
“Since a few days, bourgeois governments and their media are full of reports about a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus called “Omicron”. Without any scientific evidence, media all over the world have quickly started to spread panic. Stock markets fell sharply. Since the South African government was the first to report about the new variant, the media claim that this country is the originator of Omicron. As a result, imperialist governments have imposed travel bans and closed the borders for people from Southern Africa.
It is important to point out that such bans are not justified by scientific research as the South African Medical Association reports that the new virus variant, from what we know yet, results in mild disease without prominent syndromes.
Furthermore, there are strong indications that the ruling class is determined to exploit the emergence of Omicron as a pretext for accelerating the authoritarian capitalist pandemic policy which Marxists call the COVID Counterrevolution. The Austrian government announced in late November that it imposes a Lockdown for unvaccinated people and that it will introduce compulsory vaccination for the whole population”. [2]
The ruling classes in all countries have used the Omicron variant to impose travel bans and introduce reactionary COVID passports using police and authoritarian measures. In fact, it is in the heavily vaccinated countries of Britain Germany, Austria and the United States where infections are rising. Of course, the bourgeoisie has done nothing to advance the expansion of the public health sector but has continued to use dictatorial and authoritarian measures to clamp down and reduce the population to continual house arrest.
Authoritarian and police state measures
Our comrades in Nigerian RCIT section have shown very effectively the governments’ use of authoritarian measures under the pretext of fighting the virus. It has nothing to do with improving the health sector but everything to do with establishing Bonapartist dictatorship.
“Of course, mandating people to get any form of certificate/passport/pass before they can be allowed to work, visit certain places such as bars, pubs or even use public transport as it is been done in Europe is only a textbook method of implementing forced vaccinations. Effectively taking away the opportunity for people to choose what they want coupled with segregation based on certain rules. These are the typical features of apartheid, a COVID apartheid if you will.
All calls and campaigns for mass vaccination bolster this COVID apartheid and are equally dangerous since they will lead to segregation in society. As has been said the APC/PDP government like all other members of the global ruling class mobilize “technocrats”; religious bodies, bourgeois scientists and the media to launch a second wave of the COVID Counterrevolution. The Omicron variant is the booster for this fresh assault against the masses which consists of forced vaccinations; segregation/apartheid; increased surveillance on the population; up to house arrests for the whole population and national chauvinism dubbed as compulsory vaccination; green pass/vaccine certificates; health apps; lockdowns and travel bans respectively.
The major motive of the ruling class stems since the beginning of the pandemic from the shipwreck of the capitalist system which reached its most severe form in 2019. It is the desperation to preserve their position of power and affluence that has prompted this epochal despotism from the ruling class. The economy has failed to recover from the depression rather it has entered a second slump hence the second wave of counter-revolution using COVID as a smoke-screen. Key features of this second slump is the hyperinflation in (Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and energy prices generally the results of which the RCIT has designated as Dark Winter in the imperialist countries”. [3].
No to lockdowns, covid passports or forced vaccinations!
The RCIT has identified this COVID Counterrevolution as one of the most important events in recent history. We have also shown that a whole variety of leftist organizations have capitulated to this Counterrevolution. The bourgeoisie is effectively using the pandemic as a smokescreen for its fundamental move from bourgeois democracy towards authoritarian and dictatorial rule increasing the State’s control by using high tech surveillance through IT applications. These are desperate attempts to save their rotten corrupt system which is in interminable crisis and which is also shaken by the accelerating inter-imperialist rivalry of the USA, China, Russia, Japan and Europe.
“Many people (including among the left) did hope that the pandemic is only a temporary phenomenon which would soon disappear – and with it all the emergency measures of the capitalist state. This is – and has always been – a gross illusion! The RCIT has emphasized since spring 2020 that the policy of the COVID Counterrevolution is not driven by concern of public health but rather by political and economic interests of the ruling class. These interests of the monopoly bourgeoisie are determined by the decay of capitalism characterized by economic depression, global political instability and mass unrest. In such a period the ruling class can only keep its power by engineering a shift towards a permanent state of emergency resulting in the successive replacement of bourgeois democracy by chauvinist state bonapartism.
Such a policy of the ruling class will last for years as it can only be ended if the system of class exploitation is smashed by a socialist revolution of the workers and oppressed.
Hence, revolutionaries must have no illusions in facing the reality of the period ahead: the current state of emergency regime of the ruling class is not a temporary shift but a strategic transformation from the current form of bourgeois order towards a regime of capitalist totalitarian tyranny”.[4]
The RCIT puts forward the following transitional demands to warn and urge the working classes and the exploited masses of the necessity to organize for the Socialist Revolution in Britain and smash the Capitalist system once and for all.
* Expand the health service for more intensive care unit hospitals to be built and the recruitment of more doctors and nurses. Nationalization under workers control of all pharmaceutical companies without compensation.
* Reject COVID Health Passports and mandatory vaccinations!
* For mass protests and strike actions against anti-democratic attacks!
* Call on Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters in the Labour Party to continue opposing attacks under the pretext of the pandemic!
* For a Workers Government based on popular councils and militias!
* Join the RCIT!
Footnotes
4) Revolutionary New Year Greetings for 2022 - International Revolution (thecommunists.net)