by As agreed at LLA conference on August 23 2020
i) The conference meets during a serious political, environmental, and economic crisis. The growing recession, partly as a result of the coronavirus, will bring a further slowdown in economic activity, rising unemployment (especially amongst the young), and falling living standards. Whilst the full impact of the crisis remains unclear, it is certain that life pre-COVID-19 will not return. Within six months since the December 2019 general election the situation has radically changed.
ii) Despite the Tory government’s supposed new direction and a rejection of policies of austerity introduced after 2008, the response of the capitalist class in Britain will be to make the working class pay for the crisis. In an increasingly unstable hierarchical world system of competing capitalist states, aggravated by Covid, US imperialism remains thoroughly dominant and is attempting to reverse its relative decline through confrontational diplomacy, trade wars and ‘America first’ nationalism, which points to a future of continuing international tension and wars”.
