Will 1,000 deaths a day finally give the Tories their Chernobyl moment?

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As people slept on April 25th 1986,  none knew that the next day would mark the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. 

The next morning a nuclear reactor near the Ukrainian city of Pyrpiat exploded: the KGB cut phone lines, citizens were locked in and troops deployed. Amidst confusion and denial many received lethal doses of radiation; hundreds of thousands more had their health irreparably damaged and a baleful procession of cancers, birth defects and other radiation related illnesses began. 

The ‘Chernobyl Moment’ was born: a small Ukrainian village becoming totemic of the trigger moment when bad empires fall. The Corona virus might be the Chernobyl moment for the British establishment.

Soviet officials found people to blame for ‘the accident’: Bryukhanov, Fomin and Dyatlov. Their names will echo throughout history, but Chernobyl was a sin of the entire Soviet system: the inefficiency, systemic bullying, the corners cut on safety, the callous disregard for its own citizenry, the concentration of elite wealth and power and the endless lies told to protect ideologies.

There is a chilling parallel between the May Day Parade in Kiev (pictured above) and events in the UK in 2020. 

60 miles from Chernobyl, Kiev held its 1986 May Day Parade as normal: the Soviets were anxious to display normality before western journalists. The official position was that a nuclear disaster was impossible in the Soviet Union.

Many families traditionally dressed young children for the event and were told it was safe. But the crowds walked through severe radiation and the authorities were never forgiven for sacrificing the children of Kiev for the sake of appearances. 

Fast forward 34 years and in the middle of a global pandemic emergency this was the scene on March 13th at the 2020 Cheltenham festival – the 1986 Kiev May Day parade re-enacted.

Indeed the UK’s response to the corona virus pandemic has many parallels with Chernobyl.

Moscow spent weeks after the explosion saying that a nuclear disaster could not happen in the Soviet Union: so the UK government issued eight assurances during January through to March that the coronavirus posed a “very low” or “low” risk.

Soviet officials insisted that Chernobyl was under control. UK Cabinet ministers promised on at least 16 occasions that the NHS was “well prepared” in the run up to the current pandemic. 

In 1975 in Leningrad, an accident just like Chernobyl occurred and utter disaster barely averted. The Soviets took no action and news of the incident was suppressed. In 2016 Operation Cygnus tested NHS readiness for a pandemic and found it hopelessly inadequate: the Tories did nothing and the Department of Health suppressed the conclusions.

In 1986, Soviet news agencies lied about the true death toll and radiation levels at Chernobyl, drew self-serving parallels with nuclear accidents in the west and KGB agents spread rumours that American spies had attacked the plant. In the UK the true death toll from Covid-19 is being hidden behind statistical time lags, the true level of infections behind the lack of mass testing and unfavourable parallels with other nations are being buried: pro-establishment media portals have tried to blame China.

The Soviets delayed evacuating Prypiat and surrounds until it was too late to save tens of thousands from severe radiation. In the UK the government delayed a lock down until it was too late to prevent a deadly pandemic.

In 1986 Moscow accepted contaminated food from Ukrainian farms and kept reactors at Chernobyl running throughout. In the UK, building sites and non-essential workplaces remain open. 

At Chernobyl senior officials refused to accept that the reactor had exploded and even kicked around lumps of insanely radioactive graphite on the site – then they were hospitalised. In the UK Boris Johnson shook hands with Corona Virus victims and was hospitalised.

The Soviets sent young conscripts into radioactive areas with virtually no protective equipment. They fashioned their own and were forbidden from talking about it. NHS staff have been sent in to look after Corona virus patients with virtually no protective equipment: they have been forced to fashion their own and forbidden from talking about it

Soviet efforts to deal with Chernobyl were hampered by denial, officials dodging responsibility, internal political jockeying and scientifically illiterate decisions…sound like anywhere you know?

Much of the initial Soviet effort about Chernobyl pivoted around disinformation and propaganda. Much of the current UK effort about Covid 19 pivots around naked pro-government propaganda, with the BBC playing the role of the Soviet news agency TASS. The terse Soviet TV announcement about Chernobyl has an uncanny parallel to the recent royal address urging unity and strength. 

I could write a book about the similarities between Chernobyl and the UK’s handling of Covid-19. All the calling cards are there – lies, hubris, stupidity and a callous disregard for human life – all to protect the power, wealth and the ideologies of an elite.

The death of 1,000 people a day is being spun as a success for the British government; but just as the Soviets failed to cover up Chernobyl, so this narrative will fail. As with Chernobyl, the real blame lies not with individuals but a corrupt system. In 2020 Britain that system is neoliberalism allied to elite class privilege.

Pandemic deaths may yet be somewhat limited by the belated concern of the owning class and heroic sacrifices of the working class, but my best hope now is that sections of the UK population so long asleep…finally wake up.

The Tories have been responsible for so much suffering and death in Britain: on bleak days they appear as unstoppable as the USSR once did.

Perhaps one good thing can come the Covid-19 pandemic: maybe these will be the days in which the British population finally throws off the neoliberal yoke and gives the Tories their long overdue and much deserved Chernobyl moment. 

Since 2013 I have worked between 4-6 hours a day on this Ad-Free site: trying to give a voice to those without the power or agency to speak out for themselves and uncovering truths that well paid journalists in the corporate media dare not utter.

I am a home schooling parent on a low income – paying for the domain, web hosting and security entirely out of my own pocket.  

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Thank you in solidarity with all our readers. John Lynch, Editor.     

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