WE ARE currently in the midst of three distinct but overlapping crises. 

All of them are being exploited against the interests of ordinary workers, against black and Asian people and migrants and against countries outside the G7 club of rich countries.

In first place is the public-health crisis caused by the novel coronavirus, which is now responsible for over 400,000 deaths globally.  

If the experience of this country is anything to go by, this total is likely to be a severe underestimate.

Second, there is the huge economic crisis that has already begun. 

Working people are being hit hard in this country and globally. Most Western governments have pursued a strategy, to one extent or another, which puts preserving “the economy” ahead of preserving lives.  

This has not generally been the case in countries of the Asian Pacific, many of which took decisive early measures and have largely defeated the virus.  

Third, there is the ongoing climate crisis, where there is a real risk that an ill-conceived “growth-at-all-costs” laissez-faire approach will be adopted which will deepen the climate crisis.  

Instead, resolving the challenges of catastrophic climate change should be the major investment opportunity that will create good jobs, transform the environment and raise living standards by lowering energy costs.

It is sometimes easy to forget that these crises exist. Instead, our radio waves and TV screens are full of another, much older crisis.  

This is the crisis of racism, born of colonialism and slavery. It particularly infects US society but is also prevalent in all the countries which participated in on benefited from colonialism and slavery over the last 500 years.

There is a reason for this. All of society’s ills, and all its various crises become magnified enormously in the black communities precisely because of the prevalence of a disgusting and deadly racism.   

George Floyd was not the only black man to killed by the police in the US this year.  

He is not even the most recent victim of police killing, as others have been killed since.

But his killing ignited a tinderbox because of the severity of the current crises and how they are experienced by the black population.  

It is also sometimes easy to forget, given the demonisation of the Black Lives Matter movement, that now a clear majority of Americans of all ethnicities support the protests.  

This could not happen (and in fact has barely ever happened previously) unless the overwhelming majority of Americans felt the movement was in some way also speaking for them. And it is.

Millions of Americans do not have payroll jobs, being informally employed of self-employed, by choice or not. They have had no support at all from the Trump administration.  

Others have lost their jobs and fear they will not be rehired. All of this affects black people disproportionately.  

So too do the deaths from coronavirus. And black Americans are less likely to have medical insurance, more likely to be renters than homeowners and therefore more susceptible to the predations of unscrupulous landlords.  

Black Lives Matter is a movement responding to police violence and police murder. But it is driven by all of these factors and more, which affect not only black communities but also Latinos, other ethnic communities and the low-paid and marginalised of all ethnic groupings. This very much includes middle and lower-paid white people. 

Black Lives Matter is standing up for all of them, which is why the protests command such large support.

The US is currently engulfed in the widest civil unrest since the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968. 

That, too, was a period of multiple crises, all of which affected the black population disproportionately.  

The long post-World War II boom was coming to an end. As well as the movement for civil rights, there were increasing fears about pay and unemployment, as well as the women’s rights movement and of course the protests against the Vietnam war.

This period is not the same. But there are distinct similarities.

The election of Donald Trump was billed with the slogan “Make America Great Again,” a transparent reference to the pre-Obama days when a black person could not hope to become president. 

But it was also an admission of failure. For Trump and his supporters, the US needed restoring to greatness.  

Greatness clearly did not include rebuilding crumbling infrastructure, addressing the environmental crisis or the shambles in schools or housing.  

It certainly did not mean addressing the crisis in the healthcare system — and we have seen the deadly consequences. 

It did include the largest military budget in peacetime.

To clear up one point, Trump must know that all his depredations on US society would hit the black population hardest, otherwise he would be an idiot.  

If you knowingly pursue policies that hit black people hardest, that makes you a racist.

The British political class likes to believe “it could not happen here.” Yet nearly all the elements that have generated a wave of civil unrest in the US are present in Britain: the terrible coronavirus death toll among black people; a history of a disproportionate use of force against black people by the state; institutional racism generally, and a national leader who shows no understanding of or empathy for issues of race.

In fact, it is Boris Johnson’s policies in all these areas and more which make this country (along with France, for similar reasons) the most likely to emulate the current unrest in the US.

This poses a key question for the labour movement as a whole: will we be on the side of progress and protest, or on the side of reaction? 

There are plenty of Democratic and other politicians who denounced Martin Luther King, let alone Malcolm X.  

There are innumerable US labour leaders whose response to demands for votes, schools and jobs was to engage in red-baiting. 

But history does not tend to record the names of those who stand in the way of progress, who let our rulers treat people as if they are expendable.  

We must be for progress.

Diane Abbott served as the shadow home secretary from 2016 to 2020. She has been the Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since 1987.