EVERY year, on April 28, the trade union movement observes Workers' Memorial Day for those who have been killed due to their work.

We do it under the slogan 'Remember the dead, fight for the living'.

We in Yeovil & District Trade Union Council always hold a ceremony at the brass plaque outside Unity Hall in Central Road.

This year, the date has a special poignancy.

First, we can't hold the ceremony as it would break the rules on social distancing and lockdown. Second, so many more workers have lost their lives this year.

They were doctors, nurses, care workers, bus drivers and workers in many other occupations who contracted the virus in the course of their work.

Many of these were killed because their employers failed to provide them with protective clothing or a safe working environment - a clear breach of the Health and Safety at Work Act.

Many of these workers, out of humanity or economic necessity, continued working despite knowing the dangers. We salute them all and send our condolences to their families, colleagues and friends.

The severe problems in the NHS have been caused by the policy of successive governments to underfund it, on the grounds that there is 'no magic money tree'.

Now we know that austerity was always a policy, never an inevitability.

When the coronavirus crisis is over, there must be no 'going back to normal'. Normal was the problem.

Under that normality, rough sleepers could not be housed, yet now they can.

The NHS could not be properly funded, yet now it can (albeit too little, too late).

Failing businesses could not be helped, yet now they can.

Suddenly, the impossible has become possible.

When the crisis is over, we will be campaigning for more of the 'impossible'.

KEN KEABLE Yeovil & District Trade Union Council