‘He was my hero’

Ian Fowler was a semi-retired design engineer at JLR Castle Bromwich and a Unite member, who lost his life to coronavirus at the age of 56.

His son, Matthew, described his father as “the life and soul of the party – including the ones he wasn’t invited to”.

“He was a family man, he loved his wife and children very much,” Matthew told uniteEXTRA. “He was a man of incredible charisma – he was the sort of guy that if you met once you never forgot him. He was the centre of our whole world. He was my hero – and I’ve said time and time again that I am who I am because of his influence.”

Like Hannah, Matthew spoke of the pain of grief during the pandemic.

“I don’t think I will be able to grieve properly until all of this is over – both the state of the pandemic as it is and the subsequent fall-out afterwards,” he said. “We’ve been forced to handle grief in an isolated fashion which has been incredibly difficult. I remember standing in the funeral home with my mum and not being able to hug her which was torturous, and I know that a lot of other people have experienced the same.”

‘Circling the void’

Rajith Chandrapala, a Unite member and London bus driver who drove the 92 bus in Ealing, was on the eve of retirement when he succumbed to coronavirus last May. He was 62 years old.

His daughter Leshie described her father Rajith as “so funny, so warm and really kind”.

“He was really connected to everyone around him. He was so comfortable in his own skin that so many people just gravitated towards him – he was always the centre of attention at parties,” she told uniteEXTRA. “He played the guitar, loved to sing and dance and wrote poems too. He was very wise but wore it lightly.”

Despite it being almost a year since her father died, Leshie says she still struggles to process her grief.

“I can’t tell you how excruciatingly painful those days were when was in hospital – it felt like hell,” she said. “Hell is a place on earth and that was hell. I was pleading to all the gods to bring him back to me. It’s coming up to my dad’s one year anniversary but I still feel like I’m just circling that void of that great loss to our family.

“My dad wasn’t just a statistic – he was a living, breathing human being with his own hopes and dreams and ambitions, with lots of love and lots family and friends he’s left behind.”

The most painful part for Leshie, she said, is the fact that her father’s death – and so many others – could have been prevented. “It’s very painful to think that my father need not have lost his life – better protection could have meant that he would still have been here with us today,” she said. “I have lots of questions about why he died and why so many bus drivers and other workers have died of Covid.”

Justice fight continues

Matthew, Leshie, Hannah and her sister Tasha are only four of the many thousands of Covid bereaved who are now demanding answers to those very questions.

These brave young people, who met with Unite general secretary Len McCluskey at the Covid Memorial Wall on Workers’ Memorial Day in April, are speaking out to ensure they and their loved ones secure justice through a full public inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic – and to ensure loss on this scale never happens again.

Matthew, who is one of the co-founders of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, highlighted the importance of a public inquiry.

“I would like the government to think carefully over what’s happened over the last year – I would like to see as many MPs as possible walk this wall and take in the scale of the impact this pandemic has had,” he said. “I ask them to think carefully about what we can do to prevent any of this happening again – not just in the wake of Covid-19 but in preparation for any future world events like it. What can we do now that would go towards saving an infinite amount of lives?”

Just days after uniteEXTRA spoke to Matthew, Hannah and Leshie at the Covid Memorial Wall on Workers’ Memorial Day, prime minister Boris Johnson announced that the government would pursue a statutory public inquiry as the bereaved families have long called for.

But the prime minister said the inquiry wouldn’t begin until the spring of next year, which the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group said was ‘simply too late’. And despite repeated requests, as of writing, Boris Johnson has refused to meet with the bereaved families.

And so the fight for justice continues. Hannah, Matthew, Leshie and the thousands more bereaved families, united in grief and anger, are determined to continue campaigning – for a fair and urgent public inquiry, and for the National Covid Memorial Wall to be made permanent.

Hannah explained why making the wall permanent was so vital. “This wall should be made permanent because grief will now be a permanent feature of 156,000 families’ lives,” she said. “I will live my life permanently not having a dad, my future children will permanently not have a granddad. Why shouldn’t a memorial wall which isn’t political – it’s 156,000 hand-painted hearts – why shouldn’t it be made permanent?”

As Unite continues to work closely with the bereaved families in their campaigning, Unite general secretary Len McCluskey urged everyone who can to visit the wall.

“It’s a highly emotional experience and it’s also here for us not only to remember the dead but also fight for justice,” he said. “Although this wall is full of love, it also brings for me an element of anger,” he added. “How many of these 150,000 lives could have been saved if the government had acted quickly enough on a whole host of different issues that we urged them to do such as PPE provision? We need this wall to become a permanent memorial and we need a full and urgent public inquiry so that the questions that these bereaved families still have are answered. It’s the only way that they’ll get closure.”