https://iclfi.org/pubs/wr/47/letby
In August 2023, Lucy Letby, a neonatal nurse at the Countess of Chester Hospital in Britain, was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of seven babies and attempted murder of six others back in 2015 and 2016. Letby was labeled in the press as one of the worst serial killers in British history, an “angel of death” preying on premature infants. But since her conviction, countless voices—medical experts, statisticians, journalists and even a prominent retired detective—have debunked the entire prosecution’s case. A growing chorus of experts has come out not only to argue that her conviction is unsafe, but that Letby is innocent, that no murders happened at the Countess of Chester, and that the prosecution’s evidence was at best flawed and at worst fabricated.
It has become clear that Lucy Letby was scapegoated. The Countess of Chester Hospital—like most hospitals in the UK—was hugely understaffed, underfunded and decrepit. Sewage was frequently coming up the pipes. Multiple drug-resistant superbugs were present. Doctors and nurses were in constant shortage. As the number of infant deaths spiked, hospital management and consultants did what they do best: they blamed the staff. This is when suspicions around Letby mounted and she was removed from neonatal care. But Letby fought back. She filed a grievance through her union and, against all odds, won. The consultants were made to apologize to her. They then went to the police…
The story of Lucy Letby is one of a nurse, a working-class woman and a trade-union member, caught in the crisis of the National Health Service (NHS) and framed to cover up its failure. One would think that the trade unions and the socialist left would be on the front line of her defense. But no. Not a single trade union has spoken up in defense of Letby, including her own union, which went silent after the police got involved. Prominent left-wing outlets like Novara Media endorsed her conviction back in 2023 and have remained silent since. Groups like the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Party wrote articles claiming she is guilty—and have said nothing since. In fact, our own comrades have been accused by Socialist Party members of defending a “baby killer.” In general, on the left, anyone raising doubts about Letby’s conviction is quickly labeled a conspiracy theorist in bed with right-wing forces. This is because the silence on the left has meant that the main political voices defending Letby have come from the right, from Reform UK supporters to Tory MP David Davis.
The reason for this is quite simple: Letby’s case is unpopular among liberal and middle-class elements. These people, who are the main constituency of the “left,” believe in the justice system and dismiss frame-ups as conspiracy theories. Defending Letby necessarily means becoming unpopular in this crowd, which is why prominent left-wing figures or trade-union leaders won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. In turn, the defense of Letby resonates strongly among working-class people, particularly among those who look to Reform UK or who work in the NHS. The reason for this is that they have nothing but distrust for the powers that be and hate the establishment.
The case of Lucy Letby exposes everything that is wrong with the socialist movement today. If huge swaths of working-class people are turning to the right, it is precisely because on the left they only find defenders of the status quo, mainly worried about upsetting liberals or trade-union leaders subservient to the Labour government.
We of the Spartacist League, together with the Partisan Defence Committee, have been virtually the only socialists campaigning for Letby. The silence and opposition of the rest of the left to our effort is a huge betrayal and a scathing exposure of its blind faith in capitalist institutions. We know that many members of socialist groups actually agree with us. Fight for your group to take a public stand! It is crucial for Lucy Letby and for all NHS workers who could be the next scapegoats and who have been cowed into silence by this conviction. But it is also crucial to detach the socialist movement from the liberals.
