Anti-cuts round-up

Submitted by AWL on 1 February, 2011 - 2:18

A round-up of recent anti-cuts campaigning in Scotland, Barnet, Islington and Merseyside.

Scottish anti-cuts alliance launched

Around 90 people attended a conference held in Glasgow last Saturday, organised by the Defend Glasgow Services campaign in order to launch a Scottish Anti-Cuts Alliance (SACA).

This was a rather slender basis from which to launch a Scottish-wide alliance, especially given the very limited representation from outside of Glasgow and Edinburgh. Only a few days earlier, for example, Aberdeen City Council had announced 900 compulsory redundancies. But no-one was present from there.

After the three platform speakers – Janice Godrich of the PCS, Brian Meek of Glasgow Unison, and a ranter from the Right to Work Campaign – it was time for reports from local campaigning.

But only two reports were taken before the conference moved on to discuss SACA’s draft founding statement and proposed amendments.

This was a pity, given that it would have been useful to hear reports of what was happening on the ground – especially at a time when more and more councils and other public sector employers are announcing compulsory redundancies – and what could be done in support of such campaigning.

The discussion about the draft statement and amendments was effectively a dispute between the Socialist Party Scotland (SPS) and the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).

The focus of the dispute was the question of whether SACA should be open to elected politicians who “agreed” to vote against cuts (backed by the SPS), or whether it should be open to elected politicians who would be “encouraged” to
vote against cuts (SWP).

The sub-text of the SWP formulation was that the SPS had a narrow sectarian approach to building the campaign. The sub-text of the SPS’s defence of its formulation was that the SWP was wanting to open the campaign to people who did
not oppose all cuts.

In the course of the debate it certainly became clear that the SWP wanted a lowest-common-denominator kind of campaign – one based on woolly opposition to cuts, within which the SWP could present itself as the ‘hard’ and ‘real’
class-struggle militants.

(Other amendments – less contentious, more bland, and certainly more wordy –, which incorporated the SWP’s politics reflected the same approach. The draft statement wanted a broad-based campaign? But what was needed was a really,
really broad-based campaign!)

The amendment in question was defeated by 32 votes to 18. (A considerable number of those attending the conference did so as non-voting visitors rather than as voting delegates.)

But the SPS was nothing if not magnanimous in victory. It allowed through an amendment calling for support for the SWP’s Right to Work Campaign’s People Convention. Given that the same amendment also called for support for National
Shop Stewards Network events, however, it would have been tricky for the SPS to oppose it.

The fact that political debate at the conference was an argument between the SWP and the SPS was an indication that the conference was limited not just in terms of the geographical spread of those attending, but also in terms of the political breadth of those present.

At the end of the day, though, a Scottish Anti-Cuts Alliance now exists. But if that Alliance is to become and a real political force and play an effective role in fighting the cuts, it most definitely needs to rise above the standard of its founding conference.

Barnet

At least 500 people marched in Finchley, Barnet on Sunday 30 January, against cuts and the easyCouncil privatisation plan.

Unions represented included the council unions NUT, NASUWT, GMB and UNISON and there were contingents from most of the groups facing direct cuts in the borough: youth services; Barnet's two museums; children's centres; and sheltered housing.

All of these have organised small campaigns off their own bat, which the Barnet anti-cuts group, the Barnet Alliance, is now helping to find a wider audience and to join up with others.

Campaigners were pleased with the turnout, but we had worked hard for it, including distributing 25,000 copies of “Our Barnet”, a free newspaper detailing the cuts.

We ended our march at the Arts Depot in north Finchley, which faces closure as it loses a number of grants including from Barnet council.

Barnet UNISON is balloting around 140 staff in planning and regulatory services, who are in the first tranche for privatisation.

Barnet plans cuts of £54.4 million over three years, and expects to make 350 redundancies this year. The biggest hit is to the youth service which will be abolished completely in four years if the Tory council gets its way.

More: Barnet Alliance

Islington

Islington council faces £100 million cuts, about 27% of its total spending (while leafy Richmond faces cuts of around 2%). As one of the more deprived London boroughs, the effects will be devastating.

Islington has one of the highest stocks of social housing in the country; government changes to force social housing rents to float closer to market rents will make it impossible for many working class households to live there. Islington is close to the City of London. The Tories and Lib Dems want to get their greedy paws on our housing and hand it over to property developers who would make a fortune at the expense of tenants.

The council is run by Labour; they are carrying out a mass leafleting of the borough encouraging people to fight the cuts, but at the same time the Labour group on the council is… pushing through the cuts.

Islington Hands Off Our Public Services is campaigning against the cuts, including organising a lobby of the council. The campaign has grown partly out of the successful campaign to stop the closure of the Whittington Hospital A&E department.

Merseyside

Liverpool council’s joint trade union committee organised a demonstration on Saturday 29 January.

It had been planned for a while but on Thursday the council announced it was cutting 1,500 jobs, which made the demonstration bigger than expected; about 600 people protested. Liverpool Labour Party, Labour councillors, Liberals Against the Cuts, UNISON and GMB were present, alongside anti-cuts activists.

A statement was read out from Joe Anderson, chair of the Labour group on the council, saying that he opposed the cuts — strange because he was actually on the demo but didn't speak himself.

Trade union speakers from UNISON spoke out against the cuts and urged people to support the 26 March TUC demo. But they said nothing about fighting the actual cuts being carried out by the council. Another trade union speaker said the Labour group faced hard and difficult choices and we should help them. A Socialist Party member, speaking from UNITE, was best but that was easy given how appalling the rest were.

A few of us heckled, and when Joe Anderson was being interviewed by BBC television, he was directly confronted in the broadcast, which made it onto the BBC news website.

It’s no surprise that relatively few council workers joined the protest if the message they are getting is that the union opposes the cuts in principle but in practice thinks that they and the Labour council can do nothing to stop them. There was no sign of a fight to defend these jobs.

The same is happening on the Wirral — UNISON and UNITE are accepting 1,100 voluntary redundancies. In the anti-cuts campaign we need to organise campaigns to defend services and thereby give council workers the confidence to fight back.

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.