Anti-cuts, public services

Health, education, housing, benefits, local councils, ...

For Labour victories on 5 May!

Labour’s record and policy in local government is, if anything, even more wretched than its national stance. Labour councils are not protesting against the cuts decimating local government and demanding more funding, let alone organising active resistance and campaigning. That applies to the Labour left as well as the right. “Left-wing” councils are often better on this or not that issue, but they are not fighting back. The bulk of the left promotes flim-flam about “community wealth-building” and avoids agitation, let along organising, to push the Tories to restore local government...

Support the anganwadi childcare workers in Delhi and Haryana!

On 9 March the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, the nationally-appointed official who oversees the territory of the Indian capital, invoked the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) to ban a strike by thousands of childcare workers. This relatively little-used Act applies to government workers. As Shivani Kaul, president of the workers’ union DSAWHU (Delhi State Anganwadi Workers and Helpers Union) , points out, the workers do not have the status of public employees: they are treated as volunteers who receive honorariums. This is in fact one of their main grievances. So which is it? The union...

Liverpool cuts producing Labour split

On 2 March six Liverpool Labour councillors were suspended from the Labour Party for refusing to vote for the Labour council’s proposed budget. They are opposing the cuts that are being proposed by the Labour party at the behest of the Tory appointed commissioners; they are doing so following several years of corruption allegations and investigations; and they are also opposing the attacks on democracy in the Labour Party that have been seen since Starmer’s election as leader. The sequence of events is: Joe Anderson, who was Labour Mayor of Liverpool from 2012 to 2021, was arrested as part of...

Rebuilding in local government

Since the re-election victory of Paul Holmes (the new elected left-wing national president of the Unison public services union) as branch secretary in Kirklees Unison, local press reports that six members of admin staff and two Unison reps have gone off sick, refusing to work with him. There is little more information available on this matter. Workers’ Liberty supporters are calling for an independent labour movement inquiry to deal with the complaints made against Holmes. Having such an inquiry as quickly as possible is the best way to address the serious complaints and also to challenge his...

Parliamentary Labour Party refuses to oppose cap on welfare spending

The Tories’ parliamentary majority is 73. But on 10 January a proposal to retain a cap on large elements of welfare spending passed with a majority of 252. 306 voted for the proposal and only 52 against. (This is different from the better known “benefit cap” limiting the total amount people can receive in benefits. However it is another aspect of the same Tory war on the welfare state.) In the midst of Boris Johnson’s crisis over flouting lockdown restrictions, this attack should be generating more outrage. In fact it seems to be largely passing under the radar. The reason for the government’s...

Children failed by a decade of cuts

Arthur Labinjo-Hughes was a six-year-old boy who was tragically neglected and then killed in 2020 whilst living with his stepmother and father. In late 2021 they were found guilty in court of murder and manslaughter, and jailed. After his biological mother was jailed for killing an abusive partner , his father, Thomas Hughes, assumed custody. When the first Covid-19 lockdown was announced, Hughes and Arthur moved in with Hughes’ girlfriend, Emma Tustin. From the moment he arrived, the abuse started. Tustin made Arthur sleep on the floor in the front room and stand for hours in the hallway...

For a publicly-owned integrated transport system

The government decision to scrap the eastern sections of the HS2 high-speed rail project is unsurprising. Rumours that the Tories were looking for short cuts over the project alongside an apparent new “package” of upgrades had circulated for some time. But the government’s own claims that their new package of upgrades to existing lines adds some new capacity bear scrutiny. The section that would have connected Birmingham to Leeds will now end at the existing East Midlands Parkway station. A new high speed line between Manchester and Leeds has gone. Instead it will end in Marsden, West...

How to clean the stables of capitalism

Corruption. Conservatives. And the other big c-word here, really, is contracting-out. Contracting-out of public functions has expanded hugely over decades, since the 1980s. It generates lush and repeated profit-chances for those who can make the introductions, drop words in the right ears, or just give inside knowledge on the right notes to strike in applications. The squall about sleaze set off by the affair of paid-lobbying MP Owen Paterson comes on the back of two great contracting-out scandals which, somehow, so far, the Tories had managed to navigate with little punishment. The PPE...

Labour women's solidarity with domestic violence refuges

Lewes Labour Women have combined practical solidarity with political campaigning and policy discussion in taking on the issue of violence against women. Six months into lockdown, we asked Labour members in Lewes constituency to donate clothes, toys and other items for our local women’s refuge. We knew that lockdown had made domestic violence more common, leaving an abusive relationship more difficult, and refuges unable to meet demand. Driving round our patch of East Sussex collecting donations also meant talking with members about the need for political campaigning. We had no intention of...

Diary of a firefighter: Pumps off the run

P opens BOSS, an operation database. “What do we reckon then, gents?” It’s become a daily ritual – guess how many pumps (the frontline workhorse fire engine of the brigade) are off the run. The guesses come thick and fast, mostly between 25 and 40, although J, ever the optimist, plumps for 20. “33”, P informs us. It’s a shocking shortfall, but about average for recent months. And that’s just the pumps off the run, let alone pump ladders, aerials or any other specialist appliance. The brigade is chronically, woefully short staffed. At every change of watch, Resource Management Centre play a...

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