The letter below is from Tony Mulhearn, who was a leading councillor in Liverpool’s Labour council when it fought Thatcher’s vicious attack on that city between 1983 and 1987. Tony was also president of Liverpool District Labour Party. The letter was sent to the Liverpool media.
DEMANDS FOR cuts in jobs and services are orchestrated by the friends of those people who caused the crisis – the pigs whose noses are firmly back in the banking trough. Vince Cable can condemn the excesses of the fat cats, but nothing will happen without the agreement of the same fat cats.
Cameron and his henchmen are straining at the bit to slash the hard-won benefits fought for by generations of working people. Every local authority leader faced with demands for cuts prefaces his or her response with the mantra: ‘cuts are necessary.’ This is completely false.
Not a single cut nor a single job loss should be accepted to remedy a crisis caused by the obscenely rich so beloved of Cameron, Blair and Mandelson!
We are told that Liverpool council must save the equivalent of the wages of 3,600 employees over the next three years. £110 million, we are told, must be saved between April 2011 and March 2014.
Who says so? A cabinet composed of multi-millionaires, the rabid right that historically has opposed every public provision in health, education and social services, while supporting privatising the utilities, which proved to be a cash bonanza for the bloated chief executive officers of companies.
The latest report on BT’s call-handling arrangements with the council exposes further the lie that privatisation can ‘save’ the taxpayer money. BT has overcharged the council to such an extent that £23 million a year could be saved if the council terminated the contract.
It’s time Joe Anderson, the Labour leader, declared Liverpool’s opposition to any further cuts in jobs and services. All those opposed to the cuts are urged to support Liverpool trades council’s anti-cuts initiative.
