Vote socialist to fight the cuts

The office of Coventry Connexions, the youth advice service, is boarded up. A wall of chipboard greets passers by. The New Labour council’s cuts are already biting.

Rob Windsor, Socialist Alternative candidate, St Michael’s ward, Coventry

WATCH, a group managed by local people in Hillfields, worked hard to rebuild a community shattered by unemployment and poverty in Thatcher’s Britain. This week it was closed down after funding dried up.

WATCH used to be showcased by Labour councils, now it has been abandoned by them. All that was offered was a ‘bridging loan’. As a founding member said: “how can an agency with no funding pay back a loan? I’d love to find an organisation that provides funds for this”.

1,000 workers in Coventry still have this threat of redundancy hanging over them, many are women over 50 who may never work again.

The Con-Dems are the main villains after cutting grants but New Labour would only have cut ‘more slowly’. The selling off of council housing, student fees, PFI in hospitals and academies were all road-tested by the last Labour government.

In Coventry one councillor, socialist Dave Nellist, voted against the cuts. Our election campaign, part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) campaign, is standing in all 18 seats up for election in Coventry.

It seeks to provide a louder anti-cuts voice on the council to represent a stronger anti-cuts movement in workplaces and communities.

Vote TUSC

The TUSC election alliance was set up last year, backed by leading members of the RMT transport workers’ union, the PCS civil servants’ union, the National Union of Teachers and the POA prison officers’ union. TUSC is standing 154 candidates in local elections across the country.

See www.tusc.org.uk for more details.