Labour leader makes ‘speech of surrender’ on cuts

Reading Labour leader makes ‘speech of surrender’ on cuts

Neil Adams, Reading Socialist Party & TUSC

Reading Socialist Party and Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) lobbied the Reading Borough Council meeting on Tuesday against the proposed cuts of £21 million. We held out our banner and leafleted passers by. We were joined by the Reading Peace Group campaigning against the extortionate amount of money that is proposed to be spent on Trident at the expense of public services nationally.

We went into the meeting and leafleted all of the councillors present with our demand for a no-cuts budget.

When it came to the business of voting on the proposed cuts, Labour leader Jo Lovelock gave what can only be described as a speech of surrender, almost sounding tearful as she claimed there was no other option than carry out the cuts that have apparently been imposed on them. She raised the scenario of commissioners taking over the council and imposing their cuts at will.

The Green Party, of which there are three councillors, declared themselves the only opposition and opposed the proposed budget in their address. The Labour councillors mockingly and somewhat strangely laughed at the Greens’ suggestion that they were no opposition to the Tories.

No-cuts alternative

However, in opposing the cuts, the Greens did not put forward a concrete alternative, whereas TUSC demands that all Labour-controlled councils should set no-cuts budgets, initially using reserves and borrowing powers. This is perfectly legal and would be in accordance with the ‘localism’ agenda devolving more powers to local councils. In reality, commissioners would have no grounds to take over the council.

Deputy leader Tony Page resorted, in response to the Green Party, to an attack against what he denounced as Toy Town Trots. In all likelihood this was a side swipe against Socialist Party and TUSC members’ in the audience who had leafleted the meeting. He probably remembers the valiant and successful battle fought by the Militant Tendency (forerunner to the Socialist Party) in Labour-controlled Liverpool City Council in the 1980s. This is a spectre that haunts the right wing of the Labour Party.

As expected, when the vote came, only the Greens voted against and, one by one, the Labour councillors meekly voted with the Tories to carry out a further £21 million of cuts up to 2019.

This disgracefully includes a staggering £5 million cut to the budget for safeguarding and protecting those who are most vulnerable.

They are also not too concerned with ‘providing the best life through education, early help and healthy living’ as they are cutting £1.5 million from this service.

The vote showed a complete lack of perspective and no confidence that the people of Reading will be willing to fight the cuts. After all, after passing a legal no-cuts budget, a mass campaign demanding further funding would need to be initiated amongst service users, trade unionists and community activists. This is an alien concept to the Labour councillors that were present.

In Reading we continue to build that movement and put forward the need for working class candidates to stand against Labour councillors that are carrying out cuts. TUSC has a proud history of doing this and we will be in the forefront leading up to the May elections and beyond.