But it won’t stop our anti-austerity fightback
Damian Cosgrove, East Sussex Socialist Party
Voters in East Sussex are part of the 15 million disenfranchised under Labour’s short-sighted devolution plan. East Sussex Council is one of the many Tory-run authorities that asked to postpone their elections.
We were planning to stand Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) candidates in East Sussex. Our main message is that we need to organise the community around a campaign to oppose any cuts to our services.
Austerity is a political choice. Our council could shield us from the devastating cuts pushed by Westminster.
Winter Fuel
For example, East Sussex Council could provide winter fuel payments to residents that have had them cut by the Labour government. Instead, councillors from all major parties – including Labour and the Greens – have run smaller ‘second-tier’ councils in East Sussex, uncritically passing on cuts, decimating our services.
Hastings has the worst rates of homelessness in south east England, with one in 79 people homeless. The situation is made continually worse by a deadly mix of gentrification, causing increasingly high rents, coupled with a complete disregard for building social housing.
East Sussex Floating Support offers support for those who are homeless, or at risk of homelessness. Despite all this, the Tory council has threatened the service with up to £4 million of cuts.
We need to tackle the housing crisis by building council homes, owned and run by the community, and introduce rent caps to ensure local people can afford to live in the place they’ve grown up in.
We were also going to focus our campaign on the crisis facing our schools. Socialist Party members are helping to lead National Education Union (NEU) strikes locally.
This gives us an insight into education privatisation through academy trusts. Often, this redirects funds from where they are needed, like SEND (special educational needs and disability) support.
Our education
Education should be regulated and controlled by the students, parents, and the communities they serve, as well as the teachers and other staff. They all understand the needs of the school far more than any corporate academy trust ever could.
Despite the opportunity to stand being taken from us this year, we will continue our campaigning, as well as preparing to stand for election to whatever body the reforms create.
Our message is clear – the conditions we find ourselves in now aren’t inevitable, there is capacity to change society, and build it in the interest of working-class people. Part of the fight for that means building grassroots, working-class campaigns against austerity, and a new mass working-class party.
