We’re fighting for a people’s budget

Becca Bayman, Liverpool Socialist Party

50 people came to the Liverpool Trade Union Council meeting to discuss a ‘People’s Budget’. The Save Liverpool Women’s Hospital campaign was there, emphasising the harm of healthcare privatisation, calling for the NHS to be adequately funded and regenerated.

Local Labour MP Ian Byrne was unable to attend. Liverpool’s councillors were invited. Local Green Party councillor Martyn Madeley and Your Party councillor Alan Gibbons did attend.

Our people’s budget included rejecting council tax rises, building 5,000 council homes, and stopping cuts to services – reversing over £56 million of cuts by Liverpool Labour council.

Liverpool Labour’s new proposed cuts include fines for parents whose children miss school, removing second carers from vulnerable people, and restricting one-to-one care to “exceptional circumstances”. The Labour council’s budget demonstrates its vicious willingness to inflict austerity onto the most vulnerable, stripping the pockets of working-class families in a cost-of-living crisis.

Since the Conservative-Liberal Democrat national coalition government in 2010, Liverpool has lost more than £600 million in government funding. In 2015, The Liverpool Echo reported that 160 people could be dying each year on Merseyside “due to austerity cuts”.

More than ten years on, there’s no end to austerity in sight. Now, Reform is trying to profit from working-class anger.

Therefore, trade unions must take matters into their own hands, to fill the political vacuum on the left. The trade union council’s people’s budget proved that there is an alternative.

The meeting was underpinned by the legacy of the Liverpool 47 – the socialist Labour council in the 1980s, led by Militant (now the Socialist Party). That council drastically improved the lives of Liverpool’s working class in the face of Margaret Thatcher’s Tory austerity agenda – translating socialism into the language of jobs, homes and services.

So local councils do have a choice, and can choose not to implement austerity, going against the ‘advice’ of unelected council finance officers.

Opposing cuts is essential. Thousands of people could be mobilised in campaigns to build council houses and improve workers’ lives. Just as 50,000 workers in Liverpool marched to the town hall to support the 47 on the day of the budget meeting in 1984, in a one-day general strike.

Today, councillors making a stand against cuts would be backed by the working class. A government threating to ‘send in commissioners’ to make cuts would face huge working-class opposition.

During the discussion, Green councillor Martyn Madeley signed the trade unionist petition, calling on Zack Polanski to ensure that Green Party candidates will only appear on the ballot if they have made a public commitment to vote against all cuts. Your Party councillor Alan Gibbons also agreed to present the budget to the council, speaking about “breaking the gap between funding and needs”, and rejecting council tax rises.

Teachers at the meeting opposed education privatisation, calling for school debts to be written off. We agreed to include demanding funding to reopen a local library. And to lobby the council budget meeting, and send a delegation. This people’s budget will be used as a springboard for 2027 local elections, and the Liverpool Trade Union Council could endorse a slate of candidates that will put forward what we had raised, and to stand against cuts.

Green and Your Party councillors

After the meeting, councillors Martyn Madeley from the Greens and Alan Gibbons from Your Party wrote to say that they would not be supporting the people’s budget.

The Greens’ Martyn Madeley said: “We decided not to propose the People’s amendment this year.” Your Party’s Alan Gibbons said: “It might have been better not to go for a zero council tax rate [rise]”.

We think that would be a mistake. As the Socialist goes to press, they still have time to change their minds again.

In the 1980s, Thatcher’s Tories were forced to return tens of millions of pounds to Liverpool City Council. But this movement was isolated to Liverpool by the right-wing in Labour, led by Neil Kinnock.

Now, with people’s budget meetings taking place across the country, the opportunity arises for trade unions to take charge in improving the lives of working-class people and channel their resources into a political fight for that.

Sign the petition: Greens must pledge ‘no cuts’ – change.org/GreensMustPledgeNoCuts