Ross Saunders, Cardiff Socialist Party
Protesters who were gathered outside Cardiff’s City Hall on 8 December were shocked to find their speeches interrupted by a heckling Labour councillor.
Speakers were explaining why they were opposing the Labour council’s plan to privatise St David’s Hall. But Peter Bradbury, cabinet member and councillor for Ely in Cardiff, began shouting over speakers, saying the council had no choice but to sell off the well-loved facility.
Music
St David’s is an important music venue, which the local council has owned since its construction. It plays a key role in music education in the city’s schools. But the council complain that it requires a subsidy of £600,000 in order to keep running. Labour wants to lease the hall to private profitmaking outfit AMG, which also owns the O2 Arena, and hopes to end the public subsidy.
We heard the same arguments direct from the lips of Peter Bradbury when he oversaw the sell-off of the city’s leisure centres to Greenwich Leisure Limited. It would be cheaper, he said. But despite brutal attacks on the leisure centres’ workforce, and a savage slashing of services, GLL has demanded – and received – millions of pounds in bailouts and subsidies since the transfer.
Socialist Party Wales supported the protest. I spoke at the rally, explaining that privatisation is a way of transferring public money into someone’s private profits. It inevitably leads to worse services and lower pay for workers.
Council cuts
Defending the services we rely on must also mean taking on the Welsh and UK governments, and fighting for more funding. This February, Cardiff Council plans to cut another £53 million of funding for services. This comes after £250 million and 2,500 jobs have been cut over the last ten years.
We’re calling on councillors to refuse to make these cuts. Spend some of the £84 million in reserves the council is sitting on, and use borrowing powers carefully to plug funding gaps in the short term, while a mass campaign for funding gets off the ground.
We need councillors who will fight with us. And, if Labour refuses, then we must build a new party, with campaigners not just protesting, but standing in elections.
