Nick Chaffey and Bill North, Southern and South East Socialist Party
Towns and cities, cold and hungry, full of fear and anger as this cruel Tory government of the super-rich tries to beat down on working-class communities to protect their wealth and profits sucked from the pockets of every worker. But now, workers are striking back in greater and greater numbers, determined to defend themselves and their families.
More and more people are asking what can we do, how can we make sure no one goes cold, hungry or homeless? Next month councils across the country will have the chance to take action; to use their powers to set needs budgets that provide free school meals, open school kitchens at weekends and holidays to feed families, introduce rent controls and no-eviction policies, and provide grants to those facing energy bills they can’t afford.
Mobilising the anger of local communities, they could link up with striking trade unions and demand the Tory government pays the balance and restores the billions stolen from local councils since 2010.
Alongside the cost-of-living crisis, council services that have survived twelve long years of cuts are in a state of collapse. Many communities are left with nothing but an underfunded, overstretched school, with families in crisis and nowhere else to go. We need to reopen council-run youth clubs, day centres for the elderly to eat and socialise, libraries and care homes, and rebuild our communities.
Added Covid costs that the government didn’t meet in full have increased deficits, and inflation has sharply increased costs. Even Tory council leaders hypocritically speak out as they fear the electoral backlash from cutting services further!
Labour councils are in prime position to take on and defeat this weak and divided Tory government. 20% of public spending is spent by local councils. And just the Labour-controlled council budgets put together would be the sixteenth largest economy in Europe.
Councils can fight back
Recently the Green-Labour coalition in Brighton launched a ‘Give It Back’ campaign with the local Unison trade union branch demanding the millions stolen in central government cuts since 2010 are returned. But rather than defiantly refusing to carry out more cuts, the Brighton councillors have written to Sunak and effectively said: “Pay us the money or we will carry out more cuts.” Not much of a threat considering Sunak wants the cuts to go ahead!
If the council adopted the fighting national policy agreed by Unite the Union in 2021 – campaigned for by Socialist Party members, and part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) local government platform (see box) – that councils set balanced, no-cuts, needs budgets, using their reserves and borrowing powers and implemented a programme so that no one goes cold, hungry or homeless, they would gain huge support which could force Sunak and the Tories to retreat.
Councils have a choice: either fight or collaborate. Under the 2011 Localism Act, councillors no longer face the threat of surcharge the heroic socialist councillors in 1980s Liverpool faced, or the risk of imprisonment as 1920s Poplar councillors did. Government powers to use commissioners have been utilised in Slough and Liverpool in recent years, but this was on the basis of right-wing Labour councillors capitulating rather than leading a fightback.
In the 1980s Liverpool council, led by Militant supporters (now the Socialist Party), mobilised mass support for its programme to build 5,000 council homes, leisure centres and parks, control rents, create jobs and improve pay. Organising a city-wide general strike on budget day, with 50,000 marching to city hall in support, Thatcher was forced to retreat and award an extra £60 million to fund the council’s budget. What chance would Tory commissioners have of taking over from democratically elected fighting councillors carrying out a defiant approach like Liverpool?
An even bigger retreat was forced on the Tories in 1991 in the face of the Militant-led 18 million-strong Poll Tax non-payment campaign, organised around the All Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation. Working-class people were unable and unwilling to pay the same in tax as the millionaires. Thatcher, the Iron Lady, was removed and the Tories forced to find £4.1 billion to pump into local councils and reduce Poll Tax bills. We’ve seen during Covid, or more recently with the limited energy caps, that the money is there if the government is under sufficient pressure to use it.
While millions of workers across the trade unions strike for better pay, Starmer’s Labour fails to back the strikes, or support calls for nationalisation of energy, rail and mail, or campaigns for free school meals. His Labour councils are preparing to carry through a new round of brutal cuts. They must be opposed.
No-cuts needs budgets
As part of TUSC, Socialist Party branches are organising People’s Budget meetings to discuss the alternative to council cuts and preparing to lobby council budget meetings to build support for a fightback.
This year marks ten years since rebel Labour councillors in Southampton, Leicester and Hull moved balanced, no-cuts, needs budgets, showing what is possible. As left Labour councillors are deselected by the right across the country they should use their new-found independence to take a bold stand, refuse to vote for cuts and lead a fightback. Such a stand would give them the best chance to be reelected in May and provide a voice to those fighting back. We appeal to them to make an anti-cuts stand, discuss and join with TUSC in building that alternative.
If Labour won’t fight, we call on the trade unions to stand strikers as candidates in the upcoming May council elections. Unite members could campaign for the union’s no-cuts policy and appeal for others to join with them.
The potential exists to drive this government from office and every opportunity must be seized. Protests against the cost-of-living crisis are set to grow in every community, and council action will be demanded. Socialist Party members will play their full part in helping to build and lead that fightback.
The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) conference endorsed a platform for the upcoming local elections. To see the list of councils up for election in May visit www.tusc.org.uk/txt/473.pdf and if you agree, consider standing yourself. This platform includes:
“Upon election TUSC councillors would, at the first opportunity, put forward for a vote in the council chamber the following immediate emergency measures for the council to take against cost-of-living suffering:
NO ONE TO BE COLD
Top up the Tory’s miserly Household Support Fund to provide grants for those unable to pay their bills; an emergency programme of home insulation; extend the opening of public buildings, including libraries, to provide staffed warm spaces and youth facilities.
NO ONE TO BE HUNGRY
Fund kitchens in schools and other services to introduce free breakfasts, lunches and evening meals; expand food banks and distribution of safe food ‘waste’ under democratic council control; fund public provision of high-quality free care, including childcare, to prevent care cost-related hunger.
NO ONE TO BE HOMELESS
Use council licensing powers to cap rents, including for students, and ban evictions of those who fall into cost-of-living-related arrears; use compulsory-purchase orders to take over empty homes to house working-class families and young people in housing need; for an emergency shared-ownership programme to support struggling mortgage-holders; expand specialist domestic violence refuges and services.”
