The 4 May elections in England will see contests in 229 councils. Nearly 8,000 candidates will be up for election. The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), in which the Socialist Party participates, is preparing to stand – to give an alternative to Tory and Labour public service cuts and council tax rises. This is a shortened and edited version of the opening contribution made by TUSC national chairperson Dave Nellist to the discussion on the core policies platform (the common ground between all those who want to stand as TUSC candidates in the May local elections) at the TUSC conference on 4 February.
There should be nothing inevitable about the poverty and suffering that has impacted working-class families by the cost-of-living crisis.
We know that trade unions are winning victories against individual employers. But there is another force within society that could be part of the working-class fightback: local government itself. As someone who spent 14 years as a Socialist Party councillor on Coventry City Council, I took inspiration from several battles of the past.
For example, Poplar in east London in 1921. There, Labour councillors defied the government, the courts, and the Labour Party leadership. They called for the council to receive more income to tackle the area’s high unemployment, hunger and poverty, and to raise council workers’ wages, including equal pay for women workers. Three of our policies echo their struggle.
The councillors’ protest led to them being jailed. Thousands demonstrated in their favour. The councillors continued to run the council from their prison cells. They originated the phrase “it’s better to break the law than to break the poor.”
Fifty years later, in 1972, in the small Derbyshire town of Clay Cross, Labour councillors refused to implement the Tory Housing Finance Act, which required councils to raise rents by 50% to the average of private rents.
A government commissioner was sent into the town. The councillors refused to give that commissioner a desk, a chair or even a pencil! Two or more of our policies take inspiration from a town of 10,000 people and their fight against the imposition of rent rises.
Or the biggest example of all, in the mid-1980s, when the socialist councillors of Liverpool set a budget based on the real needs of the local population. They then led a battle against Margaret Thatcher for more funding and – just as an aside – today’s prime minister Rishi Sunak is no Margaret Thatcher! They won the funds necessary to build 5,000 council houses, five new sports centres, six new nurseries, and three new parks, and employed 10,000 workers a year to do the job. They showed how to mobilise a mass campaign around a needs budget and a serious fight for government funding.
So, the policies we’re putting before you today oppose those who claim nothing can be done against austerity. Whether in London boroughs, small towns, or major cities, we have a history in the labour and trade union movement of challenging that.
But such battles are not going to happen under today’s Labour, whose overriding priority is maintaining a ‘tight grip on public finance’. Our priorities would be different. Any successful TUSC councillor would call at their first council meeting for emergency measures so no one is cold, no one is hungry, and no one is homeless.
And councils do have powers and resources to deliver that. We give examples on our website, not only of demands to put but answers to the arguments that councils cannot do anything because of legal restrictions or the so-called threat of bankruptcy.
Councils have buildings that they can open up, not just as warm spaces but also as youth clubs, crèches, and social spaces for older people. They could house all homeless people indoors. They could give free school breakfasts, lunches and after-school meals, not just for the 195 official days of the school year but for all 365 days.
Councils should not outsource the social responsibility of providing a safety net to the charity workers of food banks. They should fund and democratically organise food distribution through rebuilt social services departments. Councils could now begin a mass home insulation programme, not just in a few pilot schemes.
Funding
Most councils had budgeted for 3% inflation this year. The government will give an extra 5.5% to local authorities, but only if they raise council tax by the maximum allowed 5%. We will oppose such council tax rises.
With inflation of 10% or more, local authorities’ finances are being hit. But councils have reserves. And in most local councils, those reserves have risen over the past three years. Councils also have borrowing powers. We’ll argue that councils should refuse to implement austerity and, in the first instance, use those reserves and borrowing powers instead.
But we also recognise that borrowing and using the reserves is not a long-term solution for the needs of local communities. To restore the libraries, youth clubs, and community centres – and rehire the hundreds of thousands of essential council workers that have been axed – we need a mass campaign, like Liverpool showed in the 1980s, to force the government to fund local services fully.
Our candidates will demand central government restores the cuts in local funding of over 50% since 2010. If mobilised and coordinated, councils could force concessions from this weak, Tory government.
Trade union struggle is becoming not only more widespread but more popular. Just look at the 43,000 new members who’ve joined the National Education Union in the past few weeks. Struggle inspires other workers to get involved.
Bold measures by councils to resist austerity would also inspire and draw in local and national support, as it did for Liverpool in the mid-1980s. Since 2019, the Tory government under successive prime ministers has made 30 U-turns. A concerted and coordinated campaign by local councils could force the government to pay up.
Unite the Union has an official policy for councils to set needs-based budgets, a policy that was campaigned for by TUSC supporters. We need to raise that idea in other unions as well. Keir Starmer’s Labour is preparing its local election campaign by promising Tory newspapers it would keep a firm grip on public finances. Labour is presenting itself in these elections as an alternative Tory party, not an alternative to the Tory party.
The struggle to defend local public services and budget for the needs of local communities should be raised in every town, city, and county in the May elections. With this local election platform as the common ground between all our candidates, TUSC will play its part in building a serious challenge to austerity.
- On the TUSC website, tusc.org.uk, there is a directory of the elections and a form if you want to stand as a TUSC candidate. The final deadline for submitting applications to be a TUSC candidate is 18 March
