Fight for fully funded services – vote for TUSC
Catherine Clarke, Southampton west Socialist Party
When the Socialist Party does campaign stalls in Southampton city centre, everyone who stops knows there is something terribly wrong in society.
36% of children in Southampton live in poverty. The city is the third (of 64) most deprived local authority in the South East. It has the highest percentage of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), who have social, emotional and mental health needs. And the second highest self-harm admissions of those aged 10-24 years.
It is also the most dangerous city in Hampshire. In 2022, crime was 58% higher than in the whole of Hampshire. Southampton is among the top five most dangerous cities in the UK. The most common crimes are violent and sexual offences. 50% of the population feel unsafe out after dark, according to a council survey.
But what is the Labour-run city council doing to address this social crisis? For most of the last decade, the city has been led by a Labour administration, passing on Tory cuts.
In 2013, the Labour council voted to close the majority of youth centres, sacking a large proportion of the council’s youth workers. Wholesale closure was only taken off the table after a concerted campaign led by the Socialist Party, along with youth workers in trade union Unison.
In 2019, Unison reviewed the state of youth service provision in the UK. It came to the conclusion that 2010 provision should be restored. Formally, councils have a statutory duty to provide youth services “so far as is reasonably practical”. Often youth service provision is merged into other services and provided as part of a broad package of educational and social care measures. As a result, real youth work is lost.
When youth services go, benefits to young people and communities are lost. Councils must provide universal, open-access youth services, backed up by the necessary resources, such as qualified staff and a dedicated building.
When Southampton youth services provision was being stripped from the community in 2013, rebel ex-Labour councillors Keith Morrell and Don Thomas put forward an alternative balanced budget for Southampton City Council. They proposed using the council’s powers to access borrowing, financed by reserves, to fund the budget deficit and protect all jobs and services in the city, including fully staffed youth centres. The Labour mayor refused to even hear the budget proposal in the council chamber, despite the city’s chief financial officer being of the opinion the proposal was legitimate.
If the council had adopted Keith and Don’s defiant stand, and linked up with other councils to do the same, it would have laid the basis for a huge campaign to force a government U-turn on council spending and restore the money stolen from councils since 2010.
Ten years later, Southampton Socialist Party members are among 17 standing for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC). Campaigning to, among other things:
- Fund school kitchens to provide free meals for all school children including FE colleges in collaboration with ex-Labour (now independent) councillor Barrie Margetts and ex-councillors Keith Morrell and Don Thomas
- Reinstate council-run youth service provision throughout Southampton providing state of the art, fully resourced buildings with professional staff, including mental health professionals, as well as youth workers
- Improve workers’ pay and conditions through supporting union strike action. Fight for a £15-an-hour minimum wage
- Campaign to return all our lost services back under council control including social care, pre-school and nursery provision
