Hundreds pack into Liverpool meeting against cuts

Over 300 people packed into a public meeting organised by Liverpool Trades Council on Thursday 10 February, to debate the way forward against the cuts.

There was standing room only and unfortunately many people had to be turned away at the door as there were concerns over fire safety.

Merseyside Socialist Party

Held in the Green Room, kindly donated for the evening by Ricky Tomlinson, the meeting applauded a range of speakers and resolved to take decisive action against the cuts.

Speakers such as PCS member Emily Kelly and RMT member Daren Ireland outlined the attacks facing workers in their trade unions. Also speaking was Tony Mulhearn, a socialist former president of Liverpool Labour Party, and film director Ken Loach.

They outlined the present political situation, the necessity of bringing down the Con-Dem government and the need for socialism.

The greatest applause was given when Tony Mulhearn explained how Liverpool councillors, led by members of the ‘Militant’ (now the Socialist Party), fought Tory government cuts in the 1980s and how councillors could take a similarly determined stand today.

A call from the platform, by trades council secretary Mark Hoskisson, for the TUC to follow the national demonstration on 26 March with organising a one-day general strike to bring down the coalition government was also greatly welcomed by the audience.

Several contributors from the floor raised the need for independent workers’ candidates to stand for election in May, and this can be done as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC).

The participants in the meeting included a group of sixth form college students, one of whom spoke from the platform.

Liverpool Trades Council intends to help support industrial action and coordinate anti-cuts campaigns. The meeting voted unanimously for a resolution (see below), and agreed to lobby Liverpool council’s budget setting meeting on Wednesday 2 March (4.30pm, at Liverpool Town Hall).

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Resolution passed at the above anti-cuts meeting:

This meeting totally opposes the ConDem coalition onslaught on the jobs and services of the mass of working families. We believe the policy is ideologically driven and designed to make the working class, the unemployed, the needy and the poor pay for a crisis caused by the fat cat bankers, bondholders and their allies on the stock markets of the world, and to destroy all the gains made by the working class since 1945.

We believe the crisis should be resolved by:

• Recovering the taxpayers’ money of over £1 trillion used to bail out the bankers
• Collecting the estimated £50 billion of uncollected taxes per year
• Collecting the estimated £100 billion lost through tax evasion and tax avoidance each year
• Collecting the tax from the scroungers who have moved their operations to offshore bank accounts ensuring they pay no tax on profits made in the UK
• Immediately ending the obscene bonus payments which the bankers pay themselves at the taxpayers’ expense
• We call on the Liverpool City Council and all Labour controlled local authorities to refuse to do the dirty work of the ConDems, by refusing to cut one job or service
• That, following the Demo on March 26, we call on the TUC to translate its policy into action which is to support and coordinate campaigning and joint union industrial action, nationally and locally, in opposition to attacks on jobs, pensions, pay or public services;

  And to prepare a plan of mass industrial action including a one-day general strike to halt the onslaught of the ConDem alliance