Ian Hunter and Charlie Taylor, Nottingham and Derby Socialist Party
Chants of “stop the council cuts” and “Tories out” rang out across the Old Square in Nottingham on 9 March. Around 200 people expressed their anger at the vicious programme of cuts to vital services and jobs.
Nottingham’s overwhelmingly Labour-run council had approved the cuts programme a few days earlier, when only one Labour councillor Shuguftah Quddous (ironically the Sheriff of Nottingham) spoke out and voted against. As a result, Shuguftah was suspended from the Labour Party the following day.
The cuts involve 554 full-time equivalent jobs and closing or disposing of the city’s two remaining care homes. Adult social care services will face further cuts, grants to the cultural sector will be ended.
In addition, the programme will include sales of citywide assets such as 40 residential properties the council owns but rents out at market rents. No-fault eviction notices have been served on the tenants.
Government-appointed commissioners have been in place since the end of February to oversee the implementation of the cuts.
Nottingham Save Our Services, a campaign comprising a wide range of groups in the city (trades council, trade union branches, community activists, and Socialist Party members) has vowed to continue, and to broaden and strengthen the fight against the cuts and their inevitably devastating effects on the city and its people.
