West Yorkshire campaigners feel we can win
Iain Dalton, Leeds and West Yorkshire Socialist Party
U-turns on proposed cuts by Labour councils across West Yorkshire have been coming thick and fast. Kirklees scrutiny committee rejected proposals to privatise two care homes, referring it back to the council cabinet. Campaigners had previously saved these homes from closure.
Kirklees Council confirmed its plans to reduce the size of household wastebins are consigned to the rubbish heap of history. A policy the ruling Labour group was forced to come out against just six days after the Labour cabinet announced it!
Calderdale Council has dropped plans to cut road gritting. Leeds Council plans to close 32 crown green bowls sites were shelved until the end of summer. This marks a series of victories for local campaigns
Saved
Last year, campaigners saved two leisure centres in Kirklees, and delayed the closure of three nurseries in Leeds.
Socialist Party members played important roles in several of these campaigns – as part of the leadership of the Save Little Owls nurseries campaign in Leeds, and leading on the strike ballot of Unison members in the care homes in Kirklees.
Campaigns are now developing to save the Kirkstall Abbey museum and Send 16+ transport in Leeds. In December, children protested against plans to get rid of school buses in Bradford.
Campaigners are gaining in confidence. Some have faced down cuts proposals before, or feel galvanised by seeing the success of others.
There is growing anger at Labour-run councils, who have dutifully carried out the cuts for the last decade, whilst pointing the finger at austerity from Tory central government.
Now the Tories have gone, but austerity remains. Working-class people are demanding that austerity goes, and if Labour councillors won’t fight, then them too!
Independents
In last year’s council elections, independent candidates, primarily campaigning on the issue of Gaza, won seats in Bradford and Kirklees. One of the newly elected Kirklees councillors, Tanisha Bramwell, was a leading figure in the anti-cuts campaigns. She has used her council position to take that battle into the council chamber, galvanising other councillors alongside her.
A group of right-wing Labour councillors, former leaders of the council, have broken with Labour, and are now publicly opposing privatising the very care homes that they had proposed closing.
Councils are finding it harder to implement austerity. Bradford Labour council has actually failed to implement £110 million worth of proposed cuts.
Councils have sometimes had more volunteers for redundancies than they needed. But, this year, Wakefield Labour council has had volunteers for 92 full-time equivalent redundancies, out of the 236 it wants to carry out.
Every single West Yorkshire council has overspent by at least £10 million for 2024-25. Bradford is financing a £120 million overspend through a ‘capitalisation directive’ agreement with the Labour government, financing day-to-day spending via borrowing and asset sales.
15% hike
Bradford Labour council projects that, even with making £50 million cuts every year, the capitalisation directive will end up costing them £640 million in total. They’ve now proposed increasing council tax by up to 15%, yet again putting the cost of austerity on the backs of workers.
Excluding Bradford’s ‘bailout’, over £200 million ‘needs’ to be cut this year across the five West Yorkshire councils. There is an urgent need to bring together trade unions, anti-cuts campaigns, and anti-cuts councillors to discuss how to further coordinate this fight.
That should include drawing up no-cuts needs-based budgets, that could be moved in council chambers, utilising reserves and borrowing powers to plug the immediate shortfall, whilst mounting a campaign to demand back the over £1 billion stolen from West Yorkshire councils over the last 15 years.
Labour council leaderships will be breathing a sigh of relief that there are no elections in West Yorkshire this May. In 2026, there will be all-out elections in Bradford, Kirklees and Wakefield.
TUSC is striving to ensure that the widest possible anti-austerity challenge is mounted, ideally on a common no-cuts and socialist platform.
