Editorial of the Socialist issue 1317

As Unite members’ all-out strike action on the bins in Birmingham entered its sixth week on 14 April, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner announced that the Labour government was drafting in Army planners to try and organise to break the strike, following the Labour council’s declaration of an emergency in the city. But the strikers have stood firm against this attempted intimidation and have voted overwhelmingly to reject the latest inadequate offer from the council.

The council is demanding bin workers take a pay cut of up to £8,000. It has tried every trick in the book to break the strike – from threats to draft in refuse collectors from neighbouring councils to deploying police on picket lines. But this latest move would be enough to make the Tories blush!

This isn’t new form on the part of Labour. Birmingham’s council services have been cut by £1 billion since 2010. Until July 2024, the Labour council falsely claimed it had no choice but to make cuts, because of the Tory government’s savage cuts to its funding. But now it is Keir Starmer’s pro-capitalist Labour which is in government, and yet the cuts and council tax rises are being stepped up in Birmingham and local authorities nationwide. It is clear that the government, in the context of an unfolding world economic crisis and the widespread crisis in local government nationally, is desperate to make an example of this dispute. A win for the Birmingham bin workers would boost not only the confidence of workers and young people in Birmingham to fight the council’s cuts, but workers facing similar attacks in other local authorities too.

Vital to ensuring the best possible settlement for the bin workers is the mobilisation of city- and region-wide trade union solidarity to bring the maximum possible pressure to bear on the council and government as they ramp up their attacks on the bin workers and negotiations enter crunch point.

Solidarity

Solidarity mobilisations to bin worker picket lines and rallies from other trade unions – starting with the council unions – would not only be a massive boost to the strike, but could mark the beginning of a city-wide movement to win the funding Birmingham needs from central government to halt and reverse these austerity attacks, including the 21% council tax rise for Birmingham residents over two years.

It is a scandal therefore that individuals connected to the United Left (UL) grouping in Unite are instead attempting to undermine the maximum unity of the union in the face of these attacks. On 10 April, the BBC published an attack by figures in Unite against the union’s leadership for allegedly delaying a settlement in Birmingham. This comes after members of UL walked out and boycotted a meeting of the union’s Executive Council on 10 March.

The reality is that it’s the bin workers themselves who have democratically decided to continue their struggle against the council. Given the attempts of UL in Unite’s last policy conference to roll back the union’s position of calling on Labour councils to set no-cuts budgets, these attacks will undoubtedly raise suspicion and questions amongst Unite members and activists that UL is attempting to politically cover for the actions of the Labour council and government.

The Socialist Party meanwhile will continue to fight for the maximum unity between workers and trade unions in standing against these attacks in the city. We will be building for the West Midlands National Shop Stewards’ Network (NSSN) meeting taking place in Birmingham on Saturday 26 April to discuss how a city-wide movement against the cuts can be built.

That meeting could act as a council of war against all the council’s proposed cuts – bringing together delegations from trade union branches across the city and region to support the bin workers’ dispute as the first port of call in the struggle, and drawing up a people’s budget for Birmingham as a whole.

But the fight for a people’s budget to reverse the austerity attacks carried through since 2010 also poses the need for a working-class political alternative prepared to fight for it. The next council elections scheduled to take place in Birmingham are on 7 May 2026, when all 101 council seats will be up for election. Vital now is a discussion in the trade union movement in Birmingham in preparation for those elections about how the trade unions can back candidates which stand on the side of their members, not on the side of the bosses.

Stand with striking bin workers

‘How can we build a citywide movement to defeat the cuts?’

Saturday 26 April, 12 noon
Comfort Inn, Station Street, Birmingham City Centre, B5 4DY
Public meeting hosted by West Midlands National Shop Stewards Network