Nick Chaffey, Socialist Party National Committee
The damage of austerity is colossal. Rents and council tax have risen sharply, bearing down on workers and their families receiving falling wages and benefits. The housing crisis leaves 1.3 million on council waiting lists.
Essential services are run on a shoestring delivered by overwhelmed council workers pushed to the limit. Trade union Unison estimates one million council jobs have been cut or privatised.
After 15 years of Tory-led cuts to council funding, Keir Starmer’s new year announcement to deliver a three-year ‘Fair Funding’ settlement falls way short of what is needed.
£24 billion of council cuts have been carried out since 2010, and now Labour is boasting of a £3.9 billion increase in funding – it doesn’t even touch the sides! And half of it is expected to come from increasing council tax by 5%. With the ongoing cost-of-living crisis and rising inflation this is squeezing money from empty pockets.
Redirecting funds to poorer areas at the expense of supposedly ‘more affluent’ areas as part of this three-year proposal will not restore jobs and services. In reality, it will mean attacks on the working class and most vulnerable in those areas.
Starmer’s solution is no solution. Significant battles are already under way. Most prominently the heroic year-long Birmingham bin workers’ strike. Local council workers fighting back is certain to spread. National Education Union members are balloting for action on school funding. Firefighters are facing job cuts and station closures with the new Fire Brigades Union general secretary raising the prospect of national strike action.
It points clearly to the urgent need for a national trade union-led campaign, calling on councils to set no-cuts, needs-based budgets and to fully fund council services, restoring jobs and services. Demand the ailing Starmer government coughs up the money – make the super-rich pay!
Such a campaign would be enormously strengthened if it was backed by thousands of trade unionists, socialists and other campaigners standing as anti-cuts candidates in the May council elections. Socialist Party members are making the case for the widest possible, socialist, no-cuts stand.
Help us put the working class on the ballot paper in May, pointing the way towards the workers’ party with socialist policies that we need.
