Refat, Birmingham Socialist Party
Austerity has been a plague affecting the people of Birmingham since 2010. Every service imaginable has been slashed.
When the Tories were in power, Labour councillors claimed that they couldn’t do anything. But now that Labour is in power, cuts are continuing.
Over £650 million has been cut from services. Another £250 million of public assets have been sold at an undervalued price, with at least £500 million more planned.
The money earned from this is not enough to justify selling valuable assets. It’s almost like they want to give it away for free!
Socialists believe these are worth keeping. Selling assets and underfunding services has left infrastructure rotten, creating severe issues across every aspect of life.
That’s why Birmingham Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) supporters organised a people’s budget meeting. This brought together trade unionists and community campaigners to discuss what services Birmingham needs, and how we can fight for the funding to get them.
Brummies in the meeting stressed that we are in an emergency. So the meeting drew up policies that elected councillors could fight to implement.
This would start by tapping into the council’s £157 million reserve fund, and borrowing money against the public assets that the council owns, in order to fund essential services. That would help mobilise a mass campaign to demand that national government plug the gap with additional funding on a permanent basis.
At a protest outside the council, Socialist Party member Nick Hart said: “This money could be used to keep bin services weekly, rather than this pointless war on the bin workers. That’s cost the council £30 million, and counting. A Labour council that wants to drive workers into the dust, at the bidding of a Labour government.”
Birmingham bin workers have been striking for over a year against the Labour council trying to cut their pay by £8,000 each. This attack should be reversed.
It is important that Brummies have a say on what services money is spent on. In the meeting, it was the dire housing situation, mental health epidemic, and employment crisis. Rents have soared, whilst wages are stagnant.
We urged public housing to be built in many brownfield sites across Birmingham. 45,000 homes could be built this way, even by the council’s own estimate.
Others said the city is hard for those who are disabled to move around. Many places are inaccessible.
Mental health is a key issue. On person spoke from her personal experience. She struggled to get the proper treatment for many years.
Lack of employment, training, and support of workers across many industries has plagued us, whether we have experience or have only recently left education. All these issues voiced at the meeting can be solved if the council were to fight the increasingly weak Keir Starmer Labour government for proper funding.
