The Socialist 25 May 2011

Unite to stop the cuts

National shop stewards conference - Unite to stop the cuts

As the cost of living soars...: 'We are going to fight back'!

An offer we must refuse

Why Liverpool needs a needs budget

Showing an alternative to cuts in Dorset

Battling to defend the NHS

NHS demo in London needs to be a step towards united national strike action

Unison leaders failing to adopt the demands of health workers

Challenging Tories' plans to kill our health service

PCS conference: developing strategies for struggle

UCU facing battles on all fronts

Southampton city council workers strike

Three day strike to stop redundancies at Sheffield College

Firefighters discuss strategy to fight cuts

Workplace news in brief

"We are London Met Uni, not EasyMet"

Atos Origin - profiting from pain

'Slutwalk' protests: Women reject sexism

Slave labour schemes must be resisted

Leadership failed print workers in vital battle

Review: The street that cut everything

McNulty's railway report: not 'value for money'!

Care homes privatisation hits the elderly

News in brief

Eyewitness report: Mass youth protests in Spain

Ireland: 'Reclaim the unions'

Greece: Resist bosses' agenda and the far right

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Link to this page: https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/672/12109

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Review: The street that cut everything

Sean Figg

Journalist Nick Robinson follows the residents of a street in Preston who have agreed to go without any council services for six weeks. No one can use leisure centres, libraries or youth clubs. The street lights are switched off and the rubbish starts to pile up. The kids aren't picked up by the school bus, after-school club is off limits and school meals are refused.

The film-makers gradually up the ante. Although the residents have been rebated their council tax and have decided to pool it, Robinson returns one evening to explain that the rebate does not actually reflect the cutting off of all council services. One resident's 82 year old disabled father is receiving £300 worth of care a week. Another resident receives £92 a week in housing benefit and £150 a week in Local Education Authority support for her student daughter. The rebate is less than the street's expenditure!

Robinson makes them choose what they will and won't spend money on leading to massive arguments.

Nick Robinson says several times that "cuts are about choices". This is the 'official' message of the programme, but it is not true. The only choice that has been made is the choice of pro-big business politicians to make the working class and middle class pay to fix an economy devastated by the bankers and their profit system. We are getting no choice. There is an attempt to force these cuts on us.

Despite the 'official' message, the response of the residents goes further. One woman - a nursery manager - argued at the start of the programme that she didn't feel she got "value for money" from the council. By the end of the six weeks she says she "supports everything the council does and everyone it supports". Most residents express similar sentiments.

Towards the end of the six weeks the residents write to the local councillors and condemn them for allowing real council cuts to go through. The councillors visit the street and are asked by angry residents how they can sleep at night.

Now that the residents have experienced what cuts could mean they do not support them at all. This is an important point for socialists and anti-cuts campaigners. At the start of the experiment most residents repeated the myths put out by the mainstream media that 'some cuts are necessary' or that the public sector 'does not give value for money'.

Acceptance of these myths is shattered by reality and turns into boiling anger. This will happen on a mass scale up and down the country as the cuts bite and a mighty anti-cuts movement will emerge.