The Socialist 30 January 2013

NHS workers resist cuts

NHS workers resist cuts

Privatisation: Bleeding the NHS dry

Heatherwood hospital campaign shows determination

East Midlands: Campaign forces retreat on ambulance station closure

Life as an NHS worker: bullying and stress

Cameron takes a gamble by threatening EU referendum

Austerity's utter failure

Taxing words from Cameron?

Aaron Swartz: a fight to free information

Them & Us

Southampton councillors have a choice ... Don't vote for cuts!

Hull councillors ready to vote No

Brighton's Greens vote for cuts in workers' allowances

Labour meltdown in Stoke-on-Trent continues; and Unison withholds funding

Stop Sheffield children's centre closures

Twelfth day of strike action by Tyne and Wear metro cleaners

DfE strike ballot

London teachers call for strike action against Performance Related Pay

Workplace news in brief

Fired up by Fire in the Blood - a story of big business cruelty and neglect

Jumping through hoops for a job

Shrewsbury 24: What is the government hiding?

Wales conference - confidence in socialist ideas

Server appeal: Members provide a huge boost to our resources

Socialist Party National Congress 2013

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Link to this page: https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/750/16055

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Hull councillors ready to vote No

Phil Culshaw, Hull Unison steward, personal capacity

Three Hull city Labour councillors - Gary Waring, Gill Kennett and Dean Kirk - have told the local press they will vote against cuts in jobs and services at the council budget setting meeting on 28 February.

Hull council faces losing a third of its funding over the next three years. Already, 55 people chase every job vacancy in the city.

The remaining Labour councillors are faced with a decision: do the Tories' dirty work or stand united with their workforce and the people of Hull to build a mass campaign to defend much-needed jobs and services.

But council leader Steve Brady has already distanced himself from the rebel councillors, and the militant traditions of the labour movement.

The east London Poplar councillors' motto in the 1920s was: "Better to break the law, than to break the poor!" They were jailed during their successful struggle where obeying the law would have meant cutting services, making the rates (equivalent to council tax) unaffordable, or reducing poor relief to a level that would not stop the unemployed and their families from starving.

The 1983-87 Liverpool city council adopted the same motto as Poplar in their struggle for the return of funding that was cut by Thatcher's Tory government.

Liverpool's militant stand won £60 million, resulted in the largest council home-building programme in the country at that time and created children's nurseries and apprenticeships for unemployed youth.

The council was never voted out of office. Instead it was undemocratically dismissed by the courts with the backing of both the Tory government and the national Labour leader, Neil Kinnock.

In the early 1990s, Militant (now the Socialist Party) led a mass campaign of 18 million poll tax non-payers which forced the Tories to ditch their hated tax along with their leader Margaret Thatcher. If people had followed the advice of the Labour leadership then no doubt we would still have that unjust tax!

Hull trade unions are organising a series of public and consultation meetings to build a strong anti-cuts campaign that follows the traditions of Poplar, Liverpool and the anti-poll tax movement.

In this issue

Socialist Party NHS news & campaigning

NHS workers resist cuts