The Socialist 31 January 2018

Save our NHS - kick out the privatisers

NHS: use the 3 February protests as a launch pad for a mass movement

NHS we're ready to fight

Northern health campaigns conference discusses the fightback

8,000 strong petition opposes closure of Sheffield health services

Labour NHS rally reveals horrors but offers no way forward

Leicester NHS protest

Trump as Nixon: urgent questions about press freedom and the state

Capitalism v cricket

For workplace trade union organisation against sexual harassment

Presidents Club sexism scandal: what you thought

100 years since women won the vote

Victory for Hackney school cleaners!

Local government workers' reps reject 2% pay offer

University workers' walkout for decent pensions

Merseyrail protest

Supermarket's slash jobs - union fightback needed

Cammell Lairds strikers demand improved pay and conditions

Labour civil war re-erupts over Haringey regeneration project

Tory infighting escalates - workers' action can oust them

Failing academy chain strips school assets - end academisation!

Capitalists fear for their system at Davos

Majority of kids poor in some areas

Fat cat vice chancellors schooled by Brum students

Confident London Socialist Party conference discusses key issues

Your newspaper fights with you: help fund it with May Day greetings

Bristol anti-cuts campaigners debate alternatives to the cuts

Stop the war on the Kurds

Sudan: Free Mohamed Satti

Vienna: 50,000 march against racism and austerity

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Bristol anti-cuts campaigners debate alternatives to the cuts

Anti-cuts protest, Bristol, 9.9.17, photo Matt Carey (Click to enlarge)

Matthew Carey, Bristol and District Anti-Cuts Alliance organising secretary

Bristol and District Anti-Cuts Alliance (Badaca) hosted a public debate at Unite the Union's Bristol office on 24 January.

The panel was made up of former Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition anti-cuts mayoral candidate Tom Baldwin for Badaca, Esther Giles of Bristol Momentum, leader of the Green Party group on Bristol council Eleanor Combley, Keith Evans from Unite Bristol retired members' branch and single mum and community activist Kerry Bailes.

Also invited was Bristol's elected Labour mayor, Marvin Rees, but he chose not to attend.

The mayor led a protest march of 8,000 against austerity in Bristol last year which was supported by Badaca. He also travelled to Westminster to call for more funding from central government. But Rees was snubbed by Tory ministers who failed to turn up to their presentation.

Instead of standing up to government, Marvin Rees seemed to give up the fight. Huge proposed cuts were announced, which sparked big campaigns in Bristol to save the threatened services.

There have been some major victories including by housing campaign Acorn which stopped cuts to the council tax reduction scheme and others which saved 16 lollipop people, stopped plans to completely defund parks and green spaces and forced a delay in 17 library closures while a review is carried out.

Since September local groups have also been debating ways that we can find alternatives to the council passing on Tory austerity and ways of fighting back.

Badaca has also been collecting signatures on a petition calling for Rees to use reserves and borrowing to set a no-cuts budget and we have also written an open letter to Jeremy Corbyn calling on him to unite Labour councils in a proper fightback against the Tories.

With the weak and wobbly Tories barely clinging to power, it is time for Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party to take a stand against austerity in local government.

In this issue

Save our NHS

NHS: use the 3 February protests as a launch pad for a mass movement