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Swansea Labour council votes for cuts
Protesting against Swansea council's cuts March 2018, photo Swansea SP (Click to enlarge)
Alec Thraves, Socialist Party Wales
Swansea's Labour-controlled council has passed a £28 million cuts budget for 2018-19, as well as voting through projected cuts of a further £70 million over the next three years.
During the ten-minute session allowed for public questions Socialist Party members highlighted that these medium term financial plans included some departments having their budgets cut by 50%!
Colin John, a veteran trade unionist and Socialist Party member, castigated the Labour councillors for being responsible for sacking teachers, bringing in charges for day centres and attacking the elderly of Swansea.
Swansea Socialist Party members, along with the trades council, Swansea Unison, education and other trade union members lobbied the council beforehand, with many Labour councillors sneaking in through the side entrances to avoid the protest.
A Swansea County Unison branch rep at the protest demanded that the council implement Unison, Unite, GMB and Wales TUC policy to refuse to make any cuts and set a legal no-cuts budget.
As in previous years, this demand fell on deaf ears with every Labour councillor voting to implement savage Tory cuts once more.
With the prospect of every part of our council services facing devastating cuts and outsourcing over the next few years this is only the beginning of resistance by unions and residents against the Tory austerity big-butchers in Westminster and their obedient mini-butchers on Swansea Labour council. As Arnie once said: 'We'll be back'!
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The coronavirus crisis has laid bare the class character of society in numerous ways. It is making clear to many that it is the working class that keeps society running, not the CEOs of major corporations.
The results of austerity have been graphically demonstrated as public services strain to cope with the crisis.
The government has now ripped up its 'austerity' mantra and turned to policies that not long ago were denounced as socialist. But after the corona crisis, it will try to make the working class pay for it, by trying to claw back what has been given.
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