• No to £45 million more cuts
  • Save Queen’s Market and Hamara Ghar
  • Stop the sell-off of council assets
Socialist Party members campaigning against Newham Labour cuts and gentrification, 14.2.20, photo by Niall Mulholland

Socialist Party members campaigning against Newham Labour cuts and gentrification, 14.2.20, photo by Niall Mulholland   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Lois Austin, East London Socialist Party

Newham’s mayor has announced £45 million more cuts. Rokhsana Fiaz prefers to call them ‘savings’, but the reality is that more services will close, jobs will be lost and council-owned assets sold off.

Newham is just about the poorest borough in London. Already services have been cut to the bone. We say enough is enough.

Newham council should refuse to carry out the cuts, and instead use its reserves to set a budget which meets our borough’s needs.

The council are ‘consulting’ on the future of Queen’s Market and Green Street. The first phase of consultation is about winning a £2 million payment from City Hall – to be matched by funding from the council.

Any money to do up the Green Street area is welcome. But this is the beginning of a council plan to gentrify the Green Street area, push out the traders and sell off council assets.

A second consultation will happen later in the year. Council papers talk about ‘reviewing’ council land and assets – i.e. handing community resources to private companies.

The council is proposing a ‘consultation’ on the future of Hamara Ghar sheltered accommodation. Why do we need a consultation on the future of Hamara Ghar?

It is a quality council-owned service. Its future should not be up for discussion.

Our community has to say loud and clear, we will fight any threat to Hamara Ghar. It must remain council owned. The residents should say ‘we are not moving’.

More sheltered accommodation, Terry Waite House in Canning Town, is under threat. This council was supposed to be different from former Labour mayor Robin Wales – who carried through cuts to services and sold off public assets – and the Tories.


The issues raised above are among the many reasons why it is important to fight for socialists to be in London’s City Hall. See a socialist manifesto for London and donate to the campaign for socialist policies in London’s May elections, at: www.londonsocialistparty.org.uk