On Saturday, March 16th, the Labour Representation Committee organised a one-day conference to bring together local anti-cuts groups, trade union organisations, and Labour councillors from various parts of the country who had voted against the cuts agenda and to see if a national united campaign against the cuts could be developed. Darrall Cozens reports from the recent Councillors Against the Cuts conference in Birmingham.
About 70 people met in the Council Chamber of Birmingham City Council on Saturday, March 16th, for a one-day conference organised by Labour MP John McDonnell and the Labour Representation Committee. The purpose was to bring together local anti-cuts groups / trade union organisations and Labour councillors from various parts of the country who had voted against the cuts agenda and to see if a national united campaign against the cuts could be developed. Many of these councillors, although supported by trade union and Labour Party members in their area, are being put under pressure by Labour groups to accept cuts or face disciplinary measures.
About a dozen Labour Councillors were in attendance from Hull, Sheffield, Warrington and other areas. Unite, Unison, NUT and other trade union members were also present along with a strong representation of delegates from Trade Union Councils as well as local anti-cuts groups.
The figures of the cuts and job losses in local authorities are truly staggering. There have been 230,000 jobs lost, £5bn in cuts, and even when the present round of cuts have worked their way through, it will mean a 47% cut overall. Given these figures, it was no accident that Albert Bore, leader of Birmingham City Council, had said last December that this will be “the end of local government as we know it”.
The cuts at local level have meant workers in some councils are being sacked and then re-engaged on inferior contracts with worst pay, terms and conditions. They have also meant cuts to services that were needed given local deprivation but which were over and above what local councils had to provide by law. But the cuts are now also meaning that even services that have to be provided by statute were being cut as finance is not available.
This raises the very real prospect, in not too many years, that so many services will have been privatised or cut back that the need for a local council to administer them will have become superfluous. Why have elected councillors, a local town hall and local authority workers if there are no services left to administer? As one contributor to the discussion rightly said: you really only need one person at local level to sign off the contracts and that could be done from a private house. So it is not only local need that won’t be met or local services that will not be provided – the cuts also mean that local democracy and accountability are also under threat.
But there is a new mood that is developing, albeit small at this stage. This was evidenced by the Labour councillors at the conference who have been or are being threatened with sanctions by their local Labour groups for voting against cuts. What they are doing now will be the music of the future. We know that up and down the land many Labour councillors have said that they did not stand for election to cut services that go to those who are most in need. Yet, we also know that many of the same councillors see no alternative. They fear that if it is not they who cut – and in doing so try to protect the most vulnerable – then the government will send in a commissioner who will savagely cut across the board ignoring local need. However, as one contributor said, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
A number of themes emerged from the conference. Firstly, that we are now only at the beginnings of the cuts programme and there is far worse to come as the Coalition drives through an austerity agenda, the purpose of which, as John McDonnell said, is to save a failed economic system, that is capitalism.
Secondly, it is vital, at a local and national level, that support structures are developed so that when votes against cuts are taken, those individual councillors know that they are not alone. The main support in this context has to come from local trade unions, in particular those who organise workers in local authorities, but also from Labour Party ward branches and community groups.
Thirdly, that outside the Labour Party there is no future. There are some good, committed, class conscious comrades who erroneously believe that the Party is no different from the Tories or Lib Dems and that therefore there is a need to build an alternative party for the working class. Yet, despite the hard won political credentials of these comrades, wherever they have stood in elections they have been rejected. In the recent Eastleigh by election the TUSC candidate got 62 votes, 0.1% of the votes cast.
As many of the Councillors at this conference said, the Labour Party will be changed from within. We would add that there are many factors that will change it and win it back for working class people. New members are joining; trade unions are becoming more active in the Party – Unite the Union is identifying 5,000 activists to join the LP and reclaim it for the working class; people’s life experiences of cuts and attacks on living standards will result in a change in consciousness that will in turn produce the will for alternative policies. But, above all, it will be the hammer blows of events in a capitalist system in crisis that will change the direction of the Labour Party.
The task of Marxists in the Labour Party and the trade unions is to be the most resolute defenders of jobs and services at local level, but also to raise the issue that these attacks on our living standards, both directly through wage cuts or wage freezes and job losses, or indirectly through cuts in our social wage with the decimation of public services, are the product of a capitalist system in crisis and therefore we also have to develop policies that will put an end to capitalism itself.
At the conference there was a female comrade from Liverpool, a member of Unite. The comrade correctly asked what we should be fighting for to stop the cuts and defend our class. A good starting point for Unite members coming into the Labour Party would be to fight for the policies adopted at the Unite Policy Conference in 2012 and the place to begin would be Motion 1 with its amendment that called for a campaign to bring into public ownership the banks and finance houses under democratic control. That would signify the beginnings of a programme to change society and put an end to the nightmare of austerity that working class people face.
