Throughout Britain, Labour-run councils are preparing to implement savage cuts in local services and drive thousands of workers out of their jobs. Not one council is stepping out of line. Robert Clough reports.
It is a repeat of the 1980s when, under a Tory government, Labour council after Labour council accepted rate-capping and the consequent job losses, and then Labour leader Neil Kinnock hounded Liverpool city council leaders for trying to resist. This time however there is no chance that Liverpool Labour leaders will emulate their predecessors: the council is expected to cut over 1,500 jobs next year on top of 580 voluntary redundancies to date, in an effort to save £91m in 2011/12.
Other Labour councils in the north-west cutting jobs and services are:
• Tameside Council – is preparing to get rid of 800 jobs over the next four years with 550 of them going in the next financial year.
• Salford Council – 700-1,000 jobs will go over the next three years with 700 to go in 2011/12 alone.
• Oldham Council – has given statutory notice of a possible 800 redundancies in the new financial year.
• Wigan Council – in July it was already talking about the loss of 650-820 jobs over the next three years.
• Manchester City Council – facing cuts of 21% in government funding over the next two years and on 13 January announced it would be reducing the workforce by 17% – about 2,000 jobs.
• Bolton Council – has given the statutory notice for up to 2,000 redundancies.
In Labour-run Leeds, 3,000 jobs will go over a four-year period with 570 going by the end of March 2011. It is not just jobs that Labour councils are cutting: it is essential services for working class people. Day centres, libraries, luncheon clubs and sports centres are closing. Amongst the most punitive cuts are those to respite schemes for carers of disabled and elderly people. Childcare schemes are being axed; private sector provision can only be afforded by the rich. In an attempt to obtain legitimacy for their actions, many councils are organising ‘consultations’ over what services should be axed: resistance is not one of the options they are presenting.
The story is no different in London. Newham Council, the sixth most deprived borough in the country, has declared that up to 1,600 jobs are under threat; it has suggested that this number may be reduced to 1,200 if workers are willing to accept a series of austerity measures including a pay freeze and reduction in sick pay and holiday entitlement.
Islington, the eighth most deprived borough in England, faces £335 million cuts. When challenged at a meeting in October 2010 to refuse to implement cuts, even if it meant breaking the law, Labour councillor Paul Smith objected that ‘If I went to prison, on the same day, a Tory administrator would come in and cut council housing, cut free school meals and cut everything good that we’re doing.’ It is clear he has no belief in fighting for change.
Labour-run Greenwich issued redundancy notices to its 8,000 workforce on 6 January. It intends to re-employ staff on inferior terms and conditions.
In Camden, Labour council leader Nash Ali said it ‘brings me to tears to stand here with these cuts you are facing. But we have no choice.’ Of course there is choice: to resist, or to act as agents of the ruling class. Yet as former Militant MP and now Coventry Socialist Party councillor Dave Nellist observed at a conference against the cuts organised by the National Shop Stewards Committee (NSSN) on 22 January, ‘Labour councillors opposing the cuts on Labour councils are rarer than poor bankers in this country!’ Labour councillors who refuse to oppose the cuts and refuse to campaign against them must be treated as what they are – class enemies. The anti-cuts movement must reject any attempt to let Labour councils off the hook.
No compromise – no redundancies compulsory or otherwise
While councils make their plans, there is no corresponding preparation by the trade unions, let alone action. They passively await the TUC national demonstration on 26 March as a gesture of opposition. Up and down the country they are in negotiations with councils over voluntary redundancies: they will call it a victory if the redundancies are ‘chosen’ by workers rather than being compulsory. The end result is no different: voluntary redundancies mean that jobs are lost for the next generation. The anti-cuts movement must also reject any attempt by trade unions to negotiate away jobs, terms and conditions or services whether it is a Labour, Tory or LibDem council.
Yet sections of the anti-cuts movement are willing, under the guise of ‘unity’, to compromise with those who have no intention of fighting the cuts. Writing in The Guardian, Unite the Union general secretary Len McCluskey said that ‘These are Con-Dem cuts, and this is a capitalist crisis. Any attempt to blame Labour local authorities for the problem is a shortcut to splitting our movement and letting the government off the hook’ (19 December 2010). But does this mean that Labour councillors should be ‘let off the hook’ if they are verbally against the cuts but implement them in practice? McCluskey’s answer is that it ‘doesn’t mean Labour councils should get off free. There are, alas, Labour councillors embarking on union-bashing under cover of cuts, something we won’t tolerate’. In a situation where every Labour council is implementing cuts, McCluskey’s rhetoric may protect some workers, but the majority will be sold down the river along with those most dependent on council services.
Unite is now affiliated to the anti-cuts organisation Coalition of Resistance (CoR). What position is the CoR going to take on Labour councils implementing the cuts? What position will it take on trade unions refusing to fight the cuts? We can have no doubt: compared with Unite, small opportunist left organisations within CoR like Counterfire or Workers’ Power carry no weight whatsoever. What Len McCluskey says will go.
The same ambivalence characterises the SWP, whose leader Chris Bambery said: ‘The movement must try to involve Labour MPs and councillors. You can’t build a genuine mass movement without involving the people who vote Labour’ (Socialist Worker 15 January 2011). But he is not clear on whose terms they should be involved. Saying ‘we are with Labour when they fight the Tories but criticise them if they want to vote through cuts’ is not hard enough. Every Labour MP and councillor says they are fighting the ConDem plans. Many will doubtless be on the TUC demonstration. But our terms have to be that they vote against and organise against the cuts in Labour councils, and that we won’t just criticise them if they vote through cuts, we will campaign against them as class enemies.
The anti-cuts movement must of course support all trade union action against the cuts where it takes place. Yet we cannot have illusions that trade unions are fighting organisations of the working class, or that they should be seen as the leadership of anti-cuts resistance. To date opposition to the cuts has been spearheaded by young people, but only one in 20 working teenagers is in a trade union, and only one in 10 of those aged 20-25. Trade unions organise predominantly among the older, better-off sections of the working class, especially in the state sector. 53.6% of trade unionists are managers, professionals or associate professionals compared to 34% 20 years ago.
The majority at the January NSSN conference were quite right to oppose any concession to Labour councillors who implemented cuts. However, they were quite wrong to put the trade unions in the driving seat of the anti-cuts campaign they then set up. Their justification – a picture of the trade union movement as ‘six million organised workers, who can organise mass strikes and coordinated joint action’ – bears no relationship to reality. Their new campaign will now make trade union representatives a majority on its national committee, and though it will include community-based anti-cuts groups, they are reduced to organising ‘support to back up trade union actions to stop job cuts and save services.’
The mass of the people fighting the cuts are not going to accept that they should be cheerleaders for a trade union movement whose main characteristic is a total lack of movement. Effective trade union action will require a challenge to the anti-trade union laws, and the trade union leadership will not only absolutely resist such a move but will instead police their membership to ensure that they do not get out of hand.
Despite the lull in the level of student activity, more forces are bound to join the struggle as the reality of council service and job cuts hits home. It is not the time to be making a single concession to Labour councillors or MPs. They can take the side of the working class and fight against council cuts whether Labour, LibDem or Tory, or they can choose to act as the ruling class’s executioners. The overwhelming majority have clearly made their choice. They are class enemies, and we should have no hesitation in calling them such.
FRFI 219 February / March 2011
