On Wednesday 8 February, FRFI South London, along with other groups including Catford Against Social Cleansing and Lewisham People Before Profit held a protest at Lewisham town hall in southeast London against the Labour council’s proposal to slash £12.6m from its 2023/2024 budget. These cuts will affect services used by many of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the borough – one of the most deprived in London, where nearly 40% of children are living in poverty. Youth services, support for those in temporary housing, mental health home support, ‘short break’ respite for families and carers of children with disabilities and library opening times are all under attack.
Mayor Damien Egan and his Cabinet moved their meeting with the Budget Committee forward by an hour to avoid our protest; all the proposals were rubber-stamped without a murmur of opposition within half an hour. Yet at the end of January the council received £19m from the central government ‘levelling up’ fund, to which the council is adding £5m of its own funds. With this money they could have avoided making any cuts this year at all – but instead the money is being squandered on gentrification projects to attract visitors to Lewisham town centre with a night-time market, pop-up attractions and a planned roof top garden on the library. So clearly the money is there: Lewisham Council has simply chosen not to spend it where is it actually needed.
Lewisham is a 100% Labour controlled council. The fact that not one member of the Cabinet opposed these attacks on the working class of Lewisham shows once against that Labour councils are more than willing to act as executioner on behalf of the Conservative government, forcing the poor to pay for a crisis that is not of their making. In 2015, the then newly-elected leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, wrote to Labour councils instructing them not to set no-cuts budgets; it subsequently became a disciplinary offence to do so. The current Labour leadership is no different. It is time to fight back. If you want to fight council cuts in Lewisham and across south London, get involved with FRFI South London and come to our public meeting on Thursday 16 February at All-Saints Hatcham Community Centre, 105 New Cross Road, SE14 5DG.
