Over the next three years Newcastle City Council will slash £100m from its budget, devastating working-class communities with service cuts and job losses. The proposed closure of 11 out of 18 libraries and the abolition of the arts budget have drawn huge opposition. Youth services across the city are to be destroyed: the entire play service is to be cut and only two youth workers are to be retained. Four out of seven leisure centres in the city are to go. Bin collections will become fortnightly. It is a ruthless onslaught on the working class. James Bell reports.
The city’s Labour council refuses to challenge the government’s cuts programme. Council leader Nick Forbes has repeatedly complained that he is in an ‘impossible situation’ and that he intends to ‘continue lobbying central government’. However, without a single councillor in the city taking an anti-cuts position, this will be an empty promise. He is more concerned about preserving his position than about the impact these cuts will have on the city he claims to represent.
Resistance is underway
Numerous campaigns have been set up across the city to oppose the council’s plans. These range from city-wide campaigns like Save Newcastle Libraries (SNL) and Save Our Services (SOS) to action groups organised within local communities.
Walker Action Group (WAG) has been one of the most active of these campaigns. Set up to oppose the closure of the Walker library and to develop resistance against the cuts as a whole, it focuses on street work involving members of the local community. FRFI supporters are centrally involved. At its first meeting on 6 December, the group attended the surgery for David Ward, Walker’s local councillor, and demanded that he stand against the cuts and alongside the people of Walker. Pressed as to whether he would set a budget to meet the needs of Newcastle’s population, he responded, ‘I want to make my position clear: I will not help to set an illegal budget’.
Following this, WAG organised a protest outside Walker library on 15 December with around 30 people which drew widespread press coverage. It then held a march on 12 January to a council consultation meeting with up to 80 local people, 40 of whom entered the consultation chanting and waving banners. Refusing to split into the divisive ‘focus group’ format chosen by the council representatives, the group succeeded in changing the meeting into an open discussion. The message of the community was clear: we do not accept these cuts.
Save Moorside Library (SML) is another campaign with a focus on the sort of street work – knocking on doors, petitioning at school gates, holding stalls and street meetings – that can involve working-class people. It is organising with communities in Arthur’s Hill in the West End of Newcastle. It too has repeatedly challenged local councillors to ensure that they understand that voting through the cuts will only deepen opposition.
The achievements of these campaigns are the work of the residents of Walker and Arthur’s Hill, including FRFI supporters. Working-class people are getting involved in these groups because they can determine their direction. They agree that their meetings and events have to be open and democratic and not the property of individuals or organisations. There is no ban on politics or on organisations speaking or selling their literature. One feature of the protests has been the ‘open mic’ policy: anyone who supports the fight against the cuts can speak at marches and protests. There are no special rights for celebrities or union bureaucrats.
Fighting for democracy
Such a democratic approach has been obstructed in the city-wide Save Newcastle Libraries (SNL) campaign. Organisations such as the SWP and Counterfire (a split from the SWP) exert an influence disproportionate to their numbers because they control the campaign apparatus. At the second SNL meeting on 27 November, Counterfire member Tony Dowling appointed himself as chair, with his fellow-member Mark Tyers as secretary, and attempted to rush through a founding statement he had drawn up. When a member of the meeting proposed an amendment to include opposition to other council cuts, Dowling attempted to block discussion, abusing his position as chair and repeatedly stating that the campaign was ‘only about the libraries’, and that if people wanted to oppose all cuts they should go elsewhere. When the amendment was put to a vote, the meeting overwhelmingly supported it. Dowling then insisted on re-running the whole argument, but on retaking the vote he lost once more.
Dowling has chaired the SNL meetings ever since. At the third meeting on 11 December, he shouted down a suggestion to hold a January demonstration involving all the local anti-cuts campaigns, arguing this would be a diversion for SNL. Instead he proposed a public meeting with Billy Elliot writer Lee Hall for early January. The following day, 12 December, Dowling and Tyers announced via Facebook that they were organising a ‘People’s March Against Austerity’ on 16 February. They admitted they had planned this before the 11 December meeting, but deliberately kept it secret to ensure they were in control.
When it came to plan the January public meeting, Counterfire and SWP members opposed the suggestion that a member of one of the local action groups should speak on the platform. Open discussion, too, was to be kept at a bare minimum. Dowling’s proposal was to limit contributions from the floor to a total of 10 minutes, while long-standing SWP member Lynne Hunter argued that to allow ordinary people to ‘warble on’ would ‘bore people’. It would be difficult to be more insulting. Dowling closed the meeting without agreeing a chair for the event, and then outside the meeting appointed Lynne Hunter to this role.
The fight for democracy is going to be crucial to developing effective resistance. Working-class people need to be offered a way to get involved, not just as a passive audience for celebrities or a mindless mass to be sent on a march, but as active leaders and organisers. Already in the organising meetings for the 16 February demonstration, the SWP and Counterfire have sought to prevent the rally from providing a platform for working-class people to speak, preferring instead celebrities, trade union leaders and cherry-picked service users.
Those organisers who close down meetings, restrict speaking rights, oppose alliances between different campaigns, are doing so to maintain their control of the movement. They suppress democracy because they fear the challenge from working class people if they become actively engaged. But these opportunists can be beaten: as one small example, FRFI and others have won the battle for the platform at the 16 February march to be given over to an open mic after 30 minutes of ‘official’ speeches. FRFI intends to keep up the fight for democratic campaigning. We can see that the open and inclusive approach of WAG and SML works.
We urge our readers to get involved – the time to fight is now.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 231 February-March 2013
