This may as well as regional local elections and London assembly elections Liverpool and other cities will be electing their first ever mayors of their cities. Whilst as socialists we are not in favour of a mayor system in a Bonapartist regime.
But as Liverpool never held a referendum on whether to have one or not and over ruled the people of Liverpool as the Trade Unionists and Socialist Coalition we felt it would be right to stand and not give Joe Anderson the current leader of Labour run Liverpool city council, a free rerun on the position. To not challenge him on the cuts affecting the city of Liverpool would have been a tragedy.
Whilst Geoerge Galloway has been getting alot of attention recently due to his election win another class fighter with a proud record is looking to create a similar ripple in Liverpool this may.
Tony Mulhearn has entered the race to be Liverpool's first elected mayor. The veteran socialist and trade unionist, former District Labor Party president and one of the leaders of the socialist council in 1983-87, has announced he is seeking nomination to stand.
Tony said:
I intend to provide the real anti-cuts alternative to council leader Joe Anderson's vision of savage cuts today and pie-in-the-sky promises for the distant future.
Tony is standing on a clear anti-cuts platform, as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC).
TUSC is backed by union leaders such as Bob Crow, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union and Chris Baugh, assistant general secretary of the PCS. It is also backed by the Socialist Party of which Tony is a member.
Tony explained:
There is no need for these cuts. There is a £120 billion tax gap of evaded, avoided and uncollected tax.
The UK holds £850 billion in banking assets. There is some £170 billion lying in the banks uninvited.
The bankers continue to gorge themselves with obscene bonuses. Then there is the latest smash-and-grab raid orchestrated by George Osborne against our pensioners to fund tax cuts for his millionaire friends.
The money is there and none of these cuts need to be made. Liverpool's public services face obliteration unless and until we stand up to this government and demand they return the £120 million they have stolen from our city's funding so far.
The elected mayor will hold greater powers than currently held by the council leader.
Tony added:
If elected I would use all the powers at my disposal to fight for everyone suffering under this relentless assault masterminded by the Con-Dem government and unfortunately carried out by my Labour and Lib Dem opponents and their associates in the council chamber.
• I will seek to take back in-house the vital council services that have been handed out to the privateers.
• I will propose the immediate lifting of threats to services for our children and young people and some of the most vulnerable people in our city, contained in the latest council budget.
• I will propose the reversal of all the cuts made.
• I will seek to use any new funds coming into the city to support our young people at college who are suffering the loss of their Education Maintenance Allowance, and to create real jobs.
• I will demand that Liverpool's councilors abandon their policy of implementing the cuts demanded by the Con-Dem millionaires' government which represents the bankers, hedge fund managers and others who leach on society.
• I will call for a broad city-wide campaign to defend our libraries, our hospitals, nurses etc. The NHS is now at grave risk from a government determined to open it up to private health companies whose first priority will be to maximize profits for shareholders.
Tony is not standing alone. Candidates from TUSC are seeking nomination for council.
Tony said:
I am proud to urge support for trade unionists, young people and socialists who intend standing for the council as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition.
All the parties in the council chamber have shamefully voted to carry out eye-watering cuts decided in Whitehall and Westminster by the bankers' best friends.
I and my colleagues in the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition say the bankers brought on this crisis, let them pay for it!
Just like in the 80’s Tony has declared like all other TUSC candidates if elected he will only take the wage of a average skilled worker. Not profiting from a elected position he will look to be a voice of workers on the inside giving ordinary people a voice and exposing the corrupt system of capitalism .
Finally, Tony issued a challenge to his former Labour colleague Joe Anderson and the other candidates:
Let us debate the issues in front of the public, in April, in a city centre venue open to all and free of charge.
To all those who can get involved in Toni’s election campaign, you are invited to a campaign meeting to be held in the Liverpool pub (upstairs), James Street, Liverpool on Wednesday, 4 April 2012 at 7.15pm
Tony Mulhearn can be contacted for comment on 07939 098 455, or via his campaign team Alec 07411 362 448 and Dave 07969 511 796
TUSC website: www.tusc.org.uk
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Showing posts with label liverpool 47. Show all posts
Showing posts with label liverpool 47. Show all posts
Tuesday, 3 April 2012
Monday, 3 October 2011
The Liverpool 47, forgotten by many but not by militants
Whilst many last week would have been glag to see Ed Miliband attacking Militant in the 80's over their role in the city of Liverpool struggles and thought he was right to do so i do not agree. I think the moveemnt that was around at the time which provoked some of the most vicious slanders on militant members at the time has to be remembered. Many of the great labour movement moments in history are rmembered and used to inspire new workers today but the lies and the smears the right wing in the labour movement and the official labour party of today and since the 80's has meant many workers fear looking into the struggles of the Liverpool city council back then.
The mantra 'not going illegal' seems to be the catch-all excuse for implementing the most savage cuts in Liverpool's history. [the Liverpool 47 group and the Socialist Party - Eds.] have argued for a needs budget not an illegal budget. This means using every legal device to defend jobs and services - using council reserves, taking privatised services back in-house.
Such action would need to be linked to a mass anti-cuts campaign involving trade unions, community organisations and council workers on a clear policy of compelling the Con-Dem government to abandon its punitive policies, with an appeal to other local authorities to do the same.
Jobs, wages and services are being cut while the income of CEOs increased hugely last year; the culprits for the crisis, the bankers, continue to gorge themselves on obscene bonuses; Cameron's advisers say the NHS should be up for grabs to the private health companies.
This outrageous situation cries out for courageous leadership committed to defending workers and those least able to defend themselves.
As for the argument that the conditions for mass struggle don't exist: history shows that, where leadership is given, support will be forthcoming as the Liverpool 47 showed in the 80s, as did Tom Mann in 1911 in Poplar.
Liverpool city council's struggle in 1983-87 for more funding from the Thatcher government was an inspiration to workers,
AFTER 20 years of slashing jobs, of privatising and cutting services, Liverpool's ruling parties - New Labour and the Liberal Democrats, with almost identical free-market policies, have decided to inflict a catastrophe on the local authority workforce.
1,500 will lose their jobs, the already high number of families without a wage-earner will grow. Despite Labour council leader Joe Anderson's pledge to protect the poor, public services will suffer and already are suffering.
Labour is the majority party but a key component of Anderson's strategy to deal with the cuts is to form an alliance with the arch-proponents of privatisation and cuts, the Lib Dems.
In 1987 the House of Lords backed Thatcher's district auditor's decision to remove the 47 fighting Liverpool Labour councillors from office undemocratically i might add. Since then, the city council's workforce has been reduced from 30,000 to fewer than 10,000.
The spectacle of a Labour leader going into an alliance with the local Lib Dems, a party which is part of a national coalition with the millionaire Tory cabinet, shows catastrophic abdication of leadership by a Labour party which was elected by the city's working families to protect them from the Tory onslaught.
Council leader Joe Anderson detailed how the council intends to make £91 million of savings over the coming year. It aims to cut half its senior management posts, saving £4.5 million, and to reduce budgets for children's services and adult social care.
It 'hopes' it can reduce predicted job losses from 1,500 to about 1,200. Anderson claimed the council had tried to protect frontline services but the scale of the cuts meant that 'real pain' would be felt in some communities.
Funding for voluntary groups has been cut by £18 million, almost 50%. The council says savings in this area were necessary to protect 'life and death' essential services to the most vulnerable.
'There is no alternative' claims the Labour leader. But there is always an alternative to supine capitulation and that is to fight - to form a coalition with the organised labour movement and community organisations, instead of a coalition with the capitalist parties and their allies.
This fighting policy, following the example of the Liverpool 47 councillors, would show Cameron's Tories they have a battle on their hands. In 1983, the incoming Labour council inherited a catastrophic financial situation.
The outgoing Liberal-Tory alliance deliberately under-spent throughout the 1970s to try to maintain electoral support; in one year they actually cut household rates.
They wooed their natural Tory-voting base by increasing rents, terminating the house-building programme and shedding thousands of jobs, plus making cuts in other sectors.
Much like today where the chancellor has announced council tax will be frozen for another year further putting pressure on councils to put through cuts to compensate for the loss of extra council tax.
Liberal council leader Trevor Jones could claim he presided over the lowest rate increases in Liverpool's history and was knighted by Thatcher for services rendered.
An angry Liverpool working class kicked out this Liberal-Tory alliance and returned Labour to power in 1983 on a clear, fighting socialist programme. The brave 47 Liverpool Labour councillors refused to cut jobs and services and defied Thatcher, mobilising support from the council workforce and from local people.
They won an extra £60 million from the government in 1984 and gained six new nurseries, and five colleges. Over 5,000 council houses were built.
Time has not diminished the achievements of the 47, nor undermined the importance of the struggle. The record of the 47 remains stubbornly intact.
Today Joe Anderson, however, tells council workers that the 47 were responsible for Labour's decline in the city. That is a complete falsehood.
The 47 received magnificent support from the council workforce and the wider trade union movement and at the ballot box. If some leadership was shown in this present crisis then the council could win that support again.
Anderson and Co say: 'We have no choice.' But there is a choice. The mass movement built by the 47 did not drop from the sky.
It was developed with the Liverpool District Labour Party (DLP) hammering out a clear policy which included: opposition to cuts, no rent increases, cancelling redundancies, creating jobs, expanding social services, campaigning to retrieve the millions which the Thatcher government had cut from the city's grants, and linking this programme to the need for a socialist society.
This drew the local authority trade unions, the Labour Party Young Socialists, the women's organisations and others into the decision-making process through the DLP.
At that time the DLP democratically determined council policy and Labour councillors were constitutionally bound to carry it out! A 'trade union and labour movement organising committee' was created, representing all sections of the working class with the 47 providing the cutting edge.
This committee organised the mass rallies and demonstrations which were so important in the Liverpool campaign. This body also participated in the electoral campaign which delivered the highest Labour votes since 1945.
There were many high points of the campaign: one was on 7 March 1985, when a mini-general strike involving 30,000 council workers and 10,000 dockers, plus other sections of workers took place with a demonstration of some 50,000 marching through Liverpool opposing the Thatcher government's policies.
That mass campaign was born out of the social conditions in Liverpool, which had seen 65% of its industrial base collapse in the decade before the 47 were elected.
Mass participation in the movement was also the antidote to the hostile forces of capitalism: the Murdoch/Maxwell Press, ITV and the BBC, the local press, the pulpit, with Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock and the national trade union bureaucrats underpinning the establishment's crazed campaign against the 47.
Joe Anderson and other labour party councillors recent 'demonstration' against the cuts may confuse sections of the population for a while and temporarily deflect hostility away from him and his allies.
But as the cuts bite there will be greater focus on Labour's role locally, with a corresponding call for a fighting leadership basing themselves on the policy, programme and campaigning activity of the 47.
A strategy to beat the cuts
IN AN open letter last December, a group of the 47 suggested to Liverpool's present-day Labour leader Joe Anderson and his allies that they follow the example of the 1983-87 Militant-inspired council and set a 'needs budget'.
This would protect temporarily council workers' jobs and services provided or supported by the council. Joe Anderson's response was to tell us to live in 'the real world' and accept that nothing could be done other than for him to carry out the cuts while crying bucketfuls of tears! But our letter raised important questions such as a strategy to oppose the Con-Dem onslaught.
"The first step should be to use the council's budget reserve, reported in the Liverpool Echo as £80 million, to maintain current funding levels in areas which the Con-Dem alliance is cutting.
"This would buy time for more decisive measures to defeat the cuts. Then, as we did in 1983-87, you should work out how much is required to fund existing council services in 2011 and pass a budget in line with inflation.
"This would no doubt produce a shortfall in the council's income. The amount of the shortfall could be identified, say £50 million.
"A campaign could then be launched to oppose the cuts with the specific demand that £50 million be restored to Liverpool city council as a means of defending jobs and services.
"You could call for all local authorities to embrace the same strategy and for support from the local authority trade unions and the wider labour movement, in concert with community organisations which are planning to resist any cuts in their own localities.
"If Liverpool makes a courageous stand, this could act as a beacon to other local authorities and campaigning organisations to join the campaign. If a number of the main local authorities adopted this strategy of refusing to cut jobs and services to compensate for Tory cuts, backed up by a campaign of mass demonstrations and industrial action, the Tories would be compelled to retreat.
"We call on the Labour group to totally reject the cuts and to join, not with the Lib Dems, but with the trade union and labour movement in defending the mass of Liverpool's working people."
SO please dont let the inspiration and the spirit of the Liverpool 47 die. Dont listen to the lies. Do as i did and read up on the struggle myself independently of any influence and decided for myself the truth and what really went on. Adopting a marxist strategy on the cuts that all cuts should be opposed to defend workers and working class people is the only way to go in my view. There is no excuse for Labour councillors who if they wish to warrant the name Labour councillors not to follow this route of the 47.
The mantra 'not going illegal' seems to be the catch-all excuse for implementing the most savage cuts in Liverpool's history. [the Liverpool 47 group and the Socialist Party - Eds.] have argued for a needs budget not an illegal budget. This means using every legal device to defend jobs and services - using council reserves, taking privatised services back in-house.
Such action would need to be linked to a mass anti-cuts campaign involving trade unions, community organisations and council workers on a clear policy of compelling the Con-Dem government to abandon its punitive policies, with an appeal to other local authorities to do the same.
Jobs, wages and services are being cut while the income of CEOs increased hugely last year; the culprits for the crisis, the bankers, continue to gorge themselves on obscene bonuses; Cameron's advisers say the NHS should be up for grabs to the private health companies.
This outrageous situation cries out for courageous leadership committed to defending workers and those least able to defend themselves.
As for the argument that the conditions for mass struggle don't exist: history shows that, where leadership is given, support will be forthcoming as the Liverpool 47 showed in the 80s, as did Tom Mann in 1911 in Poplar.
Liverpool city council's struggle in 1983-87 for more funding from the Thatcher government was an inspiration to workers,
AFTER 20 years of slashing jobs, of privatising and cutting services, Liverpool's ruling parties - New Labour and the Liberal Democrats, with almost identical free-market policies, have decided to inflict a catastrophe on the local authority workforce.
1,500 will lose their jobs, the already high number of families without a wage-earner will grow. Despite Labour council leader Joe Anderson's pledge to protect the poor, public services will suffer and already are suffering.
Labour is the majority party but a key component of Anderson's strategy to deal with the cuts is to form an alliance with the arch-proponents of privatisation and cuts, the Lib Dems.
In 1987 the House of Lords backed Thatcher's district auditor's decision to remove the 47 fighting Liverpool Labour councillors from office undemocratically i might add. Since then, the city council's workforce has been reduced from 30,000 to fewer than 10,000.
The spectacle of a Labour leader going into an alliance with the local Lib Dems, a party which is part of a national coalition with the millionaire Tory cabinet, shows catastrophic abdication of leadership by a Labour party which was elected by the city's working families to protect them from the Tory onslaught.
Council leader Joe Anderson detailed how the council intends to make £91 million of savings over the coming year. It aims to cut half its senior management posts, saving £4.5 million, and to reduce budgets for children's services and adult social care.
It 'hopes' it can reduce predicted job losses from 1,500 to about 1,200. Anderson claimed the council had tried to protect frontline services but the scale of the cuts meant that 'real pain' would be felt in some communities.
Funding for voluntary groups has been cut by £18 million, almost 50%. The council says savings in this area were necessary to protect 'life and death' essential services to the most vulnerable.
'There is no alternative' claims the Labour leader. But there is always an alternative to supine capitulation and that is to fight - to form a coalition with the organised labour movement and community organisations, instead of a coalition with the capitalist parties and their allies.
This fighting policy, following the example of the Liverpool 47 councillors, would show Cameron's Tories they have a battle on their hands. In 1983, the incoming Labour council inherited a catastrophic financial situation.
The outgoing Liberal-Tory alliance deliberately under-spent throughout the 1970s to try to maintain electoral support; in one year they actually cut household rates.
They wooed their natural Tory-voting base by increasing rents, terminating the house-building programme and shedding thousands of jobs, plus making cuts in other sectors.
Much like today where the chancellor has announced council tax will be frozen for another year further putting pressure on councils to put through cuts to compensate for the loss of extra council tax.
Liberal council leader Trevor Jones could claim he presided over the lowest rate increases in Liverpool's history and was knighted by Thatcher for services rendered.
An angry Liverpool working class kicked out this Liberal-Tory alliance and returned Labour to power in 1983 on a clear, fighting socialist programme. The brave 47 Liverpool Labour councillors refused to cut jobs and services and defied Thatcher, mobilising support from the council workforce and from local people.
They won an extra £60 million from the government in 1984 and gained six new nurseries, and five colleges. Over 5,000 council houses were built.
Time has not diminished the achievements of the 47, nor undermined the importance of the struggle. The record of the 47 remains stubbornly intact.
Today Joe Anderson, however, tells council workers that the 47 were responsible for Labour's decline in the city. That is a complete falsehood.
The 47 received magnificent support from the council workforce and the wider trade union movement and at the ballot box. If some leadership was shown in this present crisis then the council could win that support again.
Anderson and Co say: 'We have no choice.' But there is a choice. The mass movement built by the 47 did not drop from the sky.
It was developed with the Liverpool District Labour Party (DLP) hammering out a clear policy which included: opposition to cuts, no rent increases, cancelling redundancies, creating jobs, expanding social services, campaigning to retrieve the millions which the Thatcher government had cut from the city's grants, and linking this programme to the need for a socialist society.
This drew the local authority trade unions, the Labour Party Young Socialists, the women's organisations and others into the decision-making process through the DLP.
At that time the DLP democratically determined council policy and Labour councillors were constitutionally bound to carry it out! A 'trade union and labour movement organising committee' was created, representing all sections of the working class with the 47 providing the cutting edge.
This committee organised the mass rallies and demonstrations which were so important in the Liverpool campaign. This body also participated in the electoral campaign which delivered the highest Labour votes since 1945.
There were many high points of the campaign: one was on 7 March 1985, when a mini-general strike involving 30,000 council workers and 10,000 dockers, plus other sections of workers took place with a demonstration of some 50,000 marching through Liverpool opposing the Thatcher government's policies.
That mass campaign was born out of the social conditions in Liverpool, which had seen 65% of its industrial base collapse in the decade before the 47 were elected.
Mass participation in the movement was also the antidote to the hostile forces of capitalism: the Murdoch/Maxwell Press, ITV and the BBC, the local press, the pulpit, with Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock and the national trade union bureaucrats underpinning the establishment's crazed campaign against the 47.
Joe Anderson and other labour party councillors recent 'demonstration' against the cuts may confuse sections of the population for a while and temporarily deflect hostility away from him and his allies.
But as the cuts bite there will be greater focus on Labour's role locally, with a corresponding call for a fighting leadership basing themselves on the policy, programme and campaigning activity of the 47.
A strategy to beat the cuts
IN AN open letter last December, a group of the 47 suggested to Liverpool's present-day Labour leader Joe Anderson and his allies that they follow the example of the 1983-87 Militant-inspired council and set a 'needs budget'.
This would protect temporarily council workers' jobs and services provided or supported by the council. Joe Anderson's response was to tell us to live in 'the real world' and accept that nothing could be done other than for him to carry out the cuts while crying bucketfuls of tears! But our letter raised important questions such as a strategy to oppose the Con-Dem onslaught.
"The first step should be to use the council's budget reserve, reported in the Liverpool Echo as £80 million, to maintain current funding levels in areas which the Con-Dem alliance is cutting.
"This would buy time for more decisive measures to defeat the cuts. Then, as we did in 1983-87, you should work out how much is required to fund existing council services in 2011 and pass a budget in line with inflation.
"This would no doubt produce a shortfall in the council's income. The amount of the shortfall could be identified, say £50 million.
"A campaign could then be launched to oppose the cuts with the specific demand that £50 million be restored to Liverpool city council as a means of defending jobs and services.
"You could call for all local authorities to embrace the same strategy and for support from the local authority trade unions and the wider labour movement, in concert with community organisations which are planning to resist any cuts in their own localities.
"If Liverpool makes a courageous stand, this could act as a beacon to other local authorities and campaigning organisations to join the campaign. If a number of the main local authorities adopted this strategy of refusing to cut jobs and services to compensate for Tory cuts, backed up by a campaign of mass demonstrations and industrial action, the Tories would be compelled to retreat.
"We call on the Labour group to totally reject the cuts and to join, not with the Lib Dems, but with the trade union and labour movement in defending the mass of Liverpool's working people."
SO please dont let the inspiration and the spirit of the Liverpool 47 die. Dont listen to the lies. Do as i did and read up on the struggle myself independently of any influence and decided for myself the truth and what really went on. Adopting a marxist strategy on the cuts that all cuts should be opposed to defend workers and working class people is the only way to go in my view. There is no excuse for Labour councillors who if they wish to warrant the name Labour councillors not to follow this route of the 47.
Sunday, 25 September 2011
Poplar 1921: 'Better to break the law than break the poor'
This excellent article in this weeks socialist highlights just how far real working class socialists will go to defend and stand up for the working class. To defy the law which is deeply unfair to working class people. Deliberatly so some would say designed by the ruling class to oppress us even more. Good working class fighters have had to break unjust laws at times to defend the working class this week's edition of the socialist looks back at the Poplar struggles in the 1920's and what a inspiration their struggles are to us today.
This year marks the 90th anniversary of the struggle of councillors in Poplar, east London, against government cuts. This culminated in their going to prison with the slogan 'better to break the law than to break the poor'.
Their ultimately successful battle was a major inspiration for Liverpool council to take on the Tories in the 1980s and shows the way forward today in fighting against the Con-Dem government's attacks. Linking all three periods are profound crises of the capitalist system.
Poplar council's main struggle was to gain a reduction of the rates, the forerunner of the council tax, but they also battled for adequate relief for the poor and a decent minimum wage for council workers.
Poplar has always been a poor area. In the 1920s over a quarter of the borough's men worked in transport, mostly casual dockworkers, yet the docks were vulnerable to trade depressions. Unemployment and poverty rose enormously in the economic bust that followed shortly after World War One.
In 1919, socialists won 39 of the 42 seats on Poplar council and consolidated their hold on the 'Board of Guardians' that administered poor relief. The new councillors were not middle class armchair socialists. They included seven dock workers, seven railwaymen and four labourers.
The capitalist press had a fine time sneering at them as 'unfit to govern', but their first year in office saw impressive achievements. Council housebuilding was inaugurated, the electricity supply developed, the library service expanded. Free milk was provided for expectant mothers and babies and measures were taken to reduce the threat of TB. Poplar paid a minimum wage to council workers well above that elsewhere and introduced equal pay for women.
Poplar levied rates on behalf of London County Council (LCC), the Metropolitan Police and other all-London bodies. It also levied its own rates, including part for the Poplar Board of Guardians. Since the Board of Guardians paid all poor relief in the borough, it was paying out far more, due to the rapid rise in unemployment.
Yet wealthy boroughs like Westminster with few unemployed did not face this problem. In effect, the poorest boroughs were having to pay far more than their share in looking after London's poor.
Campaigns for "equalisation of the rates" in London, to make rich boroughs pay their share, had been going on for decades with no effect on government policy. Poplar faced a choice - to stay within the law and show Labour in power could be "responsible" as Herbert Morrison, Labour mayor of Hackney advocated, or defy the law in order to change it.
Obeying the law would have meant cutting services, pushing rates above what most of the population could pay, or reducing poor relief to a level which would not stop the unemployed and their families starving.
The Poplar councillors wanted to make a protest which 'would force the central authorities to pay attention'. George Lansbury, the Labour group leader, proposed that they should just levy the rate for their own purposes and the Board of Guardians, not for the all-London bodies.
Mass support
This strategy was discussed and agreed at mass meetings of the council trade unions, and in every local area. Backed by this mass support, councillors voted to break the law and did so.
The LCC took a writ out to try to force them to change course. Poplar council then used every avenue to delay the writ, even though they had no chance of a court victory. They were playing for time to build the movement and get other councils to support them.
Finally the LCC took proceedings against them for contempt of court. On 29 July 1921, the councillors and 2,000 supporters marched from the town hall to the High Court, under the now famous slogan, 'better to break the law than to break the poor'.
In prison, the councillors soon made their voices heard. On arrival, Lansbury asked to see the warder's union card. The food was terrible initially, but a campaign led to a big improvement in their conditions.
They also won the right to hold council meetings in Brixton prison, and the women councillors were brought over from Holloway prison specially. Every evening there were demonstrations outside the prison in support of the class-war prisoners.
The government hoped the councillors would compromise. However, Stepney and Bethnal Green councils made moves to follow Poplar. The pressure was such that even Clement Attlee (future Labour prime minister and no radical) then a Stepney councillor, moved the resolution to go down the Poplar road. Poplar also won the TUC's backing.
A formula was eventually accepted that the councillors would apologise for contempt of court, but without agreeing to levy the disputed rates - in other words a crushing victory for the 'law breakers'. A subsequent conference to discuss the issue, organised by the government, accepted nearly all of Poplar's demands.
The rebel Poplar councillors were under no illusions that what they were fighting for was a simple reform. They all saw the ultimate solution for the ending of unemployment in a socialist society.
Today, the present mayor of Tower Hamlets, that includes the Poplar area, invoked the spirit of 'Poplarism' and Lansbury in his election campaign. He then implemented a savage programme of Tory and Liberal cuts (without any resistance) making a mockery of his earlier pronouncements.
If Tower Hamlets followed the Poplar road today, as well as the successful example of the 1980s Liverpool city council struggle, then a campaign could be built that would draw other councils behind it and force the government to retreat.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
London Socialist Party public meeting:
"How do we fight for a better future? Better to break the law than break the poor."
Thursday 29 September 7.30pm.
Room 2.40, Francis Bancroft Building, Queen Mary's university, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS.
Nearest tubes. Mile End, Stepney Green.
Speakers include Tony Mulhearn, Liverpool 47 group of councillors, Peter Taaffe, Socialist Party general secretary.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In this issue
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Building for 30 November strike
We won't pay for
This year marks the 90th anniversary of the struggle of councillors in Poplar, east London, against government cuts. This culminated in their going to prison with the slogan 'better to break the law than to break the poor'.
Their ultimately successful battle was a major inspiration for Liverpool council to take on the Tories in the 1980s and shows the way forward today in fighting against the Con-Dem government's attacks. Linking all three periods are profound crises of the capitalist system.
Poplar council's main struggle was to gain a reduction of the rates, the forerunner of the council tax, but they also battled for adequate relief for the poor and a decent minimum wage for council workers.
Poplar has always been a poor area. In the 1920s over a quarter of the borough's men worked in transport, mostly casual dockworkers, yet the docks were vulnerable to trade depressions. Unemployment and poverty rose enormously in the economic bust that followed shortly after World War One.
In 1919, socialists won 39 of the 42 seats on Poplar council and consolidated their hold on the 'Board of Guardians' that administered poor relief. The new councillors were not middle class armchair socialists. They included seven dock workers, seven railwaymen and four labourers.
The capitalist press had a fine time sneering at them as 'unfit to govern', but their first year in office saw impressive achievements. Council housebuilding was inaugurated, the electricity supply developed, the library service expanded. Free milk was provided for expectant mothers and babies and measures were taken to reduce the threat of TB. Poplar paid a minimum wage to council workers well above that elsewhere and introduced equal pay for women.
Poplar levied rates on behalf of London County Council (LCC), the Metropolitan Police and other all-London bodies. It also levied its own rates, including part for the Poplar Board of Guardians. Since the Board of Guardians paid all poor relief in the borough, it was paying out far more, due to the rapid rise in unemployment.
Yet wealthy boroughs like Westminster with few unemployed did not face this problem. In effect, the poorest boroughs were having to pay far more than their share in looking after London's poor.
Campaigns for "equalisation of the rates" in London, to make rich boroughs pay their share, had been going on for decades with no effect on government policy. Poplar faced a choice - to stay within the law and show Labour in power could be "responsible" as Herbert Morrison, Labour mayor of Hackney advocated, or defy the law in order to change it.
Obeying the law would have meant cutting services, pushing rates above what most of the population could pay, or reducing poor relief to a level which would not stop the unemployed and their families starving.
The Poplar councillors wanted to make a protest which 'would force the central authorities to pay attention'. George Lansbury, the Labour group leader, proposed that they should just levy the rate for their own purposes and the Board of Guardians, not for the all-London bodies.
Mass support
This strategy was discussed and agreed at mass meetings of the council trade unions, and in every local area. Backed by this mass support, councillors voted to break the law and did so.
The LCC took a writ out to try to force them to change course. Poplar council then used every avenue to delay the writ, even though they had no chance of a court victory. They were playing for time to build the movement and get other councils to support them.
Finally the LCC took proceedings against them for contempt of court. On 29 July 1921, the councillors and 2,000 supporters marched from the town hall to the High Court, under the now famous slogan, 'better to break the law than to break the poor'.
In prison, the councillors soon made their voices heard. On arrival, Lansbury asked to see the warder's union card. The food was terrible initially, but a campaign led to a big improvement in their conditions.
They also won the right to hold council meetings in Brixton prison, and the women councillors were brought over from Holloway prison specially. Every evening there were demonstrations outside the prison in support of the class-war prisoners.
The government hoped the councillors would compromise. However, Stepney and Bethnal Green councils made moves to follow Poplar. The pressure was such that even Clement Attlee (future Labour prime minister and no radical) then a Stepney councillor, moved the resolution to go down the Poplar road. Poplar also won the TUC's backing.
A formula was eventually accepted that the councillors would apologise for contempt of court, but without agreeing to levy the disputed rates - in other words a crushing victory for the 'law breakers'. A subsequent conference to discuss the issue, organised by the government, accepted nearly all of Poplar's demands.
The rebel Poplar councillors were under no illusions that what they were fighting for was a simple reform. They all saw the ultimate solution for the ending of unemployment in a socialist society.
Today, the present mayor of Tower Hamlets, that includes the Poplar area, invoked the spirit of 'Poplarism' and Lansbury in his election campaign. He then implemented a savage programme of Tory and Liberal cuts (without any resistance) making a mockery of his earlier pronouncements.
If Tower Hamlets followed the Poplar road today, as well as the successful example of the 1980s Liverpool city council struggle, then a campaign could be built that would draw other councils behind it and force the government to retreat.
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London Socialist Party public meeting:
"How do we fight for a better future? Better to break the law than break the poor."
Thursday 29 September 7.30pm.
Room 2.40, Francis Bancroft Building, Queen Mary's university, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS.
Nearest tubes. Mile End, Stepney Green.
Speakers include Tony Mulhearn, Liverpool 47 group of councillors, Peter Taaffe, Socialist Party general secretary.
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In this issue
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Building for 30 November strike
We won't pay for
Saturday, 26 February 2011
The fight has just begun
So as we see councils across the country passing their budgets for the year 2011/2012 it wont be long now untill the first real cuts start to bite in early April. With a national budget set to unviel even more cuts and probably tax rises for fuel and other such taxable items they can get their hands on we are left wondering about the battle ahead.
So far the cuts are happening so widespread and scattered its hard to know where to focus all of your energies. I do think the anti cuts movement do need to step it up a bit over the next few months as the cuts begin to deepen as local communities begin to suffer at the hands of this tory lead government of ours.
A few key dates will be on the 5th of March myself and other comrades will be getting out in protest for the first official NSSN anti cuts body's big scale protest. This will be a joint protest with comrades on teh same day taking their voices and placards down to cardiff where the lib dems are meeting. The one i will be attending in London will be the national conference of labour councillors. To highlight their hypocrisy of putting through cuts in their areas whilst saying they are against the cuts.
We need to make them realise they are just as much to blame for the cuts as the tories and lib dems. Ok maybe they are not the governing party of the country of course but when cuts are being passed down to a local level it is then their choice if they do the tories dirty work for them or not.
I was at the budget council meeting for the stevenage borough council this week which is a labour run council and was saddened to hear that they all voted through the cuts resoundingly. Very sad i thought to myself as i came away from the meeting.
We put up a good if small protest before the setting of the budget but it came to nothing as the cuts agenda rolls on.
Back in the 80's there were labour councils out there prepared to fight back against Margret Tatcher and say no to her cuts. They were almost successful. They even gained 60 million pounds of concessions from teh cuts through a well organised mass campaign and for them days a 60 million addition to your budget was a lot and something to feel very proud of.
This came about due to the role of militant labour in the city who along with Terry fielding and Derek Hatton took a stand against teh government. Along with Lambeth council who a few interesting stories of councillors being expelled from teh labour group there made a admirable stand.
The main reason these campaign eventually broke down was due to a mass purge from the labour right including the then leader neil Kinnock. The isolation of these brave councils, who were not realy brave if you think about it they were just doing right by their residents and people who voted them in.
Which i'm afraid is what we expect of all of our elected representitives sadly a left wing labour council as Dave nellist rightly said at the last NSSN conference is as rare as a poor banker in this day and age.
If one labour council stood up and said they are not doing the tories dirty work and refuse to put through their cuts it will send a message out there that other councils may follow in inspiration. Its all it might take to spark a wave of resistance to teh cuts which will send shockwaves back to Eric Pickles and the tory party. We should not be scared of big fat Eric Pickes coming in and setting our budgets for us as if in between refusing to vote the cuts through a mass campaign linking local anti cuts groups, unions, public sector staff and local charities and workers can rally around and create a mass resistance to Eric Pickes and his nasty tories. I really do think if you do not even attempt to fight back you have no chance of winning. Even if you fail you have still made a stand and stood by your principles.
People talk to me saying you cant set a illegal budget when setting your council budget. But a illegal budget is only when you havent set a budget at all. A needs budget is not illegal at all and is something i'm hugely in favour of.
An needs budget is where you set out which key essential services you cannot loose and what your local community and area needs and cant do without and spend its reserves and borrow in order to save jobs and services as the campaign builds
Councils are able to borrow at a good rate and can do this to bridge the gap in cut in funding. Quite often councils have large pool of funds they can draw on in the emergency/reserve budget that can keep local councils going if they do get stuck.
I found this piece which i have refered back to plenty of times to people in debates over council budget and cuts debates i've engaged in. This is a piece from the socialist a newspaper produced by the socialist party on The 7th of October 2010 and which i feel highlights things brilliantly and explains why councillors should fight the cuts.
IN THE mid-1980s Liverpool Labour council, under the political influence of the Militant (forerunner of the Socialist Party) and the pressure of a mass working class movement, successfully led a campaign to secure extra resources for the city's urban renewal programme from a hostile Tory government intent on cutting funding.
Subsequently, in an act of political revenge, 47 Liverpool Labour councillors were undemocratically removed from office and surcharged thousands of pounds. Every penny of the surcharges was raised from the labour movement in a magnificent fund-raising campaign.
If any council today showed a milligram of the courage and conviction of the 47 Liverpool councillors we would be living in a better place. Unfortunately New Labour councillors are raising the spectre of surcharge as an excuse for not fighting coalition cuts, but instead for passing them on.
I have done a quick question and answer guide of council law for New Labour councillors worried that the twin terminator toffs - Cameron and Clegg - will come and batter them.
If I don't vote for these cuts and annoy the government I will be surcharged and lose my home?
Oh no you won't! The power of surcharge was identified as wrong by the Nolan Commission and abolished as part of the 2000 Local Government Act. The only possible remnant of this system is if a councillor personally benefits from any financial losses incurred by a council.
But if I go against the cuts I could be barred from office.
If you do not "have regard" to financial advice given by your council's chief finance officer and fail to explain the reasons for not going along with his or her advice then, according to their statutory duty, you could be referred to the standards board for breach of your council's code of conduct which could bar you from office for a period.
But it would not be easy for a finance officer to do this if, like Liverpool, you took a stand as part of a mass campaign to defend your services and communities. Remember it is the local people who put you where you are, not unelected finance officers.
Margaret Thatcher's vicious Tory regime only moved to surcharge the Liverpool councillors after the 1984-85 miners' strike ended and Liverpool council was left isolated by the Labour leadership. If the twenty other Labour councils that had pledged to defy the Tory government had not crumbled at the first hurdle, the government would not have been able to surcharge the Liverpool councillors. On the contrary, the government would have been swept from office.
But the government will just take over and send in commissioners to run things.
Despite the threat, it did not happen in Liverpool. Instead the Labour Party, under the spineless leadership of Neil Kinnock did Thatcher's dirty work for her in witch-hunting the district party. Recently, the only notable time when commissioners were sent in was in Doncaster following a media storm about the running of social services.
For a weak coalition government to try this against a council fighting to preserve services, and especially one with local workers mobilised in support, would be an entirely different matter.
Naturally all this would depend on mobilising support but tens of thousands supported the councillors in Liverpool on mass demonstrations. This organised fightback actually won extra cash for services.
The next Labour councillor who tries to back away from saving local services should recognise that by voting for massive cuts they will in effect be voting to abolish themselves. After all, if the services go, what is the point of having these surplus-to-requirement back bench councillors anyway?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Local democracy
Just how responsive to local people was the Militant-influenced Liverpool city council? London Evening Standard journalist Simon Jenkins recently wrote:
"The most distinctive feature of the militant Left's rule of Liverpool in the Eighties was its impact on urban renewal. Responding to the local public, the council smashed most of the hated towers to the ground and left neighbourhood groups to plan their replacements. The result was no more decks, stairwells and broken lifts set in windy parks, as dictated by professional architects. Instead people decided to revert to terrace houses, like those taken from them in the Sixties. It was an object lesson in democracy."
A far cry from today's councils!
So as the cuts austerity project rolls on by the tories and attacks fall on the ordinary good people of this country this is just where the fight begins.
Lastly i do hope you can join me on the protest for an alternative on the 26th of March in central London where myself and hundreds if not thousands will be marching against the government and telling them there is another way.
Lets keep the fight going to preserve our public services before it is too late!!
So far the cuts are happening so widespread and scattered its hard to know where to focus all of your energies. I do think the anti cuts movement do need to step it up a bit over the next few months as the cuts begin to deepen as local communities begin to suffer at the hands of this tory lead government of ours.
A few key dates will be on the 5th of March myself and other comrades will be getting out in protest for the first official NSSN anti cuts body's big scale protest. This will be a joint protest with comrades on teh same day taking their voices and placards down to cardiff where the lib dems are meeting. The one i will be attending in London will be the national conference of labour councillors. To highlight their hypocrisy of putting through cuts in their areas whilst saying they are against the cuts.
We need to make them realise they are just as much to blame for the cuts as the tories and lib dems. Ok maybe they are not the governing party of the country of course but when cuts are being passed down to a local level it is then their choice if they do the tories dirty work for them or not.
I was at the budget council meeting for the stevenage borough council this week which is a labour run council and was saddened to hear that they all voted through the cuts resoundingly. Very sad i thought to myself as i came away from the meeting.
We put up a good if small protest before the setting of the budget but it came to nothing as the cuts agenda rolls on.
Back in the 80's there were labour councils out there prepared to fight back against Margret Tatcher and say no to her cuts. They were almost successful. They even gained 60 million pounds of concessions from teh cuts through a well organised mass campaign and for them days a 60 million addition to your budget was a lot and something to feel very proud of.
This came about due to the role of militant labour in the city who along with Terry fielding and Derek Hatton took a stand against teh government. Along with Lambeth council who a few interesting stories of councillors being expelled from teh labour group there made a admirable stand.
The main reason these campaign eventually broke down was due to a mass purge from the labour right including the then leader neil Kinnock. The isolation of these brave councils, who were not realy brave if you think about it they were just doing right by their residents and people who voted them in.
Which i'm afraid is what we expect of all of our elected representitives sadly a left wing labour council as Dave nellist rightly said at the last NSSN conference is as rare as a poor banker in this day and age.
If one labour council stood up and said they are not doing the tories dirty work and refuse to put through their cuts it will send a message out there that other councils may follow in inspiration. Its all it might take to spark a wave of resistance to teh cuts which will send shockwaves back to Eric Pickles and the tory party. We should not be scared of big fat Eric Pickes coming in and setting our budgets for us as if in between refusing to vote the cuts through a mass campaign linking local anti cuts groups, unions, public sector staff and local charities and workers can rally around and create a mass resistance to Eric Pickes and his nasty tories. I really do think if you do not even attempt to fight back you have no chance of winning. Even if you fail you have still made a stand and stood by your principles.
People talk to me saying you cant set a illegal budget when setting your council budget. But a illegal budget is only when you havent set a budget at all. A needs budget is not illegal at all and is something i'm hugely in favour of.
An needs budget is where you set out which key essential services you cannot loose and what your local community and area needs and cant do without and spend its reserves and borrow in order to save jobs and services as the campaign builds
Councils are able to borrow at a good rate and can do this to bridge the gap in cut in funding. Quite often councils have large pool of funds they can draw on in the emergency/reserve budget that can keep local councils going if they do get stuck.
I found this piece which i have refered back to plenty of times to people in debates over council budget and cuts debates i've engaged in. This is a piece from the socialist a newspaper produced by the socialist party on The 7th of October 2010 and which i feel highlights things brilliantly and explains why councillors should fight the cuts.
IN THE mid-1980s Liverpool Labour council, under the political influence of the Militant (forerunner of the Socialist Party) and the pressure of a mass working class movement, successfully led a campaign to secure extra resources for the city's urban renewal programme from a hostile Tory government intent on cutting funding.
Subsequently, in an act of political revenge, 47 Liverpool Labour councillors were undemocratically removed from office and surcharged thousands of pounds. Every penny of the surcharges was raised from the labour movement in a magnificent fund-raising campaign.
If any council today showed a milligram of the courage and conviction of the 47 Liverpool councillors we would be living in a better place. Unfortunately New Labour councillors are raising the spectre of surcharge as an excuse for not fighting coalition cuts, but instead for passing them on.
I have done a quick question and answer guide of council law for New Labour councillors worried that the twin terminator toffs - Cameron and Clegg - will come and batter them.
If I don't vote for these cuts and annoy the government I will be surcharged and lose my home?
Oh no you won't! The power of surcharge was identified as wrong by the Nolan Commission and abolished as part of the 2000 Local Government Act. The only possible remnant of this system is if a councillor personally benefits from any financial losses incurred by a council.
But if I go against the cuts I could be barred from office.
If you do not "have regard" to financial advice given by your council's chief finance officer and fail to explain the reasons for not going along with his or her advice then, according to their statutory duty, you could be referred to the standards board for breach of your council's code of conduct which could bar you from office for a period.
But it would not be easy for a finance officer to do this if, like Liverpool, you took a stand as part of a mass campaign to defend your services and communities. Remember it is the local people who put you where you are, not unelected finance officers.
Margaret Thatcher's vicious Tory regime only moved to surcharge the Liverpool councillors after the 1984-85 miners' strike ended and Liverpool council was left isolated by the Labour leadership. If the twenty other Labour councils that had pledged to defy the Tory government had not crumbled at the first hurdle, the government would not have been able to surcharge the Liverpool councillors. On the contrary, the government would have been swept from office.
But the government will just take over and send in commissioners to run things.
Despite the threat, it did not happen in Liverpool. Instead the Labour Party, under the spineless leadership of Neil Kinnock did Thatcher's dirty work for her in witch-hunting the district party. Recently, the only notable time when commissioners were sent in was in Doncaster following a media storm about the running of social services.
For a weak coalition government to try this against a council fighting to preserve services, and especially one with local workers mobilised in support, would be an entirely different matter.
Naturally all this would depend on mobilising support but tens of thousands supported the councillors in Liverpool on mass demonstrations. This organised fightback actually won extra cash for services.
The next Labour councillor who tries to back away from saving local services should recognise that by voting for massive cuts they will in effect be voting to abolish themselves. After all, if the services go, what is the point of having these surplus-to-requirement back bench councillors anyway?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Local democracy
Just how responsive to local people was the Militant-influenced Liverpool city council? London Evening Standard journalist Simon Jenkins recently wrote:
"The most distinctive feature of the militant Left's rule of Liverpool in the Eighties was its impact on urban renewal. Responding to the local public, the council smashed most of the hated towers to the ground and left neighbourhood groups to plan their replacements. The result was no more decks, stairwells and broken lifts set in windy parks, as dictated by professional architects. Instead people decided to revert to terrace houses, like those taken from them in the Sixties. It was an object lesson in democracy."
A far cry from today's councils!
So as the cuts austerity project rolls on by the tories and attacks fall on the ordinary good people of this country this is just where the fight begins.
Lastly i do hope you can join me on the protest for an alternative on the 26th of March in central London where myself and hundreds if not thousands will be marching against the government and telling them there is another way.
Lets keep the fight going to preserve our public services before it is too late!!
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