support the NHS workers out on strike today

Today see's many NHS workers including midwives and vital workers who keep us healthy everyday helping our sick and injured back to healthiness again. The old phrase if you pay peanuts you get monkeys could not be more relevant today. If you pay your staff very little does not expect them to feel valued and appreciated for their work they do. Many NHS workers work very long shifts and have to endure some very challenging working conditions. Take an ambulance driver and crew they do not know what they are turning up to when called out. They could make the difference between saving someone’s life or not. I was born in a NHS hospital and have been helped out allot when I’ve had trouble or been ill in the past. The level of support I received when I was losing my sight was very touching you got the feeling these people really do care about others and want to help others even if their pay is not great. In a fantastic article posted on LibCom about why NHS workers should strike this week puts it brilliantly "The privatisation of the NHS, dismantling of the welfare state, and attacks on terms and conditions mean that nurses are facing the biggest battle in their history. The time for negotiation has finished. So what are you going to do? I recall vividly a conversation with a colleague several years ago. The discussion was about job cuts, unsafe staffing levels, and pay. She said to me, “You are a nurse, you should never strike”. Industrial action of any description was not on the cards, it was just a general chat. That statement has stuck with me ever since, and with the upcoming public sector strikes, the issues of nurses and industrial action is now back on the agenda. I will be on strike on the 30th, but not as a nurse as. I left clinical practice to work in nurse education earlier this year. However, I will always be a nurse first and foremost. After recently speaking to friends and former colleagues, it is clear that the same old debates about striking and industrial action are being discussed. The RCN which represents the bulk of registered nurses in the UK (400,000) has stated that it will ballot for industrial action in January if the government does not back down on its pension reforms. The RCN has many qualities; it has other roles than just being a trade union, and does a very good job. However, as a trade union it is generally weak, and about as un-militant as you can get. To be fair though, it never claims to be anything else. It has enjoyed comfortable relationships with governments, and its membership is seen as less militant that the nurses who are with UNISON. This will be the first time in its history that they will have balloted for industrial action, and judging by debate within the media between the government and the RCN, there is definitely a souring of the relationship, which can only be a good thing. The government will not back down, so when the ballot goes ahead, I am absolutely positive that they will vote for strike action. The result may be closer than other unions, but I am confident it will be passed. What does this then mean for nurses, patients, and the government? The first issue takes me back to my colleagues comment about not striking. Why shouldn’t nurses strike? Well, “our first priority should be our patients”. I agree, however, what are nurses supposed to do when employers and governments do not provide adequate staffing or funding, or close services that are desperately needed, or make attempts to privatise the NHS? Negotiation can only go so far. To be completely passive is not in the interest of any patient who requires service that is closing. No one is suggesting that NHS be completely shut down. Nurses would provide a skeleton service during a strike. They would not leave people at risk of harm. I say this not just as a nurse, but as a human being. Clearly striking is not the only type of action available, and there other just as effective actions that could be taken. The NHS is a huge paper based bureaucracy, with paperwork for everything. It also relies on the constant goodwill of nurses, working through breaks, staying behind to support busy colleagues (unpaid). Nurses could withdraw their unpaid labour, and refused to complete anything but paperwork specifically relating to patient care, they could generally work to rule. I have never met a nurse’s who does not carry out work that is not within their job description. So striking is not the only option, but whatever action is taken, patients would not be left at risk. The moral argument of nurses not striking does not hold any water for me. In fact, I would argue that it is immoral not to take action, when an employer or government are implementing changes that will have a negative impact on patient care. The next argument that is thrown up is, “what about the public perception of nurses”. And what about, “upholding the reputation of the profession”? I would refer anyone using this argument to the last paragraph. It is not as if nurses go on strike in this country very often is it? There has to be a line that when it is crossed, nurses should say, ‘enough is enough’. I always remember many nurses saying, I wouldn’t strike for pay, but if they ever went after my pension I definitely would. Well guess what? With regards to the public perception of nurse’s striking, I would argue that the vast majority of the public would support them. I feel that the public are aware that nurses are not repeat strikers, and would possibly take the attitude that things must be bad if nurses strike. Furthermore, the public pressure that a government would face would increase if nurses’ took action, possibly shortening the duration of any dispute. What made me so angry was the NMC (Nursing and Midwifery Council) the governing professional body for nurses, making a statement last month, stating that “any nurse who went on strike would be in violation of the professional code of conduct” and would possibly struck of the register and lose their career. This was a disgraceful stance to take, no doubt pressured by the government to make those comments. They quickly changed that statement following uproar amongst nurses. They anticipated many people caving in due to the threat of a fitness to practice panel, but it had the opposite effect, nurses became angrier. For me, the old arguments of nurses and industrial action are just that, old. My patients are my first priority, and the action that is sometimes needed to effectively care and treat someone, stretches beyond providing nursing care. I cannot provide sufficient care if a I have fewer colleagues than needed, or if the service I work for closes, or if we cannot recruit nurses because no one wants to train anymore, or if the government refuse to fund certain treatments, or if the government sells of the NHS, or allows the market to break it up. If nurses genuinely want to make the patient their first priority they should bloody well stand up for what is right, and not swallow the nonsense that has kept nurses subservient for the past century. Everything I have said is not based on the fact that I am an anarcho-syndicalist or indeed political in any way. It is based on having a desire to provide the care and treatment that I believe should be provided. It is about time nurses fought back. They are far and away the biggest staff group within the NHS and healthcare, and their potential influence and impact cannot be underestimated. They are a sleeping giant that needs to wake, and quickly. If they do not, they will one day wake to find the NHS renamed ABC healthcare, and they will no longer be able to provide effective care, or make patients their first priority. Their first priority will then be £ sign! Another thing the nurse who I mentioned earlier said to me was, “what would Florence Nightingale say about it all”. Well, I never met her, as she was a bit before my time. However, with what I know about her I suspect she would have said something along the lines of, “If you want to make patients your first priority you cannot allow the government to sell off the NHS, and you cannot allow them to dismantle the public sector or welfare state. Negotiation has been tried and failed. It is time to get around your workplaces, and organise!!!!!” Posted By Working class s... Nov 23 2011 11:34 With thanks and link to original post at http://libcom.org/blog/why-nurses-should-take-industrial-action-23112011

Outsourced Britain

As austerity continues to bites one of the big features before and now very much more so after the great recession is the idea of outsourcing and it is really happening on a huge scale lets be frank. Outsourcing is a good way for capitalist to drive down labour costs during times of austerity. Take N Power this week. "Npower is to cut 1,400 UK jobs. PA Npower is to close offices and outsource work to India in a move that will see 1,400 UK staff lose their jobs at the energy supplier. The announcement is expected to intensify public anger around the activities of the Big Six power companies and raise the political heat in Westminster where energy has risen to the top of the political agenda. Trade unions accused npower of serving up a "Christmas nightmare" by planning to offshore 1,400 jobs to India and transfer a further 570 to another British firm, probably Capita. It is understood that frontline call-centre operations will be outsourced to a third party in the UK, with back-office work moved to India. Union leaders warned the moves would backfire and further tarnish the reputation of npower which came bottom for customer service in a recent survey and which told a parliamentary committee earlier this year that it had paid almost no corporation tax for three years. Npower, the energy supplier of Germany's RWE, hit gas and electricity customers with a 10.4% rise in fuel bills earlier this month and its central London offices were the target of fuel poverty demonstrations earlier this week. The company declined to comment on the planned office and staff cuts but well-informed sources told the Guardian that npower staff would be informed of the changes at 9am on Thursday. Npower said in a statement: "As we announced a couple of months ago, npower has been undertaking a major review of sites, operations and people across the UK. "We've been doing this to improve our customer service and keep our costs down, at a time of external pressures on customers' bills. As we've always said, we'll tell our people first and then inform the media," it added. Npower and the other big six firms such as SSE and Centrica insist that they have to raise domestic bills and trim their costs in a bid to counter the impact of rising wholesale prices and green levies for home insulation. Npower's parent RWE said earlier this month that 6,750 jobs would need to be cut across Europe as it tries to reduce a debt mountain of over £28bn, partly caused by the Berlin government's decision to phase out nuclear power stations." The key bit that jumps out at me in that piece in the Guardian was the cutting costs line. This is clearly not to cut costs for the customers and those who use Npower but to keep costs down for the business and to maintain profits and raise profit levels if possible. With Britain being the second biggest nation for outsourcing we will see in time if its allowed to happen a huge wave of outsourcing to other cheaper nations and to areas where the labour costs are cheaper. In an excellent piece on Open democracy Stuart Weir writes "The government has put a huge FOR SALE sign over the country’s public assets and services. According to the sharedserviceslink.com website, the bulletin board for “leaders in finance shared services”, the United Kingdom is the world’s largest out-sourcing market after the United States. The number of contracts in the UK has increased sharply by 47 per cent to 148 contracts a year since 2010. The annual contract value for this country jumped 16 per cent in 2012 to $3.75 billion! All this before the major sale drive about to take place in the NHS. The International Services Group (ISG) states that the UK accounted for 80 per cent of all contracting out across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, making our government alone among the major European economies in using out-sourcing as a key element in its response to austerity. Richard Vize, of Outsourcer Eye, says that the application of cuts is dominated by “short-term thinking”. The effects of all this activity on quality or cost is unclear and there is no reliable information on the impact of cuts or out-sourcing – though these effects are visible, for example, in local government, the NHS and government agencies such as the Inland Revenue. The government’s “short-term” thinking is of course, as Polly Toynbee warned recently, part of a determined and reckless long-term drive to reduce the public sector to a mere rump. Social security is gradually being outsourced to charities and food banks, while services and assets are increasingly handed out to private firms to operate at often extortionate prices (like the trains), described by George Monbiot as the 'toll booth economy'. The effects on ordinary citizens will be far-reaching and devastating, the more so for the vulnerable people whom the state has long acknowledged a responsibility to protect. The state is being fundamentally transformed before our eyes. This is a phase or a form of capitalism which is turning public service’s into money making enterprises and this will stop at nothing. From our energy sector to our schools and hospitals nothing is sacred when it comes to capital's drive for greater and grater profits. With thanks to open democracy link to article at http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/stuart-weir/uk-becomes-worlds-second-largest-outsourcing-market

Busting the myths on immigration

With the question of immigration making its way back on to the agenda sadly it’s a good chance for us to rebuff some of these more popular myths and how wrong the right wing media and politicians are. Isabelle Koksal counters the right wing myths with some facts and figures MYTH: The flood of immigrants is unsustainable the movement of migrants is not just one way. As people arrive, others are leaving. This gives us net migration figures which for most years since 1840 have actually been negative. Geographer Danny Dorling notes that before the economic crash, the number of migrants coming to Britain was roughly balanced with the number leaving. In total, ‘there are 10-14 million people who live here that were not born here – and there are 10-14 million people born here who no longer live here’. So not really a flood at all. It is also worth viewing Britain’s migration figures in a global context. This shows that our experience of international migration is not at all remarkable, growing in line with world migration. Migrants make up 9 per cent of the population, which is the average for Europe. Britain has a smaller proportion of migrants and lower rates of net immigration than the US, Canada, Australia and several large European countries. The number of asylum seekers that Britain receives is again average for Europe, ranking 14th out of 27 when looking at asylum seekers per head of population. The UK receives fewer asylum applications than France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Belgium. As of January 2012, the UN estimated that the number of refugees, pending asylum cases and stateless persons made up just 0.33 per cent of the population. In fact, it is the so-called developing world that receives the majority of refugees, with 80 per cent being hosted there. The past decade has seen higher net numbers of migrants. However, rather than being ‘unsustainable’, this migration is actually vital for the functioning of our society. Danny Dorling argues that the real problem is actually too little immigration. With a rising elderly population and decreasing fertility rates, we will depend even more than we already do on immigration to provide tax revenues and services. MYTH: Britain is a soft touch Successive governments have been making the asylum process increasingly tough for asylum seekers despite their duty under the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees to provide protection to those fleeing persecution. The system is particularly hostile to women as UK Border Agency officials often lack an understanding of gender-based persecution. A recent report by Oxfam stated that all aspects of the asylum system are flawed and that the entire process should be urgently reviewed. The fast-track system does not give the time needed for asylum seekers to make their case; this and many other issues with the asylum determination process means that often people are wrongly denied asylum. With devastating cuts to legal aid, this situation will only get worse as asylum seekers cannot access the legal advice and support that they need. When an asylum seeker reaches the UK they are photographed and have their fingerprints taken, they are security checked and issued with an ID card. They are then required to report at regular intervals to immigration reporting centers. They are issued with a letter that informs them that they can be detained at any point during the asylum process. EU citizens have free movement across Europe under European law – although home secretary Theresa May has been drawing up plans to curb intra-EU migration. But the rules governing the entry of non-EU immigrants are incredibly stringent, with a points-based system that requires people to show documents such as their bank statements and exam results. It is during detention where, far from being a ‘soft touch’, the reality for immigrants and asylum seekers is often a hard fist. Medical Justice has documented hundreds of cases of abuse of detainees at the hands of security guards during detention and deportation. Each year, 1,000 children are detained with their parents. MYTH: They come here for our generous welfare system Research commissioned by the Home Office concluded that there was no evidence to suggest that asylum seekers had detailed knowledge about the UK benefits system. When someone is fleeing from persecution, they often do not know where their end destination will be; some may choose the UK because they have friends and family here. Asylum seekers anyway do not have access to the mainstream benefit system. Rather, they have a parallel system of welfare support that provides them with £36.62 a week, 52 per cent of Jobseeker’s Allowance. Surviving on £5.23 a day puts asylum seekers well below the UK poverty line. Those who are refused asylum but are too scared to return home find themselves destitute as they cannot access any benefits. Oxfam estimates that there are hundreds of thousands of destitute asylum seekers in the UK. Asylum seekers do not have access to social or council housing. They are allocated housing on a ‘no choice’ basis in ‘hard to let’ properties. This housing is often of very poor quality. This is likely to get even worse with the privatisation of asylum housing through G4S, Serco and Reliance – all of whom have poor records in managing detention centres and transport and escort services. Indeed, there are already concerns that G4S will repeat its Olympics shambles in asylum seeker housing, leading top officials in the Home Office to monitor the situation closely. Migrants most often come here to work and they do just that. Many have high skill levels but often find themselves in jobs that do not utilise these skills and are poorly paid. National insurance data shows that foreign nationals are less than half as likely to claim unemployment benefits as UK citizens. Access to benefits for migrants is complex, and as with access to welfare for asylum seekers has become increasingly limited since the mid-1990s. Research by the Equality and Human Rights Commission dispels the myth that immigrants jump the social housing waiting list. This found that 60 per cent were privately renting, 18 per cent were owner occupiers, and only 11 per cent were allocated social housing. The research found no evidence of abuse neither of the system nor of ‘queue jumping’. MYTH: They take our jobs Asylum seekers are not allowed to work, despite often being highly skilled and keen to use these skills. Once their claim has been decided they may work if they have been given refugee status. However, they face many barriers to entering employment. The government has cut the Refugee Integration and Employment Service, which provided them with support in finding a job. Refugees may also struggle to work in their chosen profession as their qualifications may not be transferable or they may face discrimination by employers. Migrants generally travel to where there are jobs available, often filling vacancies where there are skill shortages. The UK Border Agency’s points-based system for non-EU immigrants means that they are only permitted to take jobs where there are recognised skill shortages and if they can prove before entering that they have the relevant qualifications. Numerous statistical studies have shown that there is no link between EU immigration and unemployment levels. MYTH: They are draining public services it is our duty, not a drain, to protect asylum seekers. As discussed above, the welfare provision that we do provide is woefully inadequate. A number of other European countries provide more generous support than the UK. The minimal provision the state provides for asylum seekers and refugees is now being decimated by government cuts with devastating consequences. There have been massive cuts to support services for asylum seekers and refugees and cuts to the Home Office housing budget for asylum seekers. The cuts to legal aid will affect asylum seekers’ ability to access justice in a system already stacked against them. Asylum seekers and refugees are being used as an easy target by the government. The Home Office has acknowledged this itself, stating: ‘Because the UKBA is not facing uniform cuts, some areas – including asylum – will be required to bear a greater proportion of the cuts.’ Besides, far from ‘draining’ public services, migrants (including refugees) actually contribute significantly to their funding through their tax and national insurance contributions. They make a net contribution to the UK economy of £3 billion. Because they are often young, healthy, and skilled, their use of public services is actually very limited. Migrants also help deliver many of our public services, working in the National Health Service, education and social care. It is a fact that the NHS could not function without migrant workers. The myth of immigrants’ dependence has obscured the reality of our own dependence on them.

No to outsourcing in Herts police

Hertfordshire police force are considering out sourcing again after the G4S contract bid was dropped out sourcing has crept back on their agenda. All efforts must be made to prevent these first steps towards privatisation. An existing Herts Police arrangement with Beds and Cambs’ forces is to be dropped while police and crime commissioner David Lloyd searches for savings. In a statement leaked by Herts Police Unision commissioner Lloyd states: “Work [is] underway to seek further collaboration opportunities beyond those already underway with Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire (Police) will cease.” He also is quoted as saying: “Clearly there are some things that only warranted officers can and should do. But I want to ensure that all other policing services are considered for outsourcing over the next two years”. It also reveals the police will now “explore the benefits of outsourcing policing functions which do not require warranted powers”. Before the statement was sent out commissioner Lloyd, chief constable Andy Bliss, senior staff and representatives of the Police Federation and Unison met. During yesterday’s (Wednesday) meeting chief constable Bliss is alleged to have said: “If there is a better deal to be had in house, we will very seriously look at that. “However the expectation is very clear from PCC Lloyd that we will be going out looking at market opportunities.” Herts Police Unison want commissioner Lloyd to look “in house” for savings and think costs could be cut internally. A union spokesman said: “All Hertfordshire Police Staff and Officers have worked tirelessly over the last three years to implement savings not only through the collaboration of services with Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire but internally within Hertfordshire Constabulary alone. “We believe there are still more opportunities to make savings internally and we strongly urge PCC Lloyd to give the staff and officers of Hertfordshire Constabulary the chance to do this first before outsourcing services. “In public service we feel morally obliged to do what is right and necessary to help those affected by crime, in private enterprise the only imperative is to service contractual obligations and thereby maximise profit.” The announcement follows a failed outsourcing bid with private All sounds quite concerning what the unison guy says words like collaboration and finding cuts in house rather than out saucing show a sign of a union who is more bout finding compromises than actually standing up for its members. Just shows the urgent need to transform that union to a fighting left union. But we will have to watch this one closely as privatisation in our police seems to be back on the table and being seriously considered.

TUSC biggest challenge to labour from the left in years

This may the Trade Union Socialist Coalition will be fielding hopefully its biggest number of candidates in a local election across the country ever. This will mark a dramatic step forward in the TUSC name and profile. What this will also represent is the biggest challenge to labour from the left in probably a generation. Standing on a class basis of opposition to all cuts fielding anti cuts candidates with many from the Socialist party itself too shows that the labour boss’s never did finish off militant and we’re making a comeback on the electoral front. Whilst we do not expect to win or gain huge votes at all just by simply standing many candidates in such areas like Hertfordshire where I hope to be standing myself in my town of Ware will show that an alternative to the cuts is possible. We hope to begin to dent if not fully smash the lie that there is no alternative to the cuts and the cuts are inevitable. There is always an alternative an alternative of investment in public services we vitally need not cuts would be our priority. All TUSC candidates stand for an average wage of a skilled worker and would not benefit financially from being elected. We are true class fighters using elections as a platform to gain access to a wider layer of workers that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to reach. The pro capitalist parties of Labour, Tory and lib dem all stand for cuts of some speed or description even if they won’t be honest about it up front. We as TUSC are proud and clear to declare our opposition to all cuts and will be building links on the ground with workers in new areas spreading our influence and resistance to the cuts onslaught. All TUSC candidates pledge to vote against all cuts and any rises’ in council tax to offset cuts, we oppose all forms of privatisation even arms length out sourcing which is often the first step to privatisation. In and around the country there will be local issues we look to take up and fight on in our campaigns we can make these big areas of our material and propaganda. In Harlow for example we will make the closure of the Harlow Welfare rights centre which many struggling people relied on for benefit advice and support part of our campaign. These are just county council elections and in many ways the vote is not important if we do well then fair enough but we are laying down a marker building our forces on the ground for future struggles up ahead. If you wish to find out more about TUSC and what we stand for please visit www.tusc.org.uk

Outsourcing police dogs, are there any limits to privatisation?

In Hertfordshire the latest plan to cut spending on police is this new idea to outsource police dogs and limit their use.

Whilst I’m not a huge fan of the police clearly this is significant if the police are feeling angry about cuts and are not being protected by the state. Police should have full trade union rights like other workers and have the ability to withdraw their labour like anyone else.

For a full democratic society police should be accountable to the wider public. Privatising parts of the police and outsourcing areas such as trained police dogs is just one part of this trying to undermine police officers doing their jobs.

SPECIALIST police dogs will be outsourced and handler numbers in Hertfordshire slashed under plans to cut the budget by £1.1m.
Slicing the budget by almost a third would mean police dogs for Herts, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire would be based 48 miles (77km) away from Hertford, and only be available 18 hours per day, according to a report to a police authority meeting on Friday (July 20).
The report read: "To achieve the most operationally effective unit, it is proposed that a model based upon 24 dog handlers will provide resilience, a level of flexibility and peak demand overlap. It will provide savings of approximately £1.1m (32 per cent of current budget).
"A model of 24 constables is considered the optimal number and will provide resilience both within the unit and to LPC [Local Policing Command] areas.
"Based on substantive levels of research and consultation, it is evident that the dogs unit could be reduced effectively by introducing a defined remit based upon four core areas of activity."
One Herts dog handler, who asked not to be identified, told the Mercury: "The resources are already stretched. We can’t provide any decent level of service because of the cuts that have been made. To think that we could cover three counties with 24 constables is stupid because we can’t cover two counties with 24 now.
"We’ve been kept completely in the dark and I don’t feel at all valued. This process absolutely stinks. The figures that have been looked at have been manipulated to suit.
"It’s an absolute nonsense. I hope that the police authority sees through it and sees sense."
East Herts chief inspector Gerry McDonald added: "Police dogs offer me reassurance, an ability to run faster than my officers and track people. They’re often used for drug detection and firearms recovery. It’s daily business for us.
"I’ve got a whole menu of options and police dogs are another opportunity. I don’t know what the impact will be yet but the constabulary’s not going to let me down."


with extracts from the Hertfordshire Mercury

PFI = Profit from Illness, drive profiteering out of our NHS!

Private finance initiative has been crippling our NHS for decades now. With many hospitals now a certain hospital trust in south London facing difficulties it’s time to end this profit mad system and re nationalize the NHS and kick out the profiteers from our health care once and for all.


The South London Healthcare NHS Trust has already lost £150m

The trust runs three hospitals and has run up deficits of more than £150m over the past three years. It is thought to be on course to lose between £150m and £375m by 2017.
Our staff has worked hard for patients and in spite of significant financial issues we are extremely proud we now have among the lowest mortality and infection rates in the country

Its chief executive was informed on Monday night that the trust is likely to be put into the "unsustainable providers regime", which was introduced by the last Labor government but never before used.

The administrator will take over the board and recommend measures to the Health Secretary to put the trust's finances on a sustainable basis. Which to me means nothing but cuts and a contraction of services offered and a round of redundancies for the staff.

Hospitals run by the trust include Queen Mary's in Sidcup, the Queen Elizabeth in Woolwich and the Princess Royal in Bromley.

It is clear to me to save the NHS PFI must be rejected out of hand and all services brought back into proper democratic public ownership. With a trade union lead campaign with local communities and the mass of the working class behind a campaign to save the NHS we can save it only if we act now. Each day a further piece of our NHS is lost if we don’t act now it’ll be gone in a few years time. A distant memory.

PFI was begun in the early 1990s by the then Tory government. It was attacked by Labour when in opposition, but then massively accelerated under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's governments. Today there are hundreds of PFI projects covering hospitals, schools, roads, bridges, police stations and prisons.
Instead of a public body building a new facility using public money, albeit through a contract with a private builder or developer, PFI involves a private sector developer or consortium doing the whole job. It borrows the money (often at higher rates of interest than the government would), builds the project and then charges a fee for 25 to 40 years for maintaining the buildings and usually also providing various services.
Labour spokespersons such as Patricia Hewitt and Alan Milburn condemned such PFI projects as 'backdoor privatization' when in opposition. In government, however, as health secretaries, they claimed it was the 'only game in town'. And curiously, after government, they (and many other Labour ex-ministers) got lucrative private sector jobs and consultancies, many in the same areas where they had been ministers.
The Financial Times estimated in 2007 that, after ten years of New Labour, the total capital value of PFI contracts across the UK was £68 billion - but that the total which would be given to the private companies involved in those contracts, by the time they were finished, would be £215 billion!
Three years later, in November 2010, the total payment obligation for PFI contracts in the UK had rocketed to £267 billion. And in the first year of the Tory/Lib Dem coalition a further 61 PFI schemes, with a capital value of £7 billion were approved. PFI has become a 'milch cow' for big business in the public sector.

Defeating the myths on the need for cuts

Before the general election in 2010 David Cameron tried to claim that the Tory party had changed and was no longer the brutal anti-working class party of the 1980s.
Within days of taking office they revealed themselves as Thatcherites to the core.

The Tories' propaganda is that cuts are necessary because of New Labour's excessive public spending. This is a giant con-trick.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The crisis Britain is facing is not a crisis of the public sector but of the private sector.
It was the collapse of the banking system, not greedy public sector workers that the economy into crisis.
Yet, while public services are being destroyed, the rich are increasing their wealth further still.

In reality, New Labour did not preside over a significant increase in public spending. On the contrary, under New Labour, as under the Tories before them, public spending on measures that decrease poverty has fallen back and, as a result, for much of New Labour's tenure, inequality and poverty increased.

High quality council housing, unemployment benefit and a pension that it is possible to live on, these are all now distant memories. Job Seekers Allowance is at, £64.30 a week, equal to just 10% of average earnings compared to 17% when Margaret Thatcher was in power.
It is the lowest in the developed world and is literally impossible to live on. Even in those sectors such as health where public spending increased under New Labour, although not enough, this has been linked to increased privatisation.
When New Labour was elected in 1997 total public spending had fallen to 37.7% of gross domestic product (GDP), its lowest level since the 1960s. New Labour kept it at the same level for its first two years in power.
By 2008 it had increased marginally to around 41%, although this remained extremely low compared with other major European countries such as Germany, and particularly France, where it was still 53%.
Since then it has jumped again to around 46%. To put this in perspective it was 45% in 1985 - when the Tories had been in power for six years! However, the jump has nothing to do with increased spending on public services and everything to do with the bailout of the banking and finance system.

The Treasury department spent £109.5 billion in 2008/09, an increase of 49,891% on the previous year! This vast sum of money, slightly more than the entire spending on health for the year, was used to bail out the finance system.
Yet the same big financiers whose profligacy triggered the economic crisis are now demanding cuts in services. All capitalist politicians accept the need for cuts because 'the markets' demand it.
The Tories are particularly enthusiastic about cutting as much and as fast as possible, but New Labour has also made it clear it would do as the markets demand and carry out severe cuts.


What are these markets? Not some elected or democratically accountable body but a few handfuls of unelected bond market traders interested only in their own mega-profits.
These are the people who are demanding vicious cuts which will ruin the lives of millions.
If this government gets away with it, the clock of history will be unwound with levels of poverty returning those of the 1930s. But it will not get away with it.
This government is deluded if it imagines it will be able to carry out its programme without meeting an avalanche of opposition.

United we are strong, divided we will be defeated. The government knows that and is desperate to divide us - public sector from private sector, old from young, benefit claimants from everyone else...
To avoid the government's trap, and build a united movement, it is vital that we oppose ALL cuts in jobs and services. If we fall into the trap of accepting pay cuts on the spurious grounds that they will stop a local library or swimming pool open, or fighting to save one local hospital but not another, we will allow the anti-cuts movement to shatter into a thousand pieces.
Of course, we will not always succeed, but our starting point must be to fight every single cut. This includes cuts implemented by Labour councils, who are willingly wielding the axes handed to them by the government.

The socialist party does not accept the need for any cuts and fights for a new mass workers party that can give ordinary people a voice again.
To be fully effective, a workers' party would need to put forward socialist ideas. Socialists do not accept that cuts are necessary.
Capitalism has created enormous wealth, science and technique. We have technology today that was unimaginable a generation ago.
The world economy is 17 times the size it was a century ago. Yet we are being told that the most basic public services - a decent public health service, the right to an affordable home - cannot be afforded by capitalism.
The current crisis is not caused by a bloated public sector but by the worst crisis of capitalism in 70 years. This is a crisis of the private not the public sector.
Yet all the major capitalist parties - Tories, Lib Dem and New Labour agree that it should be the working class and public services that pay for it.

Any government that acts in the interests of the markets would put forward savage cuts along the lines of those being proposed by the Con-Dem coalition.
Across Europe - from the ex-social democratic governments (equivalent to New Labour) of Greece, Spain and Portugal to the right-wing capitalist parties of Britain, France, Germany and Italy; the cuts are virtually identical in their brutality.
All of Europe is dancing to the axe-men's tune. Capitalism is in crisis and it is the working class that is expected to pay the price.

This crisis is more than simply the responsibility of a few greedy bankers. The severity of the economic crisis that began in 2008 is a consequence of the increasingly parasitic nature of capitalism over the last decades.

Capitalism has always been a system based on the exploitation of the majority, the working class, for the profits of a few at the top.
There was a brief period, from around 1950-73, when capitalism developed rapidly. At least in the more economically developed countries, including Britain, working-class people were able to win a few crumbs from the capitalists' table.
In Britain, a National Health Service and a mass council house building programme made a real improvement in workers' lives.
However, when capitalism went into crisis, it set about restoring its profits by driving down the share of the wealth taken by the working class. Production was moved abroad to countries with cheaper labour, wages were driven down, and spending on public services was cut back.

The consequence of all of this was that, by 2007 in the G7 countries, the share taken by the working class (wages plus benefits) had fallen to a post-war low of 53% of total income.
During the last boom profits reached an all-time record. However, they had difficulty finding profitable fields to invest in.
Investment in science, technique and production remained at an historic low. Why? Because working-class people lacked the means to buy the goods that could potentially be produced.
This is the terrible reality of capitalism. It does not matter that two billion people are without the most basic necessities of life, they are not 'a market' because they lack the money to buy what is produced.
Instead of investing in industry, the capitalist class made its profits in the last boom by gambling on the world's stock markets in a speculative frenzy. To try and increase their markets the working class got its own little share in the credit frenzy: cheap credit cards and mortgages - not crumbs but bubbles from the table.

But while the bankers' debts were nationalised - handed to us to pay off via cuts in our public services - our debts (the £1.5 trillion consumer debt overhang from the boom) remain like millstones round our necks.

Socialists argue that the rich should be the ones who pay the crisis, via dramatically increased taxes for the super-rich and the big corporations. For most of the 1970s the tax rate for the highest band of income was 83%.
Likewise, for most of the 1970s, big corporations paid 52% of their profits in tax. But that percentage has been reduced step-by-step ever since, to just 28% now.
As the PCS points out, even with the existing low levels of taxation for the rich, more than £120 billion goes uncollected every year. While we favour taxing the rich, we also recognise that the 'markets' - neither the big corporations nor the bond traders who hold whole countries to ransom - will never meekly accept dramatically increased regulation and taxation.


So what is the alternative to this market madness? The starting point is to refuse to accept the cuts. Faced with a determined working class, big business will be forced to retreat.
However, in its relentless pursuit of profit, capitalism would then come-back with other ways of making the working class pay, for example, by using inflation.
That is why we need a socialist solution. For a start we call for the nationalisation of the big banking and finance companies.
Compensation should be paid on the basis of proven need. Not one penny should go to the speculators who are demanding that the working class pay for the crisis for which they - the speculators - bear responsibility.
It would then be necessary to introduce full government control of all incoming and outgoing foreign trade. That would enable a democratically elected government and the working class - not the market - to control imports and exports including capital.
A socialist nationalised banking sector would be democratically run by representatives of banking workers and trade unions, the wider working class, as well as the government.
Decisions would be made to meet the needs of the majority - for example, offering cheap loans and mortgages for housing and for the planned development of industry and services, and ending all repossessions of peoples' homes.

However, that would only be the start. Capitalism has led to enormous economic destruction.
In Britain around 10% of wealth has already been lost as a result of the recession, due to factories and workplaces closing, resulting over 2.6 million officially unemployed with the number rising.
Nor is there any prospect of a return to healthy growth. This is the real difference between now and, for example, the end of the second world war when the total national debt was far higher than it is today - over 200% of GDP compared to around 60% now.
Then, however, Britain entered a period of significant economic growth, thereby shrinking the national debt.



Its time to reject the need for any cuts at all, we do not accept like new labour that some cuts are needed at all. Lets redouble our efforts to win the arguements and win more people to our ideas of socialism and a change of society to benifit the many.

Far more cuts to come with 16 billion more announced today, time to fight back!

When you thought the cuts were bad enough we are told today there is more on their way as this government of millionaires looks to continue to make ordinary people pay for a crisis they did not create at a much faster and harder rate than before.

Danny Alexander is shaking up Whitehall spending rules
"In an environment of economic uncertainty, with ongoing instability in the eurozone, the UK's large deficit remains a crucial economic vulnerability. It remains a clear and present danger to stability," he will say.
New rules, which will be enforced from this year on, have been drawn up by finance directors in Whitehall and are aimed at improving financial management.
Mr. Alexander will say they are "rules that demonstrate the collective determination of government to ensure that never again will our nation's finances be allowed to get into such a mess".
He will insist that departments' delegated responsibility for spending cannot be "an excuse to hide information, close the books, or weaken financial management".
"For too long financial management in Government has been stifled by poor information sharing and poor incentives. That has to change," the Cabinet minister will say.
"From now on, all departments must monitor and share spending information with the Treasury on a monthly basis. And that data must be consistent."
In an environment of economic uncertainty, with ongoing instability in the eurozone, the UK's large deficit remains a crucial economic vulnerability. It remains a clear and present danger to stability.
Treasury Chief Secretary Danny Alexander
The Treasury kept central reserves small in the spending review so departments could have the most money possible, which means departments themselves have to have a buffer in case of any problems.
Under the new rules, they will have to identify around 5% of their resource budget which could be used if new "pressures" emerge or new policies need funding.
Mr Alexander will stress that the changes are not a "small tweak to the Whitehall machine".
"They are another signal of our unwavering determination to deliver the fiscal consolidation we promised," he is to say.
"It is this focus on delivery that is the cornerstone of our country's credibility. Credibility, let us not forget, which is delivering the record low interest rates that are benefiting millions of families across the UK."


This all sounds very like a hard line austerity or nothing kind of speech. If this doesn’t wake the trade unions up to get up off their knees and fight back I can’t see what will. This is a huge threat to our standard of living. With the original cuts still only about 9% into their 5 year programme things are going to get a hell of a lot worse. Some people still think amazingly that this is just a short term measure to see our finances back on track but I personally believe we are being locked into permanent austerity with this.

This should be a warning shot to the anti cuts movement and the trade unions to prepare for battle. A bigger more concerted battle this time with the willingness to build for a general strike with public and private sectors. We can’t just simply lie down and let this happen we will have no choice but to fight back I feel. More cuts are not the answer with 120 billion going evaded in tax each year the vast majority of austerity cuts could be avoided.

With an investment in public services and a mass house building programme we would not have to endure huge spending cuts. They are not savings at all they cost us more in the long run so do beware of the language these capitalist politicians use.

It is also clear still we need a party that will fight for our interests a new workers party that will reject austerity once and for all. This can only come about by people having the heart to feel ready to build a new party out of the ash’s of a capitalist apocalypse .

Do we want choice ?

So we hear it nearly everyday, David Cameron trying to sell NHS reforms or privatising large parts of our public sector. This is the tories real plan for our public services. But the word Cameron and Clegg and his con-dem buddies seem to want to use is this word "choice". Apparently we all need choice now on what hospital providers we use. This in otehr words is saying we need to be able to choose a private company offering you something for a cheap price. But this is all well and good but why should we pay for public services which we pay for anyway out of our tax's well most of us not including much of the ruling class who evade tax.

But the use of words has been very clever by the tories over the last years or so. To get labour out of power and bring about a shift in peoples minds they convinced many people we needed change. That labour were out on their knees and we needed something fresh. The use of the media which has so famously gone up in flames this week in the tabloid press especially with the News of the world helped trumpet.

But i wanted to know with our public services do we really want choice, i mean really ? surely most people in this country i'd have thought would settle for a brilliant top class service, free at the point of use and paid for by their tax's. Its tried and tested and works well. Even if it is not perfect it works largely well. SO where does David Cameron get this idea we now want choice in our services ?

I believe like many that this is a smokescreen for privatisation and inviting his private sector mates in to make a quick buck on our NHS and public services.

Quite simply we do not need choice. We just want a good well funded NHS which is free at the point of use and provides good health care.

Afterall that is what it was set up to do in the first place. Not to become a market for private companies to make money out of us.

The failiure of privatisation is very clear you do not have to look much further than the likes of Railtrack and Southern Cross care homes to realise that when profit comes before care and need then it is a recipe for disaster and sloppy service ultimatly ending in failiure.

So Mr Cameron we are happy with our public services, they may need better funding and a few tweaks here and there but on the whole they are fine they do not need a choice based system or a profit making excersise involved either.

The role our public services play is a key part. Our fire brigade and police and council workers do a excellent job. Lets not destroy the great jobs they do.

Fire engines for sale, Is this the private sector they want to sell more of our public services to ?

In a excellent article published by the FBU Matt Rack the general secretary of the Firebrigades union sums up many of our feelings on this blog on privatisation and the horrors of the grim realities of this system.

AssetCo, the private owners of London and Lincolnshire’s fire engines, are on the brink of collapsing under debts of £140 million. The High Court will today hear the future is either liquidation, administration or a takeover by Saudi-backed Bahraini investment bank called Arcapita.

The move comes on the day the coalition spells out its plans for greater involvement of the private sector in public services, including the fire service. The Fire Brigades Union said the AssetCo saga flags up the dangers of involving the private sector in public services.

London Fire Brigade privatized the ownership and maintenance of London’s fire engines and 50,000 pieces of rescue and safety kit in 2001. AssetCo has a similar arrangement with Lincolnshire fire service.

The Fire Brigades Union says the news underlines the dangers privatization poses for emergency services. Debtors could seize assets and the fire engines and kit could be forfeited to creditors and sold off in full or part to any fire service in the world.

In the event of a takeover fire brigades have no control over who their fire engines are sold on to. Internet search engines throw up enough material about Arcapita to be of serious concern.

The timing of the end game of the AssetCo saga – on the day the Government is spelling out even greater involvement of the private sector in running public services, shows the coalition is out of touch with the dangers of privatization.

Matt Wrack, FBU General Secretary said: “It was a monumental blunder to hand key operational assets over to the private sector. The saga is unfolding in the High Court on the day the Government sets out plans which pave the way for greater private sector involvement in the public sector.

“When you involve the private sector you do not know what crisis awaits you in the long-term. AssetCo has not provided a solution and expertise they have delivered a crisis and uncertainty.

“We’ll hear a lot about competition and innovation from the coalition today. What AssetCo shows is the unacceptable face of the private sector and the disaster it can bring.

“The public demand certainty from the public services they rely on. What has been delivered in this case is a financial mess and utter chaos.”

FBU press office 0208 541 1765 or mobile 07736 818100

How the western intervention in Libya could swell the numbers for march 26th TUC demo

In a survey of British people only 35 % of the public currently support the western military interventions in Libya. That figure i expect to fall considerably as this imperialistic mission drags on for weeks into months possibly.

But i really do think this all may have a big affect on this saturdays march in London where a estimated minimum of quarter of a million plus will be marching fagainst the cuts this retchid government of ours are trying to force through. They say the cuts are unavoidable and there is no alternative, we say they are wrong and they need to make the bankers pay not the working class - ordinary people.

I really think when people open their eyes to the fact we are spending hundreds of thousands on expensive bombs and missiles that no average ordinary people benifit from they only serve to halt a revolution in the arab world which risks the western influence and more importantly to the capitalist nations that big three letter word Oil.
When ordinary working class people the disabled, students and pensioners are being told we cannot afford these vital services and support networks yet they see our beloved government bombinb the shit out of a country which can barely defend itself with a load of out of date Weapons that are nothing compared to American, British and French planes, bombs and technology. It is not a fair fight and it must be opposed i feel.

I think as this unessesary conflict continues, not unessesary that we dont need to see the removal of Gadaffi but the removal of him by his own people in a popular uprising situation would be our preference rather than bombing for peace as the west loves to describe it. I've never heard so much rubbish how does dropping bombs on a country and its people and lets be honest given the best bombing technology in the world today bombs and missiles can still go off course and hit civilian targets as we all well know.

So i think this obsurdity that we can afford bombs and missiles for wars abroad yet we cannot afford to basically look after our own people it will anger people. I know it angers me a hell of a lot. The hypocrisy is astounding and we must highlight this on saturday too.

Why are we not getting more angry about the cuts ?

I personally believe we have yet to see the full force of the cuts program from teh tories. We have seen budgets being passed up and down the country in local council chambers by Labour, liberal and tory councillors. All in it together. But as i was returning from the anti cuts protest at the weekend in London urging Labour councillors to join the resistance and vote against cuts i thought to myself this is a very slow burning movement.

Many in the movement are now building up and preparing for march 26 in London where the TUC are holding a march against public sector cuts. I am hoping the confidence that march can give us and the movement will be electrifying. Not in many years have we seen the trades unions in this country rise up and march in big numbers. Even during the poll tax protestsa nd march's in London trades unions never got involved. SO it will be interesting how the TUC respond to the pressure to act. It took a big effort from the likes of the NSSn i'm involved with to force the TUC into action. Argueably we could havea nd should have had something before christmas riding on the momentom that the student movemt and protests have built up.

FOr myself attending march 26th i will be marching against all public sector cuts not just cuts that are too far and too fast as Ed miliband likes to eral off liek a broken record. The working class wont accept cuts from labour either but they dont seem to realise this that labours cuts were estimated to be further than Maggie Tatcher went in the 80's. They would have been equally as devastating to the public sector and jobs and livliehoods as a result.

So why are we not getting more angry ab out all these cuts ?

I personally think just like with TUSC's decision not to stand in teh recent Barnsley central bi-election on a anti cuts banner was right not to as it is a little premature i think the cuts have just been voted on. Its when they are started to be implimented the real anger will come i believe .

Likewise when John Mcdonald called for people attending march 26th that we must ask ourselves do we go home that night or not. urging people to bring their sleeping bags and camp at parliament. I think John is a good socialist and i quite like him but seriously john i think yuor jumping the gun a little with those calls. I think its all a bit premature.

TUC estimates at present upwards of 200,000 people who will be attending the march already 600 coaches have been booked out with over two weeks to go to the march. Numbers on the day could be unpredictable as it really does depend on the weather, people in and around Londons desire to mobilise and get out there to join it and also the publicity it gets. I would hope we could get half a million out any more will be a big bonus i'd say.


But i do think as we progress through this year the anger towards cuts and a anti cuts - no to all cuts narrative will grow and grow. Labour i'm afraid will be left in the dark as their idea of lesser cuts and not as fast will fall on deaf ears as the anti cuts movement grows and labels them same as the tories for being pro cuts.

The public want to see a real alternative to cuts. If any party stood out today and said no more cuts, no to cuts and we have another way they will rocket in popularity i can assure you. Alot of people still are getting by and coping but when the real cuts start to b bite i really think the movement will take off in a b ig way.

The question is are the trades unions and TUC and labour crucially ready for teh anger coming their way when people/workers are calling for action. I mean industrial action.

It seems clear to me that alot of people n the march on the 26th will be there to help labour get re-elected rather than fighting against the cuts. So i do think labour may gain from this movement in a opputunistic way sadly. I just hope people can see them for waht they are that they are also for cuts. Just not as fast or as far apparently.
I think if labour appear to be being over taken by thea nti cuts movement they may try and stiffle it or risk being totally washed over and anger of non action against the cuts may come back to bite them.

Interesting few months ahead with a lot to prepare and build for. This is just the start and we must have a plan of action co-ordinated action to take after the 26th. I think it is looking increasingly likely that will be in teh forms of strikes. But lets not rule out other forms of protest and resistance.

What UK Uncut have been doing must continue and grow highlighting teh role of the banks in all this whilst individual groups should look to occupy council buildings and make them councils for the people. Preventing these cuts being implimented. Its militant but it is what it is going to take i'm afraid as the anger grows.

The worrying signs from privatising the police force

I have just found this article on the BBC's new pages and rings alarm bells to me about which way this tory lead government wants to take the state and its police force.

An Essex-based private security firm is aiming to be among the first in the UK to operate residential patrols with powers to deal with low-level crime.

BBC Inside Out East has discovered that Garde UK wants to start a 24-hour a day service covering Brentwood, with residents each paying £1 a week.

The company has been accredited by Essex Police, which means it could be granted powers to tackle anti-social behaviour, issue fixed penalty notices and confiscate alcohol.

Under the Community Safety Accreditation Scheme (CSAS), people can apply for accreditation to exercise limited legal powers.

Nearly 400 people from 25 organisations, including park wardens and bus inspectors, have been vetted and trained by Essex Police, but the force is yet to grant any powers to Garde UK.

'Strain on resources'

Tom Peppiatt, from Garde UK, said the firm wanted to work alongside the police to deter crime and improve community spirit.

He said: "We are not a private policing company - we are a private security company that is providing additional information and intelligence back to the police to help the system in their day-to-day routine."

The plan has been criticised by the Essex Police Federation.

Chairman Tony Rayner said: "We think policing powers should stay firmly with the police.

"If people can afford to pay £5 a week £250 a year whatever it is, then why can't they afford to pay that in additional precept to the police authority for more police officers to do it?"

But a report by Perpetuity Research and Consultancy International, which specialises in research into crime reduction and security, said while some senior police officers saw working with private security as a threat, others had embraced the idea.

Professor Martin Gill, director of Perpetuity Group, said: "I think to dismiss it too quickly is dangerous in itself, especially as we move into a new era where there are cutbacks.

"There is going to be a greater strain on police officers and they are going to have to look to different ways of policing."

"There are going to be some brave police forces that go out there and set out a different way of doing things where they find better ways of embracing resources in the community, including private security."

The full report can be seen on BBC Inside Out East and London on Monday 7 March at 1930 GMT on BBC1.


THis is quite worrying for me as we see at the same time thousands of frontline and backroom police workers and officers being removed from their jobs. We can see now with this later report where the tories plan to fill the gaps. It is clear that these private security firms will have vested interests and would have been allowed to move in with permission with the tories. You can imagine there would have been some dodgy deal done that we dont know about.

Now i'm not the greatest fan of our police in this country but i do think for teh good honest policeman or woman they deserve better than this. They do a hard job in the circumstances and i do feel sorry for them with this latest move.

Hopefully this is not a start of things to come with more and more privatisation of our public services once they have been cut.

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!!

How the innocent tax payer will subsidise the privatisation of the NHS

just came across this horrifying article in solidarity magazine online where Unite the union has uncovered plans for a sneaky way the tories are giving leg up's to their rich private health care friends.
http://solidaritymagazine.org/2011/02/unite-reveals-14-per-cent-%e2%80%98nhs-privatisation-tax%e2%80%99/


The government is planning a 14 per cent ‘NHS privatisation tax’ to help private healthcare companies take-over great swathes of the health service, Unite, the largest union in the country, said today (Thursday,17 February).

Unite, which has 100,000 members working in the health service, said that the 14 per cent includes taxpayers subsidising the corporation tax that the private healthcare companies will incur on the profits they make on their NHS contracts. Other elements include ‘help’ with pension provision and building costs.


Unite research has discovered that the Impact Assessment – which accompanies the Health and Social Care bill – indicates that private providers will be given a 14 per cent ‘leg up’ – for every £100 they spend in the new NHS ‘market’, the taxpayer will be made to refund them £14.

Unite’s National Officer for Health, Karen Reay said: ‘If this is mirrored across private healthcare company contracts worth hundreds of million of pounds, the taxpayer subsidy could be immense.’

‘In a nutshell, this is a NHS privatisation tax specifically designed to help private healthcare companies gobble up lucrative NHS contracts for the benefit of their shareholders – some of the very companies that have donated £750,000 to the Tories since David Cameron became leader in 2005. There is a clear conflict of interest here.’

Healthcare companies that have financially supported the Tories include the TLC Group, IC Technology, Sovereign Capital, as well as the wife of former chairman of Care UK (which gets almost all of its business from the NHS). Private hospital chain, Circle sponsored a fringe meeting at the Tory party conference addressed by Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley.

Karen Reay said: ‘This will be a national scandal if MPs don’t step in now and modify this deeply flawed bill. What we are seeing is a potential ‘smash and grab raid’ on already hard-pressed taxpayers.’

Unite said that the reason that the bill has been structured in this way is that the NHS does not pay corporation tax on its activities; that private companies want public funding for providing pension provision for the staff they employ; and these firms complain that the NHS already has buildings in place, that they would have to provide.

Karen Reay said: ‘The NHS is currently enjoying its highest public satisfaction levels since 1983 – the public obviously like what a state-funded universal service, free at the point of delivery, is delivering. So why are funds going to be diverted from patient services to pay for the coalition’s NHS privatisation tax.’

Unite is also challenging claims made by Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg that there will be no subsidy to the private sector to allow them to make a grab for NHS contracts.

Karen Reay said: ‘According to our research, this is definitely not the case – private companies will be receiving substantial support from the taxpayer. Therefore, the question has to be asked: ‘Is Pinocchio the latest recruit to the Liberal Democrats?’


Well done to Unite my union as it goes for uncovering this bit of news. I feel this will be a absolute disgrace if the governemnt allow this to happen. It is giving back handers to their friends in the private sector. Many of whom funded David Cameron's attempts to become tory party leader in 2005. I am totally against privatising the excellent NHS but this story sickens me. The lengths tories will go to appease their rich benifactor friends is astounding.

We must not allow this to happen and must expose them for what they are doing and get them to re think like they did with the selling off of our forrests.

Why we must not let David Cameron privatise our public sector

In a article in todays Daily Telegraph the Prime Minister outlines his plans for the future of the public sector as he puts it. I will be countering his thoughts and offering some of my own. Here is the article below.

A White Paper, due to be published in the next fortnight, will set out an automatic right for private sector bodies to bid for public work.

Decision-making power will be given back to professionals – who have in the past been hampered by red tape – while people will be able to have more control over the budget for the service they receive.

The changes could ultimately see many functions of the NHS – from operations to walk-in triage services – being run by private firms. All schools could be run by charities or private sector companies, as could municipal services such as maintaining parks, adult care, special schools or roads maintenance.

Outside providers would be offered payment-by-results contracts, which would earn them more as they increased the quality of services.

Downing Street said the plans illustrated that Mr Cameron was prepared to go far further than any recent prime minister – including Tony Blair – on public sector reform.

The only exemptions will be the judiciary and the security services. All other public services will be expected to open up to private competition under the plans, which the Government hopes will slash

bureaucracy, improve the quality of public services and save money.

However, they are likely to be fiercely opposed by Labour and the trade unions who will interpret them as a return to the era of privatisation and a cover for Coalition spending cuts.

In his article for the Telegraph, Mr Cameron says standards in public services – on cancer survival rates, school results and crime – have been slipping against comparable countries for too long and that “complete change” is needed.

“We will create a new presumption – backed up by new rights for public service users and a new system of independent adjudication – that public services should be open to a range of providers competing to offer a better service,” he says.

“Of course, there are some areas, – like national security services or the judiciary – where this wouldn’t make sense. But everywhere else should be open to real diversity,open to everyone who gets and values the importance of our public service ethos. This is a transformation: it ends the state’s monopoly over public services.

“Instead of having to justify why it makes sense to introduce competition in individual public services – as we are now doing with schools and in the NHS – the state will have to justify why it should ever operate a monopoly.”

Some of the changes to encourage more competition are already being introduced through education and health legislation.

However, when taken with the new Open Public Services White Paper, Downing Street believes the plans are a “battering ram to break open monopolies”.

In his article, Mr Cameron says the new principle of diversity will be married to a “new presumption that services should be delivered at the lowest possible level” to give people more choice over how their public services are being administered.

He says: “Working from this presumption, we will devolve power even further. For example, we will give more people the right to take control of the budget for the service they receive.

“In this new world of decentralised, open public services it will be up to Government to show why a public service cannot be delivered at a lower level than it is currently; to show why things should be centralised, not the other way round.”

Mr Cameron said that his inspiration for these reforms could be traced back to when he and his wife, Samantha, were caring for their disabled son, Ivan.

He says: “I never understood why local authorities had more control over the budget for his care than Samantha and me.”

The state will still have a role to play in ensuring “fair funding, ensuring fair competition, and ensuring that everyone – regardless of wealth – gets fair access”, he says.

But he adds that “these important responsibilities for central government must never become an automatic excuse for returning to central control”.

The White Paper will set out principles that will “make it impossible for Government to return to the bad old days of the standard state monopoly”, he says.

“The grip of state control will be released and power will be placed in people’s hands. Professionals will see their discretion restored.

“There will be more freedom, more choice and more local control. Ours is a vision of open public services – and we will make it happen by advancing some key principles.”

The plans to privatise large parts of the public sector could well cause unease among some of Mr Cameron’s Lib Dem Coalition partners.


Found at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/8337237/David-Cameron-promises-public-sector-revolution.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter


I am personally shocked by these revelations firstly who does David Cameron think he is to start a war on the public sector ? what gives him the mandate to do so ? was this what people voted for ? i'm pretty sure they did not.

We can all tell well i hope we can tell waht Mr Cameron is really after with his plans. A total selling off of the public sector, the state as he likes to call it. It is planning to go further than Maggie Tatcher ever did.

How can people sit by and let this radical overhaul just happen ??

I certainly wont be and i hope Labour and the Lib Dems find their fight that they have lost for years now and protect what they created.

I dont buy all this hogwash by the PM of that privitisation brings greater efficiency it is simply unproven and increased competition for services is not what people want. What people want if free to use public services that they pay their council tax's for not something they have to pay to use. They are known as local public services for a reason for the public to use not private companies to make a quick profit out of.

How people cant see his ideaology here now i really dont know, the cat is well and truely out of the bag and we must stop him before its too late.

I personally have no faith in Ed Miliband to use any of his political power to stop this happening. He needs to stand up and oppose thsi properly. Its all veryw ell standing up at conferences and telling us this is wrong waht David Cameron and his government are doing but what would he do instead ?

We have heard nothing from him and his party on his alternative so far. So we have to assume he would do the same to a degree.

I think this will anger many public sector trades unionists and this is intended to i feel. David Cameron wants a reaction from the unions. Rial them up and get them on the defensive so he can then slap more anti trades union laws on them turning them against the public. Its a very clever game he is playing but i can see it and i dont know why so many others can not.

It is an absolute demolition of the public sector not a revolution. The only revolution going on is the selling off of our services to his mates in the private sector. I for one will do all i can to not let that happen.

I do hope the trades unions use all their power and resources to oppose this and say to Mr Cameron and his cronies on March 26th we will not let you do this. We will fight to the very end to protect our services.

The people dont want this so why is he going through with this ? Because he thinks he can and because he is facing pressure from his party and other private sector friends waiting in the wings to make a quick profit out of our beloved services.

So please lets not let this happen I plea to the Labour party and the Lib Dems to properly oppose this by joining the March on 26th of March in central London where we hope to send a clear message to the government that we as the public will not tollerate this.

spending cuts put tories "big society at risk"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12378974

The government's spending cuts are "destroying" volunteering and undermining its "big society" vision, the head of a leading charity has said.

Dame Elisabeth Hoodless, who is retiring from the Community Service Volunteers (CSV) after 36 years, said there was no "strategic plan".

She told the Times the "massive" council cuts would make it harder for people to do more in their communities.

Ministers insist they are creating new sources of funds for voluntary groups.

The government has said it will be investing £470m over the next four years in charities and voluntary groups to give them independence from state money.

But Dame Elisabeth told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "The cuts that are being imposed on local government and the health service are taking place now.

"So there are a lot of very worthwhile programmes - for example volunteers working in child protection as promoted by the minister for children - which are now under threat of closure."


This must be all very worrying for Mr Cameron who seems to strongly believe in this big society rubbish he seems to spurt alot. Does anyone actually truely know what it means really ?

Lets face facts the article above from the BBC excellently outlines how this cannot work and will turn out to be a big fad. People who have jobs cannot give up their time to volunteer where public services have been taken away. Its a con and a smokescreen to mask the fact key local public services are being scrapped or sold off. I have seen through this idea right from the start. Now spending cuts are starting to hit so is everybody else. I would love to see a survey of how many people understand what the "big society" is and if they are in favour of it ?. The fact of the matter as the article above also explains the charitable sector and voluntary sector often called the 3rd sector have been covering a lot of what this "big society" is meant to be for years. organisations like the Citizens advice bureau. have been offering these services for years and years. Why put these excellent organisations at risk by cutting their funding and then say we still want the services but you'll have to find the money from somewhere else. Where do David Cameron and his pals down at Tory HQ expect these charities to find the money from in this day and age ?

Hugely out of touch i might suggest.

We need councillors who will fight the cuts

i just thought i'd share this article i read on the TUSC website. it summerises things excellently. It highlights the issues and problems many councillors will run into this year. With a large amount of labour councillors set to win big this year i suspect this will become a bigger and bigger issue. It will sort out which labour members/councillors have the bottle to stand up for their local peoples rights and services or bend over and allow the tory cuts through which will show a real weakness. In this article it outlines ways labour councillors can oppose teh cuts and keep public support on their side. THis can be done and has be done successfully in the past. It just needs people to be brave enough to stand up to the coalition governemnt and not let working class people suffer at the hands of the tories.

Here is the article from the TUSC website. check it out if you can.

The Con-Dems' savage austerity plans announced in October's comprehensive spending review put local councils firmly in the front line. Funding for councils from the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) will be cut from £31 billion in 2009-10 to £22.9 billion in 2014-15 - a 27% fall, the biggest 'departmental cut' of all.

At the same time councils will be expected to administer many of the cuts announced under other budget headings. These include the cuts to housing benefit funded from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) budget but administered by councils; the Department for Education's 12% cut in 'non-school' spending on young people (including the abolition of educational maintenance allowances for 16-19 year olds); and a 're-adjustment' of NHS social care funding.

Setting council tax benefit, averaging £900 a year and currently paid out by councils on behalf of the DWP, will be devolved to councils, but with a 10% cut in overall funding.

Councils will also become the final agency to apply the £500 'total household benefit' cap, through housing benefit deductions. "Outsourced", was an apt headline in The Guardian - "town halls must do Osborne's dirty work", it went on.

To say councils "must do" this dirty work, however, is wrong. Not unexpectedly, Labour councillors are already saying there is 'nothing we can do' to stop the cuts from being implemented locally, even where they control the council. But that is just not so. Councillors have a choice.

That's why the decision of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC - see box) to facilitate the widest-possible challenge in the local elections that will take place in England next year is an important part of building the anti-cuts movement. 32 million people will be able to vote in these elections, in every part of England bar London. TUSC is also involved in discussions to ensure an anti-cuts challenge is organised in elections to the Welsh assembly and the Scottish parliament, also in May 2011 (there are no local elections in Wales and Scotland).

The TUSC steering committee has agreed a draft policy platform for the English local elections, which will now be open for discussion in trade union branches and anti-cuts campaigns and finalised at a conference of prospective candidates in January.

It starts from the basis that councillors can refuse to pass on the cuts. Voting in May, it argues, can be not just a 'protest vote' but can actually stop cuts to local jobs, benefits, and services. Building support for TUSC candidates can be an important means of putting pressure on current councillors when they decide council budgets in March, and in shaping how they respond to the 'new responsibilities' they will have to administer.

What can councils do?
WHAT ROLE could councils play to stop the cuts, if the political will was there to seriously oppose the Con-Dem government's austerity measures?

Over the years councils have been stripped of direct funding responsibility for many different services. The TUSC election platform notes that former Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who began this process, famously said: "I must take more power to the centre to stop socialism" - in other words, that public services that 'crowded out' the private sector should be curbed or, where they exist, should be opened up to private companies to make profits from public needs. New Labour continued this process throughout its 13 years in office - the turnover of private companies running public services reached over £80 billion in 2008, for example, 126% higher than 1995-96 under the previous Tory government. Now the Con-Dems' spending review announcement includes plans for 'private provider quotas' for councils' elderly care, early years, youth and family support services.

Despite this however, as the TUSC election platform states, councils still have enormous powers and responsibilities. They control budgets totalling billions of pounds spent on services from housing to schools, youth clubs, libraries, adult social care, crime reduction, sports centres, highways maintenance and refuse collection, to name but a few. They have legal powers over non-council provided services, including many of those now 'outsourced' that could be used, if the will was there, to defend jobs and services.

Councillors could - and TUSC councillors would, as the policy platform states - "vote against the privatisation of council services, or the transfer of council services to 'social enterprises' or 'arms-length' management organisations, which are first steps to privatisation". They could - and TUSC councillors would - push for councils to "use all their legal powers available" to "oppose both the cuts, and government polices which centrally impose the transfer of public services to private bodies".

That could mean that, for example, faced with the Con-Dems' housing benefit cuts, councils would refuse to evict council tenants who fall into arrears as a result of the changes - and withdraw from 'partnership agreements' with housing associations (HAs) and other 'social landlords' who fail to do likewise (and actively support HA tenants' organisations to fight for this policy).

Councils could also intervene in the private rented sector. The government hypocritically claims that its aim is to 'bring rents down', after housing benefit payments have ballooned to £21 billion - although the Tories began this by abolishing rent controls in 1988 and slashing council house-building (policies not reversed by New Labour). Councils cannot impose a legally-binding private rent limit but they could, for example, threaten compulsory purchase proceedings against multi-property landlords who move to evict tenants suffering housing benefit cuts.

But housing is just one area where councils with the political will to oppose the Con-Dem government could play a key role in resisting the cuts. They could use their powers to 'call in' and refer local NHS re-organisation proposals, for example. With a King's Fund survey showing that fewer than one in four doctors believes the government's new GP consortia commissioning plans - opening up £80 billion of NHS primary care funding to private companies - will improve patient care, councils could galvanise opposition to the Con-Dems' dismantling of the NHS.

Defending councils' budgets
Even some Tory and Lib-Dem councillors are criticising the government's 'free schools' plans (particularly in relation to faith schools) as endangering socially cohesive local education. Councils could use their 'schools organisation' and admissions monitoring powers, governor appointments etc - and initiate consultative parents' ballots, for example - to build a public campaign of opposition to these and the equally divisive accelerated academies programme. Councillors, it is clear, have a choice - they don't have to do the government's 'dirty work'. They can resist.

But what can councils do when faced with government cuts to the centrally allocated 'revenue support grants' they receive to pay for council-funded services? The TUSC draft election platform states that councils should refuse to implement these cuts, and reject above inflation increases in council tax, rents and service charges to compensate for them. If even a handful of councils were to make such a stand it would electrify the mass opposition to the cuts that is developing.

As Margaret Thatcher's resignation 20 years ago this November shows, in the face of mass non-payment of the poll tax, even the seemingly most imposing government - and the Con-Dem coalition is not that - can be forced to retreat if it faces a sufficiently powerful mass campaign of opposition. Not only was Thatcher removed but the Tories were forced, within weeks of her downfall, to put an extra £4.3 billion into local government funding (around £7 billion today) to finance the abolition of the poll tax.

The TUSC policy platform argues that the best way that councils can contribute to mobilising the mass campaign necessary to defeat the cuts is to set budgets that meet the needs of their local communities, without massive council tax hikes, and combine together to demand that the government makes up the funding shortfall. That is the 'Liverpool model' which in 1984 enabled the city's Labour council, led by Militant supporters, the predecessor of the Socialist Party, to compel Thatcher's government to concede extra resources to the city worth up to £60 million (£98 million today).


The campaign built by Liverpool city council in 1983-87 to win extra funding inspired thousands of workers, photo Militant (Click to enlarge)
But the campaign in support of Liverpool's 'needs budget' had been long prepared, even before Labour won a majority on the council in 1983. A 25,000-strong demonstration was organised in November 1983 and the budget meeting itself, in March 1984, just weeks after the start of the miners' strike, took place against the backdrop of a city-wide one day strike and a 50,000-strong march to the town hall. The anti-cuts movement will grow rapidly, given confidence by events such as the student demonstration in November and the combative stance of unions such as the Fire Brigades Union, the PCS civil servants' union and the RMT transport workers, but it is still at an early stage. There is certainly no group of councillors who have prepared the ground as the Liverpool councillors had in 1984.

So, for the next budget-setting period, the draft TUSC policy platform also includes support for councillors who are prepared to use councils' reserves and 'prudential borrowing' powers to avoid passing on government cuts. Such a policy is completely within a council's legal powers.

Council finance officers can challenge a budget they believe to be 'knowingly unbalanced', in other words, a planned deficit - which a 'needs budget' without massive council tax rises would be - but they can only question an individual council's ability to meet short-term debt re-payments. The use of reserves to meet such initial debt re-payments, for example, is legally a 'matter of judgement' for councillors to make. Councillors have a choice.

In some respects this approach would be a 'Liverpool in reverse sequence'. In 1984 the mass campaign led by the council was able to extract extra resources from the government. The campaign continued in 1985 but, with the defeat of the miners' strike, and under ferocious attack from a Labour Party leadership doing Thatcher's work for her - effectively, with Liverpool left isolated - the council had to resist cuts and sustain its house-building programme for a second year by using its borrowing powers.

'Legality' and a mass campaign
COUNCILS USING their reserves and borrowing powers to avoid making cuts in this budget-setting period would only be buying time before they faced an inevitable showdown with the government for extra resources. Ultimately, there is no 'clever tactic' that can avoid the need to build a mass campaign against the cuts.

There is, of course, no guarantee in any struggle. Most Labour councillors are 'New Labour', indistinguishable from the Tories and the Liberal Democrats in their pro-market policies and outlook. But even those who sincerely want to oppose the cuts still hesitate before the Liverpool road. Eventually, having defied the government for four years and won lasting gains for the city, the Liverpool councillors were surcharged and dismissed from office in March 1987.

The law has changed since the 1980s. The 2000 Local Government Act abolished the power of surcharge, for example, except for cases of personal gain. As importantly, the actual course of the events in Liverpool needs to be rescued from right-wing myth-making. It was not the setting of a needs budget or the later decision, in 1985, to fall back on the council's borrowing powers, that the councillors were surcharged for. It was the decision to delay setting a rate at all (rates were the local tax levy then), that was used as the legal pretext to charge the councillors with 'wilfully incurring financial loss' to the city.

This 'no rate' strategy was decided on by the leaders of 20 other Labour councils, ironically against the Liverpool councillors' advice (Liverpool went along with it to keep a united front), who then all - bar Lambeth council - backed down to leave Liverpool to fight alone. Nobody is proposing not setting a council tax rate today.

It was also significant that the councillors were only taken on by the district auditor in 1985 and not in 1984, when they had also delayed setting a rate (as some Labour defections meant no party had been able to get a majority for its budget in the council chamber). It was only when the mass campaign had ebbed - not in Liverpool but elsewhere - after the miners had been defeated, the other Labour councils had capitulated and Liverpool had been attacked and left isolated by the Labour Party leaders, that the Thatcher government felt confident enough to 'apply the law'.

The situation today is different. The Con-Dem cuts are the worst in generations, permanently changing life in Britain, as Cameron himself has explained. They will be resisted, no matter what the axe men decide - in parliament or the council chamber - and the opposition has only just begun. Councillors who are prepared to fight could play a historic role in the inevitable resistance

Fight or stand aside - or face a challenge
THE CLAIM that there is 'nothing Labour can do' to stop the cuts 'until the next election' - leaving aside its support for 'less deep and fast' cuts if it did come to power - is disproved by one simple demand.

If Ed Miliband was to stand up tomorrow and commit an incoming Labour government to meet the debts incurred by councils who borrowed rather than made the savage cuts demanded of them, then not one council would have a reason to make the cuts. The same pledge could be made to other public and semi-public bodies like universities, health authorities, school governing boards, housing associations etc which incur 'temporary' deficits to avoid implementing cuts.

Many trade union leaders still hope that 'Labour will listen' and resist the cuts. Let them ask for such a pledge, which would, in local government, save the 100,000 jobs at threat and the services they provide. But if, as is almost certain, they don't get it, then they must admit that the only option is to fight and build a mass campaign, including standing or backing candidates in the 2011 local elections who will fight the cuts.

Some Labour councillors will no doubt sincerely wish to oppose the cuts but draw back at the prospect of taking a bold stand. They should resign and make way for those who will. Whatever, it should be made clear to all councillors: councillors can fight the cuts and TUSC candidates will - and will contest the seats of those councillors who vote for cuts.


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What is TUSC?
The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition was set-up in 2010 to enable trade unionists, community campaigners and socialists who wanted to resist the pro-austerity consensus of the establishment parties to stand candidates in the 2010 general election. By registering TUSC with the electoral commission, candidates could appear on the ballot paper as Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition rather than as 'Independent' which they would otherwise have to do under electoral law.

TUSC came out of a series of discussions by participants in the No2EU - Yes to Democracy coalition, which contested the 2009 European elections with the official support of the RMT transport workers' union, the Socialist Party, Solidarity - Scotland's Socialist Movement, and others.

TUSC is a coalition with a steering committee which includes, in a personal capacity, the RMT general secretary Bob Crow, and fellow executive member Craig Johnston; the assistant general secretary of the PCS civil servants' union, Chris Baugh, and the union's vice-president, John McInally; the vice-president of the National Union of Teachers, Nina Franklin; and the recently retired general secretary of the Prison Officers Association, Brian Caton. The Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party are also represented on the committee.

TUSC was established as a federal 'umbrella' coalition, with an agreed core policy statement endorsed by all its candidates but with participating organisations accountable for their own campaigns. Its core policies include, amongst others, opposition to public spending cuts and privatisation, student grants not fees, the repeal of the anti-trade union laws, and a clear socialist commitment to "bringing into democratic public ownership the major companies and banks that dominate the economy, so that production and services can be planned to meet the needs of all and to protect the environment".

The draft local elections policy platform agreed by the steering committee is a supplement to the core policy statement. It will be finalised at a conference in January and will form the basis on which any prospective council candidate can stand under the TUSC name in May's elections.