Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, urged Labour councillors not to make cuts during last week’s Ralph Miliband lecture – and went on to ask: what would happen if they did? The context of his question suggests he hoped that this would somehow stop the cuts happening at all. However, the reality of what would happen is very different. Far from cuts being avoided they would happen on a greater scale and without any of the priorities Labour espouses being applied.
Our party rightly celebrates those who make a stand and in this context reference is often made to the actions of councillors in Lambeth and Liverpool in the 1980s and in Clay Cross and Poplar before. But the Tories also know very well how powerful martyrs can be and the law has changed. Today councillors don’t face surcharge or prison if they vote through an illegal budget. What happens is that the council quickly grinds to halt as a great deal of expenditure is frozen.
Eventually an external team arrives with the power to direct or confirm the action of council officers in preventing an overspend and to set a legal budget. Their priority would be saving money, not services. Put another way it will be the appointees of Eric Pickles who are making the decisions not the elected Labour councillors.
It is beyond doubt that local government has suffered more than most at the hands of the Tory austerity programme. But Labour councils across the country have done everything in their power to protect frontline services and ensure that Labour policies and values are upheld.
In Lewisham, we have continued to implement the living wage, kept all 19 of our children’s centres open and started building the first council homes in the borough for 30 years. At a time when our budget is being slashed by £90m we’ve still been able to keep free swimming for under-fives and over-60s, permanently expanded eight primary schools and are about to open our second new leisure centre in the space of two years. All that would stop if we opted for the gesture politics of setting a no cuts budget.
Taking such actions would play straight into the Tories’ hands beyond local government. Refusing to implement the cuts and produce balanced budgets would throw services into disarray and allow Labour to be portrayed as incompetent and irresponsible – we would hear the line that ‘Labour cannot be trusted’ over and over again.
No one elected as a Labour councillor wants to be making savage cuts. However in 2010, when I was re-elected, we were all fully aware that some savings would have to be made, whoever won the general election. Our party went into that election telling voters that cuts were necessary and the two Eds have made it clear that when we return to government in 2015 we cannot promise to overturn any but the worst of the coalition policies immediately.
To suggest that there is a simple way Labour councillors can prevent cuts happening is not only misleading and unfair to councillors but would, if attempted, actually make it less likely that we will see the return of a Labour government which would begin to rebuild our public services.
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Steve Bullock is elected mayor of Lewisham
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Steve, Labour Councillors should not be pandering to Cameron, Gove and Osborne’s cuts agenda. We can oppose cuts to services by de-layering levels of management and making sure that managers are productive, not just workers. The City of London is making huge savings of many millions by bringing services, including cleaning, back in-house. Many councils, including some Labour councils, have saved millions by bringing their Housing ALMOs back in-house. Should a Labour Councillor that says ‘there’s nothing we can do about the cuts’ be a Labour Councillor?
There was an interesting suggestion when the Poll Tax was introduced in 1990 from one Labour Councillor – that the party resign en masse from leadership and go into “majority opposition”, leaving the Tories and Libs to implement the Poll Tax and the consequential cuts from non-collection.
One of the problems here, of course that Labour has to act as the Conservative’s agents in cutting services – are socialist cuts any more worthy than Conservative ones? I think in the 1980s it was called the “Dented Shield” policy, as I recall. Will voters appreciate the nuancing that goes on as regards which vital services to cut?
Steve’s attack on Len McClusky appears to be rather nasty spin. This is what he really said copy and paste:
-In the midst of an unending economic crisis, with what Ralph would have
called a discredited ruling class at the helm, it is past time for the
working class to step forward with its own vision and alternative.
-Our values are eternal.
-We need to be courageous like those that have gone before us.
-To seek a brave new world.
What’s wrong with that?
Here is a link to a transcript of the speech http://www.unitetheunion.org/news/thelabourmovementandprotestlenmccluskeysralphmilibandlecture/
There is a definite paucity of vision in Steve’s article. Whilst he admires “…those who make a stand” he thinks it would be “…unfair to councillors” to ask them to do so. And besides he says, legislation means that we are unlikely to get our “powerful martyrs”. As if that was the lesson to be drawn from the actions he mentions. The point is these people won by putting up a fight.
But we can’t countenance this because we will lose credibility. With who, Steve? Spending cuts are, and will be, larger absolutely and proportionally in urban and poorer parts of England; that is London and the northern regions, our heartland. Doesn’t it matter that we will lose credibility with the working class voters in those areas? After 5 years of Labour administered cuts I wouldn’t be so certain that the party can guarantee a return to power. Remember, it wasn’t the Labour Party that abolished the Poll Tax it was the newly re-elected Tories who were faced with a long running campaign of direct action and non-payment. We can’t afford to wait and see.
Thankfully not everybody is calling on councillors to be obedient administators of austerity, check out this new campaign: http://councillorsagainstcuts.org/
34% didn’t vote in the last General Election (me included) because there was no real alternative on offer. Admittedly, had I lived in a constituency where the choice was right wing Labour or Tory, I would have voted Labour, but in Eastleigh there really was no point in registering a vote for Labour because Labour doesn’t stand FOR something (as well as not standing an earthly – many Labour supporters voted LibDem to keep the Tory out – what a joke, eh?!).
If Labour councillors and Labour MP’s don’t understand that their role is to support the vast majority, not the tiny minority, I suggest they rethink their position.
“Our party went into that election telling voters that cuts were necessary” – yes, and it was wrong to say that then and remains so now – “necessary” in whose interests? An anti-cuts budget would “throw services into disarray” – what and cuts of 30%+ to local council budgets given a simulataneous rise in demand for social care ISN’T to do precisely that? How much are you paid to sit there and tell everyone there’s nothing to be done?
Where are your £90m cuts falling Steve? How many fewer jobs have been lost from direct employment by the council in Lewisham? What services have been withdrawn or significantly diminished? How many people will be evicted from their homes, whilst you are running up your white flag?
And whilst we’re at it – will Labour pledge to scrap the proposed Tory cuts from 2015-2018? Will they reverse these savage Tory cuts to local budgets?
Admires people who make a stand? Really. Because I remember him referring to anti-cuts campaigners as ‘fucking idiots’ (he’d left the mic on). As far as I can see he has utter contempt for the left, for those campaigners who object to what he’s doing, to the traditional labour movement values of solidarity and struggle.
The local paper recently announced another massive local cuts package, including the withdrawl of 800 busses passes to the very vulnerable.
And his current opposition to the (Tory) NHS cuts at Lewisham Hospital is in stark contrast to the cuts he has made locally. Presumably he believes that the only rational cuts in Lewisham are the ones he makes.
I used the work at Community Education Lewisham which he chopped up. He ‘had no choice’.
But, of course, we always have a choice. In this case the choice is whether Labour passes on Tory cuts – or fights.
Tell us Steve, when you got your knighthood, and you we scraping the floor in front of the queen, did you remember the sort of idealistic young socialist you used to be? Can you remeber that far back?