The indices of deprivation statistics recently released by CLG are disappointing, but not surprising. Blackpool has had pockets of poverty since it was founded. A former colleague on the Labour benches – who died only fairly recently – spent part of her childhood in the workhouse. The tourist economy then started to decline in the late 1950s, the manufacturing industry went the same way in the late 1970s, and the public sector began its rapid contraction in 2010 – each blow being felt with more pain. Those residents, who moved here in the 1980s, using their redundancy money to buy pubs and guesthouses, are now suffering – and dying from the industrial diseases that were visited upon them by long-gone past employers.
The curse of seasonal unemployment still blights us, despite a recent, but very welcome and substantial upsurge in traditional seaside tourism, and as we build on our cultural and heritage tourism offers. There is nothing quite so closed as a closed seaside town, and nothing quite so damp, grey, windy and miserable as the British seaside in February.
When you see how many times Blackpool features on the list of the 20 most deprived neighbourhoods in the country (eight) it seems inconceivable that we are also one of areas that has been on the receiving end of the most savage budget cuts – while authorities in the most affluent areas have had their budgets protected. We have lost £93m from our budget and expect to lose another £20m in the next financial year.
You simply cannot lose that much money without it affecting the services that help the most vulnerable residents in our community. We are trying really hard – but with our budget heading rapidly for 50 per cent of what it was at its 2007 peak, the economic climate next to the Irish Sea remains about as cold as anyone can remember.
So we respond, as we are legally and morally obliged to do, by trying to find the ‘least worst’ way of managing the cuts. They are unfair, unjust, without logic or justification. I never cease in my struggle to make this clear to anyone who will listen – but the government is the government – and they have a mandate to govern, and a mandate for another term of austerity.
The language of the Conservative party around this is fairly clear and consistent (albeit delivered in a much more pleasant and less confrontational way under Greg Clark, than it ever was under Sir Eric). They see no reason to fund failure, to fund deprivation, or to fund poverty. They say that 40 years of increased funding has not improved our most impoverished areas, and so (the unspoken logic continues) why bother? They will fund opportunity – and I am hoping that the enterprise zone scheme will shortly bear fruit here on the Fylde coast, and am certainly grateful for the support we’ve had through the growth deal for Lancashire, and am very keen to get immersed in the politics and practicalities of devolution, through the putative combined authority for Lancashire.
How the language of the Labour party has changed, and how it will change is very significant. We have heard a lot about building a movement, harnessing passion, youth, inspiration, kindness, fairness, and a lot of ‘it doesn’t have to be like this’ – but how does that translate itself into action? There is nothing romantic about the struggles of the working classes. There is nothing glamorous about dying from mesothelioma or COPD. Nothing sexy about managing on £57.90 a week – being sanctioned because you were kept awake all night by the fighting downstairs.
We have seen protests against the cuts in Manchester this weekend – we are (almost) all against the cuts – but we are against them for many different reasons. My view is that brutal public spending cuts do not make economic sense – they necessitate the piling of resources into crisis management and emergency provision, starving public bodies of their ability to invest in preventative services and build resilient communities. In other words, they encourage short-term thinking, rather than incentivising long-term solutions. I agree that it does not have to be like this – but a lot more work needs to be done, and quickly, on what our alternative future looks like – because the ideologically driven cuts agenda shows no signs of slowing.
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Simon Blackburn is leader of Blackpool council. He tweets @CllrSBlackburn
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