WeeklyWorker

27.02.1997

Fight Tory and Labour cuts

No Tory, Labour or SNP cuts! For local services delivered according to need!

Local government in Scotland is in a state of chaos. March 6 is budget day, when councils in Scotland will be setting out their spending proposals and council taxes for the coming year. It is estimated that a combined total of £350 million (seven percent) will be slashed from the budgets, as well as council tax increases over 20% in some areas. Some of the proposals put forward include:

With no Conservative-controlled councils to worry about, draconian spending limits have been enthusiastically imposed by Michael Forsyth’s Scottish Office in the hope that Labour and the SNP get the blame for the cuts. In defence of their Scottish scorched earth policy, the Tories commissioned a costly consultancy report which estimates that Scottish councils cost 18% more to run than their English counterparts. This is not due to the profligacy of Scottish councils, but rather the legacy of the Tories’ attacks on English local government in 1980s, where capping was widely used by Thatcher to savage local services and roll back the tide of ‘municipal socialism’.

The level of spending in Scottish councils should not be dragged down to the English level. The real fight has to be around setting ‘needs budgets’, if necessary illegal budgets, that will provide the quality services that are needed and give workers in England and Wales the inspiration to follow suit. Those services should reflect the dawn of the 2lst century, not the 19th century of Victorian Britain.

The Labour and SNP response to these vicious cuts where they are in power is to implement them. Yes, they’ve moaned to the press, sent ‘worthy’ delegations to George Kynoch, the minister responsible for Scottish local government, to plead for more money, but they have failed to mobilise or put up any genuine fight.

Labour and SNP councils will impose the cuts and attempt to dress them up as ‘caring efficiency savings’ and ‘voluntary’ redundancies or early retirement - unless forced not to by mass action. This is no different to the attitude of Labour-run councils in England in the 1980s. With one or two notable exceptions, they refused to fight and ‘efficiently’ cut jobs and services. Labour’s ‘dented shield’ policy was always held up as the holy grail, supposedly excusing such attacks - ie, ‘We’ll make caring cuts now but hang on until the next Labour government ...’

Well, almost a decade later, with a Labour Party on the verge of general election success and government, the ‘dented shield’ has proved to be simply a cover for Labour’s commitment to capitalist austerity. Gordon Brown, the iron chancellor-in-waiting, and George Robertson, Labour’s shadow secretary of state for Scotland, have explicitly stated there should be no expectation that a Labour government will ride in like some “financial seventh cavalry” to restore services and jobs in local government. Watch their lips - there will be no new money. Brown has vowed to stick to the Tories’ spending limits for the next two years, as well as holding down taxes on high earners for five years, much to the displeasure of some council leaders.

However, they were not upset enough to defy the government and their own party hierarchy in the interests of the working class. No, that would interfere with their career prospects within the Labour Party.

Labour councils are so committed to dancing to the Tories’ tune that they are still pursuing non-payers from the poll tax with a vengeance, on Forsyth’s orders.

There can be no excusing the Labour or SNP response. While they pass increases in their expenses and continue to justify trips abroad, they are cutting free school transport and meals for children with special needs, closing libraries, sacking home helps, sheltered housing wardens and teachers and withdrawing funding from hundreds of community groups and closing leisure and recreation facilities. In councils where they are in opposition they mouth platitudes in committee meetings, suggesting alternative cuts to those proposed by the ruling group.

The left must not cover for such behaviour. The illusion that Labour, whether running central government or a local council, will be any different from the Tories has to be destroyed. Like the Tories, Labour is a capitalist party. It will always defend the bosses’ system against the interests of the working class: ‘profit before need’ has always been its philosophy, and Blair and Brown are committed disciples. It is shameful that revolutionary organisations like the Socialist Workers Party are still demanding a vote for Labour in the general election. In effect they are trying to create illusions that there is something progressive about Labour.

It is imperative that a fightback comes from below: from the communities under attack, from rank and file local government workers. Local government trade unions, as well as the STUC, are calling on councils to set budgets higher than the capping limits. Unison branches in Dundee and in Perth and Kinross have passed resolutions demanding the setting of illegal budgets to defend jobs and services. Council workers, facing compulsory redundancies, have voted for strike action if their employer attempts to implement such measures and thousands of council workers are set to strike on March 6. It is crucial that the control of such actions is not left in the hands of the trade union bureaucrats, some of whom are more interested in getting a Labour government elected than fighting for their members’ jobs or the services that they deliver.

Mass action must be built across Britain, uniting workers faced with the same cuts across the country. An unstoppable momentum has to be forged that cannot be ignored by this Tory government, an incoming Labour government or local councils. The fight against council cuts again raises the democratic deficit in Scotland. If the militancy against cuts in Scotland is taken south of the border a Britain-wide revolutionary movement can be built. One which not only fights the cuts, but challenges the British constitution - the actual state itself.

Nick Clarke