Anti-cuts, public services

After 12 grisly years of “austerity” — cuts to living standards and public services to further enrich employers and the rich — and decades of rising inequality, the working class in the UK faces a dramatic new assault. One that poses a stark challenge to workers, the labour movement and every individual who wants a better society. The growing surge of workers’ struggles can defeat these attacks and start to turn things around — but only if we organise to take it much further . Under the Tories’ plan, people in this country will suffer the biggest fall in living standards on record: a 4.3% cut...

Local authorities will face a spending squeeze following the Tories’ Autumn Statement. Their funding may not have been cut directly, but it will have been significantly reduced because of inflation and no commensurate increase in funding. The Government is giving local authorities in England the ability to set higher Council Tax by increasing the referendum limit to 3% per year from April 2023. It is also giving local authorities with social care responsibilities the ability to increase the adult social care precept by up to 2% per year. The ability to raise council tax by up to 5% could make...

Health Service workers were expecting an extra £700 in September pay packets this month after a much delayed £1,400 flat-rate uplift was added in. But many of us received less than we did in August, and many more got only a few pence more. What happened? In 2021 the government realised that they could significantly delay announcements on NHS pay without provoking any reaction from the health unions. Since then it has become custom to announce on pay several months after 1 April, when the new pay structure should be introduced. Although the unions are all in dispute about the miserly £1,400...

From March 2022, Sri Lanka was convulsed by protests against collapsing living standards and state authoritarianism, leading in July to the resignation of right-wing nationalist president Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Niyanthini Kadirgamar, a member of Sri Lanka’s Feminist Collective for Economic Justice, explains how the current crisis in her country intersects with women’s oppression and women’s – particularly working-class women’s – struggles. The Feminist Collective for Economic Justice is a network collective of feminist economists, scholars, activists, university students and lawyers, working in...

Between 31 January and 9 March many thousands of workers in the “anganwadi” early years childcare system of the Indian capital Delhi struck for higher pay, to be recognised as full public employees and other demands. In March their strike was declared illegal; hundreds of workers have now been sacked and thousands threatened with disciplinary action. The Delhi State Anganwadi Workers and Helpers Union has since organised a wave of protests, and says it will be restarting the strike. There have also been struggles by anganwadi workers in many other parts of India. At the end of July workers...

Probably over a thousand people packed into the Save London Transport rally organised by the RMT on 31 August. The main hall at the TUC headquarters was packed, there was an overflow room and people were struggling to get in. No doubt a lot had come to see and hear left-wing US Senator Bernie Sanders. In addition to RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch, we also heard heard from John McDonnell MP, a CWU Royal Mail striker, a disability rights activist and representatives of sister London transport unions ASLEF, TSSA and Unite (among others). The turnout was not the only good thing about the rally...

Mick Lynch, general secretary of the RMT rail union, on Peston on ITV, responded to Tory MP Robert Jenrick about how to increase demand for the railways: “The worst way you could do it is by insisting the fares go up by RPI ripping off the commuters, but you won’t give the workers RPI… Last year, profits were made by the train operators — £500m out of that subsidy you gave went to those companies. First Group and Go Ahead, whom we’re negotiating with, are both subject to takeovers from private equity companies. “They’re going to be worth billions because they know you’re going to keep...

Barristers involved in criminal cases struck for two days in the week of 27 June 2022; they are set to strike an extra day each week up to a five-day strike in the week of 18 July. The immediate issue is the government fees barristers get for legal aid cases, which have been cut and held down over three decades (including under Labour governments). The government is proposing a 15% increase in October, which the strikers say would help little in the context of inflation. They want 25% sooner. Since 11 April barristers have also been refusing to do the “return work” – stepping in to pick up...

The only speaker in the opening plenary of the Progressive Economics conference held at the University of Greenwich by the Progressive Economy Forum on 11 June was Professor Michael Marmot. Marmot is director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity and author of the famous “Marmot reviews” on health inequality . Measured in tone and heavy with statistics, Marmot’s speech was a powerful indictment of the Tories’ policies and urging of the case for a clear alternative. His work is a yardstick against which the lack of strong proposals and campaigns from the labour movement - and particularly the...

London’s bus routes, covering far more of the city than Tube and rail, and used by many who cannot afford rail travel or work too late or early for it, face drastic cuts very soon. Transport for London (TfL) is consulting (1 June to 12 July) on scrapping 16 of the 650-odd bus routes it contracts private companies to run. Already a period of running down services through frequency reductions (no consultation required) has removed 300 buses from service since the start of 2021. Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, says that if TfL doesn’t get adequate funding from the Tories by the end of June, he...