Local Councils

Tower Hamlets council in east London is planning on privatising its resources department, meaning that 800 workers will be transferred out of council employment and become employees of a private company. The attack comes in the context of a rapidly accelerating pace of cuts across the borough; the council is also planning to devolve the payment of severance packages down to individual schools, meaning that if a given school feels itself unable to pay out then it will have the power not to do so. Some schools have also started transferring out the employment of their cleaning staff to tin-pot...

Click here to download article as pdf . - "Strong moves to a united Ireland" by John O'Mahony - "School cuts spark nationwide fightback" by Colin Foster - "The lesson of the animal rights protests: if the law is wrong, disobey it!" by Wayne Nicholls - "Mandela's government attacks the working class" by Bobby Navarro - "The fight for Clause Four" by Gerry Bates - "Rail union backs Clause Four" by Alan Pottage (RMT National Executive, Scottish Area) - "The diary of a Clause Four activist" by Roland Trechet

Polls suggest the Tories and Liberal Democrats will lose 1,700 councillors on 5 May, mostly to Labour. That will bring into even sharper relief the contradiction between the unpopularity of the cuts — and the Tory/Liberal government forcing them through — and the reality of Labour-controlled councils imposing them locally. In Broxtowe, Nottinghamshire these elections look set to force a change in the borough council. Labour is unlikely to win an overall majority but they will almost certainly increase their council representation. But in Broxtowe, two of the Labour candidates are campaigning...

Library workers in Lambeth have voted unanimously, in an indicative ballot, for strike action against job and service cuts. Unison has 90% union density in Lambeth Libraries; if it goes ahead, strike action would shut all of Lambeth’s libraries. All “enquiry desk” staff are facing redundancy, and the mobile library service is closing as a result of a proposed Cultural Services restructure. As well as providing advice, enquiries desk staff run reading groups and story times. Lambeth Libraries get more than 100,000 visits per month, and many local people rely on the services the council plans to...

University and College Union members in both higher and further will be on strike over the next ten days over pensions, pay and jobs. University strikes over pensions will take place in Scotland on 17 March, Wales on 18 March, Northern Ireland on 21 March and England on 22 March. Then on 24 March university lecturers across the UK will strike over pensions, jobs and pay, alongside members in further education striking over pay. The 24th is also the national day of action in defence of ESOL provision. Bringing in virtually the whole of UCU, this is the most significant industrial action yet...

Wirral TUC relaunched Wirral Against the Cuts in order to campaign against closures of care homes. We leafleted care homes, organised meetings, and a lobby of the budget meeting, and one of the users of the Fernleigh centre who we met put in for a legal injuction. The Fernleigh centre is the only centre providing support and respite for those with mental health problems. Now Wirral council have backed down and Fernleigh is to stay open for at least 12 months. We need to let people know that it is possible to win precious small victories by organising campaigns such as this.

Cambridgeshire’s ruling Tories are running a “Participatory Budgeting Project” for Violence Against Women and Girls projects in Cambridgeshire. Residents can vote for which VAWG projects get funding of up to £3,000 — and which get nothing. Cambridge Rape Crisis is the only specialist VAWG organisation who has gone in for the vote (to avoid similar organisations competing). The service is a lifeline to women and girls who have experienced rape and sexual abuse. Funding will enable them to start running face-to-face counselling again. It is disgusting that essential services are put up against...

On 2 March Hackney council passed its budget. As in other boroughs local activists demonstrated against the meeting. The road outside the town hall was blockaded and activists inside chanted slogans at councillors, disrupting the meeting at one point, before agreeing to let it continue. I was glad to be there. That said, more would have been possible if Hackney Alliance activists had developed a plan to disrupt the meeting. We have since learned that the Lambeth Town Hall occupation was the product of a lot of preparation (see Solidarity 195). In Hackney, and I’m sure elsewhere, there is a...

Around 300 people demonstrated outside and then occupied Lambeth Council chamber on Wednesday 23 February. They then held an anti-cuts meeting whilst the councillors scrambled around for a room to vote through £37 million in cuts. When security and police refused to allow members of the public into the galleries and overflow rooms, protesters challenged them and then rushed into the Town Hall. •http://lambethsaveourservices.org

Six Labour councillors in Hackney, east London, have declared: “We would like to see local Councils across London leading the charge. They should refuse to adopt cuts budgets as a result of government enforced policies and produce Needs Budgets to show what should be funded”. One of them, Ian Rathbone, announced at a Hackney anti-cuts demonstration on 23 February that he would vote against all cuts and called for the lobby of the council budget-setting meeting to be so big that councillors would not be able to get into the council chamber to vote for cuts. With the other five, it is still not...