The Scottish TUC’s anti-cuts demonstration in Edinburgh on Saturday, 23 October, is likely to be the biggest demonstration in Scotland since the anti-Iraq war demonstrations.
Cuts are begining to bite.
Housing Benefit cuts amounting to over £27 millions a year will leave 75% of all claimants in Scotland worse off — on average by around £7 a week.
Linking public sector pensions to the Consumer Price Index instead of the Retail Price Index will cost Scottish public sector pensioners around £17 billions over the next 20 years.
The average local government pension in Scotland is £4,700 a year. Over the next 20 years this is likely to rise to £8,655 (linked to CPI) rather than £12,004 (linked to RPI) – a total loss of £27,931 for each pensioner over that period.
Increasing welfare benefits in line with the CPI rather than the RPI will cost claimants in Scotland a total of £92 millions each year. As unemployment increases as a result of other cuts in public spending, even more claimants will find themselves in receipt of benefits of declining value.
Like the attacks on the public sector carried out by the 1979-97 Tory government, the Con-Dem public spending cuts will hit Scotland even harder than other parts of Britain.
25% of jobs in Scotland are in the public sector, compared with 21% on a UK-wide basis. And in the 2011/2012 financial year Scotland will face two years worth of cuts, as a result of the Scottish government having been given the go-ahead by Westminster to delay a budget reduction from this year to next.
In real terms, and taking account of inflation, the Scottish government’s budget (i.e. the ‘block grant’ it receives from Westminster) is likely to be cut from £29.2 billions this year to £27.5 billions next year. By 2014/15 the Scottish budget is likely to be cut in real terms by around £4 billions, or 12.5%.
Those cuts will, in turn, be passed on to local authorities, which receive 80% of their funding from Holyrood. This will lead to the loss of as many as 90,000 jobs in the public sector in Scotland (i.e. both local authorities and the civil service). A total of more than 12,000 job losses have already been announced by Scottish councils.
In the worst-case scenario as many as 37,000 jobs could also be lost in the private sector, as public sector contracts dry up for the private sector. This does not include jobs which would be lost as a result of the declining spending power of most consumers in Scotland.
For those in work the impact of the Con-Dem government’s policies will mean falling living standards.
150,000 local authority workers in Scotland have recently been awarded (i.e. it has been imposed) a pay ‘rise’ of just 0.65% for this year – even lower than an earlier offer which had been rejected by the unions. This is to be followed up by pay freezes in 2011 and 2012.
But inflation in August was running at 4.7% (RPI) or 3.1% (CPI). Core inflation (which gauges the underlying longer-term inflation trend) increased from 2.6% (July) to 2.8% (August). Inflation will rise even further with the increase in VAT from 17.5% to 20% in January, and the likely ending of the current council tax freeze in Scotland next April.
Confronted with this assault on public spending, jobs and living standards, the Scottish TUC set up the “There is a Better Way” campaign and initiated the demonstration in Edinburgh on 23rd October. It is making a serious effort to maximise support for that demonstration.
It has sent speakers to the Scottish Regional Committees of its affiliates and to Trades Councils throughout Scotland in order to encourage support for its campaign and the demonstration. It has also encouraged Trades Councils to initiate local anti-cuts campaigns.
The STUC has stressed that its own campaign is an ‘umbrella’ for the campaigns already being run by different unions, such as Unison and the EIS, rather than being one which is counterposed to them.
Running true to form, the STUC is aiming to build a broad and all-inclusive anti-cuts campaign. On one level this makes sense. What, after all, would be the point of building a narrow, exclusive, and thereby ineffective, anti-cuts campaign?
At the same time, however, the STUC’s campaign has yet to address some basic questions.
First and foremost, there is the role of local authorities, especially ones controlled by Labour (either on its own, or in coalition), in either implementing or defying the cuts.
There is no campaign by the STUC for local authorities to refuse to set no-cuts budgets. In fact, the STUC is more likely to take a position that local authorities who impose cuts unwillingly and with a heavy heart should be treated as allies in the anti-cuts campaign.
Nor has the STUC campaign taken a position on the council tax freeze. But the reality is that the STUC (taking its lead from Unison) does not support the freeze. And not supporting the freeze means supporting an end to it.
Apart from not wanting to fall out with Unison, the STUC’s reason for taking this position is that the council tax is not a progressive tax. Freezing a non-progressive tax, runs the argument, therefore benefits the better-off more than the worse-off.
But VAT is not a progressive tax either. If there was a central-government freeze on VAT, would socialists oppose that freeze on the grounds that it is of more benefit to the wealthy than the less well-off?
There is also a certain fuzziness about the overall thrust of the STUC campaign. Is it against all cuts, full stop? Or is it a more Labour-like position that cuts should be imposed at a slower rate and less severely?
The lead slogan on publicity material for the Edinburgh demonstration, for example, reads: “Deep, Savage and Immediate Cuts Are Not Necessary and Are Not Unavoidable.”
These are the kind of issues which need to be discussed in union and Labour Party branches and in local anti-cuts campaigns, whilst also continuing to mobilise the biggest-possible turnout for the Edinburgh demonstration (details below).
To take the anti-cuts campaign forward in Scotland the STUC should also convene an all-Scotland anti-cuts conference, open to delegates from unions, CLPs, and anti-cuts campaigns, with adequate time allowed for the submitting and debating of motions.
If the STUC is not prepared to call such a conference, then local anti-cuts campaigns should take the lead in trying to co-ordinate anti-cuts campaigning across Scotland.
Saturday, 23rd October. Assemble 11.00am, East Market Street (behind Waverley Station). Move off 11.30am. Rally at 12.30pm at Ross Bandstand in Princes Gardens.
