The consequences of cuts

 

Wrexham Socialists’ have had a number of street stalls in the past few weeks in Wrexham town centre, campaigning against the unprecedented cuts to jobs, services, education and welfare being undertaken by an ideologically motivated ConDem government in Westminster, and being passed on to working class people with little protest by local authorities and by the Labour/Plaid Welsh Assembly Government (WAG).

 

The level of anger and disillusionment of working class people about these cuts is high. We have spoken to retired miners, engine drivers, nurses and care workers, who are concerned about what the future holds for their grandchildren, and about the demise of the welfare state; we have spoken to single parents, facing cuts to their benefits and being forced onto Job Seeker’s Allowance despite having young children and without the means to pay for childcare; we have spoken to Welsh students who recognise that for all the bluster, fees will likely increase for Welsh students next year and EMA will be scrapped; to overseas students, facing a doubling of the already astronomical costs of studying in the UK; to workers in the public sector, already seeing massive attacks on jobs and conditions, with the obvious implications for services, and frustrated with the trade union bureaucrats who seem unwilling to fight for their members’ interests; to private sector workers and sole traders, wondering where business will come from when nobody has any money; to volunteers, at hospices and homeless shelters, who are being told they are the future of the so-called Big Society, whilst their funding is cut to its bare bones; to people who voted Tory, Liberal, Labour and Plaid in the general election but who now say that they didn’t vote for this.

 

We’ve spoken to young people leaving education in September, entering a stagnant labour market, with many of them seeing the army as their only way out. We’ve spoken to unemployed people competing against dozens of applicants for every job; to private tenants seeing rents increase year on year whilst wages stay the same; to working class people who rightly feel that the politicians of all the capitalist parties, on ever-increasing salaries that put them in the top five percent of earners, not only do not represent the interests of ordinary working people, but do not even have the first clue about what life is like for us – with one woman, angry at the bosses, bankers and politicians, and the whole dog-eat-dog nature of society, who saw the BNP as an alternative because ‘at least they listen to us, even if they are barking’.

 

This is the human face of the cuts. These are the social implications, seemingly of no concern to the wealthy capitalist politicians of all parties, of making working class people pay for a crisis created by the super-rich; of destroying the last vestiges of the welfare state; of attacking the most vulnerable in society.

 

The position of the Socialist Party is clear. All cuts should be resisted, whether they are coming from Westminster or Whitehall, or whether they are coming from Cardiff or the Guild Hall. We see the politicians of the Labour Party and Plaid Cymru, and their trade-union bureaucrat supporters, hiding behind anti-cuts rhetoric whilst passing these cuts down on to us; we see a Welsh government claiming that Wales will be protected, that they are not like their fellow coalition in London, whilst they cut health and education to the bone, cut investment into the already underfunded infrastructure and public services of Wales, and blithely make us pay for a crisis not of our making – whilst the bankers who’s actions directly led to the crisis pick up bonuses rounded off to their nearest million.

 

We support a mass campaign to resist the cuts, including workers in the public sector, service users, students and the whole of society affected by them.

 

We support the struggle of students to resist the increase in university tuition fees and cuts in education and for the restoration of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) across the whole of Britain.

 

 

The initial claims of Welsh ministers that Wales was escaping the worst effects of the recession have proved to be false as unemployment in Wales continues to climb.

 

Employment in manufacturing – a traditionally strong sector in Wales – fell by over 16% between 2001 and 2008. The greatest growth was in the public sector which now accounts for over 30% of employment. Welsh employment had been protected somewhat in the early stages of the recession by the high proportion of workers in the public sector.

 

But the cuts being undertaken by both governments, in London and in Cardiff, and by local authorities across Wales, will cost the jobs of many public sector workers, with the potential to create systemic unemployment throughout Wales that will affect many generations to come. Ironically, chancellor George Osbourne – who visited the JCB plant in Wrexham this week – now wants manufacturing to pick up the slack for wholesale public sector job losses! Such is the irrationality of capitalism.

 

We call on councils and the WAG to resist the ConDem government’s vicious cuts programme, designed to widen the gap between the super-rich and the rest of us; that instead of blaming the ‘hand they have been dealt’ they should instead set a needs-budget – that is, a budget based upon the genuine needs of the people they were elected to represent.

 

Local authorities are all capable of resisting these cuts by setting a budget based upon the needs of local residents and workers rather than the whims of central government, as Liverpool City Council, which fought back against Thatcher’s Tory government and built council homes, community centres and schools, and created jobs in construction and the public sector, demonstrated in the 1980s.

 

In 1984 Liverpool City Council was able to win £60 million in extra funding from Thatcher, with the active support of tens of thousands of workers.

 

Liverpool’s councillors were only surcharged and removed from office after a four-year struggle, as a result of the betrayal of Liverpool by Kinnock and the right-wing Labour leadership.

 

Unfortunately, not a single council has so far been prepared to even contemplate ceasing collaboration with the ConDems and instead fighting back.

 

As the editorial of this week’s Socialist noted:

 

Even Labourlist.org – the Labour bloggers’ website set up by arch-Blairite Derek Draper – published an article by Daniel Blaney saying: “If there was a collective defiance of Eric Pickles [Tory local government minister] by scores of local authorities (essentially going on budget strike), and their act was vindicated by Labour gains in the local elections, it could force a political crisis on the Tory-led coalition.

“A cascade of ‘no cuts’ budget decisions by local authorities could be the most effective resistance to the cuts so far.”

 

The Welsh Assembly Government in particular would be perfectly capable of refusing to implement cuts. We are told that there is ‘clear red water‘ between New Labour and Welsh Labour – although it would appear to be more of a pink puddle – and that we should be grateful for our allegedly social-democratic ‘One Wales’ Labour/Plaid government.

 

Given the relative influence of the WAG in comparison to the diminished powers of local authorities, and given the likely ‘yes’ vote in the forthcoming referendum which would further reduce the influence of Westminster and Whitehall on Welsh government, a needs-based budget, which would potentially lead to WAG setting a budget deficit, would be perfectly feasible to implement. Whilst it is true that if WAG – or councils – refused to carry out cuts it could, at a some stage, come into conflict with the legal system, it is clear that any such campaign of resistance would be hugely popular, and would garner the almost universal support of the (overwhelmingly working class) Welsh public.

 

If the inevitable popularity of the Welsh assembly or councils in such a situation was used to mobilise a mass movement it would be very difficult – as in Liverpool – for the law to be used against Assembly Members or councillors.

 

WAG and most councils would have time to prepare before taking this road. By using their reserves and borrowing powers to avoid making cuts, authorities can gain time to build a mass movement in their support.

 

Combined with the increasing autonomy of the Welsh government under the devolution process and a mass campaign involving trade unionists, workers, young people and service users, any such campaign could not only succeed in beating the cuts in Wales but also bring down the despised ConDem government.

 

If Welsh Labour wished to demonstrate that their ‘clear red water’ is anything more than a trickle, and if Plaid Cymru wished to demonstrate the advantages of a full law-making parliament for Wales – a position which the Socialist Party agrees with – or a potentially independent Wales in the future, then such a campaign of resistance to the cuts would appear to be a golden opportunity.

 

However, any hope that the One Wales coalition may adopt such a position would likely be in vain, as both parties pass cuts down at assembly and local level, supported by the Welsh TUC who are more concerned with getting Labour – who concede they would also have made working class people pay for the crisis and disagree only on the speed of the cuts – re-elected than with defending ordinary workers. All parties in the assembly agree that “some cuts have to be made” in public services to pay for the crisis caused by the banks. Indeed, we are told that to propose a needs-based budget is unfeasible or ‘ultra-left’.

 

The same was said about the Poll-tax refusal to pay campaign – which our forerunner Militant led, and for which Militant supporters went to prison – by trade union bureaucrats and right-wing Labour councillors and the Labour Party leadership. They said that a refusal to pay campaign would never succeed, that it was unfeasible and ultra-left. Just as now, they claimed to disagree that working class people should pay, but then told us to pay anyway! But the Poll-tax was beaten, because of a mass campaign of non-payment by the working class. We say the same today as we said then – we will not pay!

 

 

The cuts in Wales and across Britain can be beaten, by building a mass campaign of workers, trade unionists, pensioners, students, young people, the unemployed and the disabled, backed by coordinated industrial action and by placing pressure on our elected politicians in local authorities and in the Assembly, which is more susceptible to pressure from the working class than elsewhere in the UK; and by resisting every cut and every job loss.

 

Forced by a movement from below it cannot be excluded that the Assembly, or councils, will ‘find the courage’ to make demands on the ConDem government. This would require a serious struggle, in which the trade unions would have a key role to play, linked to campaigns by local communities in defence of services.

 

It is not the easy option of implementing ConDem cutbacks, but for working people facing redundancy, falling wages, house repossessions and raising prices there are no easy options.

 

However, without a party of the working class – a party that will represent the interests of ordinary working people – then we cannot rely upon the politicians, whether they are in Westminster or Cardiff. We need a new party of the working class that will offer a real alternative to the four pro-capitalist parties currently represented in the Welsh Assembly, and will stand up to the attacks on services of all four main parties and point the way towards a socialist change in Wales, Britain and beyond.

 

There is an alternative – we can resist; we can create jobs, homes, hospitals and schools. We can invest in services, invest in our young people, and look after our elderly. A socialist WAG would set out a bold programme to defend the Welsh economy using its new powers to take into public ownership firms threatening redundancies, the utilities and privatised public services. The programme would propose socialist economic policies and a plan of production to put Wales back to work again through an ambitious programme of useful public works and public investment, in publicly owned green and high technology industries drawing on the skills and commitment of Welsh workers.

 

Wrexham Socialists’ will continue to campaign against the cuts to jobs, services, education and benefits, on the streets and in our workplaces and campuses, and as part of North Wales Against Cuts and the Shop Stewards Network, which has recently launched an anti-cuts campaign dedicated to fighting every cut, regardless of who is making it.

 

We will no doubt speak to many more working class people angry that we are being made to pay through job losses and cuts to essential services on the streets of Wrexham – many more pensioners worried about their grandchildren’s futures; many more postal workers, fire fighters, road sweepers and other public sector workers facing job losses; many more unemployed people unable to find work on the one hand and facing an arbitrary and unfair benefits system on the other; many more young people who feel they have been thrown on the scrap-heap by the crisis in capitalism.

 

We can offer no immediate solutions beyond this – join the fight-back and we can not only beat the cuts but work towards a new, fairer, cooperative society; a society based not on private ownership by an elite but by common ownership. A society which offers real democracy, genuine influence over the decisions which affect our lives so drastically, rather than the sham of democracy we have today – where a government we haven’t elected can carry out regressive policies nobody voted for. A society in which we look after the most vulnerable, and in which employment, decent housing, healthcare and education is available to all. A socialist society.

 

Many thanks to Stillshooter for the photos.