Anti-cuts, public services

Trade union activists have begun building community and workplace opposition to Academies in the borough as part of the Tower Hamlets Anti-Cuts Coalition. Unlike neighbouring borough Hackney, Tower Hamlets has never been receptive to Academies (partially because of the strength of union organisation in the borough’s schools). Now, under the Tory scheme which allows any school to apply for Academy status, some Tower Hamlets heads are seeing pound signs. Old Ford and Mulberry primary schools have both expressed an interest in applying for Academy status. The financial incentives are, however...

About twenty people attended the second Lambeth Save our Services planning meeting on 5 August - not bad considering it's the dead of summer. The meeting started with good news. After the brilliant campaign led up by the UNISON members in One O'Clock clubs all of the jobs in Adventure Playgrounds and One O'Clock Clubs have been saved. (The council was sacking them and creating new jobs because, even though it saved no money, it could break up the union and prepare the way for future cuts.) As one of the women said at the meeting: "We've got 100% union density - we know they'll be back for us"...

To download the following petition, produced by South London AWL, but useable wherever there are Labour councils or indeed councillors, click the attachment below. "We the undersigned oppose the cuts to jobs and services being pushed through by the Lib Dem-Tory coalition government. We want a government which will tax the rich and the banks, scrap Trident and cut military spending, not cut jobs and services. We call on our Labour councillors to join with trade unions and community groups to fight the cuts, and to refuse to implement them. Labour councillors should not cooperate with the...

We reject these cuts as simply malicious ideological vandalism, hitting the most vulnerable the hardest. Join us in the fight It is time to organise a broad movement of active resistance to the Con-Dem government's budget intentions. They plan the most savage spending cuts since the 1930s, which will wreck the lives of millions by devastating our jobs, pay, pensions, NHS, education, transport, postal and other services. The government claims the cuts are unavoidable because the welfare state has been too generous. This is nonsense. Ordinary people are being forced to pay for the bankers'...

Librarians in Southampton have scheduled a second two-day strike against cuts, de-skilling and casualisation for 6 and 8 August. The workers, who struck previously on 21 June, have already postponed the second round of strikes twice as they wait for a new offer from their employer, the local council. The council plans to staff libraries with unpaid and untrained volunteers, replacing six full-time trained workers, in order to cut costs. It has said it is dealing with “difficult economic times.” Speaking in the Southern Daily Echo at the start of the dispute several months ago, Unison's...

The Lib/Tory government plans to make many of its cuts by chopping finance for local councils. Local councils, including Labour councils, are now preparing to pass on that cut, axing jobs and services. And committees to fight those cuts and Lib/Tory cuts in welfare are now being set up in areas across Britain. Local Trades Councils are the best bodies to initiate such committees — anti-cuts campaigns need to have the local labour movement at their heart. If committees are initiated outside trade-union structures, for example by community groups, they should move to link up with the labour...

Bob Crow, General Secretary RMT, speaking at Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival, July 2010 "We are going to see a massive onslaught on working people to pay for the bankers’ corruption and greed. "If the government gets away it, people are going to have their welfare benefits cut, suffer pay freezes, have their pensions taken away from them, be made to work longer. At a time when we should be getting people off the dole queues and into work. "Over the next 18 months we are going to see a workers’ fightback. People will start to join the trade union movement because they know the only voice that...

Download this AWL bulletin to hand out at anti-cuts meetings

The new issue of Tubeworker asks and answers questions about why the government is making cuts and what we have to do to stop them. It reports on the success of the Tube Lines strike, asks for support for the DLR strikes starting this week, and reminds readers to vote Yes in the ballots for industrial action against job cuts. Click '1 attachment' / file name to download it. Click here to read Tubeworker 's bog.

A government made up of parties with a historical, ideological commitment to the rule of markets coming to power against the backdrop of an economic crisis that gives it contextual cover to make cuts means that the expansion of public sector privatisation and outsourcing is inevitable. Selling off the provision of various public services – waste management, housing or education for example – is an easy way to cut without seeming to cut and to absolve central or local government of any responsibility for the quality of service or the working conditions of those who provide those services. There...