Local Councils

The Labour leadership claims that the local government results on 5 May show a recovery from the supposed nadir of the Corbyn era. Not so. Poll-cruncher John Curtice summed up: “The party did no more than maintain its 2018 vote in London, secure a small increase in the South of England, but was down three points in the north of England”. The Tories are convulsed by scandals, deliberately pushing benefits and public-sector wages below rising inflation, and grinding down the NHS: they were bound to lose ground. But Lib-Dems and Greens did better than Labour. Over 61% of Labour’s councillor gains...

On 5 May 2022, the Scottish National Party (SNP) scored its best ever result in council elections. It increased its share of first preference votes to 34%, increased its number of seats by 22, and emerged as the biggest party in 21 of the Scotland’s 32 local authorities. Scottish Labour also increased its number of seats (by 20), as too did the Lib Dems (by 20) and the Scottish Greens (by 16). By contrast, the Tory vote slumped, costing them 63 seats. The collapse in the Tory vote allowed Labour to overtake them and come in second behind the SNP. As in England, the Tories did badly as a result...

The campaign for the 5 May local elections is lacklustre in many areas. Even lifelong Labour activists are dispirited, with Starmer’s push to the right. Despite “partygate”, the cost of living spike, and their heavy lid on public sector pay, the Tories could even come out of these elections OK. As Luke Akehurst documents on LabourList , the seats contested now were last contested in 2018, when Labour did particularly well. (And as Akehurst does not mention, that was due to Corbynism’s popularity then, before its economic-equalising message got drowned by equivocation on Brexit and antisemitism...

The public services union Unison has been consulting on the local government pay claim for April 2022, with the results being fed through to Unison representatives on the National Joint Council alongside other public sector unions. Members haven’t yet been given a timeline for future decisions. The options given to members were a flat rate claim, or RPI plus 2% The claim is to be for pay from 1 April 2022, and yet hasn’t even been submitted yet. RPI inflation is currently 9.0%, so we have to build confidence in an urgent fight for a serious pay award. Many Unison members will receive the 1.75%...

Alan Gibbons, a Labour councillor and well-known local campaigner in Liverpool, and a member of Momentum’s National Coordinating Group, has been expelled by Labour for an interview for Socialist Appeal’s newspaper in January 2021 — six months before SA was proscribed. Gibbons has taken a strong and vocal stand in solidarity with Ukraine against Russian imperialism (unlike Socialist Appeal!). He and other Labour councillors in Liverpool who refused to vote for the last council budget were excluded from the Labour whip a while back. Now they have set up their own group in the council: as they...

The future of London’s sex-positive, LGBTQ+-friendly parties Klub Verboten and Crossbreed is at risk. London Borough of Tower Hamlets contacted their regular venues, E1 and Colour Factory, challenging their right to host parties with nudity or semi-nudity under their current licence. Klub Verboten released a statement on Instagram: “In this day and age, the council are seeking to dictate to informed, self-regulating adults what they can and, crucially, what they can’t wear?” They challenged the council, asking: “Is the sight of an ankle, bare shoulders, buttocks, cleavage and bare chests a...

Labour’s record and policy in local government is, if anything, even more wretched than its national stance. Labour councils are not protesting against the cuts decimating local government and demanding more funding, let alone organising active resistance and campaigning. That applies to the Labour left as well as the right. “Left-wing” councils are often better on this or not that issue, but they are not fighting back. The bulk of the left promotes flim-flam about “community wealth-building” and avoids agitation, let along organising, to push the Tories to restore local government...

In mid-February, Paul Holmes, elected national president of Unison in June 2021, was re-elected as secretary of Kirklees local government branch. After the branch’s AGM in February, union officials said that the branch would be returning to normal functioning after two years under regional control while Holmes and other branch officers were suspended by the council. The council sacked Holmes on 2 February. He is appealing. Today, 28 March, we tried to contact the Kirklees branch office and got an answerphone message that the branch cannot respond to phone or email enquiries. Members wanting...

The local government branches of the public services union Unison are only now being consulted on the pay claim for the year starting 1 April 2022. Following a failure in a union ballot to reach the 50% turnout threshold required by the Trade Union Act 2016, last year’s pay deal (1.75%) was settled just weeks ago. The options for a 2022 claim offered by the union leaders are 2% above the Retail Price Index (RPI) or a flat rate rise of £2,000. Our fight to challenge low and unequal pay normally points to support for a flat-rate claim, but there are problems with a flat-rate claim this year. If...

Unison members in Glasgow City Council have voted to strike in their ongoing dispute over equal pay compensation payments. Some 96% of Unison members voted in favour of the strike action, beating the anti-union laws threshold with a turnout of 52.5% among just under 9,000 workers. Some days earlier GMB workers also voted for strike action, while Unite the Union will be balloting its members on industrial action on 14 March. The dispute has its roots in a £500 million settlement agreed with council staff in 2019, for which a new pay and grading system was required to account for the many...