by Eddie Barns, former Hackney Labour councillor
Wherever you look, Hackney Council is making cuts in services.
Even now, far too much of its housing is unfit for human habitation and/or sold to private companies against the wishes of local tenants.
In education, schools are closed, experienced teachers sacked, and the schools handed over to private companies with disastrous results for Hackney children. Private companies are awarded lucrative contracts to run Council services frequently resulting in millions of pounds being lost, jobs threatened and services deteriorating. Disabled people are deprived of their free travel and even children's paddling pools are closed down.
When declining to give the Council's support to Geoff and Diane Gray in their campaign to force the Government to hold a public enquiry into the deaths at Deepcut army barracks, Hackney Mayor Jules Pipe said "Indeed because of the reputation gained by Hackney Council over the years I would suggest that your campaign would be undermined by any association with the Council".
What has happened to Hackney Council? Why has its reputation sunk so low?
For over twenty years, the Council has faced funding cuts from central government. In the mid-eighties Hackney, together with numerous councils across the country, decided to resist the Thatcher government. But eventually, all the councils caved in and made cuts and put up rents and rates.
After the rate-capping defeat in 1985, many Labour Party members who were involved in that campaign stood for Council determined that this would never happen again.
In 1986, the Labour Council was elected to implement socialist policies and campaign with local people and trade unions to fight for the return of funding taken away by the Thatcher Government.
But as soon as Labour lost the 1987 General Election, all the commitments to protect services and living standards were abandoned. Libraries were closed (sounds sadly familiar to more recent times), and cuts were made.
Sadly, when the crunch came, councillors adopted the so called "Dented Shield" policy - in other words, make cuts to services, put up rents for local tenants, and wait for a Labour Government to ride to the rescue.
Some councillors may have believed that this was a viable alternative to linking with local community groups and trade unions to build resistance. If so, history has proved them to be completely wrong.
The current state of Council services is a testimony to their failure. Council services are now worse than they have ever been.
As political principles were abandoned, personal acrimony took over: factions formed, chaos ensued. Labour even lost control of the Council for some time.
In the intervening period the nature of Labour councillors changed. They joined the party with little or no commitment to fight for more resources from central government. Many had been in the local party for a matter of weeks only before they were selected to stand for election for the Council.
The main priority of these councillors was, and remains, to balance the budget at whatever cost to local services and local people.
Hackney Council is now the problem: it has become more distant from local people and is a daily focus of anger, frustration and disturbingly, apathy.
We can and must fight its policies of privatisation and cuts. Maybe the history of the Council in recent years is something we can learn from.
