Last week, I spoke to several Labour councillors in Southampton.
Although they felt they had managed the first round of cuts without
inflicting excessive hardship – indeed, they have offered to reverse pay
cuts imposed by the previous Tory administration – over the next few
years, jobs, services and people will be hit. “ Intolerable” was a term
one councillor used to describe the situation. But they had no intention
of spending the next few years resigned to acting as the local Labour
custodians of Tory policy, merely attempting to minimise the damage
inflicted on their communities by cuts they did not agree with it.
Instead, they wanted to fight back.
What was suggested was a
strategy that could pose a new threat to the Government’s whole
austerity agenda. Councillors right across Britain would convene a
conference to decide on a national strategy for taking on the unfolding
disastrous cuts to local government. Rather than spending the next few
years managing the misery locally, councillors across the country could
co-ordinate a response that would challenge these cuts. It would not
simply be out of principle; after all, it is local councillors who face
being blamed for policies imposed by a government they oppose.
In
part, such a strategy would need to drive home the impact of these cuts.
Many people struggle to understand what services are actually provided
locally; they only notice them when they depend on them and they
abruptly disappear.
Often, many will suggest libraries as the most likely victim, and indeed up to one in five face being shut down because of cuts. In Brent, for example, six libraries – or half the total number in the borough – face the chop.
But
the impact is far, far greater than local libraries. The anti-cuts
website False Economy have been collating examples, and the picture is
frightening. Bristol City Council is closing eight of its care homes,
sacking 130 workers and leaving almost 200 vulnerable elderly people
having to find somewhere else to live. In York, the cost of attending
day care for disabled people has been hiked by a stunning 263 per cent.
In Northamptonshire and Bolton, street lamps are being dimmed or
switched off, leaving women particularly at risk. In austerity Britain,
the lights are literally going out.
Lunch
clubs can alleviate the loneliness many elderly people face, but they
are being slashed, too. In communities like Anglesey, teaching
assistants face the sack, and funding for local authority social care
across Britain dropped by more than 6 per cent in a year. Back in July, a
legal challenge to North Somerset Council’s decision to decimate youth
services with a 71 per cent cut was dismissed. Such cuts are happening
across the country. Expect thousands more bored teenagers to flood on to
our streets.
We don’t hear much of the Big Society these days,
but local authority cuts to charities make Cameron’s flagship project
even more farcical. Women’s refuges faced a drop in funding of nearly a
third last year, leading the charity Women’s Aid to reveal that it had
turned away 230 women a day.
In a country in which two women are killed by their partner or ex-partner a week, lives are at risk.
In Liverpool, local authority funding for the voluntary sector has been
reduced by £18m, or nearly half. According to New Philanthropy Capital,
six in ten charities face being hit by local council cuts; and,
overall, charities face losing up to £5.5bn because of local and
national cuts, says the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary
Organisations.
By the next election, councils across Britain will
have been stripped to the bone. Amy O’Callaghan, a Labour councillor in
Luton elected in 2010, says they originally anticipated local cuts of
£22m but – thanks to changes in benefits and business-rate restrictions –
it has soared to £48m in the past three months. That will mean the
council will not even have enough money to pay for statutory services.
“So as the situation stands, we won’t even carry out what we’re legally
accountable to do come 2015,” O’Callaghan says.
A
newly published report for the Resolution Foundation reveals a typical
low-income family faces a shocking 15 per cent drop in real income by
the end of the decade. Just one reason – among many – is the
Government’s attack on council tax benefit. Up to six million people
have either all their council tax paid, or are offered a partial rebate;
but funding has been cut by 10 per cent, with councils left to decide
who suffers. With the elderly protected, and councils unwilling to
withdraw it from already hammered disabled people, low-paid workers and
working-age unemployed people face a drop in council tax benefits of up
to 44 per cent.
Those councillors in Southampton are right – this
situation is intolerable. But fighting back is not straightforward. Some
anti-cuts activists argue that Labour and Green councillors should
simply refuse to implement cuts, and set budgets based on people’s
actual needs. But councillors respond that they would not be martyred,
as in the past, through imprisonment or being made personally liable for
funds. Instead, the Department for Communities and Local Government –
led by Eric Pickles – would simply intervene and impose cuts with
different priorities. Labour-run Islington Council, for example, might
then lose policies it is rightly proud of, such as free school meals and
the London Living Wage.
But that does not mean inaction. Labour
councillors – with other potential allies, such as the Greens – must
meet and decide a national strategy. After all, they derive their
mandates from opposing Tory policies. They are uniquely rooted in their
communities. Whether it be planning co-ordinated days of action in their
boroughs – or even more radical actions – they are specially placed to
mount a challenge to national cuts.
With the failure of austerity
sucking growth out of the economy as borrowing surges, it would be
impossible to ignore them. The choice facing our councillors is clear:
face having to take responsibility for kicking people who are poor,
disabled, old or young – or join together and fight back.
