Does the People's Assembly motion show us a way of fighting council cuts?

Following the discussion on this blog on local council cuts, after the Corbyn letter to council leaders, arguing that they had not choice but to make cuts LINK , I thought it would be worth publishing the motion passed at the People's Assembly Conference earlier this month.  The motion from Cardiff PA was more contentious that other motions but passed with a clear majority.
 

“No Cuts” Campaign Against Council Cuts

Conference notes

1.  People’s Assembly opposes all cuts. Five more years of council cuts is unsustainable.

2.  Council cuts derive from the Tory government’s austerity policies of making us pay for the financial crisis not of our making.

3.  People, especially younger people, across the UK are under financial pressure from benefit cuts and falling real wages. In these circumstances they increasingly rely on the collective provision of council and other services, only to find that they are being withdrawn whilst at the same time experiencing increased payments for less provision.

4.  Council cuts are transmitted down from the UK Tory government by a combination of withdrawal of finance and requirement to set a legal budget.

5.  Councillors, lacking politics and confidence to challenge this political and bureaucratic process, buckle under and pass ‘their problem’ as they see it, on to us.

6.  Historical examples of councils defying central government: Poplar 1921, Clay Cross & Bedwas and Machen 1972, Rate Capping Rebellion of 80s with 26 Labour councils pledging to defy government with Liverpool and Lambeth going furthest.

7.  Recently examples of Northern Ireland Assembly and House of Lords prepared to risk a constitutional crisis over implementation of Tory welfare reform and tax credits.

8.  A small number of Labour & Green councillors have voted for no cuts.

Conference calls for

People’s Assembly to launch a national campaign for councils to refuse to set cuts budgets this year and instead set ‘needs’ budgets based upon estimating what is actually needed to adequately maintain services and campaigning for the government to provide it.

Conference therefore resolves to

1.  Publicise and develop arguments around ‘needs budgets’ to aid activists

2.  Prepare model motions calling upon councils to set no cuts budgets for use by local anti-cuts groups, trade union branches etc

3.  Give a platform to, and amplify voice of councillors who vote against all cuts 4 In all council areas an electronic petition could be drawn up demanding councillors vote against all cuts, raising directly the issues that we face and the responsibility our elected representatives have to fight back.

5.  Rectify lack of material on PA website supporting local campaigners around council cuts, especially around the political arguments (ie.  responding to ‘cuts have to be made’, ‘we have no choice’, ‘what would you cut instead’)

6.  Organise a national meeting for councillors, trade unionists and anti-austerity campaigners to explore how councils can resist.

7.  Compile and share information on examples of council ‘best practice’ in resisting austerity such as using reserves, no bedroom tax eviction policies, pledges of non-cooperation with the Trade Union Bill, Manchester Council opening up empty buildings to homeless etc.”

This along with the suggestions from  Felicity Dowling LINK and William Quick LINK could provide the basis for a discussion at Brent Fightback and Brent Momentum early in the New Year.

Bennett welcomes Green and anti-austerity progress in Spanish election

The Green Party has welcomed the huge electoral progress made by anti-austerity parties in  yesterday's he Spanish General Election.

In the weekend elections, the new party Podemos, with which the Spanish Green Party (Equo) has a partnership, won 20.7% of the vote, while another new party, Ciudadanos, won 13.9%.
Green Party leader Natalie Bennett, who recorded a Green/Podemos message of support before the vote, said:

I congratulate the three Green MPs Rosa Martinez and Juantxo Uralde in the Basque Country and Jorge Luis in Aragon on their election and also Podemos for the historic level of support it won.

This is a powerful boost to the anti-austerity battle across Europe, and a further sign that politics is changing fast.

Podemos and Greens are offering a new open, democratic politics, one that offers the prospect of self-determination for Catalonia, support for grassroots campaigns and organisations, and a vision of a ‘social’ Europe that works for common good, not for the 1%.

Bennett also noted, 

Women now make up nearly 40% of the Spanish parliament – helped by half of the elected Podemos candidates being female. That puts a further spotlight on the scant progress made in Britain, where only 29% of Westminster MPs are female.

UPDATE: Sudbury School situation raises wider issues

Unions at Sudbury Primary School report that there was standing room only when they held a meeting last week for parents to discuss the way forward for the school after the suspension of its headteacher. They say that Sudbury teachers attended despite the threat of disciplinary action if they did so.

The unions said:

Several staff made it clear that, through all of this, their priority was the education and care of the children. Parent and union speakers said that without the staff the children would not be doing as well as they are.

The meeting was reminded by an emotional parent that it was the children who were the reason there was a school and we had to get to the bottom of what was going on for them. It was pointed out that if the school had still been with the local authority instead of being an academy, Brent would have stepped in and taken prompt action to deal with the situation.

Parents were angry that it had to be down to the unions to call such a meeting and felt the governors had kept them in the dark. It was revealed that a new Chair of Governors Ian Phillips, had just been put in place. The Ofsted report is due imminently after the inspection which took place after the Headteacher was suspended. The section on management of the school should make interesting reading.

The headteacher remains suspended while an independent investigation takes place. As stated in earlier coverage suspension this a neutral act to allow the investigation of allegations to proceed. 

However, the unions say that a petition for parents calling on the headteacher to 'do the right thing and resign' has been started: 'Staff remain united and determined but if this does not happen they will be taking action in the Spring term.'

 The situation is complicated by the fact that the Sudbury Primary School Academy Trust is a company limited by guarantee under the Companies Act 2006.  A large school with a budget of £9m plus it comes under the Education Funding Agency/DfE rather than the local authority, Brent Council. The Regional Schools Commissioner acts for the Secretary of State regarding academies and free schools but he does not appear to have intervened in this case so far, although there are provisions for intervention in the funding agreement LINK and the powers of the RSC.

The headteacher of Sudbury Primary School is the company's Chief Executive Officer and it appears from the last company report that all the governors are also Trustees of the company. The company secretary is Irfan Khan. LINK

At the time of the last annual report that I can find (for the period ending August 2014) in addition to the headteacher, chair and vice chair, there were 8 parent governors, 4 community governors and 3 staff governors on the Board of Trustees.

The case clearly raises wider issues regarding academies (and free schools) of accountability, local democratic representation, powers of intervention and governance.

UPDATE


The Kilburn Times LINK is reporting that Ian Phillips, Chair of Govers at Finchley's Woodhouse College has been appointed to the Sudbury governors on the recoemmndation of the DfE.

Chair of Governors, Bob Wharton, a former Lead Member for Children and Schools when Lib Dems formed a coalition with Brent Tories to run Brent Council, welcomed the appointment and said Phillips had made a good impression on staff.

The DfE said, 'We take very seriously any allegationb that children's education is being put at risk. We are continuing to work with the academy trust to strengthem governance. We recommended they (the school)  request support from other experienced governors.'

Jean Roberts, NUT, pointed out that if Sudbury had been an LA school they would have come in and taken control of the situation. It had only got to ths stage because it was an academy and being dealt with by the DfE. She added that this was why the education unions are against academies.
 

The need for a 'Needs Budget'

Mural to celebrate the Poplar rate rebels who used the powers of local government to stand up to a Conservative and Liberal coalition government in the aftermath of the First World War

Guest blog by William Quick, a Green Party member in Bristol. This posting was orginally published on his blog A Green Trade Unionist - In Bristol

I’ve just been selected by the Bristol Green Party to be their candidate for Bedminster in next May’s Council elections.  I’m really excited and want to thank all our local members who voted for me; we came second to Labour in Bedminster by only 3% this year and we have a really good chance of getting atleast one of the two seat in the ward.  I intend to do a longer post on my priorities for the ward, but for now I thought I’d dwell on something that came up in the hustings, my opposition to any and all cuts budgets and the need for a ‘needs budget’.

As you should know the Green Party completely opposes Austerity as a failed economic model, that has held back the economy, and punished the poor and most vulnerable in our society whilst forcing ordinary people to pay for the bailout of the banks.

Nationally our MP has been fantastic in continually voting against cuts and austerity and has one of the best voting records of any Left wing MP.

However, on the local level, the limited options available to resist the imposition of cuts has seen Green Councillors – most famously in Green controlled Brighton – adopt a ‘dented shield’ approach to try and minimise the worst excesses of local cuts and vote for cuts budgets (so they can amend and tinker with them).

The amount of money in the budget is imposed on local authorities by central government and its austerity agenda.  To set a legal budget within those confines means passing on cuts.

The alternative is setting a ‘needs budget’.  Disregarding the limit set by Whitehall this would set a budget adequate to cover provision for all the services local people need (hence a ‘needs budget’).  Such actions have been made illegal under section 114 of the Local Government Finance Act 1988 which then obligates the councils financial officer to alert Whitehall as to what’s happened.  After that the council would have 21 days to set a legal budget or supposedly civil servants from central government would depose the council and set a cuts budget themselves.  

That being the case many feel they have no option but to pass cuts budgets that have minimised the threat to vital services as much as possible.

However, to me, and many others, this seems a very improbable course of events.  This is a government with a wafer thin majority, and deposing the democratically elected council of one of the largest cities in the UK would be a deeply unpopular move.  The drama would dominate the news and could be a spark that ignites the disparate movements we’ve seen trying to resist austerity these last 5 years.

Should it even get so far as civil servants being sent into the city, they would be met with large scale protests and no doubt a strike from local government workers who would then refuse to help them carry out their dirty work (and many civil servants are PCS members who would be unlikely to cross a picket).  With all that going on, the likelihood of the worst case scenario (the deposition of the council) happening seems very low.

Instead they’d no doubt try and reach a compromise, in which we’d be able to win a better deal for Bristol.

One way this might work has already been laid out by our Mayoral candidate Tony Dyer.  The Conservatives have said councils can keep their business rates (probably from 2020).  Tony has challenged the government to give Bristol its business rates from 2016, which would allow us to reverse the cuts and invest in the many many infrastructural projects Bristol urgently needs (chiefly social and affordable housing).  If we set a needs budget and demanded we be given our business rates early to pay for it, it seems likely central government would, to some extent, give in.

It’s not as far fetched as some might have you believe.  Remember despite the apparent dire state of the nations finances, in the last budget the Conservatives magicked up £12 billion in extra defence spending (the exact same amount they’re cutting from welfare, coincidently), and another £10 million for a private jet for the PM (among many other things).  Last year they found money for an 11% pay rise for every MP, and £15 billion for Osborne’s ‘Road Revolution’.  In short, they’re very good at finding extra money when they need it.  And in the kind of constitutional crisis they’d provoke by trying to depose Bristol Council, they’d no doubt decided they’d need the money.

Furthermore, councils have already had their budgets cut by so much that there simply isn’t that much more they can cut before statutory services start to fail.  The so called ‘low hanging fruits’ of council expenditure have already been picked.  If councils continue to live within the dictates of the law and refuse to try and set ‘needs budgets’, at some point in the next 5 years we’re going to see a significant failure of the basic services many people depend on.

The main argument against ‘needs budgets’ is that civil servants aren’t going to know our communities needs and their cuts will be far worse than the more compassionate cuts our Council will do itself.

As I’ve said this seems unlikely, and if it got to the point where implementing cuts will result in the failure of services how can civil servant driven cuts be any worse?  Also it would focus the blame for these cuts squarely back where it belongs with central government, and would make the Tories do their dirty work themselves.

We’ve already seen massive mobilisations against the government and its austerity program since the election. If unelected civil servants started deposing local authorities to implicate savage cuts; the protests, strikes and civil disobedience it would cause would be a significant challenge to the government.  

If several councils refused to set cuts budgets at the same time, their likelihood of success would be even higher.  The blowback from them attempting to depose multiple authorities at once could likely bring down the government (so they’d probably give in).  For that to happen we need people elected onto those councils making those arguments and willing to make a stand against austerity. 

If elected I will be one of those people.  I pledge to never vote for a budget containing cuts, and to consistently make the case for the alternative whenever possible.

'Better to break the law than break the poor' - a response to Corbyn's council cuts strategy

This is Jeremy Corbyn's letter on local council cuts and a response from Felicity Dowling, one of the Liverpool 47 - councillors who refused to implement cuts in the 1980s.

Council Illegal Budgets 2

This is what Felicity Dowling, one of the  47 Liverpool councillors stripped from office, fined and banned from standing again after Liverpool Council adopted the slogan 'better to break the law than break the poor' and refused to implement Tory cuts has to say

"As one of the Liverpool Councillors from the 1980s, I obviously disagree with the Labour Party decision to support cuts budgets at local government level.

 What though could they do to effectively oppose these cuts with this 'legal'framework?

- They could honestly explain to the people in their wards what the effect of the cuts will be. No false distractions with how great they are doing while services are in reality being broken.
- They could insist all council reports are written in plain English and openly explain the likely consequences.
 - They could organise community self defence groups in their community and make sure all council buildings and services are open to them.
 - They could hold public meetings to explain the situation.
 - They could insist that not one penny was spent on municipal fripperies and receptions for the rich.
 - They could liaise with local authority workers for a huge national demonstration. - They could defend local authority trade union rights to organise
. - They could open all public buildings as places of succour and sanctuary in the cold weather. - Every home in the local authority control could be made available for social housing.
 - Different councillors could become champions of the different services.
 - They could declare that this is an emergency and operate as such.
- Every day they could be organisers for working class communities and recruit hundreds of thousands of people to socialist politics and workplace organisation, building a mass movement.
 - They could organise lots of study groups and action groups on different issues.
 - They could link all the Labour Councils together in a coordinated national campaign.
 - They could become a voice that could be heard despite the press and media whiteout of the effect of the cuts.
- They could link with all the other campaigns for housing, education, health and social care.
- They could build links with other councils in Europe facing cuts.

 Such campaigns would give hope to the desperate, courage to those tiring in the struggle, inspiration to the weary workers in the services and present an alternative. Left Unity would certainly help.What we won't accept is that our communities must suffer in silence until 2020."

Sunset on a warm December day

Sunset over Barn Hill today

Temperatures hit 16C today against a normal December average of 7C. It was all a bit odd as I walked on Barn Hill. Someone with their shirt off lounging in the grass, catching the last rays of the December sun, a robin in full throated song as if Spring had already arrived, a woodpecker drumming frantically on a hollow tree, and on my return a daffodil in bud in my front garden.

If climate change is going to limit humans' future on the planet our last disastrous days may also be accompanied by an uncanny, regretful, staggering beauty.

Conditional discharge for Sweets Way social cleansing resisters

Brent activists joined those from Barnet at a solidarity demonstration outside Willesden Magistrates Court.

People from the Sweets Way Resists campaign were appearing before magistrates charged with obstructing High Court enforcement officers when they were evicting tenants from Sweets Way, in what campaigners see as enforcing social cleansing.

The accused were given a conditional charge, which means no prison sentence or fines, but they may have court costs awarded against them.

SweetsWay Website

Corbyn statement on council cuts presents problem for local activists

The statement from Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell stating that local council have no choice but to implement cuts is going to present a real problem for local activists, long critical of Brent Council’s ‘dented shield’ approach, who have joined the Labour Party and got involved in Brent Momentum. And, 'Yes' the actions of the Green minority council in Brighton presented similar problems for socialists in the Green Party'

From the Guardian article:

The statement from Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, published in the Guardian LINK  essentially sets out the 'dented shield' strategy - that Labour councils are better placed to make cuts 'fairer' than those that would result in them being carried out by council offers or the Tory Secretary of State:

In a letter sent jointly with John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, and Jon Trickett, the shadow communities secretary, Corbyn points out that councils must set a balanced budget under the 1992 Local Government Act.

The letter says: “If this does not happen, ie if a council fails to set a legal budget, then the council’s section 151 officer is required to issue the council with a notice under section 114 of the Local Government Act 1998. Councillors are then required to take all actions necessary to bring the budget back into balance.”

Failure to set a balanced budget can lead to action against councillors under the code of conduct, a judicial review and, more significantly, intervention by the secretary of state, the joint letter states. It continues: “It would mean either council officers or, worse still, Tory ministers deciding council spending priorities. Their priorities would certainly not meet the needs of the communities which elected us."

This is essentially what Muhammed Butt and Michael Pavey have been arguing as they have made cuts in successive years.

A Green Left colleague commented on the Labour leadership's statement:

No doubt JC & JM feel that they “have no choice” as 95%+ of their councillors support this approach. But it does undermine those trade unionists and campaigners actively arguing for them to stand up to the Tories. It implies there is no choice, when of course there is a choice. Labour has over 100 Councils. If Labour nationally opposed the cuts and organised some or all of its councils to refuse to implement them, there is absolutely no way the Government could send in Commissioners to run them all. It would provoke a huge national debate on the cuts and local democracy, and have the potential to force the Government to back down partly or wholly. As it is, right-wing Labour councillors are tweeting the letter to attack anyone on the Left campaigning against the cuts.

In the end, the problem with the JC letter is that it completely understates the scale of the attack on local government and local democracy. This is not “business as usual”, a few nasty cuts etc.  This is a once in a lifetime, permanent dismantling and shrinkage of the local state, a huge extension of privatisation of local services and an undermining of local democracy itself - there is little point in having locally elected councillors if their job is (from Nicholas Ridley’s famous quote): “to meet once a year to hand out the contracts”.

The only silver lining in the letter is its appeal for councillors to support local campaigners (even if this is clearly contradictory to their councillors supporting cuts budgets!) and to be organising mass campaigns against local government cuts. This gives an opportunity to campaigners to point out that Labour councillors are only doing one half of the message from the JC letter, and not the other.

But it really could have been so much better.

According to the Guardian some Momentum branches have been pushing for a more radical approach:

It is known that Corbyn’s office has discussed various forms of defiance strategy with council leaders, such as setting a needs-based budget. This idea has been raised at some meetings of Momentum, the pressure group set up by Corbyn supporters to retain his support in the wider Labour movement. According to a Socialist party account, some Momentum group meetings are backing illegal budgets, and are planning to call for them early next year.

The account states that a conference is being planned to oppose budget cuts: “Given that we were told that Bristol has the largest Momentum group outside London, with a network already of over 800 names, there is real scope for a conference to be an important milestone in our campaign. It was explicitly agreed within both the Action Hub and the plenary session that part of the campaign against local authority budget cuts should also involve writing to every Labour and Green councillor and candidate, demanding that they refuse to comply with any cuts budgets."

Since the local government cuts began the idea of setting a needs-based budget has been raised, with a softer position being constructing a needs-based budget in parallel with a cuts budget. The former could then become a tool in campaigning for a budget (and thus funding) that really meets local needs whilst at the same time setting a balanced budget that fends of government intervention.

Can any real campaign be built between Councils, some of which like Brent are not exactly stuffued with Corbyn supporters, and labour and trade union movement and the wider community?

After all, Brent Council leader Muhamemd Butt, said that budgets for the next two years will be 'cutting into the muscle, if not the bone, of local services.'