Marching against council cuts in Birmingham on Saturday (Picture: Brian O’Sullivan)
In a toxic combination of Tory cuts and Labour’s meek imposition of them, councillors in Birmingham have approved probably the biggest budget cuts in local authority history.
Birmingham city council voted on Tuesday for proposals that mean up to 600 council jobs slashed, funding cuts to adult social care and children’s services, arts grants scrapped and libraries closed.
The cuts total £149 million this year and at least the same next year, with every service affected.
The Labour-run council also backed a 21 percent council tax rise over two years that will hit ordinary people hard.
This required special permission from the government to increase the rate above the national cap because the council declared itself effectively bankrupt in September.
Outside the meeting, hundreds of protesters demanded rejection of the cuts. Unison member David Hughes urged the council to fight the government for “proper funding for Birmingham”.
Inside Labour councillor Lisa Trickett told the meeting, “We are going to have to pass a budget that will play untold havoc on people’s lives. How did we get to this state of dysfunctionality and collective despair?”
Trickett added, “We cannot escape the massive toll austerity has had on this city and the services that its communities depend upon. Close to half of Birmingham’s children are classed as being in poverty.
“The Joseph Rowntree Foundation tells us that many families can now be classified as destitute—a term that we had once consigned to history lessons, Orwell or Dickens. This is social failure at scale.”
But every Labour councillor present in the council chamber voted for the cuts and tax rise package. They have abandoned any right to say they are standing up for Birmingham’s working class.
When the council went bankrupt last year, council leaders linked the financial collapse to a huge bill to settle equal pay claims. The only reason that the council owes money is that for years it has paid women less than men doing comparable jobs.
Justice, equality and compensation for past discrimination should be basic principles for a Labour council.
Council workers in the GMB union have shown they want to take industrial action over equal pay claims. In a consultative ballot, they voted 87 percent for strikes.
If a formal ballot confirms the move, action is set to hit schools first, followed by other sections.
The union is demanding a timetable for settling the equal pay liability, now estimated to be more than £867 million.
All the unions should be spearheading a mass revolt against cuts and to win on equal pay. But they are desperately slow to launch such a serious fight.
They may be hoping that a Labour government will save them. But to win extra money requires a fight now.
Birmingham is one stark example of a wider pattern.
Labour-led Nottingham city council on Monday voted through £53 million cuts to jobs and services.
Councillor Shuguftah Quddoos, the Sheriff of Nottingham, was the only Labour member who voted against the cuts. She said she could not “in good conscience” support cuts she felt would harm the city.
Labour said it expected its members to set a “responsible and legal budget”. A spokesperson said that Quddous has now been suspended from the council’s Labour group and the party as a whole. She was right to oppose the cuts and it’s shameful that Labour is a transmission belt for Tory austerity.
Plans for the year from April include hundreds of job losses and cuts to social care and youth services.
Across Britain, it’s time to stop implementing the cuts and instead to resist them.
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