Liverpool – can Labour have it both ways?

Some 2,500 people marched through Liverpool last Sunday in the city’s biggest anti-cuts demonstration so far.

The demonstration was called by the Labour-run city council, to demand a “fair deal” for Liverpool in the face of government funding cuts.

Labour has joined the Lib Dems and the Greens in a local coalition that intends to vote through the cuts. They joined the march.

On the protest there were many very angry people facing cuts to their adventure playgrounds, treatment centres, nurseries and more.

Labour council leader Joe Anderson told the crowd, “The cuts came from the government and the government alone.”

To those who said that he should not swing the Tory axe, he harked back to arguments used to attack the Labour council that opposed cuts in the 1980s.

He said, “The council would soon run out of funds to pay for the taxis to give out redundancy notices.”

Most of the crowd applauded him—but what will happen when this local coalition votes through the budget and people start losing their services?

A lobby of the council’s budget meeting has been called from 4pm on 2 March.

Hackney demo to stop cuts

over 600 people marched in Hackney, east London, last Saturday against the Labour council’s planned cuts

The protest finished at the town hall where speakers including Alex Gordon of the RMT union called for councillors to vote against cuts.

One Labour councillor, Ian Rathbone, who is one of six Hackney Labour councillors to sign a statement against the cuts, spoke. He called for a mass lobby of the town hall on 2 March to pressure him and others to vote the cuts down.