May Day By-election Speech

On May 1, TUSC electoral candidate for the Abbey Ward by-election, Tessa Warrington, gave the following public speech at the Stocking Farm Community Centre.

I find it fitting that on International Workers’ Day we are meeting here to discuss the brutal attacks this feckless government is carrying out on working people in the form of the cuts.

This Con-Dem government HAS condemned us. By forcing the taxpayer to foot the bill of the bank bail-outs. By allowing big business and the super-rich to evade £120 billion in tax each year. By cutting the tax of the top bracket of the highest earners, whilst at the same time cutting the funding for public services and benefits that the majority of the population rely on.

But we’re lucky enough here in Leicester to have a majority Labour city council… aren’t we? 52 out of 54 councillors are Labour, and yet they have cut:

– adult social care
– support for FE students and children’s services
– cut the subsidies to local bus routes not deemed ‘profitable’ enough by the businesses that operate them, but services you and I depend upon
– provision for the homeless by a third, meaning the loss of over 200 hostel beds
– proposed closure and selling off of all Leicester’s public elderly care
homes
– council tax benefit – which was not only NOT a mandatory cut, but had been cut by 20%, the most of any council, above and beyond even that of the Tories.

The have sat on their hands and watched, having known FOR MONTHS prior to the coming-in of the bedroom tax, the sickening reality of which policy is that people who are already scraping by on the bare minimum are now being told to pay more that the simply have not got. Being forced to skip meals in order to keep a roof over the heads of themselves and their families. Who, if we’re honest, will not be pay. Will be faced with eviction from their homes. Will be made homeless – but oh wait! They can’t do that, because they just cut the homelessness  budget.

Because the reality is that there is nowhere else to go. There is no single-bed accommodation available for the numbers they want to turn out of their homes. What there is in Leicester is a massive shortage of affordable housing. In 2009 proposed the building of 800 affordable units. Of this, they have built 140, and now they are scaling back again, just as construction workers in Leicester have lost their jobs!

By not opposing the cuts, our Labour council is essentially telling us that it’s right that you and I should pay for the failures and deceit of the rich. So while they earn in the millions, we are paying with our health and with our homes.

The councillors try to wash their hands of carrying out the dirty work of the Con-Dems. ‘There’s nothing we can do’ they say – in that case, what’s the point of them being on the council at all?! I’ve heard them say that they have no real power, that they are merely ‘agents of the government’. Forgive my mistake, but I thought they were meant to be agents of the people!

Even now Miliband has done a U-turn and said they will scrap the bedroom tax if elected in 2015 – and let’s be clear, that’s only due to the massive pressure from the people, the pressure from below  -even now, our Labour councillors hesitate to take action.

Because it’s NOW, not in two years, but NOW that this vile tax needs to be chucked out, because it’s NOW that people are being affected, NOW that people are going to lose their homes. You can’t tell people ‘don’t worry, just don’t eat for two years, then we’ll sort it out’!

I am sick and tired of their excuses. I am sick of their endless prevarication. I will not wait whilst they ‘aim to discuss the idea of proposing the option to reconsider the possibility of reaching a decision. Maybe’. We’re heard it all before, the the consultation on the closure of Glenfield’s children’s heart unit, where they ask us our opinion, but when they don’t like it they go ahead and do what they were going to do all along anyway.

In the case of the bedroom tax, It is up to them to CHOOSE to implement the policy. They are the landlords of council housing, they could CHOOSE to reclassify all extra bedrooms as box rooms and not charge people. They could CHOOSE to not make any evictions for those that fall into arrears on their rent as a direct result of this vicious tax. They could CHOOSE to use some of the £10 million they have set aside in reserves this year alone to make up the shortfall. They could put pressure on the housing associations by leading the way with their example. They could NOT make the poor and the vulnerable pay for the crimes of the rich.

This is what TUSC says. This is what I would argue for on the council. Councillors should represent the people who elected them. They should NOT be looking after themselves, they should NOT be looking after their positions, they should NOT be looking after their career prospects and they should NOT be looking after their wallets.

The council needs to put pressure on the government to start making the rich pay for their mistakes, and not the rest of us, who have played no part in the creation of this crisis but seem to be paying a very dear price, and in order to put pressure on the government we must first put pressure on the council to oppose ALL the cuts. This is not our mess to clean up, it’s theirs, and by using the reserves to fend off further cuts and starting a campaign to link up with other councils to fight these brutal attacks we can force the government to make the rich pay for their own mess and show that an alternative to the cuts is possible.