The Alternative to Cuts!

According to a dull but informative report published in June by Her Majesty’s Treasury, the 2014-15 budget for the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) totaled £26.8 billion: that is £25.6 billion for local government and £1.2 billion for DCLG Communities. This official report, which was penned to justify cuts, then proudly announced that the Government intends to further slash this ever-decreasing budget to just £24.6 billion for the next financial year. Local government funding being reduced to £23.5 billion and communities funding to £1.1 billion (“Spending Round 2013”).

The inane rhetoric accompanying these ‘new’ planned attacks on normal (non-super-rich) people explains “how the Government will continue its ambitious programme of public service transformation.” Furthermore, although you might not have realised it, in the Con-Dem’s hazy, dream-like world of wealth aplenty: “Since 2010, the Government has improved the delivery and operation of all major public services.”

To put this savaging of local authority funding into perspective, just this year the richest 1,000 Britons saw their wealth expand by a whopping £35 billion. This makes it clear that the ongoing crisis facing public services has nothing to do with the need for austerity, but instead has everything to do with a major crisis of political representation.

Pathetically, Labour-controlled Council’s across the country — like Leicester — make the bizarre argument that their hands are tied by the Con-Dem Government. But this totally unnecessary pandering to our brutal millionaire overlords is of course not mandated from above, and can and should be challenged — as explained in the Socialist Party’s 2011 pamphlet “A Strategy To Defeat The Cuts.” Everything really depends on whom our Labour Councillors think they need to please and represent: the Government or their constituents?

The answer to this question is fairly obvious, so it seems more than likely that the unrepresented people of Leicester will need to stand working-class socialist alternatives against the Labour Party in any forthcoming elections: just as TUSC did in the Abbey Ward by-election earlier this year. But we can’t wait for such elections, and in the meantime we need to build a mass campaign that is capable of forcing the Leicester City Council to:

1. Refuse to make the cuts;
2. Use reserves, borrowing, and some of the money earmarked for projects like Jubilee Square to keep services running; and
3. Take on the Con-Dem Government to get back the cash they have stolen from us all!

If this sounds like a good plan then why not come along to the public meeting organised by the Socialist Party next Wednesday evening to discuss THE ALTERNATIVE TO THE CUTS and how we might save all our adventure playgrounds from our spineless Council (meet in the Richard III Pub on Highcross Street in town at 7.30pm).

Also don’t forget to get along to what will be a huge protest today at 4pm in Town Hall Square… see you there.

UPDATE :a video of today’s protest has now been posted above.