Archive for cuts

Public Meeting – Stop the pensions robbery, the fight goes on!

10/05/2012 Drew Walton No comments

Solidarity with UNITE, PCS and UCU members taking action on May 10th.

Go down to a local picket line and give the strikers your support this morning. There will be a rally with speakers from striking unions at the Oddfellows Club on Humberstone Gate at 12 noon (this is not hosted by Leicester Socialist Party).

Tuesday 15th May – Public Meeting, The Globe, Silver St 7pm (upstairs)

Stop the Pensions Robbery – the fight goes on!

Speaker – Tony Church (PCS)

The government are determined to force through proposals to slash public sector pensions. Public sector workers are being asked to work longer, pay more, get less – with the pension age being increased up to 68, employee contributions going up by around 50% and all for a smaller pension at the end of the working life for public sector workers.

In order to defeat the government, we need united strike action across the public sector, and support from the private sector. It is vital that we do not let the working class be divided in this battle.

The PCS, UCU and sections of UNITE are striking again today – let’s support them today and put pressure on those unions not taking part in action, to continue the fightback. This is a battle we must fight and win, as pension cuts will pave the way for further privatisation of our public services, making them more profitable for future takeovers.

Unlike New Labour’s Ed Milliband, who has not supported striking workers, the Socialist Party and Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition  fully back the strikes and calls for escalation of the struggle. We are opposed to all privatisation and cuts to our public services. To find out more about how we can unite workers across public and private sector trade unions, contact the NSSN.

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Oppose government attacks on benefit claimants.

12/04/2012 Drew Walton No comments

Anti-cuts and disabled activists protesting against Welfare Reform Bill, London 28.1.12 , photo Ben Robinson

Lucy Stokes will be speaking on cuts to benefits at our next Leicester Socialist Party meeting, which is at 7pm, in The Globe pub (upstairs) Silver St, Tuesday April 27th.

Benefit claimants have had to go through harsh medical assessments and a sea of red tape, courtesy of ATOS, the company which has administered the government’s attacks on people on benefits.

The Welfare Reform Bill is grossly unfair, attempting to label people on benefits as “scroungers”, who were falsely claiming allowances. It has resulted in an increase in attacks on disabled people, and caused stress, misery and hardship for claimants.

According to an estimate by the PCS union, the rich get away with evading tax to the tune of around £120bn a year, while the government’s own statistics show that just 0.4% of claimants attempt to defraud the DLA. Who are the real scroungers?

We are completely opposed to the Welfare Reform Bill, as it is a vicious attack on working class and disabled people. It is time disabled people, along with others in society, say that enough is enough and stop attempts to divide us. The disabled, workers, the unemployed, students and young people must unite to fight all cuts.

For more information – see a recent article in the socialist.

All are welcome to come to our meeting.

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Vote Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC)

05/04/2012 Dan Fahey No comments

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) is standing against all cuts to public services. Its candidates are ordinary working people and trade unionists. We stand for the millions, not the millionaires.

Train driver and Rail, Maritime and Transport workers union president, Alex Gordon, appeals to Londoners to vote for TUSC in the forthcoming Greater London Assembly (GLA) elections in May 2012.

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cuts, environment, trade unions, TUSC

Save Our NHS – the fight goes on!

22/03/2012 Drew Walton No comments

Leicester Socialist Party members attended a save the NHS public meeting called by the Labour MP Jon Ashworth. Over 250 people had turned up in attempt to save our National Health Service, to prevent further privatisation by multinational companies eager to exploit public services for profit. Ashworth had done a lot of work before the meeting and sent out letters explaining why he will oppose the health and social care bill. We questioned its timing. Nothing had been done until 72 hours before the bill is to be passed and Ashworth basically said that there is nothing we can do to stop it. Although he was critical of the Con-Dem’s demolition of our public services, predictably he failed to mention that Labour were responsible for NHS privatisation in the first place. He also forgot to mention that it was not in Labour’s interest to maintain a public health service, given their parasitic relationship with big business.

The general discussion went our way.  People were openly criticising Labour, fully aware of their history and the fact that they can’t provide solutions for public services. Several of our members were denied to speak by the chair, but one woman in the audience brought up the poll tax campaign as an example of how the people have defeated government bills before, even after they had been passed. This gave us the perfect opportunity to come in and point out that we were the leaders of that campaign.

Like the poll tax campaign, we argued for a mass grassroots movement opposing the bill where people have to get active in their community and local anti cuts groups. We leafleted for Leicestershire Against the Cuts, our future meetings and got a good response and new contacts.

People care about the NHS and the turnout in Leicester shows that they are willing to fight the government on this issue. Socialist Party activists all over the country need to intervene with the right arguments and demands. People are are looking for an alternative to failed Labour policies, and the Socialist Party and TUSC can play an important role in providing that alternative.

One person in the audience also commented that there was a surprising lack of youth involvement around the NHS bill. Although we had a youth representative present, the chair did not let her speak. A young female trade unionist also had her hand up to speak, but she did not get into the discussion either.

Young people do care about the NHS! Our party have several young trade unionists, fighting and campaigning for the NHS. There is also the example of the recent success of Youth Fight For Jobs’ campaign against the workfare scheme, which has forced many of the big companies to back down. Our organisation is full of young activists fighting day in and day out and organising. The NHS is an issue that can engage with and enthuse young people. Our job is to organise them and provide the right political solution.

We will keep on fighting for a NHS for the 99 % by our hard work within the Party, Youth Fight for Jobs and within Leicestershire Against the Cuts, a local anti-cuts group.

by Rebecca Christiansen, Leicester Socialist Party

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5th December – Public meeting – Fight till we win!

02/12/2011 Drew Walton No comments
Socialist Party public meeting – Leicester University, 7.30pm, Tuesday
5th December. (Venue TBC, but likely to be Ken Edwards Building).

On Wednesday around 3 million public service workers went on strike – the biggest day of action since 1926. In Leicester around 5000 trade unionists marched in one of the biggest rallies in the city for decades. We need to turn this into a movement to defeat not just the Tory / Lib Dem cuts but also to put forward a socialist alternative.

What programme does the Socialist Party put forward to stop attacks on pay and conditions? How can we put pressure on the leadership of trade unions to escalate the action if the government do not back down? What alternative do we pose to the argument that the cuts are a necessary evil and how can we stop the cuts?

We say that cuts are not necessary and that there is the wealth in society to provide a decent pension and well-paid employment for all, if the wealth were controlled by the vast majority of the population. Ordinary people did not cause the economic crisis, so they should not have to pay for it. We need a mass campaign and a mass political party to put across the ideas of socialism, rather than put up with the lesser evilism of New Labour and the Tories. Milliband does not support the strikers, so why should we support Labour? We argue that we need build working-class political representation.

Come along to the meeting and join in the discussion.

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Support striking public sector workers on November 30th

22/11/2011 Drew Walton No comments

Anger at the government’s attacks on pensions and public sector cuts have led to trade unions voting for the largest co-ordinated strike action in Britain since the general strike of 1926. 3-4 million public sector workers will be striking. We are not going to work until we are 68, or put up with cuts to vital services.

Unions on strike include UNISON, UNITE, GMB, the teachers’ unions and civil service unions. The National Shop Stewards Network has played an important role in lobbying the TUC to call for the public sector general strike in the first place.

Leicester Socialist Party will be supporting striking workers by offering solidarity on local picket lines from 7am and joining in the march and rally from High St to the Athena (assemble 11am outside the Orange Tree on Wednesday 30th). We will be marching in the Leicestershire Against The Cuts contingent.

Get involved

There is a joint trade union public meeting on 22nd November at the Adult Education Centre, Wellington St, 7.30pm.

Our usual branch meeting has been postponed to Wednesday 23rd November at the Turkey Café, Granby St, 7.30pm and the following Tuesday (29th November, 7.30pm) there will be an organising meeting to plan action on the 30th.

Leicestershire Against The Cuts are hosting an interactive meeting on Saturday 10th December to discuss the way forward for the campaign after November 30th. This will be held at the Adult Education Centre, Wellington St from 11am.

All welcome.

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We cannot work for nothing. Fully fund the NHS!

28/09/2011 Drew Walton No comments

SOCIALIST PARTY PUBLIC MEETING

TUESDAY 13TH SEPTEMBER, 7:30PM, F BAR, 95 WALNUT ST, LE2 7LA

The Chief Executive of UHL has threatened that staff will not be paid in August and September, if current spending rates continue at Leicester’s hospitals. Already, 200 staff have not been paid for overtime this month. Staff have been asked to take unpaid leave or reduce their hours.

The Socialist Party totally condemns this action and is calling a public meeting to launch a campaign to demand that staff receive their full pay.

Management are saying that not keeping to financial plans would have ‘terminal consequences’ for the hospital’s application to become a Foundation Trust. Instead of putting patient care first they are prioritising finances. It is dangerous to expect ‘efficiency savings’ to make up the shortfall when wards are already chronically under staffed.

Foundation Trusts will force hospitals to compete with each other rather than co-operate to provide the best care. They mean that hospitals could go bankrupt. In Leicester, UHL Trust has to make budget cuts, year on year over the next 5 years amounting to £158m, due to spending cuts from the government.

These cuts could be stopped, if UNISON, the main union in the NHS, had a fighting leadership, combined with industrial action by the other public sector unions. The Socialist Party calls for a 24-hour public sector general strike.

The Tories were lying when they said that they would not cut the NHS. Jobs will have to be slashed as a result. Yet the process of privatisation, encouraging hospitals to become Foundation Trusts began under Labour. All three main parties are in hock to the interests of big business – ordinary people need to build their own party to represent their interests.

The money is there to fully fund our public services. The government bailed out our banks with over £1 trillion. The economic crisis was caused by the rich and big business, not public sector workers. The money exists to pay for jobs, education and healthcare for all but it is the hands of tiny minority.

The Socialist Party is against all cuts in public services. We demand:

  • Staff to be guaranteed pay in accordance with their contracts, including overtime and enhancements.
  • Services should be properly funded and wards staffed to meet patient need, not financial profit.
  • For an all-members meeting of the trade unions to be held urgently to discuss action, including industrial action, to defeat these attacks.
  • No cuts to jobs and services.
  • No to Foundation Trusts and privatisation. For a fully publicly-funded, democratically run NHS.

The Socialist Party is part of the Committee for a Workers’ International which operates in 40 countries across the world. We need an international fightback against a rotten capitalist system, which will always seek to erode past gains made by working people, such as the NHS and the welfare state.

Read more about how the NHS could be transformed, with a socialist programme.

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Riots in Leicester: Display of anger amongst young people

10/08/2011 Becci Heagney No comments

Yesterday afternoon in Leicester, shops closed early as police gathered on the streets in anticipation that the wave of anger shown across the country would arrive in the city.

While a few groups of young people gathered around the clock tower, in Highfields the community centre held a meeting. They discussed how they should respond to the riots and the shocking number of people who have died at the hands of the police. Around 20 young people marched into town holding banners saying ‘Peace on the Streets’. Their aim was to speak to the youth thinking about rioting and convince them to protest peacefully.

Youth Fight for Jobs supporters and Socialist Party members went along to support the protest, which swelled to about 100 people. Many people there were looking for a way to fight back and organise around the outburst of anger being seen. There was interest in the Youth Fight for Jobs march against youth unemployment from Jarrow to London in October and people bought copies of our newsletter ‘The Spark’.

One of the organisers from Highfields Community Centre said to me:

“This has been a long time coming. Even since the last government, the Labour government back in 1997. The youth have no power, no direction , they’re full of anger. I’m upset about [the riots] but I’m not surprised and in a way it needs to be done for people to really wake up. It started as a peaceful protest over another incident. They needed an excuse. The youth have got a voice, they need to be heard.”

Then a few members of the English Defence League turned up, coming into the crowd and deliberately provoking the mainly Black and Asian youth by saying “I’m glad Mark Duggan got shot, he deserved it.” Once a few more had arrived they started chanting “EDL”. Understandably, the youth reacted to this. It was under a year ago when Highfields came under attack by an EDL protest. There was a small confrontation between the youth and the EDL until the police stepped in and pushed the protesters back.

The protest was then forced up the street by riot police and dogs as they tried to kettle the protest. Anger was then directed at the police with people chanting “justice” and calling them racist. One young man stood on a bench to read a poem about corruption in the police force – he was saying “if we can’t trust the police, what do we do? We come on to the streets and get justice ourselves.”

Eventually the protest was allowed to disperse. There were still groups of young people smashing windows and looting in Leicester late into the night but these were not connected to the organisers of the original protest.

Hypocritically, the EDL mobilised to act as vigilantes to protect Leicester against riots. They called on their members to patrol the streets, even saying that they should cancel all their ‘demonstrations’ in August to help the police! Last October they were not so concerned with smashing windows of takeaways and shops in the city, attacking innocent by-standers and attempting to attack the mosque in Highfields.

The EDL and their racist views do not represent working class people in Leicester who are concerned about the increased rioting in the city. It is not something organised by ‘Muslim groups’ as they are trying to portray. The protest that they attacked was peaceful, demanding that something is done to deal with the under-lying causes of the riots.

We need a community and trade union response to the riots, involving workers and youth. We do not condone the riots and violence that is taking place. But, it is happening for a reason. In Leicester, one third of those claiming Job Seekers Allowance are under 25. Highfields has the highest unemployment level in the city.

The government and the local Labour council should be investing in youth services and real jobs and a decent education for young people. The Jarrow March this year is an opportunity for young people to harness their anger in an organised and trade union backed campaign that is putting forward these demands.

The Socialist Party demands:

 

  • An independent trade union-led inquiry into the death of Mark Duggan and into the causes of and policing of the riots. Scrap the IPCC. We need police accountability through democratic control by local people.
  • End stop and search. No to section 60.
  • For control of the police to be placed under the auspices of democratically elected local committees involving representatives from trade unions, councils, tenants associations, and community organisations.
  • For the government to immediately cover the uninsured losses and repairs of all small businesses and homeowners affected by the riots.
  • For councils to immediately re-house those who lost their homes in the riots. For investment in social house building and renovation, creating jobs and improving health.
  • For the immediate reversal of the closure of local youth and Connexions services. Funding from central government to pay for it.
  • No to all cuts in jobs and public services. Free education and training for all. Reinstate EMA and abolish tuition fees. We demand huge public investment in job creation and services.
  • Build a mass campaign to fight for these demands but also to fight for socialist change in the way society is run, with democratic planning of how we use the wealth and resources of society – under working class control and management, not that of the millionaires.

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UHL: making staff and patients pay!

22/07/2011 Becci Heagney No comments

University Hospital Leicester trust has come up with a ’10 point plan’ of cuts because it says it overspent by £8m on the first few months of this year. The trust is applying to become a Foundation Trust and also needs to make £158m worth of cuts over the next five years as a result of the government’s spending cuts.

Yesterday, the Head of Finance Andrew Seddon announced to staff that there will be more than 400 jobs slashed by the end of March 2012. There will also be a rise in car-parking charges. This is on top of 200 staff not being paid for over-time for this month and being threatened they may not be paid at all next month!

This will mean that while hundreds of people will be thrown on the dole queue, there will be over-worked and under-paid staff in the hospitals who cannot give patients the care and attention they need. And patients and their friends and relatives will have to pay more to visit the hospital!

Liberal Democrat member, and candidate for the by-election in Leicester South this year, has been quoted in the Leicester Mercury as saying “I am disappointed that car parking charges will be going up but the reality is a choice between that and patient care.” The Socialist Party completely disagrees!

Billions of pounds go uncollected in tax each year, money that is owed to the country by the rich but is not paid. Yet the government is attacking public services and working class people rather than those who caused the economic crisis! There is enough money in the hands of the rich to provide good quality, free health care for all, including the ability to park at the hospital for free; staff can be employed on the basis of need and not profit – and receive the pay that they are entitled to!

A campaign of staff and service users should be launched to defend the NHS in Leicester. Unfortunately, the trade union that represents workers in the hospital, UNISON, has done little-to-nothing on this issue. UNISON members should be demanding that the union urgently holds an all-members meeting to discuss action to prevent these brutal attacks.

Socialist Party members in Leicester support Leicestershire Against the Cuts (LAC), a broad campaign against all cuts to jobs and services, no matter which party makes them. The group is holding an ‘Assembly Against the Cuts’ on 24th September at Highfields Community Centre (more details to follow). Staff and patients effected by these attacks should come along and join the fightback!

Visit the LAC website here.

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