Fight Devastating Spending Cuts

At this point, it just seems like a sick joke. The Tories swing the axe down again in their grim carnival of cuts. In this financial year alone the government wants £3 billion of cuts from ‘non-protected’ departments.

First a March budget, now a surprise June budget. Closely followed by the July budget to detail £13 billion cuts over the next two years. This is on top of the previously announced £12 billion cuts in welfare spending.

Chancellor, you’re spoiling us! I can’t wait for August, September, October… although something tells me that pay rise I asked for isn’t on the cards.

No justice

Tory Chancellor George Osborne’s ‘surprise’ statement last week came as no surprise to anyone. In reality, £3 billion is a fraction of what the government want to fast-track before the big hit in the July budget.

The unveiling of fresh cuts heralds a special sort of dread. £450 million from education, £200 million from health, £230 million from local government – with potential cuts to protective children’s services as the bitter taste of establishment sex abuse scandals still lingers in our mouths.

In the Ministry of Justice, where I work, £249 million is to be cut. A spokesperson gave ‘renegotiating staff contracts’ as an example of how cuts would be made. And that’s what it boils down to – no jobs and no justice.

Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has released a report stating that the approach of cutting the national debt ‘may not be the best’.

However, the IMF is not rushing to the aid of the working class and poor, but rather the aid of the capitalist system. Their plea is not for governments to stop attacking workers but to make it less obvious!

Five more years of Tory misrule is not an option. Trade unionists will march on 20 June against Tory austerity, but we can’t to let it end there. More urgent than ever this struggle must be taken into our workplaces, to hit them where it hurts with coordinated strike action.

Through organisation in the anti-poll tax movement we brought down Thatcher. Cameron and Osborne are also ripe for the toppling.

Tessa Warrington, the author of this article, was interviewed by BBC Radio Leicester at 8.20am this morning.