The 4 May elections in England will see contests in 229 councils. The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) will be standing candidates in hundreds of seats to say that there is an alternative to Tory and Labour public service cuts and council tax rises.
Published below is a shortened and edited version of the opening contribution made by the TUSC national chairperson Dave Nellist to the discussion on the core policies platform (the common ground between all those who want to stand as TUSC candidates in the May local elections) at the TUSC conference on 4 February:
“There should be nothing inevitable about the poverty and suffering that has impacted working-class families by the cost-of-living crisis”.
“We know that trade unions are winning victories against individual employers. But there is another force within society that could be part of the working-class fightback: local government itself. As someone who spent 14 years as a Socialist Party councillor on Coventry City Council, I took inspiration from several battles of the past”.
“For example, Poplar council in east London in 1921. There, Labour councillors defied the government, the courts, and the Labour Party leadership. They called for the council to receive more income to tackle the area’s high unemployment, hunger and poverty, and to raise council workers’ wages, including equal pay for women workers. Three of the policies in the TUSC platform for May’s elections (see below) directly echo their struggle”.
“The councillors’ protest led to them being jailed. Thousands demonstrated in their favour. The councillors continued to run the council from their prison cells. They originated the phrase ‘it’s better to break the law than to break the poor’.”
“Fifty years later, in 1972, in the small Derbyshire town of Clay Cross, Labour councillors refused to implement the Tory Housing Finance Act, which required councils to raise rents by 50% to the average of private rents”.
“A government commissioner was sent into the town. The councillors refused to give that commissioner a desk, a chair or even a pencil! Two or more of our policies take inspiration from a town of 10,000 people and their fight against the imposition of rent rises”.
“Or the biggest example of all, in the mid-1980s, when the socialist councillors of Liverpool set a budget based on the real needs of the local population. They then led a battle against Margaret Thatcher for more funding and – just as an aside – today’s prime minister Rishi Sunak is no Margaret Thatcher! They won the funds necessary to build 5,000 council houses, five new sports centres, six new nurseries, and three new parks, and employed 10,000 workers a year to do the job. They showed how to mobilise a mass campaign around a needs budget and a serious fight for government funding”.
“So, the policies we’re putting before you today oppose those who claim nothing can be done against austerity. Whether in London boroughs, small towns, or major cities, we have a history in the labour and trade union movement of challenging that”.
“But such battles are not going to happen under today’s Labour, whose overriding priority is maintaining a ‘tight grip on public finance’. Our priorities would be different. Any successful TUSC councillor would call at their first council meeting for emergency measures so no one is cold, no one is hungry, and no one is homeless”.
“And councils do have powers and resources to deliver that. We give examples on the TUSC website, not only of demands to put but answers to the arguments that councils cannot do anything because of legal restrictions or the so-called threat of bankruptcy”. (See, for example, the 55-page briefing document, Preparing a No Cuts People’s Budget, at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/450.pdf).
“Councils have buildings that they can open up, not just as warm spaces but also as youth clubs, crèches, and social spaces for older people. They could house all homeless people indoors. They could give free school breakfasts, lunches and after-school meals, not just for the 195 official days of the school year but for all 365 days”.
“Councils should not outsource the social responsibility of providing a safety net to the charity workers of food banks. They should fund and democratically organise food distribution through rebuilt social services departments. Councils could now begin a mass home insulation programme, not just in a few pilot schemes”.
Can councils do this?
“Most councils had budgeted for 3% inflation this year. The government will give an extra 5.5% to local authorities, but only if they raise council tax by the maximum allowed 5%. We will oppose such council tax rises”.
“With inflation of 10% or more, local authorities’ finances are being hit. But councils have reserves. And in most local councils, those reserves have risen over the past three years. Councils also have borrowing powers. We’ll argue that councils should refuse to implement austerity and, in the first instance, use those reserves and borrowing powers instead”.
“But we also recognise that borrowing and using the reserves is not a long-term solution for the needs of local communities. To restore the libraries, youth clubs, and community centres – and rehire the hundreds of thousands of essential council workers that have been axed – we need a mass campaign, like Liverpool showed in the 1980s, to force the government to fund local services fully”.
“Our candidates will demand central government restores the cuts in local funding of over 50% since 2010. If mobilised and coordinated, councils could force concessions from this weak, Tory government”.
“Trade union struggle is becoming not only more widespread but more popular. Just look at the 43,000 new members who’ve joined the National Education Union in the past few weeks. Struggle inspires other workers to get involved”.
“Bold measures by councils to resist austerity would also inspire and draw in local and national support, as it did for Liverpool in the mid-1980s. Since 2019, the Tory government under successive prime ministers has made 30 U-turns. A concerted and coordinated campaign by local councils could force the government to pay up”.
“Unite the Union has an official policy for councils to set needs-based budgets, a policy that was campaigned for by TUSC supporters. We need to raise that idea in other unions as well. Keir Starmer’s Labour is preparing its local election campaign by promising Tory newspapers it would keep a firm grip on public finances. Labour is presenting itself in these elections as an alternative Tory party, not an alternative to the Tory party”.
“The struggle to defend local public services and budget for the needs of local communities should be raised in every town, city, and county in the May elections. With this local election platform as the common ground between all our candidates, TUSC will play its part in building a serious challenge to austerity”. ■
TUSC’s core policy platform for the May 2023 local elections
Vote for a socialist response to the cost-of-living crisis!
The poverty and suffering threatened by the cost-of-living crisis is not inevitable. Alongside industrial struggle, local government has the potential to be part of the working-class fightback against the Tories and the bosses trying to make us pay for the crisis and the chaos.
The 2023 council elections provide an opportunity to challenge those candidates from the establishment parties who claim there is nothing that can be done in the face of the historic erosion of our living standards. Councils in fact retain both significant powers and resources that can be used to make an immediate difference to peoples’ lives, as well as the ability to lead a campaign for central-government funding.
Local councils still own municipal buildings that could be opened up to run community services in warm spaces such as youth clubs, social spaces for older people, crèches, and so on. They could introduce free school breakfasts now – and not stop there, as whole families are going hungry. School kitchens could provide breakfast, lunch and an evening meal, and councils could link up with food banks to fund and democratically organise food distribution. Councils could begin now a mass programme of home insulation to reduce energy costs. And they have powers to award grants to those unable to pay sky-high bills.
Inflation is certainly hitting local government finances but councils still have borrowing powers and reserves which can be mobilised for an emergency programme of measures to stop inflation austerity leading to poverty, cold and homelessness – if the will to fight the government was there.
And bold measures by councils would give enormous confidence to workers, many already fighting back in the workplace, to participate in a mass campaign for government funding if councils organised it.
Most current councillors however, including unfortunately the majority of Labour’s 6,000 or so local representatives, would say they cannot use their legal authority to act without first getting funding guarantees from the government. They will say that the impact of inflation and the new round of austerity leave them with no choice but to cut. But they do have a choice.
Although the Tories have made deep cuts to councils since 2010 they still account for over one-fifth of all spending on public services, and retain responsibilities for adult social care, housing, education support, transport, recycling and rubbish collection, libraries and many other services. That’s a powerful position from which to organise a fightback. Councils should first spend what’s needed – and then organise a campaign to demand the money back from the government if there is any shortfall in meeting the bills.
The U-turns made by the Tory governments under Johnson, Truss and Sunak, spending billions when the pressure is on them, show that if just a handful of councils used the powers they have to refuse to implement any more cuts and spend what is necessary instead, the Tories could be forced to pay up.
The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) is an inclusive umbrella, not an exclusive one, with its banner available to be used on the ballot paper by every working-class fighter prepared to stand up to the capitalist establishment politicians at election time. Every trade unionist, anti-cuts campaigner, community and campus activist and socialists from any party or none who want to see an alternative to austerity politicians can become a TUSC candidate. But as a minimum commitment voters should know that any councillor elected under the TUSC banner will:
● Oppose all cuts and closures to council services, jobs, pay and conditions. We reject the claim that ‘some cuts’ are necessary to our services or that the Covid crisis and inflation austerity are a reason for attacks on working class people’s living standards.
● Support all workers’ struggles against government policies making ordinary people pay for the crisis, and for inflation-proof pay rises – no to fire and rehire.
● Fight for united working-class struggle against racism, sexism and all forms of oppression.
● Use councils’ powers to begin a mass building programme of eco-friendly affordable council homes to tackle the housing crisis.
● Oppose fracking and fight for local Climate Emergency plans, based on genuine democratic debate, that create new employment, reduce emissions and improve air quality and the local environment, while protecting the jobs, pay and conditions of all workers.
● Reject council tax, rent and service charge increases for working-class people to make up for cuts in central funding, support a redistributive revenue-raising system to finance local council services, and demand central government restores the cuts in funding it has imposed.
● Vote against the privatisation of council jobs and services, or the transfer of existing council services to social enterprises or ‘arms-length’ management organisations which are the first steps to their privatisation.
● Use all the legal powers available to councils to oppose both the cuts and government policies which centrally impose the transfer of public services to private bodies. This includes using whatever powers councils retain to refer local NHS decisions, and to initiate referenda and organise public commissions and consultations in campaigns to defend public services.
● Refuse to co-operate with commissioners sent by central government to attempt to impose cuts on local services.
● Vote for councils to refuse to implement austerity. TUSC councillors will support councils which in the first instance use their reserves and prudential borrowing powers to avoid making cuts. But we argue that the best way to mobilise the mass campaign that is necessary to defend and improve council services is to set a budget that meets the needs of the local community and demand that government funding makes up the shortfall.
Upon election TUSC councillors would at the first opportunity put forward for a vote in the council chamber the following immediate emergency measures for the council to take against cost-of-living suffering:
NO ONE TO BE COLD
Top up the Tory’s miserly Household Support Fund to provide grants for those unable to pay their bills; an emergency programme of home insulation; extend the opening of public buildings, including libraries, to provide staffed warm spaces and youth facilities.
NO ONE TO BE HUNGRY
Fund kitchens in schools and other services to introduce free breakfasts, lunches and evening meals; expand food banks and distribution of safe food ‘waste’ under democratic council control; fund public provision of high quality free care, including childcare, to prevent care cost-related hunger.
NO ONE TO BE HOMELESS
Use council licencing powers to cap rents, including for students, and ban evictions of those who fall into cost-of-living-related arrears; use compulsory-purchase orders to take over empty homes to house working-class families and young people in housing need; for an emergency shared-ownership programme to support struggling mortgage-holders; expand specialist domestic violence refuges and services.