As I listened to the BBC Radio 4 feature on 'The Mersey Militants' on Saturday 8th November, it filled me with a mixture of fond memories and fury.
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| Mass struggle won jobs and services in Liverpool 1984 |
Warm recollections of the titanic battles I took part in during the 1980s, as the Merseyside regional organiser of the socialists who led mass movements that defeated Thatcher's government.
Fond thoughts of the fighting spirit, camaraderie and rich lessons in working class struggle that the events of 1983-7 displayed, as the mass movement surrounding the socialist city council waged war against Maggie Thatcher's Tory government - and won dramatic reforms that transformed the lives of thousands of Scousers.
Irreplaceable experiences for anyone who aspires to change society through and with working people's struggles.
Fury at the obnoxious distortions peddled by the likes of the treacherous windbag, Labour leader at that time, Neil Kinnock. Even 30 years on it makes your blood boil to hear his sneering mis-representations of the genuine - and successful!- socialist struggle and marvellous class fighters involved in that chapter of history.
LESSONS OF STRUGGLES PAST
And while it was uplifting to hear the defiant defense of what we did then from a few of my socialist comrades of the time who were interviewed, it rankled to hear opponents distort our record, and others totally understate the critical role of socialist policies and organised socialists in successfully leading a movement of tens of thousands of 'ordinary' people who became 'extraordinary'.
Anyone curious to hear an account I gave of the Liverpool showdown, in a speech about five years ago at Campsies SSP, can listen to the podcast they made, which is the very first posting on this Blog.
But rather than expand on the unforgettable struggles of the Liverpool people that I had the privilege of being in the thick of, the BBC feature made me think once again how lessons from our history are invaluable to the struggles of today.
COUNCILS WIELD THE KNIFE
Councils across Scotland are poised to wield the knife to jobs and local services in a renewed round of municipal butchery. Councillors of all mainstream party colours - including not just Tory and LibDem, but also Labour and SNP - are preparing budgets for 2015/6 and subsequent years involving tens of millions of cuts in most areas, with hair-raising attacks on workforces and working class communities.
This assault includes £150m slashed next year in just a clutch of the bigger councils - on top of hundreds of millions in recent years; but the BBC describes this as "a drop in the ocean compared with the following years."
MUNICIPAL VANDALISM
Glasgow Labour council plans £71m cuts in the next two years, hard on the heels of £175m 'savings' since 2010! Job losses accompany attacks on the most vulnerable communities e.g. 40 per cent cuts to funding of Glasgow Association of Mental Health.
Numerous councils are slashing education, the single biggest council service. Highlands and Fife are amongst those proposing to cut the school week, with horrendous effects not only on kids' schooling but also parents' childcare and work arrangements.
Inverclyde has included the ingenious idea of abolishing head teachers in their primary schools.
High-performing East Renfrewshire plans to increase class sizes for S1 and S2 Maths and English from its current 20 maximum to 30, and wants kids to run school libraries while the council shed full-time librarians.
Libraries face municipal vandalism, for instance with seven Moray rural libraries targeted for closure.
Stirling council workers are in dispute over the council's attempts to impose literal pay cuts plus extend the working week by an hour; combined, that means at least a 4.5 per cent cut in hourly pay.
Across Scotland, council staff have suffered two years of zero pay increase followed by 1 per cent this year, alongside devastating staff reductions and subsequent crushing workloads for those who remain.
But now compulsory redundancies loom, unless a ferocious fight is mounted for the necessary funding.
WESTMINSTER CREATES CUTS - SNP PASSES THEM DOWN
These attacks are the result of spending cuts imposed by the Westminster dictatorship of and for the obscenely rich, which has chopped the block grant award to the Scottish government.
But amidst all the fanfares for the phenomenal growth of the SNP in membership and opinion polls, their Holyrood government is passing down these Tory cuts to councils, rather than mount a mass people's rebellion to save jobs, conditions and services.
DEFIANCE 'NO CUTS' BUDGETS
Assuredly, there is an alternative. The SSP has every year demanded that the Scottish government and local councillors should refuse to pass on Westminster's cuts, instead set No Cuts Defiance budgets, and then link up with council workers' unions and community user groups in a massive campaign to demand back the stolen £billions off Westminster to balance the books. Simultaneously, we have fought for the Scottish government to use its power over local taxation to abolish the unfair, regressive Council Tax and replace it with a progressive, income-based Scottish Service Tax.
SSP councillor Jim Bollan has pursued this alternative annually in West Dunbartonshire council, winning the support of tenants' organisations and all the council workers' trade unions - but not a majority of councillors, who hide behind talk of having to obey the law and avoid being jailed. In fact no such threat of imprisonment exists, provided they sought mass support, rather than conduct a folded-arms gesture.
LIVERPOOL DARED TO FIGHT
Thirty years ago the socialist council in one city, Liverpool, dared to fight the Iron Lady herself - arch Tory hate-figure Maggie Thatcher - and won, in 1984!
We gained about £65m in grants and concessions off the UK Tory government, allowing the council to not only avoid all cuts, but march forward with massive reforms, building 5,000 new council houses for rent, new schools and nurseries, expanded social services, alongside a freeze on rents and service charges, and the creation of 12,500 building workers' jobs.
And despite threats and surcharges, not one councillor was ever bankrupted or jailed; we built a mass movement around them, cudgeled the intransigent Tory government into retreat, and raised the cash to pay the councillors' surcharges, raising tens of thousands of working class people to their feet in the fightback. All that in one isolated city, smaller than Glasgow.
IMAGINE A NATION IN REVOLT
So imagine what a whole nation could achieve, if the SNP government, with the wind in its sails after the referendum, took this courageous course of defiance. But that requires the political will that flows from a vision of an entirely different kind of society.
Instead of heeding and applying this precedent, the SNP has passed on about £3billion of Westminster cuts in the past three years, and the recent Scottish government budget included a further £500m cuts.
It's true that without the powers of full independence, any Scottish government is hamstrung by the limitations of the block grant handed over by Westminster, and the Tories' austerity drive has horrific consequences for all the Scottish services and jobs dependent on this shrinking pot of money.
SNP LACK SOCIALIST VISION
But that's where the severe shortcomings, the lack of socialist vision, of the SNP government comes to bear down on us. Instead of just blaming Westminster for the cuts but then meekly passing them down to councils, NHS boards, colleges, etc, the SNP government should be defying the Tory cuts, refusing to implement them, mounting a campaign of the Scottish people, demanding back those stolen £billions - with rallies, mass demonstrations, strikes and occupations of threatened facilities.
Look at the panic-stricken retreats and promises of the Westminster cabal (Tory, LibDem and Labour) in the face of a threatened Yes vote - and then imagine the power to win back funding that has been used to cut taxes to the obscenely rich, if a Scots rebellion was led and encouraged by the elected Scottish government!
SCRAP THE COUNCIL TAX - TAX THE RICH
About 80 per cent of council funding comes from the Scottish government, most of the rest from the Council Tax.
Setting No Cuts Defiance budgets at Scottish and in turn council levels would also buy the time to rush through emergency legislation to abolish the hated, unequal Council Tax and introduce in its place a progressive, income-based Scottish Service Tax that could raise far greater funds for council jobs and services. That's what the SSP had in our founding programme back in 1998, which we then costed thoroughly with the help of economists.
The latest detailed figures we compiled - four years ago - show that far from Scotland suffering devastating cuts at local level, our income-based Scottish Service Tax would mean about 80 per cent of people paying less than they do under the Council Tax, the super-rich paying a damned sight more, with the net result of increasing council funding from £1.8billion to £3.4billion a year (in 2010 figures).
DEEP FREEZE COUNCIL TAX!
Back in the 2011 Holyrood elections, the SNP scented the popularity of the policy the SSP had been conducting street campaigns and battles inside the trade unions for, adopted a bastardized version of it, and won a massive increase in their vote by promising to scrap the Council Tax and introduce what they called 'a local income tax'.
But once elected, the SNP failed to pursue this plan, and instead introduced the Council Tax freeze. Welcome though it is to lower-income families to not face massive hikes in their bills, in fact this disproportionately helps the higher-income households, and adds another squeeze to council spending abilities.
The SSP would not endorse Labour's demand to end the freeze and let bills rip through the roof for ordinary families. But instead of freezing Council Tax bills, the SNP government should put the entire Council Tax system in deep freeze! Scrap it, and tax the rich minority their fair share instead, boosting annual income for local services and jobs.
GIVE US BACK THE STOLEN BILLIONS!
As council budgets are debated, we need trade unionists, community groups and councillors to back the call for No Cuts budgets to be set, Defiance Budgets, with plans laid for campaigning on the scale of the referendum in workplaces and communities around the central message of 'give us back our stolen £billions - and scrap the Council Tax, to instead tax the rich.'
Fury at the obnoxious distortions peddled by the likes of the treacherous windbag, Labour leader at that time, Neil Kinnock. Even 30 years on it makes your blood boil to hear his sneering mis-representations of the genuine - and successful!- socialist struggle and marvellous class fighters involved in that chapter of history.
LESSONS OF STRUGGLES PAST
And while it was uplifting to hear the defiant defense of what we did then from a few of my socialist comrades of the time who were interviewed, it rankled to hear opponents distort our record, and others totally understate the critical role of socialist policies and organised socialists in successfully leading a movement of tens of thousands of 'ordinary' people who became 'extraordinary'.
Anyone curious to hear an account I gave of the Liverpool showdown, in a speech about five years ago at Campsies SSP, can listen to the podcast they made, which is the very first posting on this Blog.
But rather than expand on the unforgettable struggles of the Liverpool people that I had the privilege of being in the thick of, the BBC feature made me think once again how lessons from our history are invaluable to the struggles of today.
COUNCILS WIELD THE KNIFE
Councils across Scotland are poised to wield the knife to jobs and local services in a renewed round of municipal butchery. Councillors of all mainstream party colours - including not just Tory and LibDem, but also Labour and SNP - are preparing budgets for 2015/6 and subsequent years involving tens of millions of cuts in most areas, with hair-raising attacks on workforces and working class communities.
This assault includes £150m slashed next year in just a clutch of the bigger councils - on top of hundreds of millions in recent years; but the BBC describes this as "a drop in the ocean compared with the following years."
 |
| Mass Struggle on the streets of Glasgow, 2014 |
Glasgow Labour council plans £71m cuts in the next two years, hard on the heels of £175m 'savings' since 2010! Job losses accompany attacks on the most vulnerable communities e.g. 40 per cent cuts to funding of Glasgow Association of Mental Health.
Numerous councils are slashing education, the single biggest council service. Highlands and Fife are amongst those proposing to cut the school week, with horrendous effects not only on kids' schooling but also parents' childcare and work arrangements.
Inverclyde has included the ingenious idea of abolishing head teachers in their primary schools.
High-performing East Renfrewshire plans to increase class sizes for S1 and S2 Maths and English from its current 20 maximum to 30, and wants kids to run school libraries while the council shed full-time librarians.
Libraries face municipal vandalism, for instance with seven Moray rural libraries targeted for closure.
Stirling council workers are in dispute over the council's attempts to impose literal pay cuts plus extend the working week by an hour; combined, that means at least a 4.5 per cent cut in hourly pay.
Across Scotland, council staff have suffered two years of zero pay increase followed by 1 per cent this year, alongside devastating staff reductions and subsequent crushing workloads for those who remain.
But now compulsory redundancies loom, unless a ferocious fight is mounted for the necessary funding.
WESTMINSTER CREATES CUTS - SNP PASSES THEM DOWN
These attacks are the result of spending cuts imposed by the Westminster dictatorship of and for the obscenely rich, which has chopped the block grant award to the Scottish government.
But amidst all the fanfares for the phenomenal growth of the SNP in membership and opinion polls, their Holyrood government is passing down these Tory cuts to councils, rather than mount a mass people's rebellion to save jobs, conditions and services.
DEFIANCE 'NO CUTS' BUDGETS
Assuredly, there is an alternative. The SSP has every year demanded that the Scottish government and local councillors should refuse to pass on Westminster's cuts, instead set No Cuts Defiance budgets, and then link up with council workers' unions and community user groups in a massive campaign to demand back the stolen £billions off Westminster to balance the books. Simultaneously, we have fought for the Scottish government to use its power over local taxation to abolish the unfair, regressive Council Tax and replace it with a progressive, income-based Scottish Service Tax.
SSP councillor Jim Bollan has pursued this alternative annually in West Dunbartonshire council, winning the support of tenants' organisations and all the council workers' trade unions - but not a majority of councillors, who hide behind talk of having to obey the law and avoid being jailed. In fact no such threat of imprisonment exists, provided they sought mass support, rather than conduct a folded-arms gesture.
LIVERPOOL DARED TO FIGHT
Thirty years ago the socialist council in one city, Liverpool, dared to fight the Iron Lady herself - arch Tory hate-figure Maggie Thatcher - and won, in 1984!
We gained about £65m in grants and concessions off the UK Tory government, allowing the council to not only avoid all cuts, but march forward with massive reforms, building 5,000 new council houses for rent, new schools and nurseries, expanded social services, alongside a freeze on rents and service charges, and the creation of 12,500 building workers' jobs.
And despite threats and surcharges, not one councillor was ever bankrupted or jailed; we built a mass movement around them, cudgeled the intransigent Tory government into retreat, and raised the cash to pay the councillors' surcharges, raising tens of thousands of working class people to their feet in the fightback. All that in one isolated city, smaller than Glasgow.
IMAGINE A NATION IN REVOLT
So imagine what a whole nation could achieve, if the SNP government, with the wind in its sails after the referendum, took this courageous course of defiance. But that requires the political will that flows from a vision of an entirely different kind of society.
Instead of heeding and applying this precedent, the SNP has passed on about £3billion of Westminster cuts in the past three years, and the recent Scottish government budget included a further £500m cuts.
It's true that without the powers of full independence, any Scottish government is hamstrung by the limitations of the block grant handed over by Westminster, and the Tories' austerity drive has horrific consequences for all the Scottish services and jobs dependent on this shrinking pot of money.
SNP LACK SOCIALIST VISION
But that's where the severe shortcomings, the lack of socialist vision, of the SNP government comes to bear down on us. Instead of just blaming Westminster for the cuts but then meekly passing them down to councils, NHS boards, colleges, etc, the SNP government should be defying the Tory cuts, refusing to implement them, mounting a campaign of the Scottish people, demanding back those stolen £billions - with rallies, mass demonstrations, strikes and occupations of threatened facilities.
Look at the panic-stricken retreats and promises of the Westminster cabal (Tory, LibDem and Labour) in the face of a threatened Yes vote - and then imagine the power to win back funding that has been used to cut taxes to the obscenely rich, if a Scots rebellion was led and encouraged by the elected Scottish government!
SCRAP THE COUNCIL TAX - TAX THE RICH
About 80 per cent of council funding comes from the Scottish government, most of the rest from the Council Tax.
Setting No Cuts Defiance budgets at Scottish and in turn council levels would also buy the time to rush through emergency legislation to abolish the hated, unequal Council Tax and introduce in its place a progressive, income-based Scottish Service Tax that could raise far greater funds for council jobs and services. That's what the SSP had in our founding programme back in 1998, which we then costed thoroughly with the help of economists.
The latest detailed figures we compiled - four years ago - show that far from Scotland suffering devastating cuts at local level, our income-based Scottish Service Tax would mean about 80 per cent of people paying less than they do under the Council Tax, the super-rich paying a damned sight more, with the net result of increasing council funding from £1.8billion to £3.4billion a year (in 2010 figures).
DEEP FREEZE COUNCIL TAX!
Back in the 2011 Holyrood elections, the SNP scented the popularity of the policy the SSP had been conducting street campaigns and battles inside the trade unions for, adopted a bastardized version of it, and won a massive increase in their vote by promising to scrap the Council Tax and introduce what they called 'a local income tax'.
But once elected, the SNP failed to pursue this plan, and instead introduced the Council Tax freeze. Welcome though it is to lower-income families to not face massive hikes in their bills, in fact this disproportionately helps the higher-income households, and adds another squeeze to council spending abilities.
The SSP would not endorse Labour's demand to end the freeze and let bills rip through the roof for ordinary families. But instead of freezing Council Tax bills, the SNP government should put the entire Council Tax system in deep freeze! Scrap it, and tax the rich minority their fair share instead, boosting annual income for local services and jobs.
GIVE US BACK THE STOLEN BILLIONS!
As council budgets are debated, we need trade unionists, community groups and councillors to back the call for No Cuts budgets to be set, Defiance Budgets, with plans laid for campaigning on the scale of the referendum in workplaces and communities around the central message of 'give us back our stolen £billions - and scrap the Council Tax, to instead tax the rich.'
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| Heady Days: October 1986 - confirmation of our expulsion from Kinnock's Labour Party |
PLEASE PLEASE STOP........we are in sight of the prize..the first time in hundreds of years.....HUNDREDS.!!!!
ReplyDeleteFor the sake of my grandfather, my father, me and MY CHILDREN all of whom who are not in the SNP for political reason, we are there to get our freedom. The fight is not about revolution it is about INDEPENDENCE. INDEPENDENCE. Not through threat or violence or strike or revolution comrade, it is about SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hello bowanarrow. I share you and your family's hunger for independence. But to win it we need to convince a majority that a radically better life is on offer than the crushing poverty and criminal inequality we face right now. That includes the defense and vast improvement of job opportunities and local services - the key point of this article. So if the SNP want to unite with the rest of us who refuse to meekly accept and pass on Westminster's butchery of council jobs and services, that would be hugely welcome.
ReplyDeleteBut that will mean they need to change course from what has happened in recent years, which I hope you and others in the SNP will demand they do. Otherwise not only will the SNP take the blame for Westminster cuts that they, the SNP, pass on, undermining the case for independence because many people will think 'what difference would it make to my livelihood' - but the very people most in need of change, the people who voted YES for change, will suffer terrible disillusionment.
And I'm bemused where you spot me calling for threats or violence! I am advocating determined resistance to the cuts, preferably with MSPs and councillors standing up and leading the way alongside council workers and communities - by all necessary NON-violent means we can muster. And the methods of the Liverpool victory I mention are entirely worthy of study, to see what can be applied here and now in Scotland.
We face a stark choice of struggle or starve. And the SNP government should use its mandate to defy and defeat the Tory Westminster cuts, or else they will deserve criticism for failing to keep the dream of a better life alive.