SCOTTISH SOCIALISTS CHALLENGE THE COUNCIL MACHINE: for defiance, not destruction

SSP proud history of fighting for Council jobs & services

Despite threadbare resources, the SSP is challenging the mainstream parties in the May council elections across Scotland. 

From Nairn to Arran, Dundee to Drumchapel, and a dozen seats in between, we are putting up a socialist case that differs drastically from what's on offer from Labour and SNP contenders for council control. Socialist measures that would transform the lives of working class communities and 250,000 council workers alike, provided a mass movement is built to achieve the changes proposed.

Councils at Sharp End of Austerity 

Local government is at the sharp end of austerity, raining down from the Westminster Tories, left unsheltered by the SNP Holyrood government, who since 2010 have devolved £3billion in Tory cuts to councils, NHS boards and college authorities. 

The recent SNP/Scottish Green budget added £170m in council funding cuts to the catastrophe already visited upon local authorities in recent years - including the 40,000 job losses, the £1.4billion slashed off the wage bill, and the 9.2% cut (from £10.5bn to £9.5bn) in Scottish government funding of councils since 2010/11 (Accounts Commission Report, March 2017). 

The Fraser Allander Institute predicts a further £1billion will be hacked off council revenue funding from Holyrood by 2020. 

As we've often argued, the stark choice is between defiance and destruction; either devolved devastation, or defiance and defeat of the Tory butchers.

That choice applies equally to the Scottish government, whose mandate was won on claims to be anti-austerity, and to local councils of whatever political stripe. 

No Cuts Budgets: Win back our Stolen £Millions!

The SSP is contesting the council elections to broadcast our 100% anti-cuts, anti-austerity, anti-capitalist message... with a raft of positive, socialist alternatives that would easily shelter workers and communities from the storm of savage cuts originating in Westminster, passing through Holyrood unimpeded, blasting out from supine local councils, run by both Labour and the SNP. 

We are arguing for No Cuts Budgets, and for reversal of the cuts already agreed last month by councillors who've failed to stand up for the people they now beg votes off. But we don't see setting No Cuts budgets as an idle gesture, nor a folded arms exercise, but as the launchpad for a mighty battle by mobilized council workers and communities to "win back our stolen £millions", off Westminster and Holyrood. 

For Defiance, not Devolved Destruction

Axe The Council Tax - Make the Rich Pay

The SSP is championing a package of measures that would not only fund No Cuts budgets, standstill budgets, but would generate the resources to vastly expand jobs, local services and wage levels for council workers – including the band of super-exploited council apprentices. 

We have consistently fought for our fully-costed alternative to the regressive Council Tax; the progressive, income-based Scottish Service Tax, which would simultaneously mean about 80% of Scottish people paying less in bills, and literally double the money raised locally for jobs and services; from £2billion in Council Tax last year, to £4billion under our new tax proposal. 

Instead of adding 3% to the already-exorbitant Council Tax bills - in a taxation system that hammers low- and middle-income families far harder than the super-rich in their £million-plus mansions - we are demanding the Scottish government axe the Council Tax, and usher in a Scottish Service Tax based on ability to pay, exempting the first £11,000 income, but making the rich minority pay far greater sums, thereby doubling funds. 

Drop the Debt! Fund People's Services, not PFI Profits 

Socialist councillors would provide the backbone lacking in other parties to challenge another form of daylight robbery of local people by the profiteers. As the Accounts Commission has confirmed, Scottish local authorities have combined debts of £15.2billion, costing a colossal £1.5billion in debt repayments every single year. 

That's cash that could be invested in improved social care for children, disabled people and the elderly; housebuilding and renovation; schools; libraries; community facilities; local bus services; free school meals; sports and recreation; parks; environmental improvements; bin services; local fresh food markets in every housing district; job creation; wage rises instead of 8 years of wage cuts for council workers... 

But instead, that fortune is forked out to moneylenders, bankers and spivs who've plundered public resources for profits made out of long-ago council house building and, especially, the monumental ripoff of PFI/PPP schemes. 

PFI/PPP: The School of Daylight Robbery

Schools and hospitals built or renovated under PFI and PPP - initiated by John Major's Tories, but vastly expanded under Blair and Brown's Labour governments from 1997 - will cost Scottish taxpayers £30.2billion by the time 30-35 years of repayments ("unitary charges") have been completed. That's equivalent to the entire annual budget of the Scottish government. On average, that means for every £1 invested in schools or hospitals through PFI/PPP schemes in Scotland, we are paying back £6! 

In just 8 of Scotland's 32 councils alone, £1.8billion has already been handed over to the PFI spivs for construction or maintenance of schools, but a further £4.5billion is still owed to these big business loan sharks. For example, Edinburgh city council face charges of £64m for each of the 25 PFI schools; Glasgow £1.5billion for 30 PFI schools that initially cost £225m to construct in 2001. 

That's theft on a gargantuan scale. It's robbing not only this generation, but the next, and the one after, of resources desperately needed for useful jobs and services in the community.

44p in the £1 to Moneylenders!

The SSP is demanding that the debt is dropped; that councils discover the backbone to renegotiate and cancel historic debts, and the Scottish government aid them in this. There’s a clear precedent for dropping council debts; when the government imposed mass council housing stock transfers to the likes of Glasgow Housing Association in 2001, they wiped out debt to give that oversized quango a fresh start, lifting the burden of debts that had hung round the council’s neck, hampering their ability to build or renovate homes for rent.

Put simply, we demand an end to the crime where on average across Scotland, for every £1 paid by residents in Council Tax, 44p is handed over to the profiteering moneylenders. Imagine what could be done with all that dosh, swilling around in the bank accounts of, well, bankers, amongst others! 

Minimum £10Now! for Every Council Worker

High up amongst the unique policies being pushed by the SSP in the council elections is one that would transform the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of council staff, increase their spending power in the community, and generally boost local economies; our demand for a £10-an-hour minimum living wage for every council worker - with guaranteed equal pay for women. 

It would be easily affordable - provided a fight is put up for extra funding, for a return of the stolen £millions, to win back the £1billion stolen off councils by Holyrood on behalf of Westminster since 2010/11 alone. Or by cancelling the debts. Or through the Scottish Service Tax doubling the money locally raised. 

The Power to Guarantee £10Now!

But have councils the powers to introduce a £10 minimum? Yes! They don't have the power to legally insist on £10Now! across society; that's reserved to Westminster. But already 13 of the 32 councils bask in the kudos of being Accredited Living Wage Employers, paying the voluntary £8.45 minimum advocated by the Living Wage Foundation. 

In fact, in trying to impose a miserly 1% pay cap on council staff this year, they boast of offering an £8.51 minimum. So the SSP is demanding that councils introduce a £10 minimum - as a step towards ALL workers winning that, across all sectors - and enlist the support of the same staff in an almighty fight to fund the £10 minimum by cancelling ancient council debts, and winning back the funding stolen by governments who've chosen the path of austerity, planned poverty, to bail out the ailing, exploitative capitalist system.

Merseyside mass movements led by socialists beat Thatcher in 1980s

Socialist Councillors' Proud Tradition

The SSP stands in a long, proud socialist tradition of courageous men and women who've used their positions as councillors not to manage the machine, but to challenge the deprivation and class divisions imposed by the bigger, broader capitalist system. 

The socialist councillors of 1920s Poplar, London, who went to jail rather than attack the working class, coining the slogan "Better to Break the Law than Break the Poor" - and whose mobilization of local people won vast improvements in housing, wages and services. 

The 1970s Clay Cross, Derbyshire, socialist councillors who refused to implement Tory rent rises, built council houses, vastly increased council workers' wages, and faced down the threat of jail to stand up for working class people. 

And especially the 1980s Liverpool socialist council, which led a mass movement of the Merseyside working class, beat back the notoriously hard-faced Maggie Thatcher government, and won £60million in government grants off Westminster to sustain an inspiring programme of radical reforms. Life-changing reforms, including 5,000 new council houses; an 8-year rent freeze; 12,000 new construction workers' jobs; new nurseries, leisure centres and parks; vastly improved schools and FE colleges; expanded services; and a £100-a-week minimum wage for a 35 hour week for its 31,000 staff. 

It can be done; it needs to be done; the alternative is devastation. 

Choose SSP #1 on May 4th

The choice on May 4th is fundamentally between a variety of mainstream parties, indulging in tribal warfare and largely manufactured differences on policy, but all wedded to obedience of the cuts handed down by the Westminster Tories - or socialist candidates prepared to help lead a movement to defy and defeat the Tory vandals. 

Every first (or even second) preference vote for the SSP is a statement of intent. A declaration of defiance of the endless round of cuts to jobs, facilities and services. An endorsement of policies that put the interests and livelihoods of working class communities and council workers before the profiteering and privileges of the PFI moneylenders, the bankers, and the 1% who wallow in obscene wealth through tax cuts at the expense of our daily living conditions. 

Choose a better life; choose socialism; vote SSP. Elect fighting, principled socialists.

DISARM THE KNIFE-WIELDING COUNCILLORS & MSPs

Defiance or destruction: that's the stark choice facing elected councillors and MSPs across Scotland as they debate the budgets for local councils in the context of the Scottish government's recent Local Authority Funding settlement. 

Defiance of Tory-initiated cuts to public sector jobs and services, or destruction of at least 20,000 council workers' jobs this year alone, and decimation of vital, lifeline services to children's education, and care services for children, frail elderly people, and vulnerable adults.

IN THE DEAD OF WINTER 

Every one of Scotland's 32 local councils is embroiled in decisions about this year's budget, to be voted on in the next few weeks. In the dead of winter, when most people were preparing their family Christmas, the Scottish government announced its budget, which included what John Swinney euphemistically termed "a challenging settlement for local authorities". In honest English, it actually means a 3.5% cut to council funding from Holyrood (which is overwhelmingly the main source of council funding); a loss of £350m this year alone. 

SNP DEVOLVE TORY CUTS 

The SNP rightly condemn the annual cuts to the block grant from Westminster. But when John Swinney and Nicola Sturgeon claim that they've been 'very fair' to councils, and that "local authorities' share of the budget has remained fairly steady" over the past five years, they're playing with words to hide the truth. Councils'  share might be similar, but with overall cuts to Scottish public spending as a whole, the savage truth is revealed by Audit Scotland in their 2015 Report: in just three years, from 2010 to 2013, Scottish government funding to councils was slashed by 8.5%. Even the SNP-Labour council in Edinburgh admits a fall of 14% in its real budget from Holyrood since 2010. 

And now a further 3.5% is to be hacked off last year's funding, which itself led to thousands of job losses, service cuts and exorbitant increases to service charges. Indeed, 40,000 local authority jobs have vanished in the past five years.  

NEW SAVAGERY IN 2016

The savagery facing Scotland's 250,000 council workers and communities depending on vital services this year and next makes the recent past look like a Golden Age! Cosla, which represents 28 of the 32 councils, has warned of 15,000 job losses. The union UNITE forecasts 20,000 - this year alone. 

And councils of all political complexions are plunging the knife like maniacs, with Labour-led Glasgow threatening 3,000 jobs to 'save' £131m this year; SNP-led Dundee seeking 'volunteers' for redundancy amongst its 6,000 non-teaching staff to slash £23m; and the SNP-Labour coalition in Edinburgh city council no longer guaranteeing that they'll avoid compulsory redundancies as they seek to butcher 2,000 jobs as part of this year's £141m cut. 

Vital services face decimation. One of the flagship policies of the SNP government is to close the education attainment gap between the richest kids and the rest; a gap that is yawning as wide as ever under their watch. Contrary to any such goal, even the Scottish Parliament Information Service (SPICE) reveals that the national education and lifelong learning budget is being cut by £83m (2.3%). In turn this threatens the loss of specialist teachers and support staff in most local authorities. 

WHAT TO DO INSTEAD??

So what should councils - and indeed the Scottish government - do, instead of meekly passing on a menu of brutality ultimately drawn up by Westminster's Tories? 

Some councils, such as Tory-led Moray and Independent-led Highlands, are threatening to defy the SNP government's 9-year-old council tax freeze. But the Council Tax is a pernicious, regressive means of collecting in £2billion for local authorities... still only about 15% of overall council funds, which predominantly depend on funds off Holyrood. So jacking up Council Tax bills (by 18% in the Moray Tories' plans!) will hit the poorest and middle-income households hardest.  

Putting up the Council Tax is death by financial strangulation rather than death by a thousand cuts. 

DON'T FREEZE THE COUNCIL TAX - BURY IT! 

On the other hand, the SNP's freeze on Council Tax bills also helps the better-off more than lower-income families, and adds to the squeeze on council spending, jobs, services.  

As the SSP has persistently argued, the Council Tax shouldn't be frozen, but put into cold storage, killed off, abolished, and urgently replaced by emergency legislation in the Scottish parliament with a progressive, income-based Scottish Service Tax - which we've demonstrated would mean 77% of people paying less, the very rich a damn sight more, with funds thereby raised for councils literally doubled, from £2billion to £4billion.  

SET 'NO CUTS' DEFIANCE BUDGETS 

More immediately, while pushing ahead with such a progressive form of local taxation reform, the Scottish government and local councils should refuse point blank to pass on Westminster's cuts and set No Cuts Defiance budgets. Not as a feeble political gesture, but as the starting gun for a massive campaign built amongst council workers and local communities to win back some of the £billions stolen off Scotland in recent years. 

The SNP swept the elections by claiming to be 'anti-austerity'. Jeremy Corbyn replicated that by storming into the Labour leadership position with his 'anti-austerity' message, which included a call on Labour councillors to "combine and refuse to implement Tory cuts." 

Both the SNP and Labour have a mandate to defy Tory austerity; now they need to start practicing what they preach. 

BUT WHAT IS A 'NO CUTS' BUDGET?

For several years the SSP has advocated Defiance Budgets, No Cuts Budgets, at both Scottish and council levels. But what do we mean? 

It means setting out spending plans that protect every single job, wage packet, local service and community facility. It doesn't even have the ambition of being a 'needs budget', or a 'people's budget', with advances and reforms; merely the modest aim of defending what little we already have.  

WIN BACK THE FUNDING SHORTFALL 

Then, due to successive years of cuts, that would leave an inevitable shortfall compared to income from government funding, council tax, service charges and rents. But instead of punishing the working class by hikes in Council Tax bills or service charges, we advocate a systematic mobilization of workers, user groups and communities to force funds out of the greedy fists of Westminster.  

But that would be illegal, and just lead to fines, sequestration and jail for councillors, cry the Labour (and SNP) benches. Wrong! On several counts, wrong!

In one of his disappointing retreats in the face of treachery in his own party and the media frenzy, Jeremy Corbyn has more recently circulated Labour councillors insisting they "must not set illegal budgets". There's no need for such capitulation to threats of being branded 'illegal'. 

DISMISS THE SCAREMONGERING ABOUT FINES AND JAILINGS!

For starters, councils (and the Scottish government) could temporarily fill much of the spending gap for this year's budgets by use of existing powers over their (annual!) underspend, reserves, borrowing powers and cancellation of debt repayments. On just the latter mechanism, since Scottish devolution, local authorities have forked out £3.6billion in interest charges on their £2.5billion debt!  

Such financial mechanisms would only be a very temporary reprieve, a delaying tactic to help mount a serious struggle to win back funding off the Tory thieves. They would not be a solution in themselves, but a means of buying some time to mobilize for the real solution: more funding from central government. 

And fines and sequestration of councillors were abolished in legislation 15 years ago, giving councillors more room for maneuver than the socialist councillors in Liverpool enjoyed in the 1980s.  

A MANDATE TO DEFY TORY CUTS 

In any case, MSPs and councillors weren't elected to obey David Cameron or George Osborne. Instead of whining about Tory austerity and then passing it on to local people and their own workforce, SNP and Labour politicians should discover the collective spine to stand up to the Tory cuts, defy them, set out a No Cuts budget, and then build a Scottish rebellion to force the Tories into retreat, to win back the funding to balance the books. 

IT CAN AND HAS BEEN DONE!

It could be done. It has been done. I was at the heart of the mass movement in Liverpool which involved regular workplace mass meetings, college students meetings, public rallies in the communities, one-day regional general strikes and demos of up to 50,000 in Liverpool in the '80s. The result? Working class people won back over £60million (about £100m in today's money) off the hard-faced Maggie Thatcher - through a mass struggle inspired by a group of socialist councillors prepared to defy the Tories and go all the way to win the funds to vastly improve working class people's lives, housing, jobs and incomes. 

And that was in one city, smaller than Glasgow. Imagine even a few councils in Scotland, in alliance with the Scottish government, staging the equivalent defiance, demanding back some of our stolen £billions, from the far-weaker Tory government of Cameron? 

MAKE COUNCILLORS & MSPs STAND UP - OR STAND ASIDE FOR THOSE PREPARED TO FIGHT

As we head towards the budget-making meetings, workers, communities and socialists should pound Labour and SNP councillors and MSPs to stand up for the working class majority, defy Tory cuts, and set out on the road to a mass struggle that could defeat the worst savagery in at least a generation. 

And hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully! If these politicians fail to give a lead, and bow the knee to Westminster cuts, they should be forcibly reminded of the forthcoming Scottish elections, where the SSP and other socialists will advocate precisely the option of defiance, not destruction.