CHOOSE SOCIALISM BEFORE AUSTERITY - DEFY ALL CUTS!

We live in the Age of Austerity. 
To working class people that means savage pay cuts since the 2008 bankers' crash to at least 2021, according to the Tory government's own forecasts. 

It means rampant job insecurity, underemployment, zero-hours and zero-rights contracts. 

It means literal starvation, despair, even suicide, as a result of the cruel sanctions regime against those unable to find the jobs that don't exist. 

It means privatisation for profit to dodge the deficits in council budgets, with catastrophic losses in pay, conditions and rights for workers, as well as slashed local services.
But there's no austerity for the rich. Barclays and Lloyds banks announce trebled profits (£3.2billion and £4.2billion, respectively) whilst at least 10,000 Scottish bank workers' jobs face slaughter. And the capitalist chief executives earned the average worker's annual wage of £28,200 in just their first three days back at work this year!

Austerity is not an act of God, nor a natural disaster, nor an unavoidable economic necessity. It's a choice, a political choice, made according to the class interests of the bankers and billionaires - hammering the real and only wealth creators, the working class, in order to turbocharge profits for the 1%.

SNP/Green Austerity Budget 
In Scotland, the ruling SNP government, with the aid of the Scottish Green party, has passed a Scottish budget that chooses to continue several previous years of austerity - despite smoke-and-mirror efforts to disguise their measures.
The SNP/Green deal squeezed an extra £160m for local authority funds compared to the SNP's original budget plans. But that cannot disguise their £170m cut to funding for Scotland's 32 councils. Against the devastating background of over £3billion in cuts to councils from 2010 up to 2019, a 10% cull in money for jobs and services, as researched by UNISON. 

Nor will Scotland's 240,000 council workers forget that the looming thousands of further job losses will pile up on top of the 40,000 already slashed since 2010, and the subsequent back-breaking workloads for those that remain. A crisis exacerbated by the huge loss of skills and experience in successive tranches of mass redundancy for the over-50s, in Glasgow and other councils.
And the reward? Another year of the Scottish government capping public sector pay at 1% for all earning over £22,000 - following an average loss of over £1,000 a year in real wages for council workers since 2010. 

Devolved Destruction 
Every year since they've been elected to the devolved Scottish government, successive Labour-Lib Dem and SNP administrations have devolved the devastation handed down from the Westminster block grant to Holyrood. Devolved decimation to councils, health boards, colleges and universities. This year, with the aid of the Scottish Greens. This year, despite the newly devolved powers over income tax bands and rates.

Failure to Tax the Rich 
The SNP/Green Scottish budget did nothing to tax the obscenely rich, freezing the additional rate threshold at £150,000 and the rate at 45%. The only, minuscule alteration to taxation of the better off was their decision to freeze the 40% tax rate threshold at £43,000, rather than raise it to £45,000 as the Westminster Tories have done, or inflation-proof the threshold at £43,430 as the SNP wanted to do. The 372,000 Scottish taxpayers enjoying incomes over £43,000 will hardly need to turn to food banks as a result of this featherlight 'sanction'! 

Labour: Taxing the Working Class 
Labour's alternative budget was little better; they wanted to raise income tax by 1p across the board; hammering low and middle income workers - already victims of a lost decade of stagnating wages - instead of mounting a genuine struggle to win back some of the £3billion stolen off Scotland by the Tories, as SSP MSPs would have fought for.

Rather than defy Tory cuts, the Scottish government has once again devolved the destruction. They've lifted the 8-year-old Council Tax freeze, allowing local councils to increase Council Tax bills by up to 3%.
It's like a game of pass the parcel in a bomb factory! 

Council Axewielders 
Labour, SNP and coalition-led councils are now spinelessly passing on the cuts in funding awards from Holyrood, with various combinations of job losses; attacks on workers' conditions; offloading services to Arms Length Organisations (ALEOs); outright privatisation; brutally reduced services and facilities in our communities; and income-slashing Council Tax increases. The SNP's jiggery pokery with figures assumes a full uptake of the maximum 3% rise on Council Tax bills by all 32 councils for £70m of their revenue. 

The mainstream parties play an elaborate blame game, with both eyes on May's council elections, whereas what's needed is an honest, hard-hitting explanation of the choices we face, and a call to mass action to defend every job, condition and service, as the basis of building a mass movement to enforce progressive taxation of the rich alongside the demand "Give us back our stolen £billions".

Give Us Back our Stolen £3bn!
The Scottish Socialist Party is selecting council election candidates to advocate this fighting alternative. To demand an end to meek compliance with Westminster butchery. For councils to set No Cuts Defiance budgets - or reverse planned cuts after the May elections. To instead unite with council workers' unions and community groups in coordinated battles to win back at least some of the tens of £millions stolen off each council, and the £3billion plundered from Scotland's budget since 2010. 

Axe the Council Tax - Make the Rich Pay
We aim to popularize the progressive alternative taxation system the SSP devised after our formation in 1998 - the income-based Scottish Service Tax, which would have doubled the money raised for local jobs and services last year compared with the regressive, unfair Council Tax: £4billion instead of £2billion.
We aim to expose the unaccountable, wage-cutting, service-slashing ALEOs that councils have hived off many services to, demanding a return to direct control by elected councillors and elected representatives of communities and council staff.

Choose a Decent Life - Choose Socialism!
The SSP are the modern inheritors of a long, proud socialist tradition of struggle through local government, whereby working class fighters don't seek election to run the machine, but to mobilize working class people in resistance and pursuit of radical reforms. The SSP won't just beg for the money to retain the status quo. We will appeal to communities and council workers to unite and defy all cuts, but also demand that councils blaze the trail against poverty pay and zero hours contracts, banning the latter and demanding the money to pay all council workers a £10-an-hour minimum wage, not years hence, but here and now!

You have a choice: austerity dressed up in various party colours, or socialism.

AN APPEAL TO SCOTLAND'S 'CORBYNISTAS': join with Scotland's already-existing socialist party

The SSP welcomes the massive boost to public debate around left-wing, anti-austerity, anti-war, socialist ideas that Jeremy Corbyn's leadership challenge and current re-election campaign has triggered. 

We welcome the emergence of those new activists motivated to defend Jeremy from the vitriolic attacks of the capitalists, their media and their treacherous cabal of supporters in Labour's right wing. 

Since our formation in 1998, the SSP has fearlessly defended socialism - whilst Scottish Labour has acted as barely-disguised Tories, abandoning the aims of Keir Hardie and countless other pioneers, slashing council jobs and services, threatening to jail workers who dared to strike against their municipal butchery, and spurning numerous opportunities to extend public ownership or reduce inequality.

Labour v. SSP: the Track Records
The SSP pioneered the battle to abolish NHS prescription charges - only to be voted down by Labour MSPs.

The SSP has campaigned for No Cuts budgets, in defiance of Tory cuts, and frequently led fellow-workers in strike action and communities in protests and sit-ins against Labour councils' closure of schools, community facilities and the slaughter of jobs and services.

The SSP has persistently campaigned for abolition of the Council Tax and for a replacement Scottish Service Tax based on income, which would make over 75% better off, make the rich cough up, and DOUBLE income for local jobs and services.
Scottish  Labour has defended the Council Tax, opposed its replacement - and recently proposed HIGHER taxes on ordinary workers to compensate for Westminster and Holyrood funding cuts.

                                                   Scottish Socialist Voice July 2014

In the Scottish Referendum, Scottish Labour alienated hundreds of thousands of workers and young people by their shameless collaboration with the reviled Tories in Better Together - the Tory-funded, Labour-fronted lie machine that confused enough people to make sure we now suffer years more of ruthless Tory dictatorship from Westminster.
In stark contrast, the SSP championed the aim of an independent socialist Scotland - a different vision entirely from the pro-capitalist aims of the SNP.

Alienated by Labour/Tory Collaboration 
Labour in Scotland will never be forgiven by swathes of working class people for helping the Tories to hold onto Scotland, cursing us with their blitz on benefits, war on workers' rights and slaughter of services and salaries.
That remains the case if Labour continues to deny the Scottish people the right to self-determination - or even a timely second referendum! - which unfortunately not only Kezia Dugdale and the Blairities do, but also Jeremy Corbyn and his most prominent allies in Scotland.
Failure to call for independence for Scotland - but giving it a distinctive socialist content, for an independent SOCIALIST Scotland that stands up for the millions, not the millionaires - is the Achilles heel of Scottish Labour, even if (as we hope) Jeremy is re-elected.

Unite in struggle 
The SSP offers the hand of friendship and solidarity in action to those - in the unions, Momentum, etc - who are fighting in defense of Corbyn.
We appeal to Corbyn supporters to arrange meetings with the SSP to discuss serious battle plans around our common aims and policies - such as the demand for a legally enforced £10 living minimum wage; renationalisation of our railways; a massive plan of public sector house-building; for scrapping Trident.

But we also appeal to the 'Corbynistas' to look beyond Jeremy's re-election, to the harsh choices that loom ahead for Scottish Labour. 

Not the Same Surge in Scotland
The social democratic face presented by the SNP has attracted 80,000 new members. But it's only one face of the pro-capitalist SNP, whose appalling role on CalMac ferries, ScotRail, privatization of Edinburgh hospitals and the business arm of Scottish Water, gives us glimpses of whose side they're really on. 

The SNP is not, and has never claimed to be, a socialist party.
However, for years the SNP has been to the left of Scottish Labour on most issues. That's why there's nothing like the same space, nor the same mass surge of new left activists behind Corbyn in Scotland as has occurred in England. 

For instance, whilst there's been a modest rise in Scottish Labour membership in this second wave - the #KeepCorbyn movement of recent months - the phenomenal surge to half a million members at UK level has left its Scottish branch marooned: Scottish Labour's share of the total British Labour Party membership has plummeted to its lowest ever level in history, below 4%. 

Labour's Capitalist Wing Won't Relent 
Scottish Labour faces an existential crisis that spells prolonged strife, civil war, and subsequent diminished electoral prospects.
The Scottish leadership around Kezia Dugdale and its sole remaining MP have set their face against Corbyn.
Labour's right wing, in Scotland as well as the Parliamentary Labour Party, will not cease to wage civil war against Corbyn and the left ideals he represents. 
They will be backed and boosted in their treacherous sabotage by a capitalist class and media which is terrified at the thought of a left-leaning Prime Minister and the expectations and demands for radical change which that would unleash amongst workers and young people.
These forces of capitalist backwardness have no intention of reversing the transformation of Labour into the reliable agency for the billionaires and bankers - the bastion against socialism - which it was moulded into under Blair and Brown.

Brutal Choices 
So Corbyn supporters face brutal choices, including:
- purge Labour of its capitalist wing (including through deselection of MPs, MSPs and councillors) to begin to construct the embryo of a socialist party, OR
- continue the road of retreat after retreat in a vain attempt to appease the right - as unfortunately Jeremy has tried over the last year.

Welcome Pledges - Unwelcome Retreats

The SSP welcomes the many relatively radical pledges in the #KeepCorbyn campaign, including building 500,000 new council houses over 5 years; rent controls; an end to NHS privatization; universal public childcare; an end to exploitative Zero Hours Contracts; collective bargaining for unions in workplaces over 250, with full rights from day one; "shrinking the gap between incomes"; re-nationalisation of railways. 

Less welcome is the retreat on Jeremy's manifesto of a year ago. For example, dropping immediate free education, abolition of tuition fees, with a living grant in favour of the vague "progressive restoration of free education";  and abandonment of public ownership of the energy giants. That's a worrying retreat in the face of right-wing vitriol.  

Challenging Capitalism 

Historic experiences prove that a strong, determined socialist party, rooted in the working class and undiluted socialist principles, is necessary to challenge and remove the dictatorship of capital - whose fangs have been bared at even the modest policies of Jeremy Corbyn. 

The past year's Niagara of bullying abuse and vilification is nothing compared to what a Corbyn-led Labour government would face - with strikes of investment amongst the capitalists' weapons of choice, as Labour governments in the 1960s and 1970s experienced. 

So dilution of policy pledges - in a vain attempt to appease the Blairites and their media chorus-line - is an ominous warning that unless a more resolute, unbending socialist leadership is forged, working people's hopes would be once more dashed on the rocks of retreat under enemy fire. 

For an Independent Socialist Scotland 

The most critical choice of all confronting the 'Corbynistas' is:
- continue to alienate huge swathes of the Scottish people by refusing to support a timely second referendum, let alone call for Scottish self-government (as Jeremy and his leading backers still insist on opposing), OR
- join with the SSP in a massive campaign for an independent socialist Scotland, as part of an alliance of socialist democracies across Europe. Thereby not only uphold democratic and socialist principles, but also win over radicalized workers and youth to the socialist banner, instead of them being fooled by the fake radicalism of the SNP leadership.

Scottish Labour a Million Miles from being Socialist 
At the heart of the problem facing those mobilized by the laudable, left-wing ideas expounded by Jeremy is this: Scottish Labour as it exists is a million miles removed from being a socialist party.
To begin to transform it into one would require naked civil war in the party, thereby reducing its chances of election, prolonging the Tory agony.

Why devote time and talent to what may well be a fruitless attempt to oust Labour's pro-capitalist right wing, or spend years trying to fashion genuine socialist policies in a Labour party which in any case, historically, has never used its positions in government to pursue comprehensive socialist measures?
Labour's history is littered with unfulfilled promises, anti-working class measures - and expulsions of socialists for being socialists, including many of us now in the leadership of the SSP!

Join With the SSP - Join the SSP 
Our appeal to those defending Jeremy's reelection is two-fold:
- combine with Scotland's existing socialist party, the SSP, in joint campaigns on immediate priority issues such as a £10 minimum now; democratic public ownership of rail and transport; opposition to all cuts at council or national level; and for an independent socialist Scotland, AND
- join Scotland's already existing socialist party, the SSP, with already existing socialist policies (which you can also influence and shape at our annual conferences), and an annually elected socialist leadership.

NEITHER COUNCIL CUTS NOR TAX HIKES - build mass defiance

As the butchery of jobs, services, community facilities, and workers' conditions looms large and ugly in the setting of Scotland's 32 council budgets, Labour and SNP politicians are knocking verbal lumps out of each other. 

But listening to their excuses for implementing savage cuts, and the feeble 'alternatives' they offer, we could be forgiven for quoting the lines from Macbeth's famous speech: 

"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." 

The noisy clash between the SNP government and the non-SNP controlled councils signifies nothing but cynical party political maneuvers for the May elections, rather than any

 genuinely principled opposition to the Tory-initiated butchery of jobs and services. 

Not one council controlled by Labour, or the SNP, or both combined, has shown the courage to actually refuse to implement cuts. Nor has the SNP government, despite its monolithic mandate from the Scottish people, gained largely by their election talk of being 'anti-austerity'. 

Context of Cuts 

Context is key to mapping a route out of this nightmare. The Tories treat cuts to the public sector as a virtue. The class of super-rich and capitalists they represent have little need of public services, which they regard as a nuisance in their pursuit of profit, and they deliberately dismantle the services provided by councils in order to 'justify' privatisation for profit. 

For the past 20-odd years, successive Tory and Labour governments have felt emboldened to slash council funding, in the knowledge the overwhelming majority of councillors would act as their meek servants, rather than leaders of a rebellion.

In Scotland, successive Labour-LibDem and SNP governments have rightly and noisily condemned cuts to Scotland's budget by Westminster... only to then quietly pass on the cuts, devolving their dirty work to councils, FE college boards and the likes. 

Cut to the Bone Marrow

In the past four years alone, at least £3billion has been hacked off the flesh and bone of council expenditure. Now they are down to the bone marrow, with a further £350million cuts announced by John Swinney in his latest Local Authority Funding Settlement. 

The SNP repeatedly trot out the mantra that "this is a challenging but fair settlement for local authorities", as if repetition will take the pain away from the communities and council workers thereby hammered to an extent not seen before. 

Estimates of 20,000 job losses over the next two years; savage cuts to education; library closures; reduced care services for the elderly, children or vulnerable people; school closures; removal of flexi-time for sections of council workers; monstrously increased workloads for those who remain in a job; sky-rocketing charges for use of those community facilities that aren't simply shut down... these are but samples of the consequences of the 'fair settlement for local authorities'.

SNP Council Tax Freeze 

The crunch question, however, is what to do to avoid this butchery. 

The SNP has persisted with its 9th year of the Council Tax freeze, arguing it helps families facing attacks on their income by the Tory government. Of course, low- and middle-income families welcome respite from mounting Council Tax bills. But the richest minority, living in the biggest houses, least in need of frontline services, gain more from the SNP's freeze. And whilst they claim to be compensating councils for it, in reality it has added to the pressure on budgets. 

Raising Council Tax Bills?

The 'alternative' of ending the freeze, jacking up Council Tax bills, is entirely unacceptable, however. Tory-led Moray council, and Independent-led Highlands & Islands council were amongst those threatening to end the freeze - with Moray proposing an 18% rise on household bills. Unfortunately, some trade union leaders also advocate this as an alternative to continued cuts. 

But that's robbing the working class with one hand in order to mitigate the theft of their jobs and incomes by the other hand. And since the Council Tax only accounts for about 15% of total council income, the increases to Council Tax bills would have to be massive in order to claw back the sums stolen from councils by central government. 

The Deal Imposed 

Not content with blowing apart Tory and Labour councillors' planned tax-hiking 'alternative' by argument, John Swinney and the SNP government imposed their Council Tax freeze and £350million cuts settlement with the brute force of threatened multiple penalties, adding up to an additional £408million of cuts. That is the sum they threatened to withdraw from social care and education budgets if councils defied their Council Tax freeze.

Labour Tax on Workers 

Amidst the furore between Holyrood and the Town Hall leaders, Scottish Labour stepped forward with a proposal they hoped would outflank the SNP from 'the left'; a 1% increase on all the bands of the Scottish Rate of Income Tax being partially devolved to Holyrood this April. 

On the surface, confronted by drastic cuts, some people might initially see this as a better alternative, with its claims to raise £430million. But just like the option of a hike in Council Tax bills, it would disproportionately hit lower-paid and middle-income workers. The rules of the Scottish Rate of Income Tax concession are that the top rate of tax can't be raised without the same increase on the lowest tax band. So workers on incomes between £11,000 and £20,000 would face tax increases, another form of pay cut. 

An Election Bung!

Conscious of this, Labour proposed a £100 annual rebate to people in that income bracket. Apart from failing to deliver any detail on how this would work, Labour utterly fails to answer the charge that over a third of all those eligible for other existing rebates - such as Working Tax Credit - never claims them, which means about 150,000 low-paid workers would pay Labour's tax hike but never get the £100 lump sum back. 

Furthermore, since the average wage in Scotland last year was £27,200, the average-paid worker would be clobbered by Labour's 'Tartan Tax' without even the sop of a £100 bung... a sweetener designed to win Labour votes, rather than win the fight against cuts. 

Labour and SNP Cuts 

Just like the SNP's 1999 'Penny for Scotland', this is a regressive proposal, once again robbing wages off the working class to ease the theft of services and jobs from the working class! 

Likewise, the SNP's attacks on Labour's tax proposal - as "shifting the burden of Tory austerity onto working people" - reeks of rank hypocrisy, and electioneering opportunism, since their £350million cuts package is a grand theft of wages, jobs and public services from the same working class majority population. 

Demand No Cuts Budgets 

So what should be done to avert these, the worst attacks on council provision in memory? 

Since our formation in 1998, the SSP has persistently opposed a single penny in cuts to services, a single job loss, and advocated a twin-track alternative: defiance of Tory-inspired cuts by setting 'No Cuts' budgets both at Scottish and local government levels, as a platform to launch a mass rebellion demanding back some of the £billions stolen by Westminster, and immediate legislation in the Scottish parliament to abolish the regressive Council Tax and replace it with a progressive, income-based Scottish Service Tax. That's the alternative we've argued for in council unions, in community groups, on the streets and through SSP councillor Jim Bollan in West Dumbarton.

Increasingly, trade unions representing council workers have adopted a version of this 'No Cuts Budget' strategy - including all five unions in Labour-controlled Glasgow city council and those in SNP-controlled Dundee city council. 

Instead of passing on the punishment meted out by the 'Westmonster' Tories, the SNP government and Labour/SNP councillors should discover the collective backbone to 'stand up for Scotland'; the Scotland of workers and working class communities, not the Scotland of the millionaires and billionaires who are dictating public policy to a compliant Cameron government. 

Setting No Cuts budgets wouldn't on its own transform people's lives, but it would be a firm launchpad for a serious struggle to win back the funds to save jobs, workers' conditions and local public services. 

Rejecting Cuts and Buying Time 

As a very short-term tactic, to buy the time to build such a mass campaign of council workers and communities - and to simultaneously pass legislation to replace the Council Tax with one based on ability to pay - MSPs and councillors could devise budgets that avoid cuts by use of reserves, budget underspends, rescheduled debt repayments, and borrowing powers. 

For instance, the Scottish government budget for 2014/15 was underspent by £350million. And that's an annual feature (it was £444million the previous year), as the SNP seek managerial respectability, instead of even contemplating leading a serious fight to defy and defeat Westminster's financial butchery. 

A year ago, Audit Scotland reported that Scotland's councils had a combined total of £1.8billion in what they termed 'useable reserves'. 

So there's no basis for the plea by SNP and Labour politicians that 'we have to balance the books'; that they're obliged to pass on Tory cuts.

There's plenty of room for short-term devices that would buy precious time to mount a ferocious campaign to win back some of the £billions stolen off Scotland to fund tax breaks for the millionaires and big corporations. And to push through an income-based Scottish Service Tax which - based on 2015 figures - would double local tax revenue from £2billion to £4billion, but would also mean 77% of people paying less for council services than they do in Council Tax.

Defiance not Destruction 

With the exception of the SSP's Jim Bollan, no councillor has so far emerged willing to lead this route out of the swamplands of cuts and tax hikes that hammer ordinary people. So trade unions, community campaigns and socialists need to pound the MSPs and councillors in the squabbling Labour and SNP camps with demands of defiance, instead of different roads to destruction for workers and those depending on local services. 

The SSP and other socialists are advocating this alternative, alongside growing numbers in the unions; principled opposition to the butchery dictated by Cameron's capitalist Cabinet, rather than the vote-seeking posturing of both Labour and the SNP leaderships. 

Lobbies and demos at council meetings should be just the start of a struggle to resist and defeat cuts, even if not a single local authority, when setting its budget, discovers the courage to defy Holyrood and Westminster. 

BUILD MASS DEFIANCE OF TORY CUTS

The thousands who join the Scotland United Against Austerity rally this Saturday, 20 June, in Glasgow's George Square will be united in sending a simple, stark message to the Tories: you have no mandate to rule and ruin Scotland, and we're not going to lie down and accept your butchery!
Only 10 per cent of Scotland's voters backed the Tories. Yet Cameron, Osborne and their Old-Etonian bootboys plan an assault on our lives that surpasses even the Dark Ages of Maggie Thatcher. 

SHOCK AND AWE
They plan a 100-day blitzkrieg on benefits, public spending and workers' rights. Virtually every day they declare another attack on yet another section of the working class, including the poorest and most vulnerable. 

details of the STUC rally HERE

They clearly hope to imitate the methods of George W Bush - who infamously deployed his 'shock and awe' military onslaught on Iraq - seeking to overwhelm resistance to their savagery by its sheer scale and speed.

Tory plans include £30billion cuts to public spending, £12billion of it from welfare.
An estimated £5billion slashed off in-work Tax Credits, hammering the lowest-paid, part-time workers, whilst making stomach-churning claims to being "one-nation Tories, party of the blue-collar worker".
Abolition of young people's housing benefit. A 40 per cent reduction of those getting Carers' Allowance. Cuts to child benefits.
The list marches on, mercilessly.

WORKPLACE DICTATORSHIP
The same government that only gained a derisory 24 per cent of all UK voters is hellbent on wiping out workers' rights, imposing near-impossible thresholds of a 50 per cent turnout, plus at least 40 per cent of all actual union members voting for industrial action, before it's legal.
Plus they plan to rip up facility time for elected union reps - to make them impotent in the face of escalating employers' attacks on workers - and to remove the ban on conscripting Agency workers to scab on strikes.
They want to impose workplace dictatorship, in pursuit of even bigger profits, lower wages and fewer jobs.



UNIONS HOLD THE KEY
With such brutality coming down the track at us, the STUC and the unions that together organise 630,000 Scottish workers have a pivotal part to play in resisting the Tory onslaught.
The 20 June rally must not be a mere token gesture, but the launchpad for a concerted, determined course of further action, building an alliance of trade unionists, people on benefits, communities, and socialists prepared to defy and defeat the Tories. 

No time should be wasted over the summer months; as the Tory blitzkrieg unfolds, the unions should prepare the grounds for united, militant action to halt Cameron's juggernaut.

BUDGET DAY
On Tory Emergency Budget day - 8 July - the SSP plans protests to highlight opposition to the butchery that Osborne will announce. How much more significant it would be if the STUC coordinated events across Scotland that day to give notice of the resistance that will be built over the next few weeks and months.

Potentially the STUC has unique power to spearhead a movement to stop austerity, raising concrete alternative policies at the same time as coordinating militant action.
Embracing 630,000 worker-members, it also has the advantage of not being officially tied to either the sinking ship of Labour, nor the SNP - which won a landslide by claiming to be anti-austerity, but has a real-life track record of passing on Westminster cuts at both Holyrood and council levels over the past four years. 

MAKE HOLYROOD DEFY CUTS!

The STUC and its affiliated unions need to call further mass events to bombard the Scottish government with demands to implement the mandate the SNP won for being anti-austerity, by refusing to implement a single penny of the budget cuts Scotland faces from Westminster.
They should demand the Scottish government set out spending plans this Autumn that, as a bare minimum, save all jobs and public services, and boost workers' pay - and build a mass Scots rebellion demanding the funds off Westminster for these plans, rather than devolve Tory cuts to councils, FE colleges, schools and other vital services.

ANOTHER £2-3billion IN CUTS
This is critical given the eye-watering scale of cuts forecast in new Scottish government spending projections. They expect a further cut of £2billion to Scotland's budget over the next 3 years; maybe even £3billion. At least half of that will hit councils.
As Professor John McLaren of Fiscal Affairs Scotland wrote, "Scotland, like the UK, is only about half way through the cuts to public services initiated by the UK government. Unlike earlier years it's expected to be day-to-day budgets, rather than capital budgets, that take the hit. At over 5 per cent in each of the next two years, the cuts could be more than double the average seen in the past four years."
Others have calculated the councils' share will mean the equivalent of losing 9,700 secondary teachers, plus 8,900 senior social workers, plus 16,000 cleansing department workers.

DEFY - OR DO TORIES' DIRTY WORK
So not only Holyrood, but local councillors, face a stark choice: stand up and defy the Tory cuts, building a mass movement of workers and communities to win back the stolen £billions off Westminster - or be forever condemned for carrying out the Tories' dirty work.

The STUC needs to launch a plan of action to push politicians into resistance, to make it politically unviable for the Tories to impose their plans. A whole nation in rebellion couldn't be ignored.

More "Defy the Tories" Demo pics here

At the first sign of any group of workers being blocked by anti-union laws, the STUC should build support for defiance of these laws. It's better to break bad laws that allow the Tories to break workers' backs!

WORKERS IN ACTION
Several sections of workers are courageously taking action already: Dundee hospital porters; Glasgow homeless caseworkers; Calmac ferry crews against attacks on pensions, conditions and the threat of privatisation. 

How much less painful would these workers' struggles be if the laws were scrapped that ban solidarity action by fellow-workers?
And neither Labour nor the SNP can lay claim to being on these workers' sides.
Glasgow city council is Labour, but has kept strikers out on picket lines for 12 weeks, as well as refusing to reinstate sacked UNISON rep Robert O'Donnell at the SECC, which the Labour council owns 91 per cent of!
The SNP government is heading towards privatisation of the Clyde and Hebrides ferries, as they did the Northern Isles ferries back in 2012.
The unions need to spearhead an independent political alternative that defends workers' rights and incomes. They should stop funding Labour's anti-working class lost cause; they should instead stand on the socialist principles of labour movement pioneers.

SCRAP THE COUNCIL TAX & DOUBLE THE MONEY!
The SSP has pioneered proposals that the STUC should take up and popularise; a fully-costed alternative way of funding councils, scrapping the unfair Council Tax, replacing it with an income-based Scottish Service Tax that would make 77 per cent of Scots better off, and literally double the funds for local jobs, wages and services. 

This proposal has the potential to help shield Scotland from austerity, especially as councils employ 247,000 workers and provide vital services.
Councillors - Labour, SNP or Green - face the stark choice of helping to build centres of resistance to the Tory austerity plans, building alliances of workers and communities to win the necessary funding, or they will be cursed for being central to the savagery of job losses and service decimation.

POWERS TO PROTECT WORKERS
But the issue of austerity cuts goes far beyond the boundaries of councils. The SSP appeals to trade unionists, community activists and their organisations - including the STUC - to join our campaign for powers to protect the Scottish working class to be devolved to the Scottish parliament. 

In facing the cataclysmic Tory attacks on jobs, wages, benefits and workers' rights, we demand devolution of the powers to reverse all welfare and benefits cuts; to defy pay cuts by implementing a Scottish £10 minimum wage for all aged 16 and over; to repeal all the anti-union laws and establish full workplace rights; to take all services, banks, energy and big industries into democratic public ownership, so as to create well-paid, secure jobs and begin to build a society that matches the needs of the millions, instead of the millionaires.

Join the SSP; help commit your trade union, your community group and your family to defiance of the Tories, and to the pursuit of socialist measures that could eradicate any and all excuses for cuts.
We live in an immensely rich nation: demand use of that wealth for the working-class majority population, not for the profits, perks and privileges of the stinking rich and their Tory henchmen.

DEFY ALL CUTS: there IS an alternative!

The SSP held a meeting in Glasgow at which Colin Fox gave an eye witness account about the elections in Greece last week.  Watch HERE

The contrast could not be starker. As the people of Greece give a resounding NO! to austerity, the councillors of Scotland are poised to vote YES to another bout of municipal butchery.
Council budgets are about to be set across the country, for the next 1-3 years. The common thread in all 32 council areas is cuts: cuts to jobs, cuts to vital services, cuts to the conditions of the workforce.
Tens of millions of pounds are being slashed off local public spending - despite us all being told there's an economic recovery.


A litany of slash-and-burn crimes

Glasgow city council - Labour controlled - are hacking another £100m off services and jobs over 3 years, on top of their previous cut of £175m since 2010. Vulnerable people, like those supported by Glasgow Association of Mental Health, are at the sharp end, as GAMH's budget is reduced by 40 per cent.

Edinburgh city council - run by Labour and SNP - boast of "greater efficiency" and "improved customer services" as they lop £67m off spending and plan 1,200 job losses! You couldn't make it up; well, this coalition of cuts councillors have!

North Ayrshire - SNP the ruling party - threatens another £19m over 3 years, hitting education and social services hard. The Labour opposition condemn this in Press Releases, but turn up to budget meetings and vote for the cuts!

West Dunbartonshire - a Labour council - wants to add another £17m to previous cuts in one of Scotland's most deprived boroughs, with school closures and an end to funding for lifeline services through two local Women's Aid Centres amongst the victims.

Dundee - SNP-run - aims to slice £8.5m off services, with school closures thrown into the mix.

North Lanarkshire - one of Labour's last bastions - threatens 1,400 job losses, with £62m in cuts this year, about £73m in the next two years.


TINA: "there is no alternative"

The list goes on; a dreary litany of slash-and-burn by councillors of all the mainstream political parties - Tory, LibDem, Labour, even the SNP.

And they all sing the same background tune to their axe-swinging crusade: "we have a duty to balance the books", and their all-time favourite, "there is no alternative". The latter was also a favourite tune of the late, unlamented Margaret Thatcher as she put the boot into the working class in the 1980s; she even had her own acronym: TINA, 'there is no alternative'.

It seems it never occurs to these services-cutting, jobs-slashing councillors that they should adopt the stance of the Greek people, by saying NO to ALL cuts, defying the cuts handed down from the Tory dictatorship of and for the rich at Westminster, mounting a campaign to win back some of the £billions stolen off Scottish budgets and therefore Scottish councils over the years.

In the last 3 years alone, £3billion has been robbed off Scotland's budgets by the Westminster razor gang. As Unison reported last year, 39,300 council jobs have vanished since 2010, one of the human consequences of 'balancing the books'.

Colin Fox gave his eye witness account of the Greek elections to an audience at the Trades council, Glasgow.   Watch HERE

Strangling Women's Aid Centre funds

And this new round of slaughter to services will hit some of the people most in need of the social support a modern society should guarantee. For instance, 25,000 women in Scotland made their first contact with Women's Aid Centres last year, in desperate need of refuge for them and their children, as they flee domestic abuse. But in at least West Dunbartonshire, North Lanarkshire, North Ayrshire and Fife councils - a mixture of Labour and SNP administrations - funding for these lifeline refuges are being either slashed or entirely stopped - to 'balance the books'.


Putting the CON into CONsultation

The new modern method of implementing such cowardly butchery is to hold bogus 'public consultation' exercises. Councils have spent considerable sums in this charade, this pretense of giving 'choices' to the public.

As well as online voting, they hold public forums, sometimes with hi-tech electronic voting devices, where the elected councillors hide whilst unelected council officials carry the can, putting forward a long-list of cuts, asking people which cuts to carry out.


The councillors then issue glowing Press Releases about "the biggest consultation in the council's history", and effectively pass the blame for their own spineless acceptance of Westminster-inspired cuts to the average Joe or Josephine.

As I said in the recent live Radio Inverclyde debate with the Labour council leader Stephen McCabe, that's like offering somebody the choice of being executed by a firing squad or the hangman - but with no offer of staying alive!

These Labour (and SNP) councils have truly put the con into CONsultation!

People's BudgetsInstead of offering false 'choices' between cutting local schools or community facilities, teachers' jobs or street cleaning, larger school classes or cuts to women's refuges, elected councillors should be initiating genuine forums where People's Budgets could be debated, based on local needs and priorities, but underpinned by an expansion of funding from central government, rather than annual cuts.

Even at this eleventh hour in setting budgets, if Labour and SNP councillors discovered a collective spine they could as a minimum set No Cuts budgets, Defiance budgets which refuse to pass on the cuts issued by Westminster and meekly passed down by the Scottish government. Budgets with not a penny reduction in services, not a single job lost.


No Cuts Defiance Budgets

"But the money would run out if we did that" was the cry of Labour's Inverclyde council leader when we debated this option. Only if the councillors sat on their hands and did nothing!

If they were genuine about standing up for the people they got elected by, Labour and SNP councillors should link up with the council workforces - which constitutes a massive 246,000 workers in Scotland - through their trade unions, alongside user groups, tenants' groups and political parties dedicated to fighting the cuts, and mount a massive campaign to win back the £millions required to 'balance the books' without a single penny in cuts.

If the SNP Holyrood government was serious about standing up for Scotland, they would go beyond ritual condemnation of Westminster's cuts and mount a campaign of mass defiance, refusing to pass on a single penny of the Tory-LibDem Coalition's austerity, appealing to a population awoken by the recent Referendum to take to the streets demanding "Give us back our stolen £billions - bail out jobs and services, not bankers and the rich".

Scrap the Council Tax: tax the rich

And meantime, as a matter of urgency, the trade unions, community organisations, councillors and political parties should thrash out a progressive alternative means of funding councils.

Funds from the Scottish government account for about 80 per cent of all council budgets. The rest mostly comes from the Council Tax. But this is a brutally regressive tax system, where those on lower incomes pay disproportionately far more for local services than the richest do.

The SNP government has insisted on a freeze on Council Tax bills for several years. Families struggling to cope with household bills welcome this - although the richest gain most from the freeze. Labour's response is to demand an end to the Council Tax freeze - apparently so out of touch with working class lives that they're oblivious to the pain of increased bills their option would mean.

Another false choice: added financial pressure to cut jobs and services through the SNP freeze, or an Ice Age of further cuts to disposable incomes through Labour's increased Council Tax bills.

Scottish Service Tax

The SSP has pioneered and campaigned for the outright abolition of the regressive, unfair Council Tax since our founding aims were written in September 1998. We want it replaced by a progressive Scottish Service Tax, based on income, on the ability to pay. An income-based tax with rising bands and rates, making the rich pay their fair share.

The last time we costed this alternative - four years ago - it would have meant 80 per cent of people paying less, the rich minority paying a damned sight more, and the income for local jobs and services almost exactly doubling: £3.5billion a year from the Scottish Service Tax, compared to £1.8billion that year from the Council Tax.


Defy all cuts: imitate the courage of the Greeks

Contrary to the 'TINA' brigade of councillors, there clearly IS an alternative. But it takes a bit of courage, a spirit of defiance, a readiness to give a lead to people in opposition to ongoing assaults originating in Westminster.

It would be foolish to compare the crucifying savagery of the austerity imposed by the Greek equivalents of Tory and Labour - New Democracy and PASOK - with the cuts hammering the Scottish working class. But that does not excuse the cuts here, and in fact makes it all the more shameful that Labour and SNP councillors have yet to display an ounce of the spirit and courage of the Greek people, who have risen off their knees and said "enough is enough, no more cuts".

The SSP held a meeting in Glasgow at which Colin Fox gave an eye witness account about the elections in Greece last week.  Watch HERE

Public need, not private greed

The SSP proudly stands on the side of working class communities and council workers against this butchery, ready to join them in a campaign of defiance of all cuts, and with a fully-costed, progressive alternative means of funding an expansion of council jobs and services. If Syriza and the people of Greece dare to defy the IMF, EU bureaucrats and European Central Bank, surely we can defy and defeat the tin-pot Tory dictatorship of capital around Cameron, win back funding for jobs and services, and start to build a Scotland based on public need, not private greed?

MASS DEFIANCE - NOT DEVOLVED DECIMATION OF JOBS AND SERVICES!

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. 

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."

Mass Struggle on the streets of Glasgow, 2014

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.'

Heady Days: October 1986 - confirmation of our expulsion from Kinnock's Labour Party