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. 

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.