Sue Atkins, Southampton Socialist Party
The Tories, who have inflicted 14 years of cutbacks, are on their way out. A Labour-led government after 4 July would have the power to reimburse local councils the millions stolen by the Tories and fund local government so that services could be rebuilt. The money is there, in the hands of the super-rich, who have seen their wealth rise over the same period, while the rest of us struggle to pay our bills or put food on the table.
Starmer’s answer to fix local government funding? Not to provide the necessary funding by taking from the super-rich, as Jeremy Corbyn proposed in 2019, but to give “councils multi-year funding settlements and end[ing] wasteful competitive bidding”.
Local government accounts for 20% of all public funding – ending councils’ financial decline would materially improve the lives of working-class people in our communities. However, all the signals from Labour’s emphasis on “tough choices” and “fiscal responsibility” indicate that the squeeze will continue.
Council services throughout Britain hang in the balance. The local government funding crisis means 1 in 5 councils may have to issue section 114 notices in the next 18 months – meaning councils will only fund services they are legally obligated to. Commissioners are appointed to oversee a fire sale of assets and further slashing of services.
The real impact of the cuts
My local council, Southampton, has seen £500 million slashed from its funding over the last decade. And the impact of these cuts will be the same in councils up and down the country. With Labour in charge over this period we have seen the closure of all council youth services, the closure of the remaining residential care homes. 1,000 jobs have been lost as many services have been cut and closed. Children’s services are described as “a tower of Jenga held together by Sellotape”.
And all that has achieved is bringing the council to the brink of issuing a section 114 notice. To prevent this, a massive sale of assets is being prepared in complete secrecy due to “commercial sensitivity”. We cannot even see what in our city is being prepared for sale.
Councils can fight back
That is why we have argued and campaigned for the council to use its reserves and borrowing powers to avoid making cuts in the short term, while mounting a campaign among the trade unions and communities for support to demand the necessary funding from the government.
We did this under the Tories and, under an incoming Labour-led government, we will keep campaigning and demanding that councils refuse to make the cuts and fight for the services we need.
It was local campaigning that saw St. Mary’s Leisure Centre reopened, – the Venny adventure playground, Kentish Road Respite Centre and Oaklands Swimming Pool were saved from closure.
When local people and their trade unions got involved, they used their collective power to push back and change decisions, and if our council had harnessed this potential power and taken the fight to the government we could have been in a different situation to the sorry state of affairs today.
Housing is one of the main crises facing us, and local government could be instrumental in providing some of the answers. With over 7,000 families on the waiting list here in Southampton we urgently need more council homes at truly affordable rents. The council borrowed up to £200 million to invest in risky commercial properties, now making a loss, when this could instead have been used to build council homes. There are also 2,000 empty properties in Southampton, some of which could be brought into the council housing stock.
Social care and residential care homes are all privatised, enormously expensive and in short supply and is a major reason why so many people are occupying beds in hospital when they could be discharged into the community. In the 1970s, most were run by the council until outsourced by Thatcher’s ‘compulsory competitive tendering’ policy. So bring them back in-house with decent training, pay and permanent contracts for the staff. We would then have control over staffing and costs instead of serving the profits of private business.
Southampton, like so many cities, is choked with traffic and the pollution it causes. Buses could be an important way to reduce the cars in town, but the once-city-owned bus service is privatised. So the buses are not run as a service, but to maximise profit. A council-run bus service with decent pay and conditions for the staff would serve the community not make profits for private vampires.
These are but a few of the many issues that face local government – everything is broken. Socialist Party members have organised meetings to draw up a people’s budget, working out what people need. Councils should spend what is needed and present Starmer the bill.
We cannot go on. Millions will expect a real change from Tory rule. We have to organise to demand the new Labour-led government provides the necessary resources to undo a decade of austerity. We must be prepared to organise a fight for those resources through our trade unions and community organisations.
The bosses have three establishment parties that represent them, while the working class has no mass party of its own. I will be voting for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) in Southampton, which is the only party standing on a clear anti-war and anti-cuts programme. And after the election I will be fighting with fellow community members and trade unionists for the local services we need. Through the course of the battles ahead it will be necessary to lay the basis of a new mass political party that represents us – the working class – armed with a socialist programme. that will give us the means to build a society on the basis of our needs and put the horrors of capitalism behind us.
Councils willing to fight could:
- Take over empty properties to be used to house people on ever-growing council house waiting lists
- Bring social care back in-house, alongside transport, street cleaning and the raft of other services currently being consumed for profit by big business
- Reverse Tory austerity. Set needs-based budgets funding the services that people need, using reserves and borrowing powers, sending the bill to a future Labour-led government, and organise a campaign to demand they pay for it, not ordinary workers
