In the recent local elections,
the Coalition parties took an electoral hammering to Labour’s gain. The
Conservatives and Lib Dems lost around 740 seats in total – and control of 13
councils – with Labour gaining 800 seats and majority control of 32 local
authorities
In the recent local elections,
the Coalition parties took an electoral hammering to Labour’s gain. The
Conservatives and Lib Dems lost around 740 seats in total – and control of 13
councils – with Labour gaining 800 seats and majority control of 32 local
authorities.
Despite the very narrow victory
of Boris Johnson over a divided Labour mayoral campaign that had been beset by internal
squabbles from the very beginning, the overall picture was one of an electorate
comprehensively rejecting the ConDems.
With a low turnout of 30-40%, it’s
clear that many are not motivated enough by Labour’s austerity-lite programme to
turn out in their droves to vote for the party. But the swing to Labour
represents the more politically advanced layers of workers turning toward the
mass party of their class in a bid to get rid of the Coalition parties. This
comes after the largest TUC-called demonstration in March of last year – with
nearly a million on the streets of London protesting against the agenda of
austerity – as well as mass strike action in November, with the highest number
of workers out on strike in Britain in a single day since the revolutionary
turmoil of the 1926 General Strike. This had massive solidarity demos of
support across the UK, with polls showing that 60% of the population and 80% of
18-24 year olds supported the strike.
It is clear then that there is a deep
anger at the failures of the market and a greater level of class consciousness than
there was before. This represents a turn in the situation from even two or three
years ago, when the shock of the crisis had only just hit home. However,
despite this change in consciousness, the Labour Party leadership has lagged
well behind, with the initial token opposition to cuts earlier in Miliband’s
leadership giving way to a capitulation by the Labour frontbench earlier this
year when both Miliband and Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls stated that they would
not reverse the Coalition cuts if elected, as well as utopian nonsense about
providing more public services for less money.
Seats
It is in this context that Labour
have found themselves with a majority of seats in many councils up and down
Britain after the local elections early in May but without the will in the
leadership of the party to use that power to resist the Coalition. In some
areas they have not been able to win a majority, and in these areas the
question of whether or not to engage in the inevitable post-election horse
trading to find coalition partners has arisen.
In Aberdeen City Council, Labour
came out as the largest party in what was formerly a Lib Dem stronghold yet
have opted to go into coalition with…the Conservatives. In Stirling the same
agreement was reached. In Fife – formerly a mining area with a long history of
industrial militancy, where strong working class traditions persist – Labour
has agreed to govern as a minority administration with Conservative support. It
seems unthinkable that after an election where many turned out to vote Labour
with the intention of getting rid of the Tories and Lib Dems that Labour should
then invite the Tories to power through the back door. This is a betrayal of
those voters. But it also represents a crippling of Labour’s ability to resist ConDem
attacks – after all, they will be in coalition with one the parties that will
be loyally implementing those cuts.
We need not look far back into
history to see examples of this – the same is happening right now to the
various centre-left parties of government in Europe. In Ireland, Labour has
been a coalition partner to the right-wing Fine Gael and, with nought but
lip-service paid to Labour policies, has been forced to carry through massive
cuts. In Greece, PASOK was forced to push through various austerity measures
despite winning a large percentage of the vote in 2009 and ended up being
unceremoniously thumped at the Greek general election this year after entering
into coalition with right wing parties, dropping from 43% to 13% of the vote.
On that occasion, all the parties of the left that stood on a no-cuts platform
made massive gains, having around 30% of the Greek vote between them, with left
coalition Syriza coming second. If another election were to be held in Greece –
and, at the time of writing, this is almost a foregone conclusion as there can
be no coalition formed by any of the parties – Syriza would stand to win around
28% of the vote, making them the largest party. These examples should serve as
lessons to Labour.
History
In Labour’s own past, there have
been examples of Labour councils giving a fighting lead that has bolstered the
working class movement and helped aid their struggle. In Poplar after the First
World War the Labour council set budgets that saw greater provision for the poor,
equal pay for men and women and a minimum wage. The rise in local rates proposed
by government was rejected by the authority in 1921, going against their own party’s
leadership and a government in the process. The large mobilisation of workers in
support of these measures served as inspiration for several other Labour
councils during the turbulent 1920s carrying out similar policies in what
became known as ‘Poplarism’.
Likewise in Liverpool in the 1980s, the city
council rejected central government cuts, instead demolishing slum housing and
carrying out the largest programme of social home building in the city’s
history. Liverpool’s stand was one of the great images of working class
struggle against the Thatcher government in the 1980s along with the Miners’
Strike and the movement against the Poll Tax. Liverpool proved such a difficult
nut to crack for the supposedly mighty Thatcher that she had to leave the city
council alone only until the heroic struggle of the miners had been defeated.
The
weaknesses of both Poplar and Liverpool were that they were among the few
Labour-controlled councils to stand up and fight, with attacks from the right
wing of their own party and the fact few other councils were doing leaving them
isolated and so allowing them to eventually be defeated, but only after great
effort. The fact that Labour’s share of the vote in Liverpool increased
substantially during the 1980s at a time when Labour was repeatedly pummelled
nationally is testament to the way that such policies helped rally workers to
vote for the party as well as bolstering their sense of strength in their
class.
In the present circumstances we
need Labour councils across Britain to step up and do the same, but this time
united resolute so as to prevent the same defeats of the past. Despite the
scale of the cuts already implemented in their 2 years of power – with all
areas of the public sector feeling significant strain – only 12% of the
ConDems’ planned cuts have been implemented. Much, much more is to come, and
with sub-par economic performance – the weakest ‘recovery’ from an economic
crash in Britain in over 180 years – the demand for cuts from the markets after
2015 will not lessen. This means that if Labour form the next government – and
it is very likely Labour will be elected in 2015 on the back of massive
revulsion from the British public toward the Tories and their Lib Dem allies – the
pressure will be on them to implement cuts on a similar scale.
No cuts!
With this in mind we must
therefore call upon Labour councils up and down the UK to reject the cuts that
are demanded of them and provide a fighting lead. Although the economic powers
councils possess are limited, Labour was not elected to simply pass on Tory
cuts at a local level but to fight against them and this is what they must do.
During the 1980s the term ‘dented shield’ was used by Labour councils to
describe the policy of accepting some cuts at local level. This is identical to
Labour’s logic today of ‘kinder cuts’ or ‘slower and faster’ cuts that is used
to differentiate their almost identical economic policy from that of the
Tory-led government. However, a cut to essential public services cannot be ‘kind’
and if the history of Labour in the 1980s has shown us anything is that little
cuts here and there to begin with give way to further capitulations later on.
Given the extent of the economic crisis, this will be the case once more but on
a much more severe scale. Giving way here and there will simply show weakness
and give courage to the government to demand even greater sacrifices.
Therefore
where Labour has majority administrations it should reject these measures and propose
alternate budges that are to the benefit of working class people. Where Labour
do not have a majority of seats they should at very least try and govern as a
minority but without making concessions to either the Con-Dems nor the SNP in
the case of Scotland, as to do so represents a compromising of the labour
movement’s position. In either case, Labour must use the powers that it has on
councils to put forward a needs-based budget – of holding down the regressive
council tax, of providing a ‘living wage’, of rejecting council staff redundancies,
of greater provision and building of social housing and of improved local
services such as education. In the coming period our Labour councils must not
bow down but instead stand up and fight!
