End the council cuts scandal
Jim McFarlane, Dundee City UNISON secretary (personal capacity)
Councils across Scotland are currently drawing up plans to make another round of massive cuts. The Scottish government budget announced in December will mean further cuts to jobs and services.
Over the last 15 years local councils have cut services to the bone.
Thousands of jobs have been lost and many services have disappeared. Other services have been outsourced or reduced to a bare minimum. The knock-on effect for local communities has been devastating.
Schools, libraries, community centres, care services, youth facilities, sports centres, refuse collection and lots more have been massively cut. These are services that working class communities in particular rely on.
Councillors from all the main parties, SNP, Labour, Tory, Lib Dem and Greens have meekly rubber stamped cuts budget year on year. They have all claimed to have no choice, The reality is they have offered no resistance.
If they were to put up even a fraction of the effort into fighting the cuts – for example using their powers to set a no cuts budget – as they do with coming up with ways of making the cuts then that would be a start.
As the cuts continue we are seeing the beginning of real struggles in working class communities to defend local services such as schools, libraries and community centres.
Hundreds have attended local public meetings in areas such as Douglas in the East End of Dundee to fight the closure of their community centre. There is real anger towards all the politicians responsible. They will pay a heavy price at the ballot box after taking votes for granted for too long.
The trade union movement can play a key role of building support and helping to link the different campaigns to fight together. Demonstrations and other forms of social protest and civil disobedience are inevitable.
Council trade unions should also play a pivotal role in supporting community struggles as well as looking to organise action to defend jobs and services.
Socialists and trade unionists should be urgently discussing an electoral challenge to all the cuts politicians. The failed capitalist parties have exposed themselves again and again.
The new Labour Government at Westminster are already unpopular and the SNP have seen their support evaporate after years of cuts to council funding.
Right wing forces such as Reform UK will be looking to capitalise amongst this chaos but they have no solutions and offer more of the same as well as rampant privatisation of public services.
The rich have never been richer. Profits are at record levels in many sectors. That wealth needs to be utilised for the benefit of all.
A mass struggle of workers and communities can help bring that about if this is linked to the building of a mass socialist organisation rooted in the trade unions and wider working class.
