Hundreds of trade unionists demand a no cuts budget in Glasgow
Matt Dobson reports
A historic anti-cuts lobby of the Glasgow City Council budget planning meeting took place on 29th October. All the local authority trade unions, Unison, Unite, GMB , EIS and UCATT united in demanding the Labour council set a no cuts budget. Over 350 trade unionists and anti–cuts campaigners massed outside the city chambers chanting “no more cuts”.
The unions mobilised for this demonstration with leaflets explaining how the Labour council could set an alternative, legal no cuts budget by using borrowing powers, reserves and recapitalisation.
The council could stand up and fight Tory austerity by using these financial mechanisms rather than implementing £103 million cutbacks in 2016 -17, on top of £250 million axed over the last five years.
This would give space for a mass campaign by mobilising the workforce and communities to demand the return of funding stolen through austerity. The Labour council has falsely responded by saying this would be illegal.
Speakers from Unison, GMB, Unite and EIS all explained that no more cuts were needed and called for support from any group or individual councillor to demonstrate support for a no cuts budget. Not one councillor joined the lobby.
Glasgow Unison branch secretary and Socialist Party Scotland member Brian Smith made the point that the unions were also calling on the SNP Scottish government to set a no cuts budget at Holyrood and use borrowing powers and their anti-austerity electoral mandate.
Brian highlighted that the SNP as well as Labour are making cuts where they are in power, including in Dundee and Edinburgh. Tellingly, the opposition SNP group and the Greens were absent from this lobby. Trade Union and Socialist Coalition supporters, including Socialist Party Scotland, were out in force. The lobby was widely covered by the press.
Liverpool
Later that evening a very successful Socialist Party Scotland public meeting entitled “Take the Liverpool Road – Defy Tory Austerity – Set No Cuts Budgets” with Tony Mulhearn, one of the leaders of the heroic 47 Liverpool socialist councillors who defied Thatcher in the 80’s, took place.
Tony made the point that the fighting stance of the Glasgow trade unions should be replicated across the country rather than unions being involved in the management of the cuts.
He also demanded that Jeremy Corbyn call on all Labour councils to set no cuts budgets and build a mass anti austerity fightback. A key theme of the meeting was that working class people given a lead are willing to fight back and struggle on a mass basis.
This was seen with the mass demonstrations and citywide general strikes that supported the Liverpool council’s socialist policies, with the working class giving fighting councillors massive votes despite slander from the right wing press and the Kinnock Labour leadership.
A glimpse of this was also seen in the mass public sector strike in 2011 which right wing trade union leaders then retreated. The lessons of Liverpool are vital today as is the need for co-ordinated action by the trade unions against austerity and a socialist alternative. Two people joined the Socialist Party Scotland on the night.
