SNP and Labour councils pass on Tory cuts – Build a new workers’ party

Matt Dobson reports

This year’s Scottish government budget is passing through Holyrood with the support of SNP and Scottish Green MSPs. For local government, it will mean a real terms cut of £95 million to revenue budgets and a £117 million slice from capital spending.

Despite fanfare from the SNP and the Scottish Greens that this will “protect core services”, workers and communities are angry that further devastating cuts will come on the back of a decade of Tory austerity.

Councils are currently setting budgets which include cuts, service charge increases and punitive council tax rises. Glasgow, Edinburgh and North Lanarkshire for example agreed council tax hikes at or close to the maximum allowed of 4.8%. Effectively forcing workers and communities to bear the cost of keeping services running.

Alongside cuts to councils, the SNP-led Scottish government are increasingly exposed on the NHS, where nationally health boards are running deficits, making cuts and cannot staff GP services and out of hours provision. Integrated health and social care boards are also wielding the axe.

The SNP are under pressure on school funding, with the attainment gap widening, class sizes and teacher workload increasing and the “curriculum for excellence” widely deemed to be a failure.

Thousands are signing online petitions to save music tuition in schools. In many Scottish councils services are being removed or fees increasing beyond what is affordable.

catalogue of cuts

Both SNP and Labour councillors continue to be complicit in implementing cuts. Glasgow’s minority SNP administration, again with the support of the Greens, set a £26 million cuts budget which included 350 job losses.

There has been no consultation with staff trade unions over a £7.5 million cut to social work, £1 million removed from school staff and the closure of the Blairvadoch Outdoor Education Centre.

In North Lanarkshire, a minority Labour administration voted through £31 million cuts with the support of the Tories, again with no real consultation with the trade unions on job losses.

In Edinburgh, the SNP/ Labour coalition are cutting funding to school nurseries, Edinburgh Leisure and music tuition.

In the coming days more councils will set their budgets. The SNP in Dundee are discussing £17 million cuts and in Renfrewshire a possible £25 million cut with 130 job losses.

Labour administrations in North Ayrshire and Inverclyde will also be implementing austerity. Even in councils like West Dunbartonshire with a comparably lower level of cuts, the SNP administration is running down reserves along with a large council tax increase without fighting for more funding.

Labour councillors 

In a welcome change of approach, three Labour councillors affiliated with the Campaign for For Socialism (CFS), and who stood in support of Corbyn’s policies as general election candidates, have this year refused to vote for cuts budgets for the first time. All three broke Labour group discipline having previously voted for cuts budgets.

Gordon Munro in Edinburgh abstained on the SNP/Labour cuts budget. In North Lanarkshire, Angela Feeney “with a heavy heart” refused to support her party’s proposals. Glasgow councillor Matt Kerr walked out of the council chamber in opposition to the various cuts budgets on offer, including Labour’s alternative budget. He said: “I refuse to be an administrator for any more cuts”.

The Blairite right wing of Scottish Labour who politically dominate the council groups have denounced these councillors as “grandstanding”.

One councillor who had nominated Matt Kerr for the Scottish Deputy Leadership contest withdrew her support and now backs Blairite MSP Jackie Baillie.

The CFS, the People’s Assembly and the Morning Star newspaper have claimed the actions of these three councillors marks a shift in favour of a fight back by Labour in the council chambers. They have called for the trade union movement to back these councillors. “Left” Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard is so far is silent on the issue.

no cuts budgets needed

Socialist Party Scotland welcomes political opposition to cuts budgets from councillors and we would oppose any witch-hunt of councillors who refuse to vote for cuts. But we would go further and call on these councillors to advocate an alternative no cuts budget for their councils.

So far this has not happened. Individual protests by councillors are not a substitute for a strategy of building a mass campaign against cuts.

Why did these left councillors not link up with council workers and communities and put forward the alternative legal no cuts budget strategy that has been demanded consistently and for several years by the joint trade unions in Glasgow for example?

This is also the official position of the UK local government committees of Unison, Unite and the GMB and Unison Scotland. Councils could stop cuts and council tax rises by utilising financial mechanisms such as borrowing, debt management, reserves and cancellation of PFI/PPP.

They then could launch mass campaigns uniting with trade unions and communities to demand more funding from Holyrood. The Scottish government should do the same and use its income tax powers on the wealthy to fund public services.

Historically, the socialist Liverpool council in the 1980s was able to win more funding from the Thatcher government by refusing to implement cuts. Why not follow this road if enough is really enough?

Many trade unionists, workers and community activists in Glasgow are also pointing out that. despite this recent protest, Matt Kerr was part of the previous Labour administration that carried out several hundred million in cuts. He was also on the wrong side of bitter strikes in social work and over the privatisation of ICT services in Glasgow.

new workers’ party 

Such fighting policies of course are anathema to the majority of Labour politicians in Scotland. We would appeal to the left councillors to draw political conclusions about the viability of continuing as a small minority in a right wing dominated Scottish Labour party. 

If the likes of Keir Starmer and Jackie Ballie are elected to the Labour leadership in the UK and Scotland while openly support Labour councils implementing cuts, then these left councillors will have to draw the necessary conclusions.

Working-class communities in Scotland need a principled socialist and anti-austerity mass party that is prepared to defy the Tories. 

Socialist Party Scotland campaigns for a conference of trade unions, socialists and anti-austerity activists to build a new Scottish workers’ party with a socialist programme. And to discuss an electoral challenge to the parties of cuts at the Holyrood and Scottish council elections in 2021 and 2022.