News from Leicester

July 2003 News - Updated 8/7/2003

New Liberal council brings cuts, privatisation and rises for "fat-cats"

If you type the word “Libs” into my mobile phone, the “intelligent texting” spells “liar”. Very perceptive my phone! The Liberals, with Tory support, now control Leicester City Council. They won in May on the back of a campaign against the cuts the previous Labour council had made.
They pointed to the closure of 6 secondary schools, the city centre swimming pool, a city centre leisure centre and skating rink, a proposal to build a privatised “City Academy” school and so on.
They gained votes in working class areas where there have never been councillors for anyone other than Labour in the past, as well as in middle class areas. They won a seat in Labour’s city centre Asian stronghold because of the anti war mood.
People voted for them believing them to be better. But within weeks of coming in they have proved what the Socialist Party said about them to be right. In our local election campaign leaflet we said “In Sheffield, Liverpool and other cities where they won control of councils they acted the same as all the others and proceeded with cuts to local services”. (See text of manifesto for proof!)
They have brought forward proposals to – shut old peoples’ homes, shut an estate based swimming pool, shut another sports centre, privatise the concert venue and all leisure facilities in Leicester, sell off £38 million pounds of council properties and assets, and privatise the whole council housing stock. They also say they need to make £10 millions of cuts.
To rub salt in the wounds they have just given the city’s chief executive a fat cat pay rise of £24,000 a year backdated to last April (handing him the nice sum of £43,000). He now gets £135,000 a year. As one Labour councillor pointed out the rise alone could clear the debt of a local primary school and eliminate the risk of redundancies. Of course we know that his party would do the same. When they were in power they made sure the council leader got a massive pay rise!
One of the sickening things is how the Labour group (and Local MPs like Patricia Hewitt) are now suddenly “left wing“ opponents of these plans! We don’t have memories that short!
We will get stuck into campaigns to try to halt these attacks on local people, but above all it proves the need to build a socialist alternative to all the main capitalist parties. Steve Score
 

French strike brought Leicester!

French trades unionists use the attacks we have suffered over the last few years in Britain as a way of motivating strikers in France. This was reported to people at a Socialist Party (SP) meeting in Leicester on 3 July by Virginie Pregny, a French trades union activist and socialist. Privatisation, public sector cuts, and attacks on the welfare state that we have faced here are also on the agenda over there.

Virginie has been on a speaking tour of Britain to explain the massive strike wave that has been going on in France involving millions of workers, largely unreported in the British media. She is a teacher, and delegated to the “Assemble Generale” in Rouen which coordinates strike action and also a member of the French section of the Committee for a Workers’ International – of which the British SP is part. She had been on strike for 5 weeks until the strikes were suspended for the summer holidays.

A number of issues have come together which unleashed a huge movement, which had the potential of developing into a general strike. The government is trying to force workers to work for longer before being entitled to a pension. In education the government is “decentralising” education, which is widely seen as a step towards privatisation. Sound familiar?

The difference in France is that the workers movement have not suffered defeats in struggle. Every time successive governments have tried to push these “neo-liberal” policies they have had to retreat in the face of strikes and demonstrations. The memory of May 1968, when a huge movement of General Strikes and demonstrations threatened the very existence of capitalism, still looms large in the memory of the French ruling class. But unless you change the system, the bosses will keep coming back with more attacks.

I believe that with the degeneration of New Labour, we need a new mass workers’ party in Britain, which can encompass many trends of socialist ideas and be a vehicle through which workers can struggle and debate ideas. But it seems much the same is needed in France. The equivalent of the Labour Party in France – the PSF (nothing to with the Socialist Party here!) and also the leaders of the Communist Party have in reality adopted a Blairite agenda. Although the far left got spectacular results in the presidential elections, showing the potential for support for real socialist ideas, the organisations concerned don’t seem to have taken advantage of that to encourage the creation of such a new party.

Although the strike movement has quietened down for the summer, it may well resurge in the autumn. The same attacks have been taking place all over Europe, provoking big strike waves in a number of places such as Austria etc. We discussed the idea of a possible coordinated day of strike action across Europe on the issue of pensions. What a huge step forward that would be!

Everyone enjoyed the meeting. We look forward to the time when workers in this country follow the lead of the French!
Steve Score

Earlier stories:

Socialist vote in Braunstone, May 2003

Anti-war protests

Massive schools strike in Leicester against the war

For more info on what we've been up to in the past read our archive page