What Could "Left Unity" Mean for the Community Movement?

The other day I happened upon a new Facebook page and website for a group calling itself Left Unity. I was drawn to it because it spoke boldly of its desire to form a new political party of the left, severing for once and for all the irrational political umbilical chord that for so long has joined the British so-called “left” – reformist and so-called “revolutionary” - to the party that is called Labour.

It is by no means the first time such an idea has been mooted, of course. The recent history of our national politics has been littered with left groups which have half-heartedly gone it alone, with varying degrees of unsuccess. The problem has always been the same – the separation from Labour has been from the head but never from the heart, and as such any manifestations of independent activity have invariably been a cry for help rather than a serious and sustained effort to create a lasting left alternative both to the unashamed reaction of the Conservatives and to the capitalist establishment’s safety valve that is the Labour Party.

Left Unity has, from first impressions at least, the outward appearance of being something different. Mobilised around an appeal by television and film director Ken Loach for a new party of the left, it would appear already to have gained some considerable momentum, with a network of local and regional groups to which new names seem to be being added by the day. By any measure, and certainly by any comparison with earlier attempts to achieve the same end, this is pretty big stuff.

Personally I find myself wishing the new initiative every success, but from a safe distance. Although I reject the logic of capitalism and stand four-square with the forces of labour (small “l”) in its various battles I do not consider myself as being especially of the “left”. It’s not that I dislike what it stands for, I just seem instinctively to dislike the people it attracts.

In large part this could be a simple consequence of the treatment that I have personally received at the hands of much of it. A former extreme rightist who rejected unequivocally all things racist and fascist some two decades ago, I still have doors slammed in my face by local so-called “lefties” who seem to share an almost pathological dedication to the cause of keeping alive my 1980s incarnation as an NF rabble-rouser, for reasons which only a qualified shrink would venture to probe. Whilst this causes me no loss of sleep whatsoever it does make for an interesting psychological and sociological study of the mentality of those concerned.

There have, of course, been others formerly of the extreme right who have seen the light and whose bona fides have been accepted by the generally left-dominated anti-fascist movement. So why am I regarded differently?

The only possible, logical answer is that despite my unqualified rejection of racism and fascism I remained a fierce critic of the political establishment, and of Labour in particular (for the simple reason that Labour was the party in power in my own neighbourhood, to which I effectively retreated). There is absolutely nothing else that differentiates me from other former fascists who have gone on to be actively involved in the anti-fascist movement.

So in other words the “anti-establishment” left rejected me because I rejected the establishment! C’est la vie.

This enforced separation between myself and the local representatives of this peculiar tendency in British politics led me to the view, which I have held for so many years, that the “left” in this country is utterly incapable of disengaging itself in its own mindset from the Labour Party – a party which for the most part accepts the Tory austerity agenda, enthusiastically supports capitalist wars, competes with the parties of the right in a perpetual willy-waving contest over who can strike the most macho postures on immigration, and voted down proposals to diminish the power of the House of Lords.

But there is another reason why I do not feel I belong to the “left” and that is its obsession with economic issues seemingly to the exclusion of all else. Yes we should resist attacks on benefits, low wages, diminution of employment rights, privatisation, the dismantling by stealth of the NHS and all the rest of it, but the empowerment of people travels hand-in-hand with the disempowerment of capitalism and that is something that the “left” just never seems to show an interest in. Taking power out of the hands of the bosses and placing it into the hands of bureaucrats and political apparatchiks does not a revolution make.

Yet on the other hand there is something irresistible about the rapid progress of the Left Unity initiative. In this mass communications age it is just about possible to create a really viable alternative without having access to millions of pounds and the Murdochs. What is really needed to make it happen is a vacuum, and the vacuum that exists on the left of British politics with the betrayal by Labour is immense.

What we could feasibly see within the space of a few years is a complete readjustment of the political dynamic, with the right broadly aligned to UKIP and the left organised around something like Left Unity. Whilst I have no brief for UKIP I admit nevertheless to some excitement about the prospect of the old establishment losing its grip in such a way.

Savings Without Cuts? Labour Keeps its Promise on Council Tax

Reducing the Council Tax in the London Borough of Hounslow was one of the five pledges the Labour Party made in its successful local election campaign in 2010.

After the way in which voters were conned by the "trick" pledge to introduce "100 new uniformed officers" onto the streets in "this area" (undefined) to cut crime, we could be forgiven for thinking a similar sleight of hand would be forthcoming in respect of the Council Tax pledge.

But, fair play to them, the Labour administration in Hounslow announced last week that it would be reducing the charge to residents by 0.5% - not a fortune, but it trumps the previous achievements of both their own party and of the Conservative/ICG coalition administration.

All the same one has to be careful about taking at face value the claim that this achievement will have been made without any cuts to frontline services. There is no rigid dictionary definition of a "frontline service", and it remains to be seen which service(s) not considered to be frontline will face the chop to accommodate this small saving to residents.

When the ICG was in office some of us were forever nervous about announcing Council Tax cuts or freezes before the books had been opened and the maths done. We were rightly fearful that once a commitment had been made to a figure it would be necessary for the sake of saving face to hit that target come what may. This, we believed, was putting the card before the horse.

But we supported the first three Conservative zero percent budgets of the 2006-2010 administration, some of us voting against the fourth only because our partners had somehow forgotten to consult us about its contents prior to it being brought to Borough Council. There were cuts, inevitably, but ones that were less severe in fact than many that had been imposed by Labour during its own prior term of office.

Not a lot of people know this, as Michael Caine might have said, but at one stage during the 2006-2010 administration there was a proposal by one prominent Conservative councillor to go for a reduction. After some discussion the ICG, and some Conservatives, rejected it. Interesting times.

It is good, of course, that people in the borough will henceforth be paying less Council Tax, but something will have to give as it invariably does. The administration claims it will not be libraires. Other community resources, worryingly, have not so far received a mention.

The ICG is determined that the infrastructure of our long-suffering communities will not be the sacrifice for a fiver-a-year, Tory-style gesture by the Labour regime at Lampton Road.

Councils Cut Back on Free Adult Social Care

The number of councils in England cutting back on free adult social care has increased by 13% this year, a survey has suggested.

The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services study found just 26 out of 148 councils would fund people in "moderate" or "low" need, down from 41.

The moves follow a sharp reduction in central funding for local authorities.

However, the government said it had recently allocated an extra £2bn a year by 2014-15 for social care services.

TAKING BATH

The survey revealed that 19 local authorities had raised the eligibility bar for free adult social care.

Only 22 councils in England out of the 148 which responded will now fund those assessed as having moderate needs, down from 36 last year.

This category includes people who are so ill or disabled that they have trouble preparing a meal for themselves or taking a bath.

Six councils have now opted to limit help to people in "critical' need, which includes those suffering from life threatening conditions.

Some authorities say the need to save money has left them with no option but to cut one of their biggest areas of spending.

Andrew Harrop, of the charity Age UK, said people could die as a result of the cuts and many more may land up in hospital unnecessarily.

The government has set up an independent commission on social care, which is due to report in July, and will put forward plans in a White Paper by the end of the year.

'MOST VULNERABLE'

Andrew Dilnott, chairman of the commission, said there was no doubt that social care was being squeezed and there was "a growing amount of unmet need".

He said the current system seemed to "invite variability" and "there was merit in trying to find an assessment system... that seems to give people more of a sense that there was fairness and equality across the UK".

But he said regardless of the cuts, the system needed to be reformed.

"The balance between individual responsibility and state responsibility that we have at the moment doesn't seem to be the right one, it's widely seen to be unfair.

"What we found is that many people think it wouldn't be unreasonable for them to make some contribution.

"They just don't want the system that they face at the moment where if they turn out to be one of the least fortunate who ends up needing a very great deal of care, that they lose everything," he said.

A Department of Health spokesman said: "Protecting and improving local social care services is vital, especially for the most vulnerable.

"The coalition government recently allocated extra money - meaning an additional £2bn a year by 2014-15 - to encourage more joined-up working, support the delivery of social care and protect the most vulnerable in society.

"This funding, together with an ambitious programme of efficiency, should enable local authorities to protect people's access to services and deliver new approaches to improve their care."


Reproduced with acknowledgements to BBC News.

Direct Action to Save Chiswick Day Centre - Saturday, 16th April

Hounslow Council is threatening to close the Chiswick Day Centre due to funding cuts. The Centre is a vital local resource providing much needed support and respite care for vulnerable pensioners and the disabled in Chiswick, and the only place in Chiswick to do so.

Come join us for tea, cake and bingo at a peaceful protest pop-up Day Centre, dress code is plucky pensioner granny-chic; sparkly cardies, hair rollers, zimmer frames and bi-focals.

Meet at the War Memorial on the corner of Heathfield Terrace and Chiswick High Road at 10.45am, for a location that will be revealed on the day.

http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/actions/518


Reproduced with acknowledgements to Carrie Richards at the Chiswick W4.com forum.

Charity chief warns cuts could 'kill off' Big Society

Reproduced with acknowledgements to BBC News


A leading charity figure has warned David Cameron that the pace of cuts could "kill off" the groups he needs to build his "Big Society".

Community Links co-founder David Robinson was invited to Downing St in May to discuss the social policy idea.

But in an open letter he urged the PM to "allow us to draw breath" and phase in plans to remove Legal Aid funding.

The government said charities could not be immune from cuts but it aimed to open up new funding sources.

Mr Cameron has championed the concept of the "Big Society", which encourages greater personal and family responsibility and community activism.

Community Links, an east London-based charity which provides welfare services, such as housing and debt advice, employment support and youth clubs, was praised by Mr Cameron as an "inspiring" organisation.

Mr Robinson was among charity representatives invited to Downing Street to discuss it with the PM and Deputy PM Nick Clegg after the general election.

In his letter, he said he admired the prime minister's "big hearted vision" and respected his "clear sighted perseverance" in pursuing it.

But he said he was worried about the impact of spending cuts and that organisations like his, which should be the "bedrock of the Big Society", were "wobbling".

Legal Aid

Mr Robinson drew particular attention to changes to Legal Aid and the New Deal which, he said, put most of Community Links' budget for 2011-12 at risk.

With big changes to the welfare system due to come in, he said the government had acknowledged there would be initial confusion - and expected agencies like his to provide support.

"Removing legal aid funding for advice on welfare benefits will wipe out agencies who would otherwise resolve these problems and there is next to no chance of local councils picking up the tab when most are stopping funding, not increasing it," he said.

He said many of the disadvantaged - particularly the elderly - would instead struggle on until they reached crisis point - illness or eviction.

Warning against a "barrage of uncoordinated cuts that hit the poorest hardest" he urged the PM to phase in planned cuts and do a "serious and urgent impact assessment", giving groups more time to adjust. He proposed allowing Legal Aid to support groups giving advice until welfare reforms were "bedded down".

"Allow us to draw breath or you will kill off the agencies you need to build the society you seek," he said.

"You've staked your political future on the prospect of a stronger, more compassionate society. Don't let your own government's policies undermine it."

'Appalling financial mess'

Plans for a Big Society Bank were announced by the prime minister in July. The independent organisation would help generate income for voluntary groups and social enterprises, using funding from money reclaimed from dormant bank accounts - the aim was to have it established by April 2011.

Mr Robinson said £5bn was needed for the sector, not including the unclaimed assets, to fund preventative work with people "at risk" from social problems.

The Cabinet Office said Britain was "in an appalling financial mess" and charities and social enterprises "cannot be immune from the necessary reductions in spending".

But a spokesman said: "Despite having had to take difficult decisions, the government is determined to open up new sources of funding for charities and voluntary groups to give them independence from state hand-outs and cut away the red tape that holds them back.

"The Big Society Bank will use money from dormant bank accounts to help capitalise the sector and we have worked quickly to open up a £100m short-term fund to help charities and voluntary groups through this transition period."

He added that a total of £470m would be invested in the four years to 2014-15 to support charities and voluntary groups and money would be "targeted where it is needed most" - including a £50m Community First Fund for the most deprived areas and, £10m to match fund private donations.

The Axeman Cometh

We are fast approaching that time when the London Borough of Hounslow delivers its budget for the coming year. In early March 2011 Borough Council will debate and vote upon a series of proposals that will, it hopes, enable it to reduce the local authority's annual spending by £18m. Inevitably valuable provision will be cut and the public will see a reduction in the services it receives.

The Axeman is an avowedly non-party political being. Up until 2006 he slashed services under a Labour administration, causing much angst as he closed John Aird House (a residential care home in Brentford), threatened to privatise vital health care services and hacked £1m in a single blow from the Education budget at a time when monies provided by the government for that very purpose were not ring-fenced. I attended more than one demonstration against what appeared to me to be acts of almost gratuitous inhumanity.

Then in 2006 a new administration took office of which the Independent Community Group (ICG) was a part. Almost immediately our Conservative coalition partners announced the launch of a drastic cost-cutting initiative called the Performance Improvement Programme (PIP) and declared its intention to freeze Council Tax levels, which we generally supported and between us actually managed to do for four years in a row. But there were casualties, not least the Hounslow Language Service, and from opposition Labour opposed many of the savings made by the coalition Axeman, campaigning against cuts in public services as we ourselves had done in opposition.

Now Labour is back in office, and the Axeman is once again playing for the team in red. Granted the impetus for the drastic programme of cuts upon which Hounslow is about to embark comes from central government and its savage Comprehensive Spending Review, but nonetheless the Labour administration has to deal with the same reality as the coalition administration before it and the old Labour administration before that. That reality is that the level of central government support for local councils declines year upon year no matter who is in charge at the Exchequer.

What happens at the stage we are at now is that Lead Members will have asked Chief Officers to identify potential savings in their own departments. Some of those suggested savings are included in this document, which will be discussed by the Executive next week.

The flaw in this process, and which has always been the case, is that Chief Officers will invariably identify those savings that they themselves are comfortable with, and omit those that they are not. For instance, rarely if at all will Lead Members be presented with a proposal to reduce Chief Officer salaries, or to merge departments so as to reduce their number. Unless the Lead Member is unusually hands-on, he or she will almost always accept the options presented as being the only ones realistically available.

The ICG has not had the opportunity to formally discuss these proposals as yet, but what I imagine will concern my colleagues in particular are the various implied assaults on local democracy. In particular the suggestion that Area Committees could be abolished or curtailed. My guess is that these were probably amongst the first proposals to have been mooted by certain of our Chief Officers and I would be surprised if much sleep was lost as they found their way onto the list.

It would be tempting, of course, to consider Area Committees as a luxury by comparison with frontline services to the really needy such as Older People or Children's Services. By that logic we might just as well do away with elections to the council as well - the potential saving involved would be considerable.

But the whole rationale of local government is that it enjoys a democratic mandate. This is precisely why elected members, as opposed to the more "expert" officers, are ultimately responsible for making decisions. Once that principle has been compromised we are embarked upon a journey down a very slippery slope with no handbrake. One cannot put a price on democracy.

I am also concerned by the suggestion that local community centres may be cut adrift. Sure, I do note from the document that the need for local community groups to be given time to build the capacity to take them over is acknowledged, but knowing as I do the complete lack of interest in resident involvement or even opinion that exists in certain departments there is little doubt in my mind that, were such a proposal to be taken up, our community centres would be abandoned with indecent haste and indeed closed down as soon as it was felt it could be got away with.

This is not about empowering communities, this is about certain senior officers seizing a perceived opportunity to remove themselves forever from meaningful public scrutiny.

These are difficult times, and I am reluctant to try to score points by blaming the current administration for the predicament it finds itself in (although it has to be said, under the circumstances, that some of the ruling party's election promises were reckless to say the least - everyone knew there would be cuts whoever triumphed at the general election). However I do believe that the organised community must lobby hard to protect itself from any attempt to use government cuts as a convenient excuse for curtailing its freedoms and its ability to organise.

Britain just became a colder, crueller country - and for nothing

By Johann Hari


Johann Hari is an award-winning journalist who writes twice-weekly for the Independent, one of Britain's leading newspapers, and the Huffington Post. He also writes for a wide range of other international newspapers and magazines. Publication of this article does not necessarily imply endorsement of every comment expressed therein.


Margaret Thatcher is lying sick in a private hospital bed in Belgravia – but her political children have just pushed her agenda further and harder and deeper than she ever dreamed of. When was the last time Britain’s public spending was slashed by more than 20 percent? Not in my mother’s lifetime. Not even in my grandmother’s lifetime. No: it was in 1918, when a Conservative-Liberal coalition said the best response to a global economic crisis was to rapidly pay off this country’s debts. The result? Unemployment soared from 6 percent to 19 percent, and the country’s economy collapsed so severely that they lost all ability to pay their bills and the debt actually rose from 114 percent to 180 percent. “History doesn’t repeat itself,” Mark Twain said, “but it does rhyme.”

George Osborne has just gambled your future on an extreme economic theory that has failed whenever and wherever it has been tried. In the Great Depression, we learned some basic principles. When an economy falters, ordinary people – perfectly sensibly – cut back their spending and try to pay down their debts. This causes a further fall in demand, and makes the economy worse. If the government cuts back at the same time, then there is no demand at all, and the economy goes into freefall. That’s why virtually every country in the world reacted to the Great Crash of 2008 – caused entirely by deregulated bankers – by increasing spending, funded by temporary debt. Better a deficit we repay in the good times than an endless depression. The countries that stimulated hardest, like South Korea, came out of recession first.

David Cameron and George Osborne have ignored all this. They have ignored the warnings of the Financial Times, the newspaper most critical of their strategy. They have dismissed the warnings of Nobel Laureates for Economics like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, whose warnings have consistently been proven right in this crisis. They have refused to learn from the fact that the country they held up as a model for how to deal with a recession – “Look and learn from across the Irish Sea,” Osborne said – has suffered the worst collapse in the developed world. They have instead blindly obeyed the ideological precepts they learned as baby Thatcherites: slash the state, and make the poor pay most.

Osborne galloped through his Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) speech, failing to name almost any of the services that will be slashed or shut down. It’s revealing that he doesn’t want to publicly name them while the nation is watching.

But beneath the statistics, there was a swathe of human tragedies that will now unnecessarily unfold across Britain. PriceWaterhouseCooper – nobody’s idea of a Trotskyite cell – says that a million people will now lose their jobs as a direct result. My father lost his job at the height of the last Tory recession, and had to leave the country to get another one. I remember how that felt. I remember what that did to my family. Now it’s going to happen to a million more families – and probably more after that. For the private sector to get all these people into work, as Osborne claims, there would have to be the most rapid business growth in my lifetime. Does anyone think that will happen?

Osborne has chosen the weakest people to take the worst cuts. The poorest sixteen year olds were given £30 a week to stay on in education, so they could afford to study – until Osborne’s team dismissed it as a “bribe” and shut it down. The most frail old people depend on council services to wash them and feed them – yet Osborne just slashed their budget by 30 percent, which service providers say will mean more pensioners being left to die in their own filth. Every family living on benefits is set to lose an average of £1000 a year – which, as I’ve seen from living in the East End of London, will mean many poor kids across Britain never getting a birthday party, or a trip to the seaside, or a bed of their own, or a winter coat. This isn’t just On Yer Bike, it’s On Yer Own.

The irrationality of this approach is perhaps plainest when you look at housing. We badly need more affordable housing in Britain. Some 4.5 million people are stuck on waiting lists, and the average age of a home buyer is now 37. It’s a cause of constant stress to the real middle class and despair for the poor. By a happy coincidence, house-building is one of the best stimulators of the economy: it employs a lot of people on average wages, who then spend their money quickly in a “multiplier effect.”

Yet Osborne has chosen the opposite. There will be on average one new home built per week in the whole of London and the south-east. That’s one. Indeed, instead of building homes, he’s driving people out of them. By slashing housing benefit, London councils alone say 83,000 people here are going to be forced to leave their homes, with 1.3 million ending up in more debt. Cameron has revealed that his baby daughter sleeps in a cardboard box decorated for her by her big sister. Thanks to him, a lot more people are going to be sleeping in cardboard boxes soon.

It can’t be coincidental that this is being done to us by three men – Cameron, Osborne, and Nick Clegg – who have never worried about a bill in their lives. On a basic level, they do not understand the effects of these decisions on real people. Remember, Cameron said before the election: "The papers keep writing that [my wife, Samantha] comes from a very blue-blooded background", but "she is actually very unconventional. She went to a day school." Osborne lives in a £4m trust fund he did nothing whatsoever to earn, and which is stashed offshore to prevent it being taxed. Clegg actually thought the state pension was £30 a week, a level that would kill pensioners.

These attitudes have real consequences. We’re not in this together. Who isn’t in it with us? Them, their friends, and their families. They were asked to pay nothing more in this CSR. On the contrary: they are being let off left, right and centre. To pluck a random example, one of the richest corporations in Britain, Vodafone, had an outstanding tax bill of £6 billion – but Osborne simply cancelled it this year. If he had made them pay, he could have prevented nearly all the cuts to all the welfare recipients in Britain. You try refusing to pay your taxes next time, and see if George Osborne shows the same generosity to you as he does to the super-rich.

There is one stark symbol of how unjust the response to this economic disaster caused by bankers is. They have just paid themselves £7bn in bonuses – much of it our money – to reward themselves for failure. That’s the same sum Osborne took from the benefits of the British poor yesterday, who did nothing to cause this crash. And he has the chutzpah to brag about “fairness.”

Britain just became colder and crueler country. And for what? To pantingly follow a disproven ideology over a cliff. On the eve of the general election, Cameron told us: "There'll be no cuts to frontline services," "we're not talking about swingeing cuts,” and “all cuts will be fair.” Is it possible to call him anything but a liar and an ideologue today?

You can enjoy a long rest, Baroness Thatcher – your successors have embarked on a Mephedrone-charged imitation that exceeds your most fantastical dreams.