Another snowy scene

Labour it’s ’bout time to stand up and fight!!

There was around 300 protesters outside Camden Town Hall tonight as the Council’s Labour Cabinet considers proposals to slash more than £82. 5 million from Council spending over the next three years. Nearly 1, 000 Council jobs are under threat, with rents on Council properties due to jump by more than 7%.

From reports the average age outside Camden Town Hall of the crowd was easily the clever side of 30. Primary school students have organised a petition to save their playground. Some of their parents mentioned that they will be back on benefits instead of working if playgroups are shut down. It seems there was a lot of raw anger in the raw cold. These people are looking to the Labour Party for real political leadership that will defeat these cuts and the ideology behind the attacks on ordinary people.

And Camden is of course a Labour run council. There has been discussion about what precisely should Labour councillors do about the cuts.

I think the answer is simple, resign. Call by-elections with candidates who are in a position to vote against cuts and face the consequences (although such comrades would deserve the support of the whole movement). Call for a general election when the cuts are enforced by non-elected officials acting without any democratic mandate themselves on behalf of a government without any democratic mandate itself. Strange that “democratic” socialists as many Labour politicians like to style themselves do not want to defeat the Tory government by using democracy itself.

The problem with the sweet reasonableness position is you end up building no movement and just demoralising people. Movements are built by defiance not by collaborationist sabotaging of the welfare state and of people’s lives. Labour councillors are not facing “difficult choices” as though their councils have been badly run with no thought for balancing the books…quite the contrary. They are faced with a full-scale attack on the welfare state and on working class living standards. If you manage to cut less savagely the Tories will simply come back for more next year (if they wait that long) and more after that. The only way to defeat them is to fight now.

Yes we will have to face non-elected cutters who are not part of our movement who will simply do what the Tories want. But what will make these people turn back is a powerful movement not Labour politicians asking them to consider which cuts are the kindest.