LAST MAY Labour won control of Liverpool city with a slender majority of three, ending a decade of Liberal-Tory rule. In five weeks' time, when the council sets its budget for the coming year, likely to be the first council confronting the Tories over their Photos: courtesy LIVERPOOL CITY ceiling on local spending.
Liverpool's dilemna is stark. It can stay within the law by axing jobs and services to the tune of f30 million This means 5000 sixth of the workforce would go within 12 months, with a resultant crisis in local services. manifesto commitments would require a rate increase of anywhere between 120-200 per cent. Even implementing the promises of the Liberal manifesto, which include privatising some council services, would require a rate increase in the region of 50 per cent.
Liverpool's only option is an illegal budget. This raises the threat of government appointed commissioners - who would take the administration out of the hands of the democratically elected tatives of bankruptcy, or even imprisonment for individual councillors who support such a budget.
The view has been put forward even by some on the left, that Liverpool Labour Group chooses to confront the because of 'cranky' ideological dogmatism, rather than seeking a legal way out. A cursory glance at the circumstances behind Liverpool's plight is sufficient demolish this argument. Is it the case that the Labour manifesto sets utopian targets outside the range of reforms which can reasonably be expected from a council? No. Poverty Last year Labour inherited an administration which has systematically long number of years.
Liverpool has one of the highest rates of unemployment whole country. In some areas real unemployment is as high as 55-60 per cent. It has the most expensive housing outside London. suffers from some of the worst urban and environmental decay in the country.
promises tremely modest. It pledged a housebuilding programme of 6000 new homes over five years, in a city where 15,000 homes are seriously decayed and 22,000 people are on the council waiting list. It promised to create 1000 new jobs redundancies or privatisation council services, 60.000 people are out of work. More than 34,000 jobs have been lost in Liverpool in years. of which 4500 have been council jobs. Fifty per under-25 year olds are without permanent employment.
Socialist Action 2 March 1984 And it council their lives.
Liverpool is vironment.
government • jobs council's total To meet Labour's precisely represensurcharge, government to this is an our city.
'progressive' been run down over a The city of the And it exwith no of in a city where the last five cent of D in the words of Councillor John Hamilton, mount a coordinated attack upon the decay and dereliction in which so many people are forced to live The city council has established 17 priority areas as part of a five-year plan to improve the social, physical and economic enFighting back In short, the Labour manifesto promised to defend and improve jobs and services. These pledges are not the wide-eyed ravings of Marxist fanatics - as the opponents of Militant would have us believe. They represent a minimum programme of social reform which any halt-way progressive council woulc be forced to support in similar circumstances. Labour won control because these proposals hold popular appeal for local people whose standard of living has been seriously and systematically eroded by local and central government policies for several decades.
Pete Cresswell, secretary Live Stewards Committee, and Liverp The fight to save jobs and service targets are met, one in six council the 4000 that have already gone o cuts has never been contemplates ed, it would only save our jobs f goes bankrupt we won't be paid.
An illegal budget is the only Stewards Committee is fuly sur meeting voted 117 to three for 1 NUPE's who only have 2000 m welfare services where any action they'll be so ready to pull out onc of the council's position.
The JSSC is calling for a on workforce on Democracy Day, 29 up-hill struggle agai massive action by the workforce s
fend Liverpool! the TUC as a day of national action against the Tory attack on local Liverpool council will decided its budget. The council is calling for a one-day general strike on Merseyside in support of their action. This demand is backed by the Joint Shop Stewards Committee of Liverpool's local government unions. At the same time, there will be a national demonstration in London.
Through no fault of its own, Liverpool is first in line to take on The best support the British labour movement can offer is to show the Tories where to get off by building the biggest possible against onslaught on Democracy Day, 29 March. novement must...
their late barrier start YOU CAN STILL find Dock Road pubs that stay open all afternoon - a nangover (in boln senses) Irom tne days when a docker got a day's work by talking to the foreman-ganger in the bar. Casual work, and the poverty which went with it, was the norm on the Liverpool docks right up to the 1960s.
The city never developed as a major manufacturing centre. A labour movement rooted in the early experiences of factory, mine and mill did not exist.
keligious sectarianismn was a rurtne working class solidarity.
Catholics looked for work on the North Docks, Protestants on the South. The
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OUR CITY- OUR FIGHT