The new Counter Information Services pamphlet ‘Cutting the Welfare State’ is full of valuable ammunition and explanation for those fighting the cuts. The cuts will drastically affect services that are essential to the living standards of all workers. But the pamphlet does more than just describe the effects of the cuts, although it does that very well. It also describes how the NHS has been sucked dry by those consultants involved in both private practice and the drug companies. It documents a drop in housing provision when 100,000 are homeless yet council housing expenditure is actually rising. It shows the devastating effect that cuts will have on already inadequate educational provision.
Priorities
These cuts are central to government policy. They are part of their drive to make workers pay the price for the crisis with diminishing wage packets and deteriorating social services.
The pamphlet makes it clear that the Labour government’s payments to the banks and private industry will go unscathed. Government expenditure to support private industry will be substantially increased. The government has made it clear that as the need arises more funds for Law and Order will be made available. It is those areas of government spending that are of direct benefit to workers’ living standards that will be axed. The Labour White Paper of January 1975 made clear the intention of cutting public expenditure by 1.3%. This meant that public transport, health, social services and education would take cuts of 10.0%. The Health Service can be left to collapse while the National Enterprise Board is given virtually unlimited funds to revive the flagging profits of British industry. The sickness of workers matters little compared to massive cash transfusions to shore up sagging profits.
Profits and interests
While our social services collapse, while local and central government falls deeper and deeper into debt the central banks have been having a bonanza. Over the last ten years their profits have shot up.
Clearing bank profits 1964–74:
- Midlands: up 687%
- Barclays: up 886%
- Lloyds: up 1042%
This is not surprising as interest rates on borrowed money have been soaring too.
The pamphlet calculates that government expenditure in 1975–76 will be equivalent to £1,000 per man, woman and child. Of this £91 will go on paying interest on borrowed money compared with £116 on health and personal social services. For 1975–76 the government will borrow to the tune of £9 billion on the money markets. Of this a cool £5 billion will go on paying interest on previous and present borrowings. Since 1968–69 local authority interest repayments have risen 3 times. It now costs Islington over £11 million to borrow £7½ million; in Coventry 20% of council spending is on debt repayment and interest charges.
As local authorities have been paying more for less as the social services crumble, so the profits of the banks have escalated and the flow of government money into private industry has increased.
How do we fight?
It is in the interests of all workers to fight against all cuts in welfare spending, against all deterioration in services. We demand education, health and housing as a right not a luxury.
But it is not enough to call for ‘a fight’ and for ‘no cuts’. We will be left next year calling for ‘another fight’ and ‘no more cuts’.
Those working in the public sector must decide on sanctions to be operated to prevent any deterioration in standards. Refusal to teach classes over present sizes, NUPE sanctions against private patients are all important and vital.
But the battle must not be left scattered in isolated workplaces where the weak can be picked off. We must build links and real support between public sector workers. We will need trade union public sector committees to support particular groups of workers and to publicise the effects and importance of the cuts for all workers.
The fight against cuts, however, raises more than this. It raises the question of ‘But where will the money come from?’, of ‘What should the government do?’ of ‘Is there any alternative?’. Socialists must be able to answer these questions if they are to galvanise real support. We must realise that the fight against the cuts is a fight against the priorities of the entire capitalist system.
That is why we must argue for:
- The nationalisation of the banks and finance houses under trade union control. The immediate cancellation of all debts. Only in this way can social services and local authorities be released from the grip of the banks and money lenders.
- For campaigns to force Labour Councils to refuse to implement the cuts and to refuse to repay interest on loans.
- For a sliding scale of social expenditure to compensate for the effects of inflation on budgets affecting working class living standards.
We must put these arguments clearly and concretely. We are not merely defending lousy social services against a Labour government.
Read this pamphlet for some of the ammunition we’ll need in the fight.
