By Jeremy Dewar Many hundreds of workers poured into Lifford Lane in south Birmingham from 6am onwards, many with banners and placards. They came to close the depot and prevent agency scab dustcarts from leaving, handing a temporary victory for the city’s bin workers, who have been on indefinite strike for two months, since 11 […]

The Tories are up in arms, demanding Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner intervenes in the Birmingham bin strike. Their aim? Convene a Cobra meeting and break the strike by drafting in private sector scab labour.

By Jeremy Dewar Austerity returned to Lambeth, South London in a big way last month. The right wing clique that has dominated the local Labour Party for decades passed a budget threatening £99 million of cuts by 2029, frontloaded with £50 million coming in the first year. Details have not been fully revealed, but we […]

Bankruptcy proceedings filed up and down the country by local councils are the legacy of 14 years of Tory war on public services.

Over half a million council and school employees are currently balloting for strike action to win a real pay rise. If successful, this would be the biggest strike yet in the wave of action over the cost of living crisis. But the task is huge.

Dave Stocking Radical Lambeth: 1978-1991 by Simon Hannah

By Rebecca Anderson THERE IS a real opportunity for coordinated strike action between two of Britain’s largest workforces: council workers, including school support staff, and hospital employees. If successful, it could bust the public sector pay freeze and build momentum in private sector struggles for substantial pay rises. Local government and school staff have been […]

170,000 private tenants have been threatened with eviction.

The Unison branch at Tower Hamlets Council organised a solid three day strike against the unilateral mass sacking of the entire work force.

By Jeremy Dewar LOCAL GOVERNMENT officers, health workers and school support staff will gather in Brighton in mid-June ostensibly to discuss and debate the way forward for Unison, the principle public sector union. In reality it will be a frustrating week, listening to endless and highly inappropriate self-congratulation from the top table. Motions or amendments […]

By Jeremy Dewar, Unison rep, pc Another year, another pay cut. Or so it seems. As we go to press, Britain’s biggest local government union, Unison, is about to close its second consultative ballot (we didn’t give the right answer first time) on the employers’ 2018-19 pay offer. The offer is atrocious: a real pay […]

By a Unison schools convenor There are 1.3 million local government and school support workers – 78 per cent of them women. We are the housing officers, youth workers, social workers, teaching assistants, caterers and cleaners that keep hard-up families together and services running. Austerity budgets, year after year, have wiped out over 700,000 jobs […]

WITH COUNCIL elections looming in London, the Tory press is full of increasingly worried articles about a Labour landslide. Pollsters are predicting a big increase in Labour votes, Labour councillors and even the possible capture of Tory strongholds like Wandsworth (Thatcher’s favourite council in the 1980s) and Barnet. As Sadiq Khan recently said at the […]

By Bernie McAdam AFTER SEVEN weeks of strike action and an apparent agreement with council chiefs, it seemed sense had prevailed; Birmingham’s Grade Three bin workers would not be sacked and a suspended union rep would be reinstated. Instead the Labour run council has completely gone back on its word and issued redundancy notices to […]

THE MOVEMENT that twice elected Jeremy Corbyn to Labour leader is defined by its opposition to austerity. But local government cuts mean Labour councils in many of the party’s heartlands have spent six years as the face of brutal cuts to the social fabric of our communities. Unless it is overcome, this contradiction will torpedo […]

By Simon Hardy The movement emerging in Lambeth could act as a model for everyone fighting council cuts across the country Strikes, occupations, thousands of people marching against cuts – Lambeth is currently the site of some very energetic resistance to austerity Britain. Housing, libraries, local jobs, government accountability, anti-gentrification and now the new multi […]

By KD Tait The campaign to defend Lambeth’s 10 public libraries from the Labour council’s closure and outsourcing plans saw more than 2,000 people march through Brixton in one of the biggest local demonstrations in years. Residents, librarians and Friends of Lambeth libraries assembled at the Carnegie library to congratulate the occupiers who walked out […]

Saturday saw more than one thousand council tenants and activists march against the Housing Bill and the demolition of the Aylesbury estate in Southwark. We took our protest to Downing Street, as the Bill is debated in the House of Lords. Gathering outside the Imperial War Museum in Kennington, the rally heard speeches from local […]

A motion committing Labour branches to opposing local government budget cuts

£11.3 billion will be cut from total central government grants to councils by 2016 From 2010-2015 council budgets were cut by 40 per cent. In 2015 George Osborne announced a further 30 per cent cut 75 per cent of local government workers are women, meaning cuts will affect those already discriminated against in the job […]

Key extracts from the 17 December letter from Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Jon Trickett to Labour council leaders To the Leaders of Labour Councils Dear Colleague, We are writing to you as Leader of the Party, Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and Shadow Chancellor. Today the government has announced the […]

A local government worker responds to Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell’s recent letter setting out their policy in relation to Labour councils implementing Tory austerity OVER the coming month, councils across the UK will be setting budgets for the coming year. They will include savage cuts, with the most vulnerable (women, children, the elderly and […]

BRANCHES & CLPs Across the country local Labour councils are implementing Tory austerity in the face of resistance from workers, youth and unemployed – and increasingly from local Labour parties. The Labour leadership’s decision to launch a national campaign against central government cuts to local authorities is welcome – and long overdue. We hope that Labour […]

Joy Macready takes stock of the results ot the local council elections and asks where now for Labour?   Thursday 3 May proved to be a red-letter day for Labour. The local elections saw a mass turn to Labour, despite its lack of strategy to oppose austerity. This was clearly a protest vote against the […]

1. The situation in Britain is marked by an historic offensive against the public sector, carried out by an openly bourgeois, anti-working class Tory government. Lib Dem support has plummeted – with most polls putting them below 10 per cent. The chief beneficiaries are Labour who are riding high on the back of the collapse […]

Report from Lambeth Save Our Services Fresh from our spirited occupation of Brixton Town Hall, Lambeth Save Our Services met last night full of new activists, brimful of confidence and raring to go again. Jeremy Drinkall reports. The occupation of Lambeth Town Hall on 23 February hit the front page of the South London Press […]

Local trade unionists and community campaigners occupy Lambeth town hall 23/02/2011 400 protesters demonstrated in Lambeth town hall tonight. The Labour councillors, supported by the Lib dems and Tories, wanted to vote in their package of cuts. The people of Lambeth demanded that they should be in the public gallaries. Despite filling one public gallery, […]

Today, at around 1pm, half an hour before Leeds Council were due to meet to pass a budget of swingeing cuts, hundreds braved the rain to lobby the meeting to refuse to implement the budget. Around 75-100 people managed to occupy the main council chamber, where the meeting was to be held. Many more gathered […]

Birmingham City Council has announced that £300 million will be cut from the budget over the next four years. This will involve the loss of 7,116 full time jobs, that is 37 per cent of the workforce, reports Bernie McAdam. The losses will increase to 10,000 when part time jobs are included. The Con Dem […]

Across the country, local councillors are voting on job cuts and the destruction of much needed services. At the same time, hundreds, sometimes thousands demonstrate outside, trying to block or slow down proceedings in the council chambers. Both sides know this could mark the beginning of a mass movement against the cuts. The job losses […]