Stop Closures Cuts

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OVER recent years, rate rises have been a major dividing issue on the Labour left, and especially between Socialist Organiser and London Labour Briefing. In the aftermath of Lothian's collapse and the GLC's big supplementary rate demand, JOHN O'MAHONY reassesses the debate. This anchester "SOONER or later we have to recognise that we are losing the arguments in favour of maintaining services at the cost of high rents and rates (emphasis added].

"We are losing because Labour voters simply cannot afford to pay any more. In council homes the length of Britain, Labour councils are being blamed for the high rates and rents which are the direct result of Tory policies.

"eff the slide is to be halted, Labour must take a "Not only is Labour losing the battle over cuts, it is also getting most of the blame for the consequences. Sooner or later there is going to have to be a confrontation...

CHRIS MULLIN, Tribune, August 28.

HUNTERS whose "strategy' is to grab the large wild beast firmly by the tail and, without making the kill, to settle down to preparing the meal, are not quite as in touch with reality as they need to be.

If the animal has sharp teeth and claws, the hunter is quite likely to become a meal himself.

It was such a strategy that led the local government Left to try to respond to the cuts drive of the most indiscriminately vicious government we have had in Britain for 40 years by trying to just quietly get on with administering local government.

This was a major experience of the Left in the last two years. And it was the major dividing point between London Labour Briefing and Socialist Organises, The lessons are vital for the struggle yet to come. We offer an account as a contribution to preparing for the next round.

Clash

The central truth is that we did not - as some comrades thought we did -have local government "power' . in a clash with central government over fundamentals there is no such thing.

Local government is at every point, legally and financially (and, in a crunch, by way of the military/ police power of the central state) subordinate to central government. There is not - not, unless the central state has disintegrated, can there be - such a thing as a People's Republic of Lambeth' (or Lothian).

After Thatcher won the 1979 election, we were Tory government bent on savage cuts would allow us to do.

There were only two choices.

Either to comply with turning Labour-controlled councils into mere agencies for carrying out governmentdecreed cuts and passing them on to workers and small shopkeepers; or to confront the government. Labour-controlled councils had the choice of being centres of sabotage, guerilla warfare and resistance to the government, or being groups C'ounculors snoulu sitp u Tory threats, agents working for the Tories against their own people.

That is still the choice now.

Nowhere does Tony Benn's proposal (in arguments for Democracy) for non-collaboration and 'disengagement' by the labour movement from the institutions of Thatcherism have LIU LID more direct ard immediate relevance than for logal government, which has been assigned to the role of the blade of the Tories' axe.

The fatal illusion to avoid at all costs is the belief that Labour local government can continue to go its own sweet way, more or less humanely administering local attairs and ignoring the central government. The beast is alive and has teeth and claws which it is is certain to use!

Rent and rate rises were at best a species of evasive action - a manoeuvre which had to be carried out on terrain which remained government and ultimate- under the guns of the ly under its firm control. Confrontation, a challenge to the overall central .government control by action aimed to •rouse a national strugglé, was ruled out by the local government Left.

Siphon

Labour local councils found themselves. on a slippery! slope. The Tories could. and did simply siphon off more than was raised by rate rises by cutting the flow of central government support. Having - to take the case of Lambeth - raised rates to avoid confrontation and thetęby cut seriously into the : living standards of workers in the area - the leaders of the council found that the Tories' big stick was still theie. Capitulation followed.

In Tribune of August 28 Chris Mullin summed up the present situation of Labour councils:

"The 1982 election will simply be a competition between two - and possibly IMERCE NIGH THATCHER three - main parties to see which shall have the honour of administering the cuts decreed by central government. Opposition to cuts is no longer an option. Instead the parties will be reduced to arguing that 'our cuts are more humane than yours'."

Responsibility

But that has, essentially, been the choice for over two years. 18 months ago, in an open letter to Ted Knight, Socialist Organiser said:

"The central question now is to break the labour movement from class collaboration; to break it from the reformist commitment to bargaining within the capitalist system on a basis of taking responsibility for the system and being confined to options within it.

"But you see your role in Lambeth as only that of a humane administrator. That Lambeth Council has avoided any serious cuts is something to be proud of. But how has it been achieved?

By backdoor cuts in living standards.

... A socialist militant, as distinct from a professional councillor, is concerned with the social overview JORT. and the general consequences of what he does...

"In. order to avoid the risk of losing your position in Lambeth (as a result of taking on the Tories and being surcharged or disqualified you pass on the Tory cuts, translated into cuts in income by rent and rate rises. You refuse to stand and fight the Tories now, and cling to the power to decide from which area of working class income the siphoning-off should take place"

It is not mainly a matter of recriminations. It is a matter of learning the lesson that we are faced with either destroying the Tory government or living under its anti working class measures -and, in local government, with either using it as a base tor operations against them, or being forced to be their instruments.

Illusion

It is a matter of learning that for serious socialists the 'option' - ie. illusion - of 'assuming local power' was no alternative to the only realistic option, of being revolutionary militants.

For in essence the local Knight TENUTO government rent and rate rise option was a decision to be administrators, humane administrators, not militants concerned with the overall effects of the Tory onslaught.

Chunks The delusion that we already had little chunks of 'power' locally and could exercise it, was misleading.

For even if an armed labour movement held real power in London, as the workers in Paris did for two months in 1871, it would have been necessary - if we were not to repeat the mistake made, according to Karl Marx's analysis, by the Paris workers in 1871 - to go on the offensive against the government of the rest of the country. And Labour councils do not hold state power, even locally.

The rent and rate rise strategy meant turning the left local councils into schools of class collaboration. There was not one of the arguments in support of the rent and rate rise policy that could not be applied to explain and justify 'the need' to cut. Even a cutting Labour council is still preserving some jobs and services, and wouldn't Tory commissioners be even worse....

And every one of the arguments about local government being 'realistic' and 'responsible' faced with the national Thatcher government could be applied and extended to a British Labour government facing the IMF.

Indeed, they were so applied by the leaders of the last Labour government, and the same arguments may well serve a Labour government Now we have cuts in Lambeth and Lothian. Both the councillors and the labour movement were softened up for these cuts by all that went before, especially the pseudo-left rationalisations.

The local labour movement could only be turned away from the Labour council by rent and rate rises which cut living standards; the eventual option of controntation at the 11th hour to stop cuts could only be made more difficult. Inevitably the price of the rate-rise strategy was loss of support from tenants and others who would be decisive in a fight.

The rent and rate rises were for that reason alone counterposed right from the start to ever standing up to the Tories. All it needed was for the Tories to tighten the screws, and the rateraisers did what they had always been doing - cut into workers' standards, this time by 'cuts'.

Measures There was no reason to expect that - to stick to the Lambeth experience - the 'left' talking council leaders could choose to fight in the last ditch, if it got that far. Nobody should have been taken in by Ted Knight, who tried (though he was overruled by the local Labour Party) to impose cuts a mere two months after-the Tory victory. Yet Knight's performance is the best measure of the rent and rate rise strategy.

One, two or many Clay Crosses would have been much better. That was a Al A marathon J½ hour meeting on Sunday 6th, the Manchester City Labour Party finished drawing up the panel from which candidates for the council elections in 1982 will be chosen.

In doing so it removed 24 of the right wing councilors who have been deliberately flouting city Labour Party policy for the last two years in their haste to carry out Tory cuts.

Most were rejected because they refuse to give any commitment to implement the election policy of the city Labour Party.

l'he right wing produced two arguments as to why they should not be excluded.

They said councillors with long service should have an automatic right to go on the panel: but, looking at most of Manchester's inner-city areas, you could be forgiven for thinking that a troop of 'defeat' that shook not the labour movement but the Heath government, and helped force the repeal of the Fair Rents' Act.

Now we have a WOISe starting point than two years ago, because the experience of Lambeth and Lothian must depress the movement to some extent. Yet the fight goes on.

Chris Mullin in Tribune suggests the following lines of policy:

* Cast-iron Shadow Cabinet guarantees that surcharged councillors will be indemnified by an incoming Labour government.

* Labour Local Government Committees must coordinate a mass refusal by Labour councils to either increase rates and rents unreasonably oI slash services.

* If the Tories send ir the commissioners, councill OIS could occupy Towi Halls and organise resistance by staff.

We urge London Labour Briefing to unite with Socialist Organiser an( others to fight for it. Ever now Labour-controlled towi halls can be forts for th resistance to demolitio squad Toryism, not seats 3 its (reluctant) local agents IGNU baboons might lu, done better job if hey had be in charge for tat length time.

Labour Group secret:

Bill Egerton also said: 'Vi against these councillors. 3 you'll split the party". W he meant was: he and others will split the party Some of the council are likely to be restored the panel on appeal i5 NEC. And whether the = wingers get back on or = they will still continue :

public attacks on P= policy and their attem?::

undermine the Left.

The answer of the l Party must be to z policies that say the wor class will refuse to pa:

the Tory attacks. Ex mount a mass camer the confrontation •= Tory governmez: =*:

bound to follow.

PETE KEENLIS

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday I September 145/ Paz: Socialist

----- pull-quotes -----

purge of councillors

peacefully able to do in local government only what a

of quistings ierrorised by /CUT SETORY

ED IGWU STOP

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