" the Danger Is Cuts

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Socialist Urganiser argues for the labour movement and Labour councils to fight for 'no cuts, no rate rises'. But many on the Left believe that this is 'purist' — it 'belongs to the realms of fantasy'.

Hansen presents his arguments in defence of thi Our Writeback page will be open for comments and LT -L MICHAEL Heseltine's final kick in the groin for local authorities before his departure to the MoD has left Labour Councils in London and otber urban areas with some very difficult choices to make.

The 1983-4 block grant settlement is specifically aimed at clobbering the 'overspenders' ', i.e. Labour councils who have broadly de ended jobs and services through levying higher rates.

Nationally the percentage of local government expenditure financed by Government grant has been cut from 56% to 53% -and most of this cut will be focused on those authorities who exceed the DoE's expenditure target for their area. For each of the first two percentage points of spending above target, the grant loss is equivalent to a 1p rate (£½million in Brent). For every percentage point thereafter, the grant loss will be 5p (£2 ½m in Brent).

Brent's target for 1983-4 is £132.6m to which a block grant of £60.5m is attached. This in itself represents a £5m cut compared with last year's hypothetical allocation of £65.5m grant). To meet this target we would have to slash £15m to £20m off our budget - which equates to approximately 2,000 redundancies!

Levels

To maintain jobs and services at their present levels including some recent growth), we would have to spend about {147m. At this level of expenditure block grant would be reduced by f18m to approximately £42.5m. Translated into rate figures and taking into account the GLC and police precepts, it would mean an increase in the region of 30%.

To expand our budget to take on board committees' growth aspiration (manifesto commitments), we Deed to spend approximately {153m. In this case grant loss would rise to Dearty {27m and the rate increase would be 40-50%.

purely financial terms there are various positions, beginning to emerge in the Labour Group.

1. Expand the budget, Lavour councilor ME€ i.e. to f153m. This would mean {6m growth, but would mean levying £15m extra in rates to pay for it.

2. 'No. cuts' - in real terms. Defend the existing budget plus committed growth, i.e. a rate increase of 30 to 35%.

3. 'No cuts' - in nominal terms. Defend the existing budget but exclude committed growth. The rate increase drops below 30% but in reality there are cuts.

4. A lower rate (perhaps 20%) plus substantial cuts (perhaps 5%). Already a section of the right have indicated that they will not vote for a high rate increase - if carried out this spens we ena on Dren s annlla thr and of Danat's Labour Council given the casting vote situation: 33 Labour, 30 Tories, Liberals.

The political options are:

• No cuts/no rate increase. One section of comrades in Brent argue this as a position of principle. In reality, in my opinion, it boils down to purist propaganda which offers no prac tical alternative to the labvur movement given the present class balance of forces.

Firstly, such a struggle could not he launched on TGWN

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Socialist Organiser no.119 Februar: !: I*:Fr:. "The SWP have always underestimated such questions as who controls the unions" In the second part of a survey of the John Mcllro argues that many on the Left have overestimated or oversimplified the downturn MANY on the left overestimate the depth of the downturn and see the movement in full flight before the Tories concluding that we can do littie JOHN HARRIS un these factors adversely affect our straegy.

Let us take the miners" ballot as an example. Oze argument has been that i was tactically wrong to link closures with wages on the voting paper.

But this was not just an abstract gesture. Scargil did campaiga before. through and after the ballor to highlight the closure issue and to argue cogentl! that it was intrinsically bound up with the wages fight. He knew that strike built on the spine of a fusion of these issues would be stronger. He believed in telling what is to the members and fighting for an acceptance of the correct strategy. It is pointless to fight over wages and not closures.

We spent a lot of time criticising Bill Sirs in the 1980 steel strike over this. In the film, A Question of Leadership, he is able to keep asserting correctly in formal terms, 'The strike was nul over clusures • Scargill's decision

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rates option. criticism.

NUPE NUPE FICHT FOR SCHOOL MEALS TORSEN OVSEN