Save Our Services in Surrey, meeting in Egham.

The latest in a series of Save Our Services in Surrey meetings was held at Staines Community Centre on 3^rd March.

The meeting was considerably smaller than previous meetings, but a very positive one. Although it was called at short notice, people still braved the mid-week freezing conditions. Most people were new faces, which was especially welcome.

Five of those attending the meeting, came from the newly constituted West Surrey branch of the Revolution Socialist Youth group. Revolution has been growing throughout the country with several new groups springing up. ‘Revo’s increasing popularity stems from its principled response to the cuts in education and rises to tuition fees. Revo were the main organisers of the Days Of Action against fees and cuts last year. It was Revo members in the Campaign Against Fees And Cuts that initially called for them.http://www.socialistrevolution.org/

Protest with REVO on the March 26^th TUC march against cuts. Join the student feeder march outside the University of London Union, Mallet Street. (Nearest tube Goodge Street)

Unfortunately The VOAG was late for the meeting, but arrived in time to catch Craig from the Royal Holloway Anti-Cuts Alliance in Egham, give a report on their latest developments.  The Royal Holloway Anti-Cuts Alliance is one of several anti-cuts groups affiliated to Save Our Services in Surrey. Craig, who is the SOSiS Youth Officer, spoke about the violent eviction of an occupation staged in the Central London campus of the Royal Holloway University.

Craig went on to speak about the University’s clamp down on the anti-cuts movement on his own campus in Egham. The Anti-Cuts group is being intimidated and slurred by the University authorities. Police and security have entered their meetings; and the university has even tried to label them as racists. The University recently banned a meeting of theirs about the conflicts in Palestine. It featured eye witnesses who had recently been volunteering on social and economic projects in the West Bank.

Craig announced his candidature for the NUS Executive Officer for Campaigns; and went on to tell the meeting that Daniel, another member of Royal Holloway Anti-Cuts Alliance, had been elected to be their next Union President. The VOAG wishes both of them every success!

Paul, a SOSiS and Surrey Unison officer, spoke to the meeting about the coaches he had booked for the 26^th March TUC demonstration against the cuts in London.

Coaches have been booked and subsidised by Surrey Unison. They will leave from Guildford, Woking, Redhill, and Staines. Tickets are only £2.00 Rtn. Buy a ticket on-line at www.saveourservic.es through the secure paypal, or email:guildfordagainstfeesandcuts@yahoo.co.uk

The VOAG doesn’t need to emphasise how important this demonstration is. It will be truly historic. There are more than two hundred Unison coaches coming from the South East region alone. http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000336574245#!/event.php?eid=165255660190758

Chris from Save Our Services introduced the idea of distributing a pledge to all Labour Council candidates in the forthcoming election. The VOAG thinks this is an excellent idea. The candidates will be invited to sign the pledge, and join an on-line list of candidates who have signed.

A member of the PCS announced her members at the DWP were balloting in Surrey for strike action.

A Save Our Services street stall was arranged for 19^th March at Staines High Street. And the meeting was told about a rally due to take place in Redhill, March 24^th. This is being organised by Redhill Against Cuts, another group affiliated to Save Our Services in Surrey.

For a list of Save Our Services in Surrey events go to the events tab on the Guildford Against Fees and Cuts Facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000336574245#!/pages/Guildford-Against-Fees-Cuts/167151436659040 
Or for a diary of activists’ events in Surrey and the surrounding counties, click the Events Calendar on the right hand column on this page.

The VOAG investigates Surrey University’s NUS Kickbacks. Now that’s entertainment!

Now that’s entertainment!

The Voice of Anti-Capitalism in Guildford is always going to stand up against cuts. But disturbing news has reached us from the University of Surrey.

Could it really have been necessary for the University to have spent over £90,000 in one hotel alone, on entertaining over the last year? I realise that visiting professors often need to be accommodated, but crikey £90,000 is a lot of accommodation.

This staggering figure has been spent on events like entertaining around forty people at the “Royal Economica Annual Social”, at a cost of nearly £5,000. A similar amount was spent on a jolly for the Post Graduate Medical School. Even “9-5” meetings are costing the University over £2,500 a time – just for the privilege of chatting in posh surroundings with a few sandwiches at lunch time.

The most disturbing news was that Student Union officers have also been beneficiaries of the University’s generosity. Over £2,500 has been spent on entertaining NUS officers at just one hotel alone, over the last few months. Several officers have even stayed overnight at the University’s expense.

The VOAG is beginning to wonder whether these little treats, which are thrown to the union sabbatical, are connected in any way to their unwillingness to campaign on behalf of students. Is their deep conservatism in any way influenced by a three-course meal and an occasional night out at the University’s expense?

Perhaps it’s time for student officers to be ‘scrutinised’. Perhaps they should be forced to declare any benefits they receive over and above their salaries.

In the midst of so many occupations, demonstrations and protests, The Voice Of Anti-Capitalism in Guildford finds it hard to believe Surrey University could remain so quiet.

Just up the road in Egham, the Royal Holloway University has seen an unprecedented campaign against fees and cuts. They regularly hold vibrant meetings and workshops, and have organised several occupations and protests. They also discuss wider issues, host debates, and join with other groups in the community to organise against the cuts. The Royal Holloway has just elected a socialist to be the next president of their union.

If Royal Holloway University is the norm, Surrey University must be the exception. The Student Union reluctantly booked coaches to take students to the NUS Demonstration in London on 10^th November. The demonstration was officially supported by the NUS, so they felt obliged to book coaches, but they did nothing to publicise their free transport.

In similar fashion, the University’s Student Union reluctantly agreed to support a lunch-time demonstration on the 24^th November, “National Day Of Action”. A small lunch-time meeting outside the student union was their answer to the wave of protests elsewhere across the country that day. The union did nothing to inform students of what was being planned and even kept it out of the student newspaper.

Students at Royal Holloway, Surrey University’s nearest neighbour occupied their university – while a thousand students demonstrated outside Kingston University, Surrey’s other close neighbour.

In a quiet meeting behind closed doors with two student activists, just prior to the November 24^th protest, union officers made it clear they did not want to see a campaign against fees and cuts on the campus. They said they would not support a campaign or provide it any material assistance.

The student’s response to their union’s implacable refusal to campaign has been muted, those students that presented themselves as activists have shied away from a confrontation with the union clique.

However it has been shown up and down the country that where there has been a principled response to education cuts and rises in fees, campaigns have always gained popular support among students.

The VOAG is watching!   The VOAG is everywhere!

Guildford Against Fees And Cuts: Public Spending Cuts in Surrey

Whilst rumors abound of cuts around Surrey, the Council has been tight lipped about where the axe is going to fall.

There is a Council Cabinet meeting of the council February 1st, which will discuss the cuts in detail. On February 8th there is a meeting of the full council scheduled which will finally decide on the budget for the coming year. What is clear, the reduced government block grant is set to have an impact on services.

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said in December there would be cuts of between 0.31% and 6.96% in the ‘revenue spending power’ of Surrey’s 11 borough and district authorities, plus the county council.

But the real figures for reductions in funding which comes direct from central government are much higher, as the revenue spending power totals included council tax money – which is collected locally – plus other smaller grants separate from the core ‘formula grant’.

The council funding settlements for 2011/12 and 2012/13 are provisional and the final figures have still to be confirmed. Council tax rates are set to be frozen for the next financial year, and Mr Pickles said: “We are stopping any revaluation and setting up a £650m fund so town halls can freeze council tax this April.”

But local authorities in the county, where cuts to jobs and services have been part of the landscape in recent years, warned of challenging times ahead.

Surrey County Council said its main central government grant was being cut by 25% over the two years, meaning a £41m funding reduction. Teams have already started cost-cutting ‘Public Value Reviews’ with the intention of making public service cuts like the proposed 25% cuts to the county’s fire service.

In Woking, voluntary and community groups will be asked to play a greater role in council services from next year -after a higher than expected cut in the borough’s annual grant. A total of £1.7m will be shaved off its contribution from central government up to 2013, equating to a 28.5% cut in Whitehall funding.

The borough council’s leader, Cllr John Kingsbury, said they were looking at following up the move of neighborhood police officers into Woking’s civic offices by inviting other public sector bodies to do the same. He added: “We will do things like looking at our investment programme, among other things, between now and February. The fact is, we need to save £1m.”

The formula grant cuts for Guildford Borough Council have been set at 15.7% (£1.2m) for 2011/12 and 11.3% (£731,000) for 2012/13. Leader of the council, Cllr Tony Rooth, said: “This is a very tough financial settlement but is in line with our projections. “We have been working across all our services to identify ways of making reductions in our expenditure and increasing our income, such that we can meet the financial challenges with the minimum impact on our residents.”

Before this week’s announcement, the council had already flagged up areas where savings could be made, such as axing the £100,000 staff subsidy at its restaurant. Strategic director Sue Sturgeon said it was still too early to finalise any spending cuts, but she added that other revenue streams, including car parks and the Spectrum leisure centre, were also suffering because of the recession.

Surrey Heath Borough Council said it had been taken unawares by the depth of the cuts made to its funding. The authority is set to lose more than £1m from its government grant over the next two years. Kelvin Menon, the borough’s head of corporate finance, said: “The proposed cuts are much deeper than the council expected, making them far harder to manage”.

“Surrey Heath Borough Council has already made significant savings in the past and it will be increasingly difficult to make savings of this size in the future without having an impact on services”. Surrey Heath’s main formula grant from central government was £4.4m this year. It will shrink to £3.6m and then £3.1m over the next two financial years. The borough council has already scrapped the full time Ian Goodchild day centre for the elderly in Camberley, while fees and charges for services like Meals-on-Wheels and Dial-a-Ride have risen.

In Elmbridge, the borough council admitted it faced a “huge challenge” after it was hit by the largest ever cut to its central government grant – double what officers had anticipated when setting out budget plans for the next financial year. The authority said it would now have to find further savings of £300,000 in order to balance the books. It said it was set to lose a third of its funding from Whitehall over the next two years – with reductions of 16.8% in 2011/12 and then 13.5% in 2012/13.

Jobs are set to be axed in the personnel, environmental health and licensing, housing and social services teams. The out-of-hours services will be scrapped, cutting £14,500 from the budget, and £15,000 will be saved after a decision to stop providing ‘poop scoop’ dispensers. Information for residents will be published online rather than in leaflet form, saving around £2,300. Elmbridge will also share the role of head of IT with Epsom & Ewell Borough Council, meaning another £35,000 of savings.

In Epsom & Ewell itself, the cuts in central government funding were said to be “as bad as expected” – 16.5% in 2011/12 and a further 10% in 2012/13. The borough’s formula grant is set to plummet from £4.1m at the moment to £2.8m. The council has made preparations for cost reductions of £750,000 next year, including a further pay freeze except for low paid staff, redundancies to cut the payroll by £500,000 and other savings on overheads including energy usage, training and external advisers.  

District council services will have to be provided next year in Mole Valley with almost 18% less government money. Its £4m grant will go down to £2.92m, followed by a further £375,000 cut in 2012/13. Saving money in Mole Valley has already hit services over the past couple of years, including leisure, maintenance of parks and recycling facilities. Dorking Halls has seen its budget slashed and was only able to stage a pantomime this year due to the intervention of a production company.

Waverley Borough Council has been left to find another £400,000 of savings after a “disappointing” grant settlement from central government. “The harsh reality is that we are facing a 17% reduction for 2011/12 and 14% for the following year,” said finance portfolio holder, Cllr Mike Band.” This is approaching a cut of 30%, which is a significant amount and it will have a further impact on our budget.”

Waverley had based its budget preparations for next year on having to find savings of about £1.6m, but Cllr Band said: “We will now have to save £2m, so a further £400,000 of savings will have to be found. Council leader, Cllr Robert Knowles, described the grant settlement as unfair and said they would be making “urgent representations” on the matter to MPs Anne Milton and Jeremy Hunt.

Reigate & Banstead Borough Council is due to see a formula grant drop from £6.1m now to £5.1m in 2011/12 and then £4.6m the year after (16.4% and 8.9% cuts for the two years). Council leader, Cllr Joan Spiers, added: “Clearly running a business with 25% less money over the next two years is going to be a huge challenge and we will need to make choices around what and how we do things.

The council is currently running a consultation, asking residents to nominate any non-statutory service they think could be cut. These could include keeping parks clean, community safety and CCTV funding, community centers or the Harlequin Cinema & Theatre in Redhill.

Across the border into Tandridge, the provisional grant settlement for 2011/12 is down by just under £500,000, a reduction of 12%. The district council described the cut as “higher than expected”. A spokeswoman said: “When the council also takes into account reduced income from investments, planning and other fees, together with other commitments, the total estimated saving for next year is £1.3m from a net budget of £11.5m.

Spelthorne Borough Council still needs to find another £500,000 of savings, with a 16.5% reduction in its government grant. A spokesman said: “While the council has planned for a cut in its formula grant by making redundancies, and increasing partnership working where there is the potential, it still leaves us with a gap of about £0.5m and further savings will have to be found.”

Runnymede Borough Council said its £1.3m grant cut for 2011/12 made it “one of the worst hit local authorities in Surrey”. In a joint statement, council leader, Cllr John Furey, and chief executive Paul Turrell said: We will be forced into savings of a further £750,000 on top of our current savings plan of £2.5m. “We will now work with staff and councilors to produce a potential list of savings [cuts].

So What’s To Be Done? None of us voted for these measures, and they are in no way fiscally necessary. Whilst local services are about to be devastated, banks which are partly owned by the public are making record profits again. Bankers are receiving record bonuses again, totaling billions of pounds. These bonuses are from the public finances given to the banks last year to shore up a system that doesn’t work. We even have the bizarre situation in which the government is issuing bonds to the banks, who are then charging the government over-the-top interest rates for the bonds that they’ve bought with our money. 

TUC Demo Against The Cuts: Defend the welfare state! The only answer we can give to the government is on the streets. The TUC has called a demonstration against the cuts to public services for the 26^th March. This will truly be a historic day, making the Poll-Tax demonstrations of the ’90s and the strikes of ’85-’86 pale in comparison.

It will be the most important date for a decade. It will completely change the face of British society. Without a large turn-out the welfare state will be dismantled and we will have an American type situation in which healthcare, education and services will only be for the wealthy in society- whilst the workers, those who produce the wealth in society, are left to rot.

A large turn-out will rock the very foundations of the government. It will stop it in its tracks. The government will either reverse many of its policies or it will fall. The TUC hasn’t called an all out National Demonstration like this since 1926!- And that ended in a general strike. Many union branches, who have never organised coaches to a demonstration before, are already booking three, four, and up to a half dozen.

It is essential that every able-bodied person makes the effort to be at this historic demonstration. Every single person counts in this historic battle to save the welfare state.

In order to secure your subsidised bus ticket at only £2.00 return, email guildfordagainstfeesandcuts@yahoo.co.uk -OR- visit  http://www.saveourservic.es  Use the paypal donation button to pay £2.00 and write “for bus” in the name field. (Together with your name of course).

Please join the Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/manage/updates.php?id=167151436659040&sent=1&e=0#!/event.php?eid=178381258861986

Together we can bring down this government, but if we all leave it to someone else – well, the consequences are unthinkable

The time and place where the busses will depart from will be confirmed nearer the time. – But the buses are filling up fast, so don’t delay in booking your ticket.

You can find out about local events against the cuts by joining Guildford Against Fees And Cuts Facebook page

Pamphlet on the cuts by the TUC – Read here:
https://suacs.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/tuc-cuts-pamphlet.pdf

Pamphlet on the cuts by the PCS union – Read here:
https://suacs.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/4015_nc_pamphlet1.pdf

Pamphlet: Public Spending Myths by Unison – Read here:
https://suacs.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/public-spending-myths.pdf

Guildford Against Fees And Cuts – Cuts In Surrey

Surrey University Student’s Meeting:
Save Our Services – Cuts In Surrey

26^th October,
Student’s at the university invited Chris Leary from Save Our Services in Surrey to address its weekly meeting at the University.  

Around fifteen students and supporters attended the meeting. Markus, Society President, opened with a short speech about some of the concerns he and his fellow students have about the cuts.

“Universities are about to receive a 40% cut in funding across the board”, he told the meeting. “The funding for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Technology) subjects is to be ring fenced, so that the Arts and Social Sciences will no longer be publically funded, but will be paid for through fees alone. This represents a decisive break from the liberal education ethos of the Post War University system”.

“As a consequence Universities like surrey are already concentrating on recruiting non-EU students, who are charged higher fees, in order to make up the shortfall”.“The Lib Dems are beginning to distance themselves from the recommendations of the Browne Report, fearful of the backlash that is gaining momentum. Ministers are talking about raising the cap on fees to £12,000 instead of a total abolishment of the cap. Meanwhile, the Scottish government voted to keep education free earlier in the year”.

“The University’s Vice Chancellor is keeping quiet about the cuts that are about to take place in the University. However, two Sociology lecturers have already been threatened with redundancy, with minimum redundancy payments, unless they take early retirement”.

“The head of the Law Dept. has been forced to take a sabbatical and her vacant post integrated into the Hotel and Catering Management Dept. Another lecturer was sacked on the flimsy pretext that a letter of complaint she wrote was insulting. Meanwhile, the School of Law has been integrated with the school of Management and is now called The School of Law and Management”. These moves represent “cuts by the back door” Markus told the meeting.

After a screening of some short films, showing how students around the country are resisting the cuts, Chris Leary from Save Our Services in Surrey addressed the meeting. He said “Social Services in Surrey are going to be hit hard by the Comprehensive Spending Review”(CSR).

“A report published by credit analysts, Experian says that Guildford is the eighth best placed borough to cope with public service cuts. However there are many pockets of poverty in Surrey”, Chris said. “Spelthorne, a borough in North Surrey was estimated by the report to be seventieth on the table”.

“For example Esher, a small town in the centre of Surrey, is divided by the railway that runs through the town. There is a ten year differential in life expectancy between the two halves of the town. Surrey is not all stockbrokers” said Paul.

“Surrey needs its public services to survive”, continued Paul. “And Council workers spend their money in the local economy, unlike Surrey’s stockbrokers, who stash their money in off shore accounts. Once the public sector redundancies start, the whole economy will suffer”.

“500 Local civil service jobs are due to go as town centre offices are closed. The job Centre is also due to be cut, just when unemployment is rising in the area. Funding for the National Tax Office in Woking is to be slashed, whilst corporations get away with massive tax evasion”.

“Vodafone for example, has recently had a six billion tax bill written off because the government claims it doesn’t have the resources to pursue the company through the courts”.

“The axe has already fallen in Surrey before the CSR was published. Surrey’s primary schools have been urged to become academies thus removing the council’s responsibility for primary education. Thirty Connexions careers and guidance centres are to be closed in Surrey, leaving only two centres for the whole of Surrey. The Council’s policy is cease providing all services that it is not required to provide by law. This includes bus subsidies and youth centres”.

“Road building projects have been scrapped. The Guildford town centre Council offices, employing 2000 staff is set to close. Community Support offices in Frimley, Farnham, and Staines are going to close. Family support and social workers’ funding is going to be scrapped”.

“A third of the Local Government and Communities budget is going to be slashed. Meanwhile Surrey Council has received the lowest Ofsted rating for its services- and the council’s response?..To discuss suing Ofsted for lying!..You couldn’t make it up! But the real reason for the lack of proper services is of course a lack of funding”.

“These cuts are ideological and politically motivated. The national debt is not historically high as the government would have us believe. It now stands at 48% of GDP. However, for most of the 20^th century the debt has been over 100% of GDP. Five years ago the debt stood at 38% of GDP, so when the government claims that New Labour has massively increased the debt and led us into this impasse, they are lying”.

“The debt is not a problem. The government could easily restructure the debt in order to pay it over a longer time if it chose. A 0.05% tax on speculative financial transactions, the so-called Robin Hood Tax, could net the country 30 billion a year, halving the deficit”.

“David Cameron, speaking on Radio 4 two weeks ago was asked if he was going to reverse the spending cuts once the deficit had been repaid- and of course, he said no”.

However Chris told us, “These cuts can be defeated. We have already had successes. Brooklands College when threatened by closure drew a huge reaction from the local community. A campaign spearheaded by Save Our Services in Surrey brought together staff, parents and students and forced the council to save the college”. “Shortwood School in Staines was saved through a mobilisation of the entire community”.

 “We need to link up all local struggles to save services. These cuts are a unified attack and they require a single unified response”. In the ‘90s we saw the defeat of the Poll Tax by the whole community coming together and refusing to comply. This is the response we need now”. Already we see ministers starting to backtrack on Child Benefit and University fees.

Redhill Coalition Against Cuts Meeting:
7pm on Tuesday 2nd November @ The Garlands, Brighton Road, Redhill.

North Sussex And East Surrey Anti Cuts Coalition Meeting:
8pm on Tuesday 2nd November @ St John Church Hall, in the Broadway, Crawley
(Sponsored by North Sussex and East Surrey Trades Union Council)

Join Save Our Services in Surrey on Facebook
Join Guildford Against Fees And Cuts on Facebook

Royal Holloway University Anti-Cuts Alliance – Official Launch (Report By Guildford Against Fees And Cuts)

Public Meeting: Introduction To The Cuts

21^st, October 2010
Last night saw the official launch meeting of the Royal Holloway Anti-Cuts Alliance at the Royal Holloway University, Egham, Surrey. It was a fantastic meeting with over a hundred and fifty people in attendance.

So many meetings of this kind never go beyond phrasemongary, “Tories are bad, they eat your kids and kill your parents” etc. But every speaker was interesting and engaging. Each speaker brought a wealth of knowledge and loads of facts and figures.

The speakers spoke about the cuts from a variety of perspectives but all made the point that the fight against cuts in education and the rise in fees must be linked to the resistance to the wider public sector cuts.

The meeting heard speakers from Save Our Services in Surrey, UCU, BARAC (Black Activists Rising Against Cuts), The Student Union’s Women’s and Equality Officer, a member from the NUS National Executive and Ben Robinson from Youth Fight For Jobs.

Chris Leary from Save Our Services in Surrey gave an informative talk about what the cuts meant for the people in Surrey. Whilst Surrey is an affluent county said Chris, “there were many pockets of poverty”. According to the government’s survey of Boroughs, the Surrey Borough of Elmbridge was the ablest in the country to cope with the cuts. Runneymede, another Surrey borough came seventh. However Spelthorne came seventieth in the table. “There are 30,000 people working for Surrey County Council (SCC), many on low incomes, so not everyone in Surrey conforms to the stockbroker commuting stereotype” said Chris.  

“There was a move by SCC, earlier this year to force all secondary schools into a federation of academies thus divesting itself of all responsibility for secondary education. There was such resistance that the Council was forced to back down, but immediately approached the primary schools with the same proposal. Academies do worse in league tables”, Chris told the packed meeting. “They don’t even generate extra income”.     

Chris spoke of other cuts planned by the Council. “With regards to young people, the SCC has published the target of achieving zero needs for sixteen to eighteen year-olds, which means all young people will be in work or education. However the council is reducing the grant it gives to the private company that runs the Connections careers and counselling service. It is going to close twenty centres, leaving only Camberley and Epsom to service the entire county. We have already witnessed a reduction in social workers and their admin support”, Chris added.

“The council also plans to slash the grant it awards bus companies to provide non-profitable bus services. It has also announced it will scrap all of its education welfare officers”.

“The council is talking of scrapping its present library service and replacing it with mobile libraries that may only visit once every fortnight. SCC also plans to shut down its youth services, closing youth centres, some of which were  only opened two or three years ago”.

“These cuts are just a few of those announced following the Council’s Spending Review and come before the Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review announced a couple of days ago”. “The government announced an unprecedented 20% reduction in revenues for local councils which will further devastate communities and local services”. Chris concluded that we need to link education issues with wider service cuts and build a coalition of resistance of students, workers and service users.

Next to speak was Duska Rosenberg, Royal Holloway Professor of Information and Communications Management and UCU member. She told the meeting that “whilst all other countries are investing in education, the UK is slashing budgets and predicted some Universities may close”. “This can only harm the future prosperity of the country”, she told the audience.

Professor Rosenberg spoke about the government’s plan to ring fence STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects whilst cutting funding for the arts and social sciences. As a professor whose discipline bridges the physical and social sciences, she told the meeting how the arts earn money for the economy.

“However it’s not just about economic growth, there’s also an issue of intellectual growth and education for its own sake. We need a government that respects this.

One cannot divide technology from social sciences”, she continued. “One needs to know how technological advances affect society”.

“A recent government think tank reported that the UK needs more graduates to compete in a knowledge economy, so each University needs to be preserved. However, it’s not just about academic staff, there are also thousands of administration and support jobs at stake. They are indispensible to Universities. It’s about all of us”.

A BARAC (Black Activists Rising Against Cuts) spokesperson addressed the meeting. He called the cuts disgusting. “According to the Institute of Fiscal Studies these cuts are the greatest since the World War Two”. The cuts, he said “will devastate all communities, but black people will be disproportionately effected. Black people already suffer from greater levels of unemployment. Black people die younger, and more black people go to prison than go to university”.

“Studies have proved that in times of recession racism increases and we can already see this dynamic taking shape in the way that asylum seekers are being scapegoated in the media. 80% of public sector workers are black and for the most part work in lower paid support jobs; these are the very jobs that are being targeted for cuts”.

He concluded that students have a proud tradition of anti-racism and urged all students to emulate the French and fight against the cuts. He finished with a quote from Nelson Mandela: “A society is judged by the way it treats its poor”.

We heard from the Student Union’s Equality and Diversity Officer that women will also be disproportionately affected by the cuts. “According to studies, 60% of students who are lone parents are considering giving up their studies due to the hike in tuition fees. Women already take longer to pay back their student loans.  Domestic violence services are also going to be cut, along with homophobic and HIV services”.

Ben Robinson from Youth Fight For Jobs also spoke from the platform. “The Education Maintenance Grant will be scrapped”, he told us. He said “the government has announced plans to cut a half million public sector jobs, but have not mentioned that it will have a knock on effect of creating another half million unemployed on top of this. Already there are 2.5 million people chasing a half million jobs. One quarter of all young people are unemployed, and for young black people it’s a half”.

“Presently, anyone under 25, cannot get housing benefit for their own home, they are limited to renting a room. The government’s spending review has raised this to 35 years. This means a loss of privacy, space and independence for claimants until they are 35 years old”.

“The government is only making cuts because they can get away with it”, said Ben. “The banks, still largely publically owned, have paid 15 billion pounds in bonuses this year. The richest UK banks are paying the lowest corporation tax in Europe”.

The last speaker to address the meeting was Sean, the NUS National Executive Mature Students officer. He told the meeting that the Browne Report meant that poorer students would receive a second class education because they will not be able to afford the higher fees charged by the leading Universities.

“The government’s emphasis on STEM subjects will mean only the richer Universities charging higher fees will be running Social Science courses. These will be unaffordable to most students, so that in future it will be the students from richer backgrounds taking the lead in politics and the media in later life.

The Tories, he told us “are finishing Thatcher’s job, marketising education and the NHS and attacking housing benefits, which are due to be capped at 30%  below the average cost of accommodation. “The UK’s structural debt stands at £100 billion whilst the richest thousand UK citizens have £80billion of personal wealth.

So, he concluded, “Lets all get to the demo on 10^th November and demand No Cuts And No Fees, and take this message to the Coalition Of Resistance conference on 23^rd November. And LETS GET FRENCH!!!!”
Statement of the Coalition Of Resistance
Royal Holloway University Anti Cuts Alliance
Save Our Services in Surrey
Join Guildford Against Fees And Cuts on Facebook

The French NPA’s (Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste) perspectives on Britain

The SUAC- acting locally but thinking globally- looks across the channel to see how the French are responding to the attacks on their living standards and what the French make of the anti-cuts movement in Britain. 

Today, October 12, France will be protesting against austerity measures, pension cuts and the raising of the retirement age with open-ended strikes in public transport – and a one-day strike in schools.  They are protesting against plans to push back the legal retirement age from 60 to 62. The strikes will be followed by street protests on Saturday, October 16.  According to a survey by Le Parisien, 69 per cent of people support the strike. The last demos, on October 2, attracted three million people. The CGT union has also called an open-ended strike in the power sector, calling on workers to carry out power cuts targeting official buildings, but not households.

A short article was published a few days ago on the web site of the French NPA. (Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste). It talks about the Con-Dem cuts and the NPA’s hope for a growing resistance here in Britain. 

Great-Britain. Resistance to the Budget Cuts
Saturday 7th October 

A campaign against government policy to make the masses pay the cost of the crisis has been put in place. The Conservative report into public finances will be revealed on 20th October. We can see that cuts of up to 25% will be a veritable massacre of public services, salaries, and conditions of work, the annihilation of which is the remains of union gains and the welfare state.

The government has already announced its targets: public-sector pensions, the right-to-strike, education, health and post, salaries and premiums. VAT was increased, and benefits cut. Committees led by Conservatives (Barnet, Suffolk) plan the extension of privatisation to the majority of services. 

The consequences will be dramatic. Without even including the decrease in salaries and allowances, or the increase in VAT, the Budget Cuts represent a loss of income of 4.9% per person, and even 11.2% for a single-parent family. Proportionally, women will be hardest hit by the cuts. According to a study by the House of Commons, they will bear three-quarters of the burden…

The massive bank deficit of 2008, which was guaranteed by public funds, is now transformed into a public deficit which they are asking us to pay! That which was “their crisis” has now become “our crisis”. The Conservative and Liberal-Democrat government is using the depth of the crisis to frighten people, and persuade them that there is no alternative to massive, immediate cuts, to prevent the collapse of society.

A realization is emerging. The number and size of public meetings against the budget cuts is increasing. There have been strikes on the underground in London, at Astra-Zeneca and Coca-Cola, as well as a large demonstration of fire-fighters.

The absence, since the elections, of any opposition to the cuts from New Labour or the TUC, explains why, until now, the level of resistance had remained quite weak. The executive of the TUC subscribed to this logic when they stated that “the deficit can and must be reduced, but over a longer period”. They even invited the Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, to address the TUC congress.

But this congress has just agreed a vigorous campaign against the budget cuts, and to co-ordinate strikes at a local and national level. This constitues an encouragement to unions for local campaigns, and will give confidence to the rank-and-file for strike action.

The magnitude of the crisis demands radical solutions: nationalisations in response to closures of businesses or workplaces, the placing of the banks under democratic control, a limit on the wealth of the rich, a million green jobs to fight climate change. 

We need a united campaign, with a large support base, like that against the Poll Tax in 1990, or Stop the War. The French and Greek strikes and demonstrations can equally well serve us as a reference. 

The new coalition “Resistance Against the Cuts” (CoR) has rallied a large palette of Trade Union officials, left groups, left-personalities such as Tony Benn or Ken Loach. It’s aim is to provide a democratic national co-ordination of local groups and not to end up co-existing alongside already-established groups.

The important deadlines are set. The “Right To Work” campaign has called a demonstration at the Conservative Party Conference on the 3rd October. Demonstrations are planned for the 20th October, when the Comprehensive spending review will be announced.

The national conference of the Coalition of Resistance, the 27th November, will be the time to plan an escalation in power of the campaign. Next year the TUC has organised a national demonstration for the 26th March. It is a distant event, but, from now, in all the communities, and all the workplaces, we must carry the message: we won’t pay for this crisis, involve everyone in the resistance against cuts and privatisations.

So what are the French calling for at home?

Below we have translated communiqués from the main forces on the French left posted on their websites over the last few days. The NPA is calling for an open-ended general strike. The Front De Gauche (Left Front) offers a new electoral project, with plans to codify a ‘governmental programme’ next year. Whilst the Lutte Ouvriere (Workers Struggle) calls for the resistance to be stepped up.

NPA: One solution: Renewable general strike! 
Wednesday 6th October
On the 2nd of October, many new demonstrators marched in more than 200 towns across the country. The contingents were different to those of the 7th and 23rd of September.  Fewer workers from the large industries, and more workers from grades or jobs who cannot strike, or are not unionised, a larger public, and more youth.

More friendly, but just as determined. In fact, it represents a new widening of the mobilisation, representative of the rejection of Sarkozy’s politics by more than 70% of the population. But after this latest success, we must stop here. The government has not decided to retreat under the sole pressure of public opinion manifested in polls and demonstrations. The seventh law in ten years on immigration, the racist proposals of ministers and the agitation on the terrorist threat don’t permit the government to regain any legitimacy. 

We must therefore take a step forward in the demonstrations. There is no other solution to blocking this plan to destroy our pension plans than to stop the economic and social activity of the country. The government not only wants to inflict a defeat us over pensions to symbolise its 5th year in power, but to continue through attacks on social security, schools, free healthcare, what’s left of the 35-hour week, and by new attacks on civil liberties.

Many workers from all regions have understood the desire of the government to attack us on all fronts. This explains why many demonstrations have occurred without waiting for the national days of action. Thus, many thousands of anaesthetists demonstrated on Friday 1st October through the nice quarters of Paris, dockers from several ports are on strike not only for their jobs, but also because for them too, everything is linked to pensions. Hundreds of workers from Ford-Bordeaux disrupted celebrations at the World automobile fair by demonstrating to save their jobs inside the showroom. 

Certainly, workers and the union apparatus remain marked by the defeats and retreats of the last years. The last inter-union statement on the 4th October hides badly the refusal of the principal union federations to engage in confrontation with the government. But in the factories, the offices, the neighbourhoods, the schools, the hospitals… the attacks on conditions of work and living and the racist policies of the government is provoking anger and revolt. 

Everywhere we need to build and amplify the demonstrations, the strikes, walkouts, and stoppages. We must now not merely discuss the open-ended strike, but everywhere win mobilisations to this avenue. Opposing the Media, we must circulate information and make contacts sector by sector, town by town. 

Less than ever the development of the renewable strike must be from national guidelines or local spontaneity. If some firm steps have been taken in this direction (RATP), many other structures seem ready to engage with it (SNCF, Education, CGT Seine-Maritime, Bouches-du-Rhone et Paris, inter-union federations in Paris and many ‘local’ branches, CGT chemical federation, etc). 

The concerted action of unions and convinced militants, sincerely engaged in building the confrontation can change the balance of forces and force the government to retreat. Don’t wait for the 12th October, we won’t stop on the 12th. 

FRONT DE GAUCHE: The Left Front opens a new space. 
Saturday 30th September
The Left Front launched, during the fete de l’humanite, a process of elaboration of a “shared project” covering multiple local and national initiatives in order to forge an ambitious programme for our country and its place in the world, a programme which the Left Front intends to carry to the elections to come. 

This rentree is placed under a double cross: on one hand, a government policy continuously  antisocial, anti-liberties, xenophobic, which doesn’t hesitate to question even the very foundations of the Republic; on the other hand, important and militant citizen and social mobilisations. Every day that passes delegitimizes further Sarkozy’s headlong rush.  The demonstrations of the rentree – those of the 4th and 7th September – and their support in the country, shows that on the question of liberties and of equality of rights like the social plan, the politics of Sarkozy won’t get through!

The Right in power has plunged into a deep political crisis that reveals their collusion with the financial powers. We must block them from any further destruction of social and democratic rights.

It is this sense which the Left Front intends to give its presence on all the demonstrations and struggles currently under way. It will be on all the movements for unity called across France based on the repeal of the government pensions’ project or in the movements defending the liberties and principles in our constitution with regard to the defence of the rights of man and citizen. We call in particular to join the rallies called by the inter-union federations on 15th and 23rd September.

The fight against Sarkozy also necessitates the construction of a credible Left alternative  to policies entirely devoted to the interests of the MEDEF (French CBI).

This is why, since 2008, the Left Front has proposed another way to the “people of the left” which doesn’t lead to yet another of the accompanying variations of liberalism. It constitutes a dynamic opening which has the capacity to grow.

It is in this spirit that the Left Front reaffirms its wish to “jumpstart” the situation of the Left. It means to assemble in the country a new left majority on the basis of a government programme that ruptures with the dominant logic of a capitalist system and it’s productivist models, of which the current crisis only confirms the necessity of surpassing.

It is in this vision that today, 11th September during the fete de l’humanite, a process of elaboration of a “shared project” covering multiple local and national initiatives in order to forge an ambitious programme for our country and its place in the world, a programme which the Left Front intends to carry to the elections to come. 

This “workspace” the Left Front intends to throw open nationally as well as locally to political formations which share the objectives and desire to be associated with this new project, but also to all citizens, especially union activists and associations who are involved in the pursuit of a society that denies the upgrading of economic profitability of all human activity, to substitute the values of equality, solidarity and humanism which are the real heritage of the Left in this country.

We will, therefore, put forward a concrete method: We call for the multiplication of local initiatives, permitting the largest number of ordinary people to get involved as possible: local committees of the shared project, initiatives of election and rallying of important local activists, workshops in the neighbourhoods and workplaces.

In the course of this process, we will ensure that we merge the work of elaborating the Left Front, with the demands and requirements of the organisations and actors in the social and citizens’ movements; unionists, organised militants, intellectuals who are at the heart of the resistance to liberal policies.

We also propose the setting up of “Thematic Fronts” rallying the activists of difference sectors (e.g. health, education, art, economy) in order to work out proposals together, which are likely to permit a viable democratic re-appropriation of society’s issues.

More initiatives of public debate, of a national dimension, will also be organised. For now two initiatives have been announced for the coming months:– An initiative on the question of Europe, to propose an alternative which breaks with the logic of the Lisbon Treaty and austerity measures, put in place by the Liberal European governments.

The Standing Liaison Committee of the Left Front will offer soon the forms in which organizations that wish and all citizens who share the approach of the Left Front and its objectives can fully participate.

All follow-up tools necessary to this project will be largely to inform about local and national initiatives to be taken, to publicize the work and contributions to various ensuing exchanges and allow the widest participation. 

Finally a national meeting in 2011 will conclude this process by adopting a program of government that we will be fighting for in the upcoming political events.

 LUTTE OUVRIERE: Everyone on strike on 12th October and onwards. 
Saturday 9th October
Workers’ Struggle calls for a massive turnout in all the strikes and demonstrations on Tuesday 12th October. 

Only a unified movement, each time bigger and more determined, can impose retreats on the government, over pension reforms, but also over all measures of social regression which for years have aggravated the conditions and lives of the popular masses. Only a powerful start from the workers can compel those who govern us in the name of the bosses of big business and bankers, to renounce their attacks on the conditions of the working class. 

LO also calls on the youth to join the struggle, as the issues concern the future of all society. Therefore we must all be in the strikes and demonstrations on 12th October and beyond. It is time to demonstrate that the anger rumbles on, and an explosion threatens.

Many thanks to Workers Power for providing the translations.