Islington Council leader Catherine West backs protest over her own cuts
Pledge of support to rally against job losses forced on Town Hall
Published: 17th December, 2010
by TOM FOOT and BEN WHITELAW
THE woman forced to make massive Town Hall cuts joined a protest rally outside her office on Wednesday when she assured council staff threatened with redundancy: “We will support you all the way.”
Labour council leader Catherine West, who is democratically accountable for job losses at the Town Hall, blamed the cuts on the government’s axing of £30million revenue expenditure in Islington next year.
Speaking through a loudhailer, she told protesters: “I call on you to come together with union colleagues, Labour councillors, with activists, with members of the public, with all the people who are joining up to our campaign.” She added: “We will be defending public services. We will be defending pensions and our community. We must stand together.”
Her speech won polite applause but she was heckled with cries of “Don’t implement the cuts”, “It’s too little, too late” and “You need us”.
Deputy branch secretary of trade union Unison Mike Calvert told the rally: “The councillors have to defend the people that elected them. The Labour council has to help us mobilise.”
About 300 demonstrators had marched with placards from Highbury Fields to Islington town hall on Wednesday afternoon.
Police closed roads and traffic was brought to a halt during rush-hour.
The demonstration was called by Unison – representing low-paid staff who work for the council, in schools and in the NHS – after details of massive job losses in council departments emerged in confidential documents leaked to the Tribune last week.
Unison branch secretary Jane Doolan described the cuts brief as a “criminals’ charter”, adding that crucial services were being “decimated”.
She said: “We would work with the devil himself to fight these cuts.”
The widespread cuts include:
- More than 130 jobs axed next year in children’s services, including three-quarters of the Connexions counselling service for hard-to-reach young people.
- The loss of 40 per cent of social workers at Whittington Hospital, with the rest moved to Upper Street.
On the march, council workers revealed they had already been told to prepare for redundancy.
Richard Gill, who works in the environmental sustainability section of the Town Hall, found out on Tuesday that he would lose his job as part of 50 per cent cuts to the department.
“I’d lay the blame at the feet of the Con-Dem government but I wish the council had directed the cuts elsewhere,” he said.
“I can only speak for myself but I’m disappointed that the cuts have fallen on the sustainability team. There is not going to be a team of any note.”
Mr Gill, who has worked for the council for four-and-a-half years does not have a job lined up. “I hope to be deployed elsewhere in the council but I think it’s unlikely,” he said.
“It’s not ideal [just before Christmas] but I don’t think it’s deliberate. It’s a bad time whenever.”
Islington North Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn compared the “wrong and dishonest” coalition government policies to a bad dream from the Margaret Thatcher era.
“A whole generation paid a price then and there is a generation of children still paying the price now,” he said. Then Mr Corbyn took his hat off, quite literally, to the students and young people “who have marched and showed us the way”.
He added: “I love the health service. We stopped the closure of the casualty and we saved Whittington Hospital. But now GPs are going to decide how NHS money is spent. There will be cuts and redundancies in the health service.”
City and Islington College teacher Ken Muller called for a general strike and students from the London Met university occupation said they would do what they could to “broaden the movement”.