As Con-Dem cuts bite, it’s up to everyone to join fight

Published: 17 September, 2010

• IT is to the newly-elected Islington Labour council’s great credit that it has promised to resist the cuts.

So it is a real disappointment to me, as a representative of the majority of Islington teachers and the father of a student at Islington Sixth Form College, that the council is implementing the first £3million of Con-Dem cuts, with a promise that it will protect frontline services.

These cuts will result in up to 51 teachers and support staff being sacked in the education department’s central services. These are staff whose responsibilities include helping pregnant teenagers to continue with their studies and supporting pupils excluded (or in danger of exclusion from school) – hardly what you would call “backroom” or “inessential” jobs.

They also plan to withdraw funding for Sotheby Mews Day Centre for older people, which currently provides a cup of tea, a warm place to socialise and sometimes a meal for pensioners, instead of leaving them freezing at home on their own.

Of course, retired bosses on £4,400-a-week pensions won’t be among them.

Islington trades unions, service users and campaign groups such as Islington Hands Off Our Public Services (IHOOPS) and Defend Whittington Hospital Coalition have every intention of fighting the Con-Dem cuts and defending our public services and welfare benefits, whether they are provided by schools, colleges, the council, Royal Mail, fire service or civil servants.

On October 3, many of us will be travelling to Birmingham to join the Right to Work Campaign’s protest outside the Tory Party Conference. 

On October 5, IHOOPS will be holding a public meeting to launch a campaign in defence of Islington’s public services at 7.30pm in the Methodist Hall opposite Archway station. 

On October 7, Islington GMB, NUT and Unison branches will be staging a lobby calling on the council to stand firm against the Con-Dem cuts. 

It will be held outside the town hall at 7pm. I urge as many Tribune  readers as possible to join us.
Ken Muller
Assistant secretary, Islington NUT

• I AM disgusted with Islington Council plans to close Sotheby Mews Day Centre; this is a real kick in the teeth for elderly residents.

The centre provides much-needed support, and is an essential lifeline for elderly people. It is well run, and attracts nearly 90 people a day. I can’t see why the council wants  to close it.

The Labour-run council should stop making cuts like this; stop blaming the government for all its problems, and get on with running the council.

Instead, it is wasting our council tax on barmy ideas. For example, why are we forking out for free school meals for children from Hackney, Camden and Haringey, at a cost of nearly £1million a year?

Why aren’t these councils and their council tax-payers funding the free meals? Council tax collected in Islington should be spent on its residents.

We fought the last time Labour tried to close Sotheby Mews; just as we remember this month how we stood up to Hitler during the Blitz. 

We will fight again; this time against the council’s closure plan. Hundreds of people have already signed the petition, and that is only the start. Hitler didn’t win, and neither will the council. Fighting on!
Liz Claire
Petherton Road, N5

• DOES Councillor Terry Stacy have no shame? His Lib Dem Party is propping up a Tory government which, with no mandate from the people, is making the disabled, the poor and the homeless pay for the most savage cuts in our history. Yet he criticises others for making cuts forced by his own government.

These cuts are unfair, unnecessary and made out of ideological concerns rather than need. 

I live in Cllr Stacy’s ward. When he asks the young, the old and the vulnerable for their votes at the next election I hope he will hang his head in shame.
Matt Creamer
N5