Follow Europe onto streets, cuts protesters told

Published: 1 October, 2010
by TERRY MESSENGER

EUROPEAN-STYLE mass demonstrations and general strikes are the only way to halt severe reductions in public services due over the next four years, the spokesman for Islington’s anti-cuts campaign said this week.

Activists from Islington Hands Off Our Public Services (IHOOPS) are hoping to kick-start widespread protests with a public meeting and demonstration against spending cuts in the borough of up to 40 per cent.

IHOOPS spokesman Ken Muller argued that Britain needed the sort of campaign seen this week on the Continent as tens of thousands took to the streets and workers in Spain staged a one-day general strike.

He was speaking in the run- up to IHOOPS’ first public meeting on Tuesday and a Town Hall demonstration on Thursday.

Mr. Muller said: “If it was just a case of having moderately sized protests outside the Town Hall, there would be very little chance of success.

“But there’s been demonstrations going on all over Europe this week and in Spain there’s been a general strike. We very much hope to see that sort of movement building up in this country. 

“Experience shows that when you do get that sort of national action, it is possible to force a right-wing government to retreat.”

He said that the IHOOPS campaign was principally directed against the Conservative and Lib Dem coalition government, which ordered the cuts to rid Britain of its budget deficit.

But some IHOOPS members oppose Labour-controlled Islington Council’s plan to implement government policy “while protecting the most vulnerable”. Mr Muller, who is assistant secretary of Islington NUT, added: “We may be able to mobilise a certain amount of pressure in Islington which can stop some of the cuts but we are not so naive that we think we can defeat the government with a protest here and a little bit of strike action there.

“It’s going to require the whole of the trade union movement and civil society to mobilise against the government.”

IHOOPS is staging its inaugural public meeting at the Methodist Church Hall at Archway roundabout  at 7.30pm on Tuesday and a lobby outside the Town Hall in Upper Street, Islington, on Thursday under the slogan “No Cuts, No Sackings”.

IHOOPS is a coalition comprising Holloway branch Labour Party, Islington South and Finsbury Constituency Labour Party, local NUT and Unison branches, Islington TUC, the Right to Work Campaign and Defend Whittington Hospital Coalition.

Labour council leader Councillor Catherine West will speak at Tuesday’s meeting along with Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Emily Thornberry.

Cllr West could be given a tough time by activists opposed to the council’s policy of implementing cuts.

Some IHOOPS members staged a noisy protest at a council meeting in July when the borough’s first tranche of cuts was agreed, with £7m slashed from services such as the Connections career advice service for teenagers, educational support staff and hanging baskets.

The Labour council is making plans for a further £100m worth of cuts over the next four years, representing a 40 per cent reduction in spending.

Labour finance chief Councillor Richard Greening said: “We certainly won’t be making these decisions because we want to or because we think many of them are a good idea.   

“Our approach to it will be to defend the most vulnerable people but in so doing we will have to cut a lot of services which are very valuable. It’s going to have to be achieved in order to maintain sustainable public services in the borough.”

Of the more implacable anti-cuts campaigners in the unions, he said: “I have a lot of sympathy with their position.   They are defending their members’ jobs and that’s their proper role, which I respect. We won’t agree with them but we will certainly listen to what they have to say carefully.”

Mr Muller argued that the government could find the £113bn needed to balance the books by scrapping Trident and “going after” £130bn saved by taxpayers in avoidance schemes.