Thank you to everyone who braved the cold to attend the demonstration and rally last Saturday in Liverpool. It was a good turnout and kept alive the spirit of fightback which has been so visible through the recent student protests.
The cuts are starting to take effect on our local services and will continue to do so in the coming months. According to today's Liverpool Echo, the local government cuts will mean that:
"Revenue spending power in Liverpool will fall by £72.2m, in Knowsley by £23.4m, in Sefton by £19.5m, in St Helens by £18.1m and in Wirral by almost £30m in 2011/12"
Cutting jobs is not the answer. The economic crisis was not caused by local government employees, it was caused by bankers and greedy corporate fat cats. Demonstations against Phillip Green (Owner of the Arcadia Group of shops) and Vodaphone have gathered support and momentum across the country. Vodaphone have had a tax bill of over £5billion written off and Phillip Green avoids paying UK tax to the tune of £25billion a year as he claims residency in Monaco where his wife lives. He lives in London in a hotel most of the week! For more information about protests in Liverpool use the following link: http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/actions
Key dates in 2011:
Tuesday 11th January 2011: Merseyside Right to Work Annual General Meeting. Venue tbc. As a group it is important that we keep ourselves viable, therefore we need to have a constitution, steering committee and bank account. As soon as I confirm a venue I will send out more details of the AGM agenda and draft constitution which will need to be agreed at the meeting, as well as positions available on the steering committee.
Saturday 12th February 2011: The national Right to Work campaign is holding a convention in London (see website for details http://righttowork.org.uk/2010/11/peoples-convention/). It is £5 waged and £2 unwaged. I would urge you to make the effort to attend as it will be a brilliant opportunity to get together with other activists and find out what people are doing across the country to fightback against the cuts. Please let me know if you are interested in attending.
Saturday 26th March 2011: TUC national demonstration in London against the Coalition's cuts to the public sector and welfare state. The TUC are aiming to make this event as big as the Stop the War demonstration in 2003 which brought one million people onto the streets of London in protest at the invasion of Iraq. Merseyside Right to Work took 75 people to Birmingham to protest at the Tory Party Conference, lets take over 100 to London. Coach tickets will be available in the New Year. The close vote on tuition fees last week shows how weak the coalition is and a mass public movement and demonstration could act as the catalyst for bringing down the Tory party leadership in the same way as the Poll tax protests did twenty years ago.
Finally there are several local council meetings in January and February which I think we should lobby now that the cuts to local government budgets has been announced. The last lobby we had outside Liverpool Council's meeting ended up with an impromptu sit down protest in the road which stopped traffic for half an hour. If anyone has any ideas for stunts we could do at the lobbies please let me know as that always helps with publicity. Dates and times of council meetings below (times are the start of the meeting so lobby should assemble an hour before):
Weds 12th Jan 2011: St Helens Council, 6.15pm
Thurs 13th Jan 2011: Sefton Council (Southport Town Hall), 6.30pm
Weds 19th Jan 2011: Liverpool Council, 5pm
Weds 9th Feb 2011: Knowsley Council (Municipal Building, Huyton), 6pm
Mon 14th Feb 2011: Wirral Council (Wallasey Town Hall), 6.15pm
When they say cutback, we say fightback.
In solidarity,
Debs Gwynn
Convenor, Merseyside Right to Work
No comments:
Post a Comment