Over 120 activists from all ten local authority areas, attended Saturday’s Greater Manchester Against Cuts Conference at the Friends Meeting House in Manchester. 
The mood of the Conference, described rightly elsewhere as ‘angry and feisty’, made a number of important decisions.

The Conference Organisers, Greater Manchester Association of Trades Councils, believe these decisions will help to begin the process of bringing together and building up across the Greater Manchester area, the broad ‘solidarity alliance of unions and communities’ called for by the 2010 TUC, which is so urgently needed to defend our public services, jobs and the welfare state.

CONFERENCE STATEMENT

The Conference agreed the following statement:

“This conference declares its opposition to the government’s attack on the welfare state which threaten 1.3 million jobs and the health, education, housing, pensions and welfare provisions that have been fought for by working people for generations. 
It endorses the call by the 2010 TUC for a ‘Broad solidarity alliance of Trades Unions and communities” to oppose these attacks, which are based on a false ‘free market’ ideology, and to fight for an alternative strategy based on tax justice and making the Bankers, big corporations and the mega rich pay for the crisis that their system has created.

We commit ourselves to work in all sectors of our respective communities to:
Support the building, better organisation and co-ordination of all campaigns & initiatives against the cuts and privatisation, at a workplace, community, local authority, Greater Manchester, national and international level.

Oppose any attempt to use racism and Islamophobia to divide opposition to the cuts.
Mobilise the largest possible number of people to attend the TUC demonstration on Saturday 26 March.

Support and build the re-convening of this Conference in May 2011 soon after the local elections. (The 21st May currently looks favourite).
Help find practical ways to assist local groups and voluntary sector organisations to maintain services and jobs to support the communities they are needed in.

Act in the spirit of this statement until the Conference re-convenes.”
SECTOR TASK GROUPS

Equally importantly, the Conference agreed to establish a number of ‘Task Groups’ which will take the lead for bringing together, as far as possible, everyone within their sector across the Greater Manchester conurbation as part of the wider anti-cuts fight. Also, to promote the better co-ordination and integration of their sector, and input into, the broader anti-cuts fight.

These task groups will focus on building up the fight amongst young people (i.e. HE, FE & School Students, Young Workers & Unemployed Youth, all of whom were represented in the initial Conference workshop) the Trades Unions; Communities; Pensioners & supportive political parties, groups, campaigns and associations.
It is proposed that these task groups work alongside not only GMATUCs at a Greater Manchester level, but with each of the area’s Trade Councils, so as to promote mutual assistance and support for each other at a local authority level too.

This approach will help to bridge any sector “gaps” in the geographical map, e.g. allow Wigan, for example, which has a relatively small ethnic minority community, to call on and ‘borrow’ resources from that sector elsewhere in Greater Manchester.
This would make it easier to hold meetings anywhere aimed at the broadest cross section of the public but which might normally be handicapped by a lack of someone from the relevant sector, including supportive political parties, groups, etc.
This approach to building the wider anti-cuts fight across the Greater Manchester area, it’s believed, will help to foster the widest possible inclusion, participation and sense of ownership of the campaign by everyone who wants to fight the cuts at every level and across every section of our various communities.

Such a structure it’s also believed, will also provide the best mechanism as the fight goes on, for everyone to be able take part in the discussion on the way forwards. 
In particular, to have their say in the development of a commonly supported alternative social, economic and political strategy to that being pursued by the current Government which starts from the needs and interests of the overwhelming majority of ordinary people, rather than of the Bankers, big corporations, and the most well off. 
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The question of how local Councillors who say they are against the cuts should respond to the Coalition Government’s imposed funding cuts to local authorities clearly remains a major controversial issue.

The so-called ‘Dented Shield’ approach previously employed by Labour controlled Councils back in the 1980′s against the Thatcher Government, combined with a complete lack of involvement by Labour & other opposition party Councillors in the anti-cuts fight on the ground, is clearly a wholly insufficient anti-cuts strategy if one at all, and falls way short of the type of anti-cuts stance we should expect all elected representatives worthy of their salt to be taking in the next period.

What is urgently required from them is a policy of active resistance to the cuts at all levels, and for them to be assisting us in the building up of a mass movement of the people to break this un-mandated Coalition Government at the earliest opportunity, as this ultimately, is the only way we can stop any and all of the Government’s planned cutbacks from actually happening.

If our elected representatives aren’t prepared to do that, and instead continue to confine their opposition to the cuts simply to mere words rather than deeds, and a policy of basically ‘reluctantly’ endorsing so-called less harmful cuts year on year until the next planned General Election 2015, or until the current Coalition Government somehow miraculously implodes of its own accord before then, then it is surely only matter of time before they will lose whatever credibility they might currently have as representatives of ordinary working class people.
It will also be only a matter of time before they will inevitably swept aside by the growing solidarity alliance of unions and communities, those of us who are serious about stopping the cuts, and about bringing to power a pro-majority of the people alternative to the current Coalition SHOULD ALL IN THE MEANTIME BE COLLECTIVELY BUILDING!

Concerning the latter, the petty ‘Life of Brian’ style sectarianism, ultra-Left posturing, rivalry and jockeying for position of various ‘Left’ groups and so-called national anti-cuts campaigns needs also to come to and end, as it is thoroughly debilitating and massively frustrates the building up of the broader anti-cuts fight and the needs of the movement as a whole, which requires the maximum unity of action on the part of all those opposed to what the Government is doing. What all these sectarian groupings fail to recognise, despite their protestations to the contrary, is that there is far less that divides them than what divides the mass of ordinary people from this Government of the Banks, big business and the mega rich.

Their continued failure to recognise this, and the stubborn persistence of the most class conscious Socialists, trades unionists and community activists to build up and unify the movement in spite of their sectarian antics, will surely see them also swept away by the growing mass movement.

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