Birmingham’s ruling Tory / Liberal coalition are threatening to cut 2,000 jobs this year with 1000s more to follow, freeze the pay of 25,000 low paid workers and slash £75 million from the budget- cutting services to the bone to balance their books.

Jobs at risk include social services, libraries, sports centres, parks, museums, neighbourhood offices and the housing and planning departments. The remaining council owned old people’s homes and day centres are threatened with closure.

And all this is BEFORE future government imposed spending cuts—the blood price for bailing out the fat-cat bankers.

This crisis is not of our making, and we should not be the ones who have to pay for it!

RESPECT councillor Salma Yaqoob writes:

“One of the reasons the council is in a financial mess is because of money wasted on consultants. Another £67 million is to be spent this year alone… It is ‘a drop in the ocean’ they say, in the context of a £3 billion budget. I would like to see them say that to community groups in my ward starved of funding, or families stuck for years on housing waiting lists because the council is not building enough homes.City Council Chief Executive, Stephen Hughes, is on a very nice £3,900 per week… a member of the “£200,000+ per year club”. Council bosses should get a taste of their own medicine.”

Birmingham Socialist Resistance says:

“City councillors are elected to deliver services to the residents that they represent– not to destroy them. The voter turnout for local elections is already very low, about 30%. It would be lower still if they declared openly their intention to slash vital public services if necessary.They have no mandate to destroy services.

Faced with a funding crisis, the Council should first cut out all real waste, the huge consultancy fees and bloated wages of top officials. If this still leaves a funding gap, there are two alternatives; set a needs budget, or resign. A needs budget provides decent services for all. It would be drawn up in consultation with residents and the community, through a participatory budget process. Something like this used to happen with the Housing Investment Programme (HIP allocation). Starting with the needs of providing decent housing for all, a budget would be drawn up and presented to the Council for endorsement. Even if the full HIP allocation were to be turned down, as usually happened, there would at least be the basis for a fight over it.

The other alternative for Councillors is to resign on mass, and seek re-election on a programme of demanding adequate resources from central government. As part of that process a huge public campaign would have to be built to pressurise the government to re-think its financial priorities.

If these alternatives are rejected, then councillors just administer the local arm of the capitalist state, imposing and enforcing neo-liberal austerity measures.

We can’t imagine any of the 3 main parties on the Birmingham City Council adopting anything like the strategy mentioned above, but it is still necessary to make that call. If they will not respond, then we will have to make sure that they step aside for new councillors that will try and make the local Council into one that it should be; a people’s council.”