YOU CAN STOP THEM – act now, inform friends, family and
workmates. Protest! Don’t let them take your NHS away

Wednesday 8 February
2.30 – 8.30pm

Old Palace Yard, Westminster SWIP – opposite the Lords

Also, on Tues 7 February there is also a Lobby of the BMA London Regional Council at 6pm at BMA House, Tavistock Sq, WC1H 9JP

The meeting will debate their opposition to the bill and consider taking a ballot on industrial action not only on pensions but also to get the Bill withdrawn,

Petition:

Drop the Health and Social Care Bill
Please sign and forward this link urgently – we need signatures to be seriously increased to over 100,000 in double quick time:http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/22670

The defence of the earth, the ecosystem and biodiversity is one of the most important topics on the agenda of the social movements in Latin America today and that is precisely what is at stake in the United Nations Summit on Sustainable Development Rio +20, which will take place in June 2012 in Rio de Janeiro. The thematic Social Forum ’capitalist crises, environmental and social justice’, which concluded on Sunday 29 January in Porto Alegre (Brazil), served to establish the basis for mobilisation for this key date.

The offensive of the system, via green capitalism, intensifies in its determination to privatize every aspect of life and nature. And in an economic crisis like the present, one of the strategies of capital to recover its falling rate of profit is based on commercializing the ecosystem. They present new technologies (nanotechnology, biofuels, geoengineering, genetically modified foods) as the alternative to the climate crisis when it will only make the social and ecological crises we face more acute.

All indications are that the Rio +20 Earth Summit will to serve to clear the way for multinational to justify their practice of appropriation of natural resources. Hence the importance of the People’s summit of Rio +20, to be held days before the official event, organized by a large range of social movements which will present alternative programme and rob and roadmap.

In Europe and in the United States the resistance of the indignados focuses mobilisations against cuts to the welfare state, privatizations, banking and the payment of illegitimate debt. Paradoxically these are topics that were central to the movements in Latin America in the decades of the 80s, 90s and 2000s..Putting the question of the ecological crisis and the green economy on the agenda of these new social movements, the indignados and the occupy movements was another issue raised repeatedly at this thematic Social Forum. The need to link the fight for social justice with the fight for ecological justice was a major focus..

One final concern at this forum, which had been latent at previous events which is made more urgent by recent events which is to rethink the World Social Forum process in the context of opening of a new cycle of social protests. The social movements that have emerged in the Arab world and North Africa, Europe and the United States put forward an agenda for action outside the social forum process which were an important instrument in the previous period.

Despite the success of the day of global actions on O-15 (15/10/2011), international co-ordination was rather weak. Ten years ago in contrast, the social forums (and particularly the World Social Forum and the European Social Forum) were one of the main benchmarks of the dynamic global justice and antiwar movements, and acted as the driving force to develop a programme and a series of actions to fight against neo-liberal globalization and war. This is now in the past. And now we need to see what new tools we can create to coordinate this new tide of outrage. What is certain though is that in this journey to develop this new framework and process, the experience of the World Social Forum, the global justice campaigns and the initiatives of the previous period not been in vain but the opposite.

Esther Vivas is a member of the Centre for Studies on Social Movements (CEMS) at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She is author of the book “En pie contra la deuda externa” (Stand Up against external debt), El Viejo Topo, 2008, and co-coordinator of the books also in Spanish “Supermarkets, No Thanks” and “Where is Fair Trade headed?” among other publications, and a contributor to the CIP Americas Program www.cipamericas.org. She is also a member of the editorial board of Viento Sur.

The central capitalist powers are using the economic crisis to introduce a new and catastrophic assault on the very processes of nature. This threat is on the table – or rather, underneath it – for the UN Summit on Sustainable Development, known as Rio+20, to be held in Rio de Janeiro next 20-22 June. So the world’s social movements need to build a massive, international campaign against this “green economy” as their main shared priority – a campaign that should find expression in a multitude of local and national mobilizations in the week from 5 June (World Environment Day) to 10 June, then come together at the World People’s Summit, which plans to organise debates and street actions in Rio de Janeiro from the 15 June through until the 21st. But the campaign is more than just a mobilization for an event. It needs to build durable structures and develop momentum for a long and hard battle against the green capitalist project, lasting well beyond Rio+20.

The central capitalist powers are using the economic crisis to introduce a new and catastrophic assault on the very processes of nature. This threat is on the table – or rather, underneath it – for the UN Summit on Sustainable Development, known as Rio+20, to be held in Rio de Janeiro next 20-22 June. So the world’s social movements need to build a massive, international campaign against this “green economy” as their main shared priority – a campaign that should find expression in a multitude of local and national mobilizations in the week from 5 June (World Environment Day) to 10 June, then come together at the World People’s Summit, which plans to organise debates and street actions in Rio de Janeiro from the 15 June through until the 21st. But the campaign is more than just a mobilization for an event. It needs to build durable structures and develop momentum for a long and hard battle against the green capitalist project, lasting well beyond Rio+20.
This is the core message coming out from the Thematic (World) Social Forum, which began in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil, on 23 January and has just finished. The Forum was devoted to preparing for the people’s summit in June.

We need a massive international campaign

One of the most vocal proponents of this campaign against green capitalism has been Pablo Solón. He was Bolivia’s ambassador to the UN until the middle of last year and his country’s lead negotiator at the COP climate talks in Copenhagen and Cancún. As such he played a key part in the stand taken by the ALBA countries (mainly Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua) to block the attempt by Obama, along with Brazil, China, India, South Africa and the EU, to impose the stitched-up Copenhagen Accord on the rest of the world in December 2009. When Venezuela and Cuba backed off from this stance at Cancún a year later, Bolivia, represented by Solón, was left as a lone voice standing out against the refusal of the rich countries to make clear and binding commitments to reduce their emissions. This week he again stood up against the growth agenda of the Brazilian government.

During a session of so-called “dialogue with civil society”, he told President Dilma Rousseff, plainly but politely, that capitalism could not solve the climate crisis and that all the market mechanisms beloved of Brazil, like REDD that turns forest protection into a source of speculation, had to be defeated by a massive campaign. It seems, however, that Solón and the rest of the movement present in Porto Alegre can no longer count on clear support from even the Bolivian government. Although the ALBA countries returned to a more critical stance at the Durban COP summit last December, Solón told IVP that there is no possibility of Evo Morales’ administration, in the near future, calling another Peoples Summit on Climate Change like the one it hosted in Cochabamba in April 2010.

Last year’s dramatic conflict with Amazonian indigenous communities over the TIPNIS road project, showed clearly the contradictions between ecosocialist aspirations and a developmentalist, extractivist, economic logic, that in different degrees and forms cut through the middle of the political processes in all the ALBA countries. It is clear that any mass campaign now against the green capitalist project will have to be built and sustained by the social movements themselves. Solón draws a parallel with the campaign a decade ago against Washington’s plans for a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Launched by varying coalitions of social movements around the region, this campaign eventually drew in support from Venezuela and some other governments, contributing to the final defeat of the FTAA project at the Mar del Plata summit in 2005. Defeating green capitalism will require a similar, but much greater, effort.

At Rio+20, capitalism is coming back for the rest

One of the Forum’s central plenaries heard eloquent accounts of the extraordinary imperial hubris that underpins this project to turn nature into finance capital’s substitute for sub-primes. It heard how the original Rio Earth Summit in 1992 opened the door to privatization of 23.8% of the periodic table, through the patenting of a range of natural products. Rio+20 is coming back for the remaining 76.2%. But the focus is no longer on turning natural products into commodities (“the wood”), but rather the underlying natural processes (“the forests”), re-branded as ’environmental services’. There were chilling accounts of the shift underway from bio-piracy to geo-piracy: discussions already happening in the US Congress, the Bundestag and British parliamentary committees on how to refashion the world’s ocean surface to absorb more CO2, or to change the stratosphere by building artificial volcanoes, a hundred pipes 25 kms high blowing sulphate into the stratosphere in an attempt to ’block’ the sun’s rays. The British government, it was reported, is to make a second attempt to build a pilot ’volcano’ this April, regardless of the likely side-effects of such a project, like displacing the Asian monsoon and aggravating drought across South Asia.

It was again Pablo Solón, echoing many at the Forum, who told President Dilma Rousseff that what was needed was not to submit nature to the laws of the market, to try to force it into the circuits of financial capital; rather we need to understand and respect nature’s own laws, of which we are a part.

Challenges for the World Social Forums

The make-up of this Thematic Social Forum reflects the contradictory state of the World Social Forum process on an international level, eleven years after its first edition here in Porto Alegre. It also reflects the peculiar situation of the social movements in Brazil. To begin with it was much smaller. The number taking part in the opening march on the Tuesday was in the thousands, rather than the tens of thousands. Partly this was because it was not a full-blown ’world’ social forum. But it also reflects a certain loss of credibility of the WSFs internationally, and the considerable demobilization of Brazil’s powerful social movements, which has been one of the most significant and damaging consequences of three consecutive Workers’ Party (PT)-led coalition governments.

Nonetheless, the importance and intensity of the debates does not seem to have diminished. This in turn reflects the urgency of the moment, with the intersection of multiple crises – economic, environmental, etc. – and 2011’s extraordinary explosion of struggles from the Arab Spring and Syntagma Square to the Indignad@s and the Occupy movements. Although few in number, the presence in Porto Alegre of voices from all of these struggles contributed greatly to the Forum’s radical edge. Whether or not the WSF process can succeed in becoming a forum for convergence, discussion and shared propositions among this new cycle of struggles is perhaps the most important, but unanswered, question facing it.

The presence of radical Brazilian youth in Porto Alegre suggests it might.. Again the numbers were not huge, but the level of discussion and engagement was impressive. This in turn reflects the fact that in spite of the demobilization and political disorientation, Brazil remains one of the countries with the densest networks of social movement organization and awareness in the world. This enduring fabric can be felt in student organizations, the women’s movement, environmental campaigns, black and indigenous movements, as well as in tens of thousands of poor communities in urban and rural areas across the country, and even in the divided and debilitated trade unions. In all of these areas there continue to be sharp, sometimes violent struggles, for example those of shanty-town or squatter communities against evictions motivated by land speculation or coming mega-events like the World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. But these tend to be isolated struggles, single issue campaigns, or purely economic, industrial action. Whether it is possible to turn all this into the driving force of a mass, international campaign against green capitalism in the four months leading up to Rio+20, and then beyond, is far from clear.

The extremely weak and unfocussed declaration coming out of the final Assembly of Social Movements on Saturday does not augur well. Its abstract denunciations of imperialism and ambiguous or factually inaccurate formulations on the Arab revolutions, indicate that at least a part of the social movement leaderships in Latin America do not grasp the centrality of the environmental struggle, and are unwilling to confront the developmentalist, extractivist (and indeed, campist) priorities that characterize much of government policy not only in Brazil, but also in Bolivia, Venezuela, and so on. Curiously, in this respect, the NGOs that dominate in the planning of the Rio+20 People’s Summit, are well to the left of some of the big social movements. Nonetheless, building the campaign against green capitalism is a challenge many of the Brazilian organizations seem willing to take on.

Revolutionary convergences in Porto Alegre

These five days have also been an important moment for developing exchanges and convergences – among revolutionaries and between these and many of the new movements that have arisen internationally over the last year. These processes too, for all their modest dimensions, could play a vital role in building and sustaining the kinds of campaign envisaged for Rio+20 and beyond.

Militants of Enlace, the current that organizes Fourth International supporters in Brazil’s main radical left party, the Party of Socialism and Liberty (PSOL), were centrally involved in organising and coordinating the Forum, alongside the usual array of movements and institutions that work together in the WSF, many of them far from revolutionary, and some of them closely tied to Brazil’s PT-led coalition government.

Levante, the youth organization linked to Enlace, brought almost 200 young people to the Forum’s youth camp, making it the largest single delegation in the camp. There they organised a series of debates, including one with guests from Tunisia, Greece’s Syntagma Square, Indignados from Catalonia, Chilean students, Occupy Wall Street and Occupy London SX. One of the most enthusiastic sessions was a presentation of the Fourth International today, organised jointly by Levante and Barricadas, the youth organisation linked to CSOL. CSOL is another current in the PSOL, with its origins in the Morenoite tradition of trotskyism, which has recently taken up permanent observer status in the International Committee of the FI. The meeting heard moving appeals for a renewal of internationalism – an internationalism that is open to new movements and new debates, that puts eco-socialism, feminism and opposition to all forms of oppression at the centre of its struggle against capitalism in crisis – from Enlace leaders Renato Roseno and Tarzia Medeiros, as well as from FI militants from the Spanish state, France and the Philippines.

The Forum also saw another important convergence underway, between FI supporters and the biggest of the international currents coming from the Morenoist tradition. This has its centre of gravity in the Argentinean MST (Socialist Workers’ Movement), and includes the MES, one of the two biggest currents in the Brazilian PSOL, as well as Marea Socialista in Venezuela. The MST put at the centre of its intervention in the Forum its aim to work for unification between its international current and that of the FI (known to many other revolutionaries around the world as the United Secretariat or USEC).

This will not be a simple process. Enlace and the MES have had and still have profound differences over tactics in Brazil, and over their approaches to working in the PSOL. The small number of FI supporters in Argentina have had profound differences with the MST over its attitude to the Kirchner-Fernandez governments and over its electoral tactics. But both currents also have a history of working together in support of Marea Socialista in Venezuela. This Forum saw that in spite of the differences it was possible to organise a number of joint activities in an open and comradely spirit – two days of a joint seminar prior to the Forum on perspectives in Latin America and internationally, a series of sessions held throughout the Forum in the name of the PSOL’s educational foundation, including a discussion organised by women from Enlace, other FI groups, the MST and MES, on women and the impact of mega-events.

The discussion on how this relationship can develop is now open and needs to be develop not only through frank debate, but also in the thick of the struggles to come, including those around Rio+20 and the offensive of green capitalism.

Iain Bruce was invited to show some of his films on participatory democracy and the impact of climate change in Latin America at the “Democracine” sessions of the Thematic Social Forum in Porto Alegre.

29th January 2012

Thursday 16 February, 7:30pm

SPOTTED DOG public house, by Barking tube station

Speakers:

Councillor George Barratt

Karena Johnson, Director Broadway Theatre

Paul Mackney, UCU former General Secretary

And speakers from the arts and local unions

Even before the recession, Barking and Dagenham had been identified as one of the four most deprived London boroughs for:

·         Number of working-age benefit recipients

·         Low pay  for those  living and working in the borough

·         Working-age people with  limiting long-standing illness

·         Under age pregnancies

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat government coalition has reduced by 28% the funding to Barking and Dagenham. And the Labour council is passing this onto to local residents.  This will mean:

·         Up to 200 council staff to be sacked

·         Slashing redundancy pay for sacked workers by more than half

·         One-stop shop services to be reduced

·         Loss of post-school educational facilities in facilities in the Adult College

·         Closure of the Broadway theatre

This economic crisis is not of our making. The banks were bailed out with public funds four years ago, creating  a massive debt. We are now being forced to pay for this debt with cuts in our public services, jobs, pay, benefits and pensions. But there is no cap on the earnings of the directors of banks, and the rich continue to avoid and evade their taxes.

This is not our crisis!  We should not pay for it!

It wound its way through Haringey from Downhills Primary School on Saturday January 28. The thousand marchers stopped traffic and made a big impact on the crowded Wood Green Shopping City. Dozens of children carried balloons and hand made placards with slogans including “save our school” and “we love our school”, “40 languages”, “my school is not for sale” and so on. Members of at least ten NUT branches from across the capital marched with their banners.
The closing rally outside the civic centre was addressed by NUT rep Julie Davis, a Unison rep, Downhills parent activist Karen Jacobs and NUT Deputy General Secretary Kevin Courtney. Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove was told in no uncertain terms that Haringey schools were not for sale.

The fight goes on.

Cha N. Lavandero  writes from Iligan City, Mindanao in the Philippines

The tragedy that had ravaged the areas in many areas of Northern Mindanao during the flashfloods that hit Cagayan de Oro and Iligan City last December 17, 2011 and the landslide in Pantukan Compostela Valley last January 5, 2012 are more than enough of a wake up call for everyone. The government may have responded through different reliefs and aids for the victims but still a very vital reality had been bypassed. The hows and whys of the people are answered through a generic explanation safe enough to justify the incident. It is because of the tropical storm Sendong that passes through the area of Mindanao with heavy rain-falls and the unexpected rise of the water levels in the rivers-great enough to consume all the houses near the river banks, created new pathways and submerged deep the areas that is before haven’t experienced flooding. Therefore, it was an unexpected fate that caught everybody unprepared.

A disaster

The deaths of thousands and the destruction of people prompted the government to investigate why such a “weak storm” had caused massive destruction on the lives and properties of the people. Task force Sendong was created to investigate the presence of thousands of cut logs along the shores of Iligan city. These logs have caused the killing of many people and destroyed thousands of houses and properties during the flashflood. These logs are traced to come from a Makati based logging company in Manila. Now government officials are starting to pin point on who is to be held responsible to this incident. Whose term and whose administration allowed the logging operations of logging companies.
Murder

Philippines according to the 1995 Philippine Forestry Statistics comprise a land area of 30 million ha., wherein 53% is a forest land. Forestry had played a vital role in the socio economic development of the country but due to deforestation in late 1980s, it had depleted. The increasing deforestation in the Philippines was attributed to the ineffectiveness of our forest laws and its enforcements. No wonder why a Makati based Logging Company operating in the Lanao del Sur Province after the total log ban declaration, was still able to operate clandestinely and openly and there is not only a single Logging company that operates in the Philippines, in Mindanao-there are numbers of them not including yet the foreign companies applying for Mining in the Philippines, particularly in Mindanao.

The issue of logging in the Lanao provinces can never be an isolated case, in fact almost all provinces in Mindanao have logging operations and Mining operations. To name a few, almost the entire area of CARAGA province have logging operations and even open pit mining operations, in Zamboanga Peninsula wherein mining companies have started drilling holes in the Ancestral Lands of the Indigenous Peoples. In Mt. Diwata, Compostela Valley which a number of Mining operations for gold recently has a landslide which killed more than 20 people and about 100 were still missing. The incident in Compostela was just few weeks after the incident in Iligan City and Cagayan de Oro City. Another tragedy that happened while Iligan and Cagayan de Oro City were still in the process of rehabilitations. Moreover, this government has encouraged foreign investors through the Public-Private partnership program, to invest in the Philippines and most of these investments evolved around mining, crop conversions, and land conversions.

The wrath of nature is its own way of crying as she had been continuously murdered. And the deaths of thousands of people can never be just considered as part of the collateral damage-it is murder. It is murder perpetrated by national and multi-national companies backed up by government line agencies through its policies. They have murdered our environment; they have murdered our people and they will continue to murder our future unless we the people of Mindanao and other parts of the country should act upon this by exposing the rotten system that brought catastrophe on the lives of the majority poor victims. We didn’t cut trees and yet we have paid the price. Thousands of lives had been taken away by our negligence, how many more?

Never again.

It seems the government couldn’t be happier right now. There’s been a slow down in the pensions dispute and Miliband / Balls have declared that they wont reverse any spending cut or oppose a public sector pay freeze (see article by Lindsey German here) which has led to a hike in the polls for the Tories.

However the massive anger from millions of people we saw last year has not gone away! The 500,000 that demonstrated on March 26th or the million plus that went on strike in November still wan’t to see the back of this government.

The unions who rejected the governments offer over pensions are set to meet to discuss further action. Our job is to get the movement back on the streets.

This is why Coalition of Resistance is planning a national speaking tour, to discuss these issues and to draw new layers of activists into the movement.

The tour will run through February – March. We are currently working with a number of anti-cuts groups and Trades Councils to get more of these meetings set up across the country.

Dates confirmed so far include:

Birmingham
with Owen Jones, Clare Solomon, George Barrett
7pm, Thursday 9 February
Committee Rooms 3 and 4, Council House,
Victoria Square, Birmingham, B3 3BD

Birmingham
Banner Theatre – Fight the Cuts
MC: Paul Mackney
7:30pm, Friday 10 February
Library Theatre, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham

Barking
with Councillor George Barratt, Karena Johnson, Paul Mackney, Local speakers tba
7:30pm, Thursday 16 February,
Broadway Theatre, Broadway, Barking, IG11 7LS

Liverpool
with James Meadway, Chaired by Romayne Phoenix, others tba
6:30pm, Friday 24 February
Adelphi Hotel, Ranelagh Place  Liverpool, Merseyside L3 5UL
(Green Party Conference fringe meeting – open to all)

Newcastle
with Owen Jones, Lindsey German, Speaker from Greece
7pm Wednesday 14 March
Newcastle Arts Centre (Black Swan)
67 Westgate Road. NE1 1SG

Glasgow
With Owen Jones, others tba
7pm, Thursday 15 March
STUC Centre, 333 Woodlands Road, Glasgow, G3 6NG

Please check the website for details of other meetings as they are announced. If you would like to organise one in your area please contact coalitionofresistance@mail.com.

Europe is now the centre of the global crisis. It is a crisis of the system, sweeping across Europe and is not limited to just one country. The crisis erupted four years ago under governments of both the traditional left and right as they all pursued similar neo-liberal policies.

The ruling élites claim that Europe has a sovereign debt crisis due to lack of fiscal discipline. They ignore that the public debt would not have increased at the current rates if it were not for the unprecedented bank rescue packages, the loss in tax revenues, and the increased social spending because of rising poverty and unemployment. Their solution to the crisis is austerity: ever deepening attacks on the working class and welfare states across Europe.

We need a European-wide mass movement of resistance against this concerted attack around four key demands: i) opposition to austerity policies and all cuts, ii) increasing taxes on the income and wealth of the rich, corporations and financial transactions, as well as controlling the movement of capital; iii) bringing the banks into public ownership under democratic control; iv) auditing the debt and cancelling the parts which are illegitimate.

There is a growing consensus within the left across Europe around these issues. But we also need to build a bridge from an emergency programme to beat the crisis to an alternative internationalist Europe of the people, rather than one which works in the interests of capital though the current institutions of the European Union.

The resistance in Greece, Spain, Portugal and elsewhere across Europe is focussing against the austerity like we are in Britain. They are opposing deep cuts in public services, wages and pensions, and are calling instead for the banks, corporations and the rich to pay for the crisis which they created. If these movements succeed, they would push for renouncing the neo-liberal treaties of the European Union such as the one of Maastricht, and cancelling the illegitimate debts. This would encourage and spread resistance across Europe. Withdrawal from the European Union or exit from the Eurozone is not a pre-condition in our fight against austerity and for radical change.

If one country in Europe denounced the austerity plans and refused to pay the debt, this could lead to a massive domino effect of mobilization across Europe. Protectionist alternatives on a country-by-country basis, such as withdrawal from the EU or exit from the Euro, do not have the same power to spread the resistance. They will also lead to devaluation, which would have disastrous consequences for ordinary people, especially in countries in the periphery of the EU such as Greece, as the costs of imports rise and the prices of domestic goods using these imported inputs soar and the purchasing power of wages and pensions collapse. Moreover the exit of one country is likely to lead to the exit of others, which would start a currency war via a series of devaluations across countries.

The way to unite the power of people across Europe is to build on the common interests that we have across borders. The austerity packages in every country, driven by the interests of banks and corporations across Europe and co-ordinated through institutions such as the IMF and European Central Bank, are creating mass unemployment and driving down the living conditions of the working class to pay for the crisis. In Greece, pensions and wages have been cut several times, while the rich ship owners continue to avoid and evade tax by placing their wealth in accounts in Switzerland and other tax havens. Successive rounds of austerity packages will lead this country into a prolonged recession, and turn the problem of debt into one of insolvency. The working class in a rich country such as Germany has not been spared. At the turn of the 21^st century, wages, unemployment benefits and pensions were attacked to make German companies more profitable. Reversing the pro-capital austerity programmes in Germany as well as in Greece is crucial to solve the crisis in Europe. The losses of the German workers and the increased competitiveness of German firms is part of the causes of the large trade deficits in Greece.

The austerity policies to deal with debt are intended to bail out the banks. But these policies bring countries in the periphery such as Greece, Ireland, and Portugal to the edge of insolvency by means of a deepening recession. This has consequences for the tax-payers in core countries such as Germany, France, or Britain, who will again be pressurized to bail out their banks that have driven these countries into an ever increasing level of debt which cannot be reimbursed.

The cancellation of the major parts of the debt and the nationalization of banks under democratic control, in both the richer countries such as Britain and Germany as well as in poorer ones such as Greece and Ireland, is the only way to end the vicious circle of austerity and bail-outs.

The questions we must ask are not only “why should we pay for the crisis?” and “can we pay the debt?” but also “why should we continue paying for the increasing debt caused by the ever deepening crisis?” The recognition of the need to cancel the debt is also important given the ecological limits to growth, which poses a constraint to the traditional Keynesian policies of growing our way out of debt.

An international mobilization against austerity must lead to a radical change in economic priorities in Europe, a challenge to the dictatorship of the EU, IMF and the banks, and a new and democratic way of organising society. Fiscal, monetary, and industrial policy should aim at full employment, ecological sustainability, and equality. Minimum wages, social benefits and public services across Europe should be financed by a European budget funded by increased progressive taxation of corporations, banks, and the rich. Fiscal transfers within Europe are also consistent with the interests of the working people in the core countries: a low wage periphery as an alternative location for transnational corporations is a threat to the workers in the core as well. The European Central Bank should be replaced by a real Central Bank – a Peoples’ Bank of Europe – responsible for the supply of funds necessary for green investments and to meet the needs of people and not private financial profits. Monetary policy should accommodate the priorities agreed by a Peoples’ Assembly of Europe and not those of the unelected European Council.

Across Europe we have to reject the austerity programmes and the logic of the capitalist system by proposing another way of redistributing wealth and challenging the private ownership of finance and industry. It is within this framework that we should work towards the convergence of the struggles across borders and collaborate with different anti-capitalist movements across Europe. The resources of the continent could be used to meet the needs of people and the planet, tackling poverty, inequality, and climate change. But this cannot be done within the existing framework of the European Union which was set up to create a free market for capital. Resistance against austerity is starting at a national level, but the scale of the crisis is such that radical solutions are required at the level of Europe and should be carried by a movement of resistance uniting workers and the people of the continent.

As part of its huge cuts package, voted through by the Birmingham Council ConDem leadership, several respite homes for disabled children were put under threat. But one of them, Charles House, in West Heath, has now secured its future. At the January council meeting, the reply from the Birmingham City Council Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Families (Councillor Les Lawrence) to a written question from Cllr Eddie Freeman (Weoley Ward) said it all;

“A significant number of comments, representations and consultation responses were received with regard to the provision of respite services to those young people, such as attending Charles House, indicating the value and importance of the service to their well-being, personal development and families.
The commitment shown by parents, staff and young people as expressed at the Northfield Ward Committee Meeting and at the meeting, as you detail in your question, was an important factor in the consideration of the future for Charles House.

I can therefore confirm that Charles House will continue to be a vital component in the overall provision of respite services. Already changes to the process by which places are provided have occurred, staffing profiles assessed, to enable improvements in the access to and provision of placements.
Therefore Charles House, which has on three separate occasions been judged by OfSTED as outstanding, will continue to provide high quality respite care for young people together with supporting their families underpinned by staff who are highly respected.”

There is not much wriggle room in that. So, congratulations to the staff and children of Charles House, their parents who campaigned so effectively and to everyone else who lent their active support. The latter includes a few Labour Councillors in the South West of the City and our own Stirchley and Cotteridge against the Cuts group. (SACAC)
This victory was achieved by high-profile, effective and militant campaigning, led by the parents themselves. It was all organised at regular mass parent meetings; they planned the press campaigning, the lobbying, the letters to be written and the relevant meetings to be attended. These meetings also invited in Council officials such as Eleanor Brazil, legal experts and Les Lawrence himself. Some Labour Councillors turned up at times of their own volition, others had to be dragged. SACAC members were proud to have been invited in for every meeting, to give support and advice on campaigning strategy .

But it was SACAC that pioneered the two most public demonstrations, a street corner Saturday morning stall in Cotteridge on Saturday 5th November and on the Kings Norton Green on Saturday 10th December. This latter event was preceded by parents, children and SACAC members filling up Councillor Steve Bedser’s surgery to bursting point and winning Steve’s active support for Charles House. At both stalls the public support received was overwhelming.

It was also SACAC that accompanied the parents to a memorable Northfield Ward Committee meeting on Monday 21st November. To say that the campaign made its point forcibly would be an understatement. It was probably the turning point – as acknowledged in the letter above. Councillor Lawrence was reminded in no uncertain terms of the promise he had made to keep Merrishaw Community Day Nursery open, only for the shutters to go up soon after. When we all trooped out having made our point, Cllr Lawrence followed, and spoke to us in a very different tone of voice. It was probably at this point that it was realised a big mistake had been made.

So, the articles in the press, the coverage in the B31 blog, the lobbying of Councillors, the street demonstrations, the letters written and the solidarity achieved by keeping all parents together, plus the support of the local anti-cuts group, made a victory possible.

We, of course, hope that the survival of Charles House is not at the expense of any other such house or Council services. But if anywhere else does feel threatened, the service users concerned can take a leaf out of the Charles House parents’ campaign to see how to defend themselves.

If and when the Council cutters come for any other vital services in this part of the city, be rest assured that SACAC will be there once more. And while we think about it, is it not time to consider re-opening Merrishaw Community Day Nursery?

Most of the data in this article come from government sources or the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG). The organisation says of itself “We monitor official poverty statistics and carry out research, providing evidence of the shortcomings of the social security and tax credits systems in regular briefings to government ministers, MPs and the general public. We comment on any proposed policy changes likely to affect low-income families with children.” These are modest aims but CPAG’s findings illuminate the brutality of what the Con Dems are doing.

The median wage in Britain was £25 800 in 2009, the last year for which figures are available. The accepted definition of “low income” is 60% of that, or £15480. Poverty in Britain is a huge problem. The Department of Work and Pensions says that in 2009/10 3.8 million children were in households with “incomes below 60 per cent of contemporary median net disposable household income After Housing Costs (AHC)”[1].

How do the Con Dems plan to deal with the fact that they govern a country with almost 4 million children living in poverty? They intend to make them even poorer and add significantly to their numbers. Let’s look at some of the things they have done already.

In January 2011 the Child Trust Fund and Health in Pregnancy Grant was stopped. In April 2011 the Sure Start Maternity Grant was limited to the first child only. Child benefit has been frozen for three years, a real terms cut.

In April 2011 they introduced a maximum amount or ‘cap’ on the housing benefit they will pay for each property size. Changes came into effect for new claimants in April last year and started for existing claimants in January 2012. From 2013 they intend to cap total benefits for a family at £500 per week. That £500 will have to cover a family’s rent, food, heating, clothing and every other bill. Already councils in London are preparing to advise families to move out of the city to areas with cheaper housing so severing them from their support networks of friends and relatives. In many parts of the country schools have started referring parents to food banks run by charities.

The Sun summed up the Tory view on this: “The hugely popular cap on benefits will affect an extra 50,000 families, on top of the thousands targeted by a £400 a week limit on housing benefit, unveiled in June’s Emergency Budget…. On average, scrounging families will lose £93 a week.”[2]

The Child Poverty Action Group has calculated that a baby born to a low-income family from April 2011 will be around £1,500 worse off compared to a sibling born in April 2010. This is supported by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) which calculates that median income among families with children will fall by 4.2% between 2010 and 2015, largely due to benefit changes.

The IFS predicts that child poverty will increase through to 2014/15, with families in the poorest tenth of the population being around 10% worse off. The class nature of these cuts could not be any clearer as 500,000 more children will fall into absolute poverty by 2015/16.

And it is not just a rhetorical device to assert that the most vulnerable are being hardest hit. The Universal Credit, which will be introduced next year, will slash 12% of the income of unemployed lone parents on average by 2014/15, or £2,000 per year. If you are already very poor the Con Dems want to make you even poorer. Even Labour’s Yvette Cooper was obliged to protest against the inequity of this, pointing out that “families with children are being hit more than four times harder than the average household.”

The Con Dem attacks are motivated in part by the Tories’ hatred of the welfare state. But there is more to it than that. They have no scruples about impoverishing the poorest people in the country still further to pay off the bankers’ debt. There is also a deeper reason. They want to force people into very low paid jobs, unpoliced by what Cameron called the “health and safety monster” to make British capitalism more profitable.

Defence of welfare benefits is also defence of the living standards of working people. It needs to be a central part of our fight against the Con Dems.

[1][1] http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/index.php?page=hbai

[2] http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3165359/PM-defends-cut-in-child-benefits.html