Despite 'empowerment' people still have power

“Once services are contracted out tosome semi-official community base,which is something the Conservativesare very loosely talking about now... itis very easy then to make peoplemake their own cuts. What you do isyou make people in charge of an everdiminishing budget and ask them tochoose what not to have.”

Article on actions against Local government in Wirral. from the Commune Issue 14:http://thecommune.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/issu...

despite ‘empowerment’ people still have power

by Leo Singer

"The College principal says cuts will hit adult education""Services have been streamlined and centralised to curbduplication"

" increasing its council tax precept by 4.8 per cent"

"... plans to end funding for elite swimming, switch off streetlights at night, cut two recycling centres and close crèchesat leisure centres"

"... cutting around 70 jobs, with more to come in futureyears"

This is just a limited selection of headlines from the localpapers all over Merseyside and Wallasey, collected thisspring. Local governments are preparing us for a new era, atightening of belts, expected after the national elections.Similar headlines are easy to find in papers all over thecountry. No wonder... as shit runs down.

So again, we hear echoes of Thatcher: 'There Is No Alternative',this time from all the three major parties. But luckily,the year 2009 brought us several surprises which show thatworking class people can effectively fight against austeritymeasures even in the crisis times. One can just mention thewildcat strikes at Lindsey oil refinery, the Visteon factoryoccupations of laid-off workers, parents' occupations ofschools in Glasgow and London, official and unofficialpostal strikes or brave refuse workers and street cleaners inLiverpool.

Another significant movement was the 'winter of discontent'in Wirral. Albeit shadowed by more spectacular wildcatsand occupations in the national media, the Wirral case isreally inspiring.

Wirral against the cuts

At the end of 2008, Wirral Borough Council announced aso-called 'Strategic Asset Review', planning massive cuts inpublic services: to close eleven libraries and forty-nine communityfacilities such as community and leisure centres, amuseum, a theatre and swimming baths. Nine hundred jobsin social care and transport were meant to be contractedout. In this way the council planned to save £3.1 million... sothat they could borrow £20 million to build new 'state of theart' buildings! Better not try to find any logic in it. At thesame time local trade unions exposed the fact that the librarians,teachers and school head masters were bannedto talk about these plans or to join any protests. However,the local politicians forgot the old saying, that you reap whatyou sow...

According to a quick local trade unions' survey, the localpeople's view was that libraries should be "within walkingdistance, places that children can get to unaccompanied ifnecessary to do school work, somewhere easy to get towith prams, that didn't cost £8 a trip on two buses, a placewhere they could access computers and books, a communityresource for all". They wanted the council's library resourcesto fulfil these local needs "large centralised newbuilds would not.

According to Fred MacCormack, a resident from Moreton,the discontent and anger of inhabitants had been strengthenedby the fact that Wirral Council was not seriously interestedin hearing the opinion of local communities, whichstirred them into action. Jo, who lives in Port Sunlight, recallswith enthusiasm: "It was a groundswell from the bottomup. People were writing letters, sending emails, signingpetitions, discussing on Facebook, talking to their councillors,going to consultations, demonstrations. Everybody wastalking about it."

Indeed, Wirral has not seen a similar people's mobilisationfor a long time! Hundreds of protesters poured in to the sessionof the Council's Culture committee disscussing the cutsin December 2008. People abhorred the superficial way theCouncil was planning to consult the residents.

They forced the councillors to organise four consultative'area forums' in Birkenhead, New Brighton, West Kirby andPort Sunlight. Despite the fact that they were all packed intoone week in the beginning of January, hundreds of peopleattended each of these meetings.

Wirral TUC estimate that all together 35,000 people tookpart in the consultation in some way. Let's add to it the twomass actions in freezing January, organised by trade unions:the march to Wallasey Town Hall on 11th January andthe protest at the Civic Hall a few days later. More thanthree thousand people joined the Facebook group 'SaveWirral Services'.

The trade unions launched the Wirral Against the CutsCampaign. Their goal was 'to coordinate all the differentgroups, to argue for all the libraries, not just any local libraryand to make the case for bigger political arguments'.

Elaine Jones from Wirral TUC says: "We set up organisingcommittees at eight of eleven libraries, organised publicmeetings (in Eastham we had four meetings, each over twohundred people) and coordinated the input of the committeesinto the inquiry as well as producing our own. We organisedmonthly Wirral Against the Cuts committees to coordinatethe activity." Often, she could lean on members ofpre-existing Friends of Libraries' groups. One of two localgroups not founded by the unions was Hoylake Library ActionGroup. It was set up by Barbara Kirby, resident fromHoylake, who just got a very simple idea: she put up leafletsannouncing her plan to start a local group. She also informedthat she would be sitting in the local library everySaturday. Eight people came to the meeting on the firstSaturday alone!... Despite threats from their bosses, somelibrarians helped undercover the local campaigning groups,e.g. with copying leaflets at work. Fred MacCormack wasactively involved in both Hoylake local group and Wallaseycoordinating group. He went to both newspapers on Wirraland asked them to see reader letters concerning closures.He analysed them all. Out of 167, only one was fully andone conditionally in favour of closures.

Community asset transfers: an empowerment?

Local politicians tried to calm people down. Their alternativeto the closures was for the local community to take overmanagement and maintenance of facilities under threat.However, this vision - called Community Asset Transfer -has been rejected by the popular movement. Jo says: "Idon't feel it works. It is very difficult for people to run themon community basis. You just will get completely exhaustedwhile trying to find funding for running these facilities. Justlook at what happened with Byrne Avenue Baths!" Theswimming baths was a registered charity which had leasedthe building from the Wirral Council fourteen years ago. Itshut down in February 2009 due to a lack of grants, despitemassive popularity and the local community helping withrepair.

Alan Gibbons, a Liverpool writer who got involved in thecampaign to save libraries, is not in favour of CommunityAsset Transfer either. "The position of our 'Campaign forthe Book' is: taxpayers pay for these services. The servicesshould be administered by local councils. That way you willget the statutory protection of the law for these services toexist. Once they are contracted out to some semi-officialcommunity base, which is something the Conservatives arevery loosely talking about now, then I think you lose thatprotection. It is very easy then to make people make theirown cuts. What you do is you make people in charge ofan ever diminishing budget and ask them to choose whatnot to have. I don't think that's how you administer publicservices. I think you set up statutory minimum levels, that'swhat we are fighting for. That's why the act is so important.What I hate is all these reports that come out with titlessuch as empowerment and enhancement, they mean nothing.Unless there is a rigorous plan that sets out the minimumstandards, they are a fraud.

Victory for libraries... the game is not overIn April 2009, the former Culture Secretary Andy Burnhamordered an inquiry into Wirral library closures. The'Campaign for the Book', alongside thousands of others,targeted Burnham. Alan Gibbons recalls: "We were sendingprotest letters. The Culture Secretary responded that he"was not minded" to overturn the council decision. But wewent on and the campaign against cuts kept going. A fewmonths later, in April, he called the inquiry and he did it onlybecause of the public and popular pressure."

The central government inquiry closed in October last year,concluding that Wirral Council's plan would have broken thelaw, specifically the 1964 Libraries and Museums Act. Thedocument said the council "displayed a lack of logic" and"failed to make an assessment of local needs". People onWirral burst out in celebration.

How do some of the participants see this victory? Jo: "It'sall down to our individual decision to say NO and do something,at least a little bit. This may be a lesson for the periodafter the elections when the government will come with yetmore cuts. People should never underestimate how muchyou can do as an individual".

Elaine Jones summarised the victory: "We co-ordinatedand organised the anger that existed and as such were ableto stop all closures." On the other hand, in Jo's opinion"there was no overall coordination, apart from Facebookand Alan Gibbons' blog where people could get informationand download the letter to councillors".

Fred MacCormack, who highly credits Elaine Jones' coordinatingrole, remains cautious: "Yes, we proved that communitypower still works. The problem is that all is quiet again."He hints to the fact that most community facilities to beaxed were not libraries and thus remain without any legalprotection.

So what's going to happen to the community and leisurecentres, cultural facilities, swimming pool? I asked WirralCouncil. The information manager Jane Corrin replied in avery brief email, confirming the concerns that CommunityAsset Transfers are going ahead, advertised in the localpress, one by one, each separate. "The timetable for theclosure of buildings "¦ remains."

Last but not least, Wirral Council questions the 'truth' thatthe cuts in services have been brought about mainly by thecredit crunch. In fact, already in 2006 Wirral councillorswere discussing the closures of services to save somemoney. It's no surprise.

For many years public sector workers in the UK observedhow businesses had tended to suck public services dry, andintroduced the profit motive into them. The latest recessionis just the peaking of this viral self-expansion of profit, withits 'managers' having lost any control over it. And as withany other virus, simply taking a pill does not help us in thelong run. We need more radical changes in the economythan simply fixing the recession.

*a shorter version of this article was published in Liverpoolmagazine Nerve.

If your community facilities are under threat, you may findthe following sites useful:

Statutory Guidance for Closing a Schoolwww.dcsf.gov.uk/schoolorg/guidance.cfm?id=3Parents Against School Closurewww.parentsagainstschoolclosure.davesinfocafe.comSave Our Schools Glasgowwww.sosglasgow.wordpress.comDefend Education in Lewishamwww.defendeducationlewisham.wordpress.comCambridge... Against the Cutswww.cambridgeshireagainstthecuts.org.ukLondon Coalition Against