Elected mayors: hands on the public sector, hand in glove with business

In a previous article we described an elected mayor as a dictator in the Council House. Candidates are already planning expanding their empires.

 

The key is the amendments to the Act, which are not included in the original version on the government website. They give the Local Government Secretary the power to transfer responsibilityfor almost any public service to local authorities, as long as doing so would “promote economic development or wealth creation” or “increase local accountability in relation to the function”. It potentially allows local authorities to take over any function which is “currently the responsibility of government or other public authority, which are carried out in relation to the people who live, work, or carry on activities in the authority’s area” (Birmingham Post 3 November 2011, p22).

 

A blank cheque for government

 

In effect this is a blank cheque for the government to hand over local public services to a single all-powerful mayor. The mayor’s precise powers are not specified in the Act. Apparently they will be negotiated by government individually with each mayor, which would allow government to favour Tory mayors and restrict the powers of any leftish mayors – however unlikely they might be (although Clare Short is standing in Birmingham).

 

Sion Simon plans his empire

 

The front runner in Birmingham, according to the Post, is Sion Simon, an ex-local MP. Simon is already planning his empire. He argues that ‘An elected mayor should be given control or influence over all public sector spending and assets in the city, including health,policing, transport and economic development’. He says that ‘the mayor should have direct power over schools, including the ability to remove a head teacher and management, close a failing school and even set a Birmingham curriculum.’ In the Post’s view ‘What Mr Simon proposes is a far reaching extension of local government power in Birmingham [which] would create one of the most powerful posts in UK politics.’(B Post 5 January 2012, p19).

 

Why business wants an elected mayor

 

While Simon isgetting his hands on Birmingham’s public services he is hand in glove with Birmingham’s business leaders. The Chamber of Commerce recently voted by an overwhelming majority in favour of an elected mayor. Katie Teasdale, head of policy at the Chamber, said ‘we see significant opportunities for our members – the city’s businesses and drivers of growth – to deliver jobs and wealth creation if the city is empowered to remove barriers to growth’ (B Post 19 January 2012, p14).

 

These business leaders aren’t just interested in the mayor’s support for the private sector. They see the mayor as an instrument they can use to give them influence over the public sector, gearing it to business needs (and no doubt opening up opportunities for profit-making).  ‘We believe that the mayor must become the crux through which public services in the city are coordinated and commissioned. This will be most critical in areas like health and education where providers and relevant agencies should be required to work with the mayor to an agreed strategy’ (p15). Lord Adonis has been playing a hands-on role in Birmingham. According to the Post ‘He points out that a directly elected mayor of Birmingham will be able to appoint cabinet members who are not councillors, opening up the possibility of successful business figures playing key roles in running schools, housing and transport’ (B Post 6 February 2011, p21.)

 

The threat to local democracy

 

The mayor can only be overruled by two-thirds of councillors. But there is a further threat to local democracy: ‘It is also likely that local councillor elections will change from electing one-third every year to a single election for all councillors every 4 years (B Post 6 February 2011, p21.) So once election day had passed voters would have no way of influencing policy for the next four years, making even more of a mockery of the claim that an elected mayor system would be more democratic.

 

Labour’s elected mayors to appoint school commissioners?

 

In December Sir Michael Wilshaw, the new head of Ofsted, called for a network of government-appointed local commissioners with powers to dismiss headteachers of failing academies and strip them of academy status. Of course, if the government’s academy policy comes to fruition these commissioners would have power over all schools, by-passing local authorities completely.The way that Wilshaw has posed it, these commissioners would either be civil servants or, perhaps more likely, contracted out to the private sector, like school inspections. But another option could be attractive to the government: schools commissioners appointed by elected city mayors. And this is actually the position of the Blairite wing of the Labour Party, the Progress current – represented most publicly in Birmingham by Liam Byrne, MP for Hodge Hill. The Progress online editorial on 26 January 2012 says ‘Labour should back directly elected mayors this May and press the government to devolve more powers to them.’ Its editorial echoes Simon’s desire to control local schools:

 

‘There is one further power that city mayors should be given: that to appoint school commissioners, new local champions for standards which shadow education secretary Stephen Twigg is considering as part of his policy review. As the growth of academies and free schools continues apace, local authorities have less power. While we remain firmly convinced of the case for academies, and believe their freedom and autonomy must be protected, the power to deal with those that are failing or coasting now effectively rests in Whitehall. It should not. Commissioners would not manage schools, but would monitor the overall performance of all schools in their area, ensuring fair access and that local needs are met when new schools are proposed.’

 

New Parties of the Left in Europe- a debate

The next SR Forum will be a debate between Fred Leplat of Socialist Resistance and Chris Bambery of the International Socialist Group (Scotland) on the theme of our new book ‘New Parties of the Left- Experiences from Europe’

Chris writes: ”

“Across Europe resistance to austerity and cuts is mounting. Yet this comes at a time when much of the left in Europe is in crisis and this resistance all too often passes it by. In recent years the experience of the European radical left provides some valuable experiences but also some warnings which should be heeded. As the centre left falls in behind the drive for austerity the need to pose an effective left alternative is greater than ever. That begins by throwing ourselves into the resistance to austerity.”

7.30pm, Wednesday 18th January, 2012 at Bennetts, Bennetts Hill, B2 5RS

Wanted: Young people 14-16 for varied work…

This article from our comrade Stephen Hall of Wigan Borough Green Socialists fits neatly with our own recent posts about youth unemployment…

 

This famous photo shows an unemployed worker in Wigan at the time of George Orwell’s visit to the town prior to his writing of “The Road to Wigan Pier”. Must we return to such bleak scenes before local youth rise up an act?

Are you looking for a 32 hour, four days a week job which pays a minimum £6.50 an hour to start with, has 30 days paid holidays a year, early retirement at 60 and a decent pension?

Alternatively, looking for an apprenticeship leading to a more skilled job, as well as in either case, looking for free lifelong access to education, including Higher Education, and/or on the job training?

If so, then you should, as the former Labour Party Young Socialists’ “Youth Campaign Against Unemployment” leaflets in the early 80s used to say: JOIN THE FIGHT TO GET IT!

This is the kind of employment and future income prospect all young people might have, not only in the Wigan area but throughout the land, if they all fought for it. To achieve it will mean putting to an end the very economic and political system which sees 25% of those in the 16 to 24 year old age range currently in the Wigan area NOT in EMPLOYMENT, EDUCATION or TRAINING. Or alternatively, in the case of the vast majority of the remaining 75%, sees them in generally much lower paid and lesser skilled jobs offering little in the way of future advancement, and depending on whether they’ve been to University and got a degree or not, potentially shackled to a huge student loan and other debts to go with it.

It is difficult to say who is currently in the worse position of all these young people – the formally more qualified graduate, who even if they lucky to be able get a well paid job, will soon find themselves with a student debt in excess of £30k at the beginning of their work lives which they have to pay back, those graduates who can’t find any suitable work in keeping with their qualifications, those in low paid dead end jobs, or those who are NEET.

What is for certain though is if young people don’t themselves decide to do anything the situation can only get worse for all of them, apart from that is of course, the children of the most well-off.

Whilst some of us older comrades might want to do our bit and stand up for the rights of our young people and are prepared to fight for them to the extent we might be able, we are no substitute for the mass of young people (and the mass of the people as a whole) doing it for themselves, and only young people (and the mass of the people as a whole) doing it for themselves can ultimately ensure it actually happens.

The vast majority of our young people currently face a bleak future without decisive action on their part in the next period, not only in relation to securing jobs and decent living standards, but in relation to the growing threat of irreversible global ecological degradation and catastrophic climate change which cast a shadow over the very future of humanity.

Whilst the Wigan Borough Green Socialists, would fully support the idea of young people across Wigan organising themselves independently to promote their own interests, and believe young people would probably prefer to do that without the likes of us older comrades interfering, the lack of such independent organisation by youth in the Borough is glaringly obvious at the moment, including at the level of students.

As a consequence, I think it would be at the least apt for us to offer our unconditional support to any young person or group of young people wanting to get something off the ground. This might take the shape of organising and paying for a room for a meeting, printing leaflets or posters, helping with travel expenses, or whatever.

Feed the world- without destroying the planet! 15th November 2011

We live in a world where soil erosion, desertification and famine is an ever-increasing reality for millions of poor people.

At the same time the profits of large landowners and supermarkets continue to soar. The issues of food production and food sovereignty – who controls the production, sale and distribution of food – have never been more crucial.

Monoculture – the industrial growing of a single cash crop – is a major contributor to soil erosion and desertification along with forest clearance for farming multi-nationals. Agribusiness calls for ever-increasing yields that may give short-term benefits but at a devastating long-term cost including pesticides polluting rivers and oceans. The cost to human communities is also immeasurable – peasants are thrown off their farms as land reform is reversed in the insatiable search for profit. Millions are forced to migrate to unsustainable cities – living in shantytowns with no infrastructure.

There is resistance – from the growth of militant peasant and indigenous organisations and the pioneering of organic agriculture in countries as diverse as Cuba, Venezuela and the Philippines to guerilla gardening in the deserts of post-industrial cities in the United States.

On November 15th 2011 Socialist Resistance and Green Left will be hosting a meeting in Birmingham to discuss these issues.
Our main speaker will be Maria Neri from Mindanao in the Philippines. Maria is a longstanding activist and ecosocialist and works for CONZARRD an NGO focusing on agrarian reform and rural development.

She will share her powerful experiences in the struggle for land reform and ecologically sustainable food production.

7pm, Tuesday 15th November, Committee Rooms 3 & 4, Council House, Birmingham, B3 3BD

Call 07775942841 for further details or email midlands@socialistresistance.org

You can download a copy of a leaflet here

 

 

Education without jobs? Youth unemployment in Birmingham

Education without jobs? is a new pamphlet by Richard Hatcher, published by Birmingham Socialist Resistance. With a wealth of detail, it looks at unemployment trends and patterns locally and nationally, analyses both Coalition and previously, Labour policies and presents suggestions for an action plan for the labour and trade union movement to propose as an alternative.

You can read / download it here or get a printed copy from your friendly neighbourhood SR supporter for just 50p

So, how do we stop the cuts?

 Bob Whitehead poses a few questions for the movement…

Firstly, it helps to say that you are actually against them. And that immediately casts doubt that the Labour leadership, nationally and locally, could be part of the solution. Their “too deep too fast” attitude towards the ConDem cuts gives most of the ground away in advance. If they had been re-elected in 2010, they would have carried out a similar onslaught on the welfare state, but presumably, not-so-deep and not-so fast. “In his last budget before leaving the Treasury, Alistair Darling said a Labour government would halve the deficit by 2014, which would have meant cuts of 20% to those spending areas not protected – policing, schools and hospitals” (The Guardian 12/7/10). It is easy for Ed Balls in opposition to say that the target was too stringent, but we have to go on what they said before the election on the presumption of victory.

Youth Unemployment and Birmingham

UPDATE: 26th August

On 25 August, the day after this article appeared, Labour’s shadow business secretary John Denham proposed that any company wanting to win public sector contracts should have to prove it offered apprenticeships to out-of-work young people. The government “could take immediate action by supporting the creation of thousands of apprenticeships in companies that provide services to government including construction projects.”

 It’s a step in the right direction – pity Labour didn’t take it when it was in government. But it will be a dead end unless apprenticeships are guaranteed to lead to a proper job.

 In the meantime, as we have said, Labour councils could implement apprenticeship-compliant contracts today. Why doesn’t Denham demand that they do so?

Richard Hatcher has prepared this paper for Birmingham Against the Cuts

The causes of the riots are multiple and complex, but one major factor is the high level of youth unemployment. And while this is exacerbated by the recession, its underlying cause is structural, not just cyclical. There is a permanent change in the structure of the labour market which is drastically reducing the demand by employers for youth labour.

What is Socialism? Part 5 – Socialism and Ecology

If you don’t like the message, shoot the messenger. That is the response of international capitalism to the threat of runaway global warming. For decades, the green movement, to its credit, has been warning about the threat to the world environment from polluting industries and consumerism. The destruction of the ozone layer due to the use of Chloro- Fluoro-Carbons in aerosol sprays and fridge coolants was identified almost too late for them to be banned. Years later, the effects of this pollutant are still felt in a big way over the north and south poles.

Coalition of Resistance conference report- 9th July 2011

By Bob Whitehead
The second national conference of the Coalition of Resistance was held last Saturday in London. The total attendance of three hundred was made up of 80% delegates and 20% visitors. There was a very good turnout of about ten travelling down from the Birmingham area; mainly people who have been active around “Birmingham against the Cuts”. The Green Left was also in evidence, and jointly proposed the resolution on climate change with Socialist Resistance.
As it was a delegate conference, it took on a different character than the much larger founding conference/rally that was held last year. It heard a wide range of inspirational speakers, such as John McDonnell MP, Wendy Savage (Keep our NHS public), Zita Holbourne (BARAC), Ben Hassa Mokhtar from Tunisia, Ted Knight, Mehdi Hasan (New Statesman), Dot Gibson (National Pensioners Convention), Alex Kenny (NUT), Barnaby Raine (School students against the cuts), Katy Clark MP, Paul Brandon (Right to Work) and Joe Malone (FBU). Other speakers introduced the discussions at the five workshops. Apologies were given from Tony Benn, who was at the Durham miners’ gala, Mark Serwotka, who was taking a breather from weeks of rubbishing Tory media spokesmen on pension cuts and from Caroline Lucas MP. A huge round of applause was given for the late Alf Filer, who made an inspirational fundraising speech at the initial conference last year, but who tragically died a short time ago.
Although the speakers were all good to listen to, it may, as so often happens, have been overdone. It was a democratic conference, where resolutions were tabled on request and debated fairly, but a bit more time could have been allowed to argue out some of the differences.
Yet this is not to carp too much. It was a good day; inspiring, informative, well worth travelling down for and a day that established the Coalition of Resistance as an on-going campaigning body. Fifteen resolutions were submitted, debated and voted upon and a new National Council of 50 was elected. Not bad when you consider the time given to speakers, workshops, breaks, and registration.
One of the burning issues of the movement is the need for unity against the ConDems. There are five national anti-cuts bodies in existence at present. How can this be justified? Talks are on-going with the People’s Charter and others about increasing coordination, yet a grand fusion does not seem on the agenda. A resolution calling for a unifying conference before the end of this year was defeated as premature. So, in a spirit of cooperation, time was given to the Right to Work speaker to explain why they were ploughing their lonely furrow. The explanation was unconvincing. Differences of emphasis were mentioned, but nothing that could not be contained within one campaigning body. Who benefits from this division on the left?
There was a division within the conference on whether to call for a General strike as the next step of escalation after the big successes of March 26th and June 30th. Two resolutions on this, from the SWP and Workers Power, were heavily defeated. It was felt that coordinated action across the public sector was within reach, but no more at this stage. We face the block on unity and breakthrough from the Labour Party dominated UNISON, UNITE and GMB.
The main resolution from the Steering Committee re-committed the COR to ‘opposing all cuts and privatisation of public services, the welfare state and the NHS’. This serves as a correct and welcome riposte to the “too deep – too fast”, pro-cuts position of the Labour Party. No one is against working with disaffected LP members where we can, but we must be clear what we stand for, otherwise how do you try and convince others?
The main resolution stressed that the ConDems had no democratic mandate for their attacks and this was forcefully echoed by Mehdi Hasan of the New Statesman. It also agreed to support; a second national demonstration against the cuts, a lobby and fringe meeting at the TUC, the national demonstrations at the Tory and Lib Dem conferences, the European Conference against Austerity and Privatisation on the 1st October (initiated by COR), the 8th October mass assembly in Trafalgar Square organised by Stop the War under the slogan “Welfare not Warfare” and to work with the People’s Charter to build a festival of resistance in the summer of 2012.
Other resolutions were passed on; how to work with the Trades Unions, against the Afghan war, how to elect the National Council (50 from conference + one delegate from each local and national anti-cuts affiliated organisation), supporting the campaign for one million climate jobs, opposition to nuclear power, for a youth specific COR conference, supporting the Bombardier demonstration in Derby on July 23rd and supporting a summit on the corporate media this summer. A resolution to base the COR purely on the local and regional network of anti-cuts groups was defeated.
The workshops were on; Crisis in the Eurozone, Unions and the Anti-cuts Movement, Fighting Privatisation, The Hardest Hit and Greening the Economy. The one on the Eurozone heard James Meadway from Counterfire claim that we are in an existential crisis of the Eurozone; it was all starting to fall apart, but we should respond with an internationalist, not a nationalist programme.
Some other points that were highlighted by the speakers included; September 2008 should be our constant reference point in a similar way that 9/11 has been theirs, the existence of a “Fair Pension for All” petition, the government had lost the argument over the affordability of public pensions, we were fighting to retain what our parents established, we should give full solidarity to all those sentenced over the last period for protesting and, in a concluding speech from John McDonell that brought many delegates to their feet, we should also aim to “destroy the system”.

Greece: anger on the streets- an eyewitness report

Our comrade Dave Hill is in Greece and reports from the mass demonstrations against cuts and austerity currently taking place there. Click here for the full photo report (its a large file!)