One of the teetering Right’s favoured anti anti-cuts tactics is to dismiss UKuncut’s movers and shakers as unrepresentative gremlins.
“I do not see any blacks protesting – wonder why,” one charmer observed under a video I posted of last week’s anti-cuts demonstration at Lewisham council.
The point of that and similar comments is, of course, that the Lewisham protestors were neither local, nor representative, and that actions like the Lewisham one could comfortably be written off as the deviant recreations of a small posse of middle-class Goldsmiths Trots.
Which was wrong.
The videos below are short clips of some of the people who spoke at Lewisham just before the crowd charged the hall. The first was a teacher from John Roan school. The second spoke on behalf of the now rather ironically-named Open Doors. Open Doors is/was a popular, help-to-employment service that will shut its doors in February – a casualty of the cuts programme that Steve Bullock’s council signed off last Monday. The third was a speaker from the local pensioners’ forum.
You’ll note from the clips that there was a range of genders, political viewpoints and ethnic groups at Lewisham. People had a good few things in common, though: extraordinary gratitude to the student movement, fury at public-sector cuts, and a willingness to rush the hall. The Right can shout those things down, I suppose, but that doesn’t quite change the fact of them:
It’s even easier, it seems, to put up no opposition at all. Locals have gone mad at Bullock’s proposals to cut libraries, refuse services and staff (especially in a borough that depends on council for employment to the extent this one does). As early as June, Lewisham had bullocked ahead and forecast a budget gap of up to £60m for 2011 to 2014 (although though it was still in the dark about government plans for key grants). People expect (for reasons that will forever escape me) a little more from Labour. It has been clear for a while that Sir Steve ought to keep an eye on the tide.
This evening, he tried to ignore it. Several hundred people turned up to protest at the early-evening council meeting. All went well, until they heard the public gallery would be restricted to 40. Then, someone said 28. Then, people decided they’d head in regardless. Why didn’t Bullock hold this meeting in a large hall somewhere and have it out?
A helpful someone has sent me comments submitted by users of Hammersmith and Fulham’s soon-to-be-disbanded home library service.
The disbanding of the home library service is part of a general Hammersmith and Fulham council assault on library services and staff – staff across libraries are being downgraded and posts cut as the council attempts to squeeze a few coins in savings out of this most popular and blameless of services.
The home library service is run from Barons court by a small, experienced team that is much valued by the elderly and disabled residents that it services. The council has told local libraries that from now on, they must run their own home library services, which of course they won’t be able to. At best, a home library visiting service will become a tacked-on extra. The staff cuts and downgradings will make it almost impossible for local libraries to spare staff to visit homes with the books, videos and CDs that home library users appreciate.
And they do appreciate those things, to say the least. The comments below make that clear.
The comments were made earlier this year when the council was ‘consulting’ (easily our era’s most meaningless word and act) local residents about its plans to dispense with the dedicated home library service. The really galling part is that the comments never saw the light of day. Word is that the forms they were on were shoved into a box that was, in its turn, shoved into a corner from which it only recently emerged. Even if the comments did end up in a report somewhere (and I haven’t seen it), they’ve been ignored. The dedicated home library service is coming to an end.
Anyway – here are some of the comments from home library service users. If nothing else (and there is nothing else), they show that locals are as passionate about their library services as Hammersmith and Fulham council is about eradicating services that don’t make a financial return:
“The Home Delivery Service, and its first rate reliable always cheerful staff. They know what to choose for each individual customer and find what is ordered.”
“As our Home service scheme is based there (Barons Court Library) I wouldn’t approve of any alternative arrangements which I feel might make working conditions for our lovely delivery people more strenuous.”
“My husband and I get through over 15 books (large) print), loads of videos, DVDs and CDs in the three-week period between visits. Without this service we would be left twiddling our fingers!”
“No trust could compare with the service at present. They have become “friends for life” rather than different individuals coming to us, if the service is farmed out to trusts or volunteers.”
“The Home Library Service is a life saver for us as we are both old and even if we were taken to a library we wouldn’t be able to carry the heavy books we enjoy so much.”
“Desperate to have the visiting library continue this service. Will sadly miss my supply of books to cover lonely days. In my case, being disabled, the books and whoever delivers them each time is important. Always such charming people, bringing a chirpy atmosphere.”
“The staff that comes to me always takes the trouble to bring books written by authors I like and also the H&F News which keeps me in touch with the outside world. Money is not the only answer to change, so do please think carefully on what you intend to do.”
“Barons Court Library and its services are wonderful, and it houses a wonderful Outreach service. The staff have worked under pressure for many years. The range of books and knowledgeable staff it’s time you rewarded their hard work and not downsized. It would be like losing my right arm.”
“The Home Library Service – my husband and I are very old and unable to get about much. The HLS has brought us books, talking books and DVDs every three weeks and the service is very much appreciated. I realise it may cost but since the number of people over 85 is increasing, the demand for such a service will also increase.”
“As I’m housebound my only way I could receive my library books is the Home Library. Without this service I would no longer enjoy the pleasure of reading.”
“I am not able to visit a library. My own service – The Home Library – is, as it always has been in mind exceptionally good and I judge the three people who run it exceptional also. To run the service on one full-time and two part-time employees is well nigh unbelievable. Not only do they bring the books but knowing one’s tastes they choose books also. I have always enjoyed their choices; they are well thought out and always interesting. These three people are so much more than ordinary library clerks and I would judge pretty well irreplaceable. The service they give me is of the highest order.”
“I totally depend on the regular service provided by the staff of the Home Library Service.”
This morning, I went to the Shepherd’s Bush library on the Westfield shopping site to help out at a small protest that a group of Hammersmith and Fulham librarians had organised.
The librarians’ salaries (library assistants earn about £21,000) are due to be cut as part of Tory Hammersmith and Fulham council’s gleeful pursuit of ‘savings’ and local annihilation of any notion of community, or public service. The home library service is to be dismantled and word is that some local libraries will shut.
Tis my view that closing local libraries ranks near book-burning as a social contribution, but what would I know, I suppose. Hammersmith and Fulham libraries will close and the free reading sessions and activities for kids they provide will disappear, along with the books, CDs, DVDs and free computers that so many enjoy and need. The reading and IT classes for adults that many libraries run will take their place among history’s sweeter dead, like sonnets. Thus it is that the Tories plan to build a happy, deficit-free tomorrow. My main hope in life these days is that I won’t be around to see it.
Anyway – the protest. Three or four librarians – all middle aged women – stood outside the library for about an hour in their own free time and handed leaflets about their worries to members of the public. I was there – no spring chicken myself – along with two long-time reps from the Hammersmith Unison office, and a well-known local blogger and a reporter. My leg hurt and we were all moving slowly because it was cold and we were all getting old. Armed rebellion was hardly on our agenda.
But hey-ho and you never know – suddenly, we found ourselves surrounded by four or five very heavy-looking guys in black jackets – Westfield security. Thus the high camp began. These guys were ridiculously combative – Christ knows what they had on the PS3 back in the office. At least one member of our group was hanging out to meet the resource-allocation genius that decided to send in five heavies to take out three librarians.
The first guy in the video below was incredibly aggressive – ‘you can’t be here. You haven’t got permission. You have to get out.’
He got very upset when he saw I was filming. He came after me down the street, putting his hand out every now and then towards me – I thought he was going to try and grab the camera and maybe even grab me. I hurried down the road – another slow-moving, near-fogey on the run – then back up Uxbridge Road and down a side street so that I could film the scene from across the road. So far, so very tragic. People on the sidewalk were laughing, watching my little legs trotting off to safety.
You can see three of these guys on the film, standing over the women who were protesting:
There were so many security guys hassling the librarians that people walking by observed that security inside Westfield itself had to be compromised and that now was the time to start thieving.
So. This is how public sector cuts for the hell of it look when you get down to it, people – four or five probably-badly-paid security guys trying to score points off three greying librarians on a pavement. And all for a handful of change in public-sector savings. I don’t think that this is us at our best, you know. I’d cry, if I was the type.
Here’s one of the library assistants – a ten year veteran of the job – explaining the reasons why she wanted to hand out leaflets (it was her day off, so she wasn’t on library time). She also talks about the work library assistants do.
I’ve had a lot of stupid days in my life, but today really took the biscuit.
These are video cuts from last night’s public meeting in Barnet.
There was an impressive turnout. Most people said they were Barnet residents (there was a show of hands towards the end).
Haven’t edited the vids, so there are rough moments.
First video: Shirley Franklin, Defend Whittington Hospital Coalition.
Talks about government attempts to close accident and emergency departments in London hospitals.
Nick Grant from the Anti Academies Alliance (not Alasdair Smith! – he went to another one. h/t vickram7).
Speaks about BBC giving in too easily to spending cuts rhetoric and the ‘class war’ in education. Says academies are about decentralising schools management. ‘The government has lied on its website,’ and deliberately overstated finance available to schools.
Next: John Lister from London Health Emergency.
Talks about hospitals that have lost their accident and emergency departments since the election – Queen Mary’s in Sidcup, Chase Farm, etc.
A couple of months ago, Tory Hammersmith and Fulham council voted to cut voluntary sector funding by 16%. The cut will be considerably more than that in real terms, because the council has stopped adjusting its voluntary sector fund for inflation.
The squeeze is due in the next three years – savings targets of £158,738 for 2010 to 2011, £284,772 for 2011 to 2012 and £257, 481 for 2010 to 2013, with a total savings target of £700,791 by 2014.
The council claims, of course, that the recession has forced its hand – “the impact of [the coalition’s public sector cuts] will need to be shared with the third sector,” thunder cabinet agendas.
The amusing (kind of) part of this claim is that the total annual allocations budget for Hammersmith and Fulham’s voluntary sector is a comparatively tiny £4m. That’s hardly major money, no matter how you slice it.
The amounts that the council wants to slice from it will destroy voluntary groups (some exist on amounts as small as £50,000 pa), but barely touch the sides of the council’s own three-year £50m savings target. As for the chances of annual cuts of £200,000 having pregnant impact on the national deficit – well, you have a quiet life if that adds up in your mind. These are petty savings, not temperate ones.
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Hammersmith and Fulham’s cuts are – as they always have been – part of an ideological raid. Continue reading →
Hope we see more of this sort of thing – people really need to know that striking is the only option a lot of people have. Strikers aren’t lazy or greedy – quite the reverse. They usually have work at the centre of their lives and are desperate for it to continue.
Regarding the Fremantle careworkers – I have it on good authority that it was the union’s regional office that ended that strike. It wasn’t the strikers themselves. They wanted to continue.
Cameron’s ‘big society’ concept is as hard to grasp as it is to buy into. It’s centered on the notions that people will volunteer to provide public services in place of the state and that residents should drive local council spending and direction.
Phrases like ‘community empowerment’ and ‘people power’ guff through big society rhetoric. There are already training courses (complete with hefty price tags) for government and third-sector officers who, presumably, can’t picture big society themselves.
The thing is – none of it matters a damn. Neither ‘community empowerment’ nor ‘people power’ will make it past rhetoric under Cameron’s administration. The realities of Tory rule in local government are vicious service cuts and a chilling detachment from people who need public services. There is no engagement. There is no consultation with poorer communities. Funding is cut and services eliminated without a word of discussion with service users and providers.
We’ve focused on this for several years at the Tory Hammersmith and Fulham and Barnet councils. Let’s spend some time now in Skelmersdale – a working-class town in the Conservative West Lancashire borough:
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Skelmersdale is a small (pop 38,000), Labour-voting new town that was built in the early 1960s to rehouse families from Liverpool estates.
Skem’s sprawling green fields and bright new estates drew the young families crowd in droves: Skem local Theresa Mackin, for example, made the move from Liverpool 44 years ago ‘because it was green, and I got a house [instead of a flat].’
‘We felt like films stars, to have this new house when we just got married,’ says Barry Nolan, a plumber and local councillor who moved from Bootle to Skem in 1966.
Ted and Hazel Scully, and Sandra Porter were also impressed. Ted worked as a builder when he and Hazel moved to the Firbeck and Findon estate in Skem 35 years ago. He and Hazel had young children, and they liked Skem’s green fields and sense of community. There were new schools for the kids and a decent standard of living for a family on a builder’s wage.
They also believed that council tenancy was synonymous with security.
Alas – all that has changed.
For the past three years, Firbeck and Findon tenants have been battling council plans to demolish their homes. Their Tory-led borough council wants to demolish the Firbeck and Findon estate, build plush apartments for private sale in its place and move tenants like the Scullies and Porter to homes on less lucrative land (Firbeck and Findon is right next to Skem town centre and the green (if presently unkempt) banks of the River Tawd).
The tenants first heard of the plans in 2007, when they got letters from the council alerting them to the forthcoming demolition. Not a single councillor came to tell them about the plans in person. No meetings with residents – some of whom had lived in their homes for nearly 40 years – were scheduled. Hazel Scully describes the news as “a complete shock. We hadn’t heard anything from the council.” (My own calls to West Lancashire Conservatives have gone unreturned for a year).
It was up to residents to defend their homes. Scully sniggers when we talk about community empowerment: for her, empowerment has meant spending her retirement acquiring an in-depth knowledge of council operations.
She and Porter have written a stack of letters, taken petitions around town, joined tenants’ groups and learned how to bail up councillors and St Modwen’s senior managers (St Modwen’s is the council’s private housing development partner) at meetings, in the street and/or whenever their paths sync. They’ve learned to read council files, shadow key political players and patrol their estate for anyone who looks like they’re planning to swing a wrecking-ball.
‘The council said – don’t worry, bulldozers aren’t coming over the hill in the morning… but nobody believes the council,’ Scully says.
Indeed. Here’s Hazel Scully on community empowerment (she starts with a few words on tenants’ concerns about George Osborne’s spending review):
I thought about this a lot as I walked around Skem. The likes of Hazel Scully and Sandra Porter don’t see council tenancy – or lifelong council tenancy – as a right, exactly. They see council tenancy as a deal. Continue reading →
Tory Barnet council – known as EasyJet council because of plans to permit residents to pay to jump queues for services – will lose up to £6m as a result of an arbitration finding.
Catalyst Housing, partner of private carehome services provider Fremantle Trust, had demanded an extra £8m from the council to cover what it called a ‘care fees deficit’ in its income. The council disputed the demand and took Catalyst to arbitration.
Catalyst’s demands for more money have taken place over the same period that the Fremantle Trust has made vicious cuts to careworkers’ salaries, and terms and conditions to improve the Trust’s financial returns on its carehome contract. Barnet council outsourced its carehome contracts to the Trust in 2002.
Low paid careworkers have suffered under the Trust’s cuts regime. They lost weekend enhancement pay: Barnet Unison estimated that the takehome pay of some careworkers was reduced by 30% as a result. Workers’ wages were frozen at about £8 an hour, with new starters beginning at around £6. Leave allowances were cut by 11 days and sick leave reduced to the statutory minimum.
The careworkers had been promised their terms and conditions would be protected when they were transferred to Catalyst and Fremantle from the council’s employ. They launched a strike campaign, which lasted nearly two years. The Trust later admitted the cuts had failed to deliver the expected returns.
Barnet Unison has described Catalyst’s demand for an extra £8m and Fremantle’s attempt to improve financial returns at the expense of carehome staff and services as examples of private sector greed.
The total cost of the Catalyst award to March 2010 will be included in the council’s 2009/10 accounts prior to final signoff by auditors. The value of the award to March 2010 has not been finalised, but will be up to £6m which will be funded from the risk reserve.
The cost will be funded from the risk reserve (currently £17.7m), leaving a reduced balance to manage other risks – risks which include the council’s cover of problematic deposits in Icelandic banks. The council lost £27m in investments in Iceland when Icelandic banks collapsed in 2008.
Meanwhile, Barnet council must cut £4m from its in-year budget to meet coalition government demands for in-year savings from local government. Charities and other service providers are expected to be targeted for cuts.
The council is considering the future of the Catalyst contract. Papers discussing the care contract are exempt from public examination and discussion at council meetings.
This is the latest in a series of interviews I’m collecting from low earners in Tory Hammersmith and Fulham’s Big Society:
About a month ago, Notting Hill Trust tenant Johnny O’Hagan, 53, found a fat letter from Hammersmith and Fulham council in his morning post.
Now.
Hammersmith and Fulham council rarely writes to its poorer burghers to talk love and/or mercy. O’Hagan assumed the crash position as he peeled back the envelope’s fold.
He was right to worry. Opened, the envelope coughed out a pile of accusatory correspondence about a rubbish bag that O’Hagan had put out for collection a day before he was supposed to. His collection day is Wednesday. He put his single rubbish bag out on Tuesday. There were letters, closeups and wide-angled photographs of the offending bag sitting by itself outside O’Hagan’s home on Hammersmith and Fulham’s Leamore Street, and a threatening notice – complete with paragraphs in red ink – demanding payment of a fine.
Little wonder that Hammersmith and Fulham’s less well-off residents live in fear of their council. One strike, says O’Hagan, and you’re gone. He’s an exemplary tenant and touches often on this clean sheet: ‘I’ve been a [Notting Hill Trust] tenant for 15 years and I’ve never been in trouble.’
So.
O’Hagan’s offense is poverty and ill-health, rather than attitude or a longterm love of life on the state. He was a manual worker for most of his working life – he started on the production lines in East Acton light-industry factories in the 1970s and 1980s, then spent ten years on the night shift at Sainsbury’s, unpacking West London’s frozens. He liked the routine and the regular work: he’s on the autism spectrum and prefers the beaten track.
He’d probably still be at Sainsbury’s, except that he had a heart attack on the job and went off sick, which led to the sack. Angioplasty followed, along with serious depression and a stint in Charing Cross Hospital’s psychiatric unit. Now, he collects an income support payment of about £90 a week and housing benefit for his £80 a week one-bedroom flat. He says he’s bored out of his mind. ‘I applied for dog walking, but they never got back to me. I’d like to work in a charity shop, or something silly like that.’
But enough of the laughs – back to the rubbish. Two days before he made his fatal collection-day mistake, O’Hagan woke up with feet and legs so painful that he could hardly walk. He went straight to his GP – he worries about arthritis and other permanent injuries, because he spent so much of his working life on his feet. O’Hagan’s doctor prescribed strong painkillers. They went to his head, so he decided to head off to bed. Before he went, he put his rubbish out. ‘I was out of it a bit. I got my day wrong.’
A couple of days later, the letter turned up. O’Hagan was shocked. These fines are heavy. The immediate demand for the single bag was £100, with a chance to get that down to £60 if O’Hagan paid within ten days. Both amounts were beyond him.
As for the £1000 fine that he faces if the council decides to prosecute for non-payment – well, forget that. Hopefully, the council will forget that: the costs (for councils) of taking people to court are exorbitant. Certainly, it seems that pursuing these fines is less about saving money than it is about terrorising citizens into handing over whatever they’ve got.
O’Hagan didn’t have £100, so his only option was to head down to the council offices on King’s street and ask staff to drop the fine. He left his contact details three times before he was able to talk to someone. He was told that he might be excused if he could give the council a doctor’s certificate. He went to the doctor, got his certificate and dropped it off at the council.
He hasn’t heard a word since, so he’s hoping that the whole thing is over. He says he’ll give it a couple of weeks and then relax. Been a tense few days so far, though. The last council officer he spoke to said he’d keep the doctor’s note just in case. ‘Do you know how much power do they have to take the money off us?’ O’Hagan asks. ‘Can they come into the flat?’
