The catastrophic cuts in Birmingham must be answered by a mass rank-and-file strategy to finally turn around the fight against austerity, argue John Westmoreland and Rob Horsfield

The fate of the people of Birmingham depends on a number of things after Birmingham City Council declared itself bankrupt last October and now, having been forced to its knees by austerity, faces further massive cuts of £300m. Either the government will wreck the lives of the poorest people in Birmingham, or, a far better option, there will be a city-wide campaign against the cuts led by the trade unions. The latter option should aim to win recognition by the entire Labour movement that it is time collectively to call time on austerity.

There is a choice to be made, but the people of Birmingham, starting with the most vulnerable, are going to suffer horrendous consequences unless there is a fightback. And, if the Tories get away with their abandonment of social provision in the name of fiscal responsibility, it won’t just be Birmingham. Forty-seven other local authorities are on the brink of bankruptcy as the expense of caring for the growing numbers in need far outstrips council budgets. The downward spiral of austerity-crippled social services is bound to pull other councils and institutions down too.

Devastated by dogma

The dark arts of implementing neoliberal dogma have gnawed away at local government for decades under the culture-war banner of getting value for money and ironing out inefficiency. For the Tories, there was the added incentive of destroying the credibility of Labour councils and crippling the public-sector trade unions with which Labour was supposed to be in cahoots. The Labour lambs weren’t just led to the slaughter though, they often skipped ahead, bleating about their own managerial qualifications and willingness to stick to absurd spending rules. 

The neoliberal wolves always intended to destroy the post-war consensus that local government would act as a democratically elected frontline dealing with the evils outlined in the Beveridge Report: Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. The austerity era has forced councils to move away from public provision and adopt a business-facilitating role, where the wonders of the market magically create the wealth that can render the welfare state an outdated luxury.

Before looking at Birmingham, it is useful to assess where this dogma, implemented by the crude austerity knife, has led us. Britain suffers from more regional inequality than any other advanced economy in the world and this is a testament to the viciousness of the austerity addicts. The gap between the affluence of southern Tory-controlled councils and councils on their knees in the former Labour heartlands is huge. It affects public transport, health and social care, education, access to libraries and leisure centres, employment, housing and income.

Real levelling up would be a good idea, but the ineffectual interventions of the government, usually little more than headline-grabbing stunts, have failed miserably. Gap-widening is actually built into austerity policies because as those in need multiply, due to austerity, government funding to councils is cut. Local democracy has been made worthless and irrelevant as councils have been taken over from the top down by government-appointed officers (decision-makers attuned to market conditions), and accountants whose job it is to keep abreast of the rival funding streams and the government-imposed rules about where the money can be spent.

In short, meeting human needs is an afterthought once the business end of management has been settled. Not that it ever can be settled of course, because cuts and rule changes, inflationary pressures, population movement and epidemic diseases like Covid are never factored into the mathematical models of managerial council officers and advisors.

And thus, Birmingham City Council, the largest local authority in Europe, becomes the biggest symbol of the catastrophic failure of late-stage capitalism and its addiction to austerity and free-market determinism.

Cruelty in numbers

The cuts to Birmingham City Council are both astonishing and ridiculous. That some highly paid people see making £300m cuts over the next two years as the answer to the problems facing the people of Birmingham is extremely worrying. These people should be confined to positions that will prevent them from having any influence over the lives of others, somewhere that beans can be forever counted and laid out in creative patterns perhaps.

Just consider one group of vulnerable people: children. A recent report considering the effect that austerity has had on Birmingham shows that:

‘The number of Birmingham kids being raised in “absolute poverty” is at the highest point than at any time this century. More than 100,000 children are in Birmingham households which can barely afford to make ends meet, even though the majority of them have working parents.

‘The number in deep poverty has rapidly escalated over the last eight years, rising from fewer than 85,000 in 2014, topping 95,000 in 2020 and now at more than 100,500.’

In 2014, at the start of this survey, the Local Government Secretary, Eric Pickles, was urging Birmingham to ‘shape up’: ‘It must stop looking to central government to bail it out and come up with innovative solutions itself.’

This abandonment of government responsibility was combined with an appeal to the council to work with other partner councils and business leaders; people who could be trusted to make business decisions. There is no prize for being able to connect Pickles’ pronouncements in 2014 with the disaster facing vulnerable kids in Birmingham today.

The austerity nightmare is set to continue. Children’s services will face £50m in cuts this year alone, including £9m from the Birmingham Children’s Trust, the organisation responsible for the most vulnerable children, such as those in care and those seeking asylum. 

But it’s not just kids. The cuts are also likely to wring as much enjoyment from life as possible. The complete removal of art grants will effectively liquidate any culture the city has beyond the few venues on the struggling music circuit and murals of Peaky Blinders. There will be just eleven libraries for a city of over a million people. A five per cent increase in the cost of accessing the leisure-centre services will affect poorer families, and on top of that, some centres will face closure. Birmingham will also be dirtier and more susceptible to disease as fewer bin collections will be made, and more expensive garden-waste services will lead to dumping that could increase vermin. 

The cuts to Birmingham’s budget are the largest in the history of local government and will lead to a twenty-one per cent increase in council tax. The cuts essentially destroy the second city’s ability, already weak, to care for its people. Yet, both Tory and Labour see the only solution to this disaster as economic growth. So, the continuing austerity is a partner project with the creation of special economic zones with diminished regulation and taxation, and with trade unions side-lined. The threats to local democracy, weak as it is, have never been more apparent.

A time to fight

Starmer and Rachel Reeves, in the wake of Jeremy Hunt’s scorched-earth budget, are only parroting their determination to be fiscally responsible bootlickers to the Treasury and City leaders. Austerity will continue as brand Labour, but the pain it causes won’t diminish.

Unison, Unite, and GMB organised a protest that took place last Saturday. The attendance figure was about one hundred and fifty – this could and should have been bigger.

It is very important in these circumstances that the trade unions step up the fight. There is a danger that union leaders see their role as offering rival, less harsh business plans to council leaders. There is a danger too that we are told to hang on until a general election and a Labour government that is clearly not going to ride to the rescue. 

There should be joint union meetings with invitations to community activists to call a national demonstration in Birmingham. This could be the launch pad for a fightback. Resolutions need to be passed at the branch level in favour of action to defend jobs and wages. It must be made clear that the cuts are completely unnecessary, that they are a product of decades of central government funding cuts in the sixth richest country in the world. 

There is a reservoir of political radicalism, strongly connected to the plight of Palestinians, that can be tapped. There is a growing awareness that our rights and freedoms are in mortal danger. There is the hard realisation that living standards are falling. These things can help build a fightback that meets the challenges we face. 

The stakes are high, but there is no alternative between fighting and submission, and a victory is only winnable if we fight.