It is with regret that the Rugby branch of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) announces that it has ended its engagement with the Green party as part of Rugby Against the Cuts. This has immediate implications for electoral arrangements, as outlined below.
Our reasons are two-fold:
- The recent decision of the Green party controlling group on Brighton Council to promote and implement £35 million cuts which will lead to redundancies and devastate local public services. TUSC, like Rugby Against the Cuts, is opposed to all cuts and believes they should be opposed at every level
- Irreconcilable differences with local Green party members regarding the distribution of Anti Cuts candidates in Rugby, despite our attempts to negotiate with them on this matter - differences which will make it impossible to stand anti cuts candidates in every ward in Rugby as originally envisaged by Rugby Against the Cuts.
It is politically untenable for an anti cuts organization to promote anti cuts election candidates from a Party which, when it has power, implements cuts. The Green party is clearly not an anti-cuts party, and although individual members may say they are against public spending cuts, as some did in Brighton, and some do in Rugby, if elected they would be in no position to stand up against them given their Party’s national policy.
This will mean that the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), standing as TUSC Against Cuts, will field anti cuts candidates in as many Rugby wards as possible regardless of whether Green candidates stand or not, and we will clearly not be working co-operatively with the Green Party in the 2012 Council Elections.
TUSC has a very firm set of policies to oppose the cuts, ratified at a National TUSC conference last month, meaning that any elected TUSC Councillor shall under no circumstances support cuts in public services, unlike the U-turn recently made by the Green Party in Brighton.
“The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition policy platform for the 2012 local elections
● Oppose all cuts to council jobs, services, pay and conditions – we reject the claim that ‘some cuts’ are necessary to our services.
● Reject increases in council tax, rent and service charges to compensate for government cuts.
● Vote against the privatisation of council jobs and services, or the transfer of council services to ‘social enterprises’ or ‘arms-length’ management organisations, which are first steps to privatisation.
● Use all the legal powers available to councils, including powers to refer local NHS decisions, initiate referenda and organise public commissions and consultations, to oppose both the cuts and government polices which centrally impose the transfer of public services to private bodies.
● When faced with government cuts to council funding, councils should refuse to implement the cuts. We will support councils which in the first instance use their reserves and prudential borrowing powers to avoid passing them on – while arguing that the best way to mobilise the mass campaign that is necessary to defeat the cuts is to set a budget that meets the needs of the local community and demands that the government makes up the shortfall.
"WE WON'T PAY FOR THEIR CRISIS"
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