It is a pity that rate increases have dominated the fight against the cuts -to the exclusion both of working out a strategy to take the campaign outside the "far left' and also to challenge the bureaucratic way services are run Dave Mcleod's attack on my article in Socialist Organiser -which is also the position of the Chartist Group - bristles with so manv errors and misconceptions that I must take the opportunity to delena our vicws.
WHO PAYS?
In the first place, in many Inner condon borougas. ousinesses Day the majority of the rates - 75% in Camden, for example. In the second place, the scale of rate increases we support rule out all cuts (which hit the neediest workers harder than rate increas es hit workers) & rent increases (which penalise one section of workers, without affecting the rates too much).
Thirdly, maintaining services by putting up the rates does "challenge the basic assumption that workers shouldn't shoulder the burden of the present crisis" by declaring that they should not have to sutter a decline in services but - rather - that these services should be improved Of course, we demand that the central government cough up the money for this and - when they don't - blame the Tories for the rate increases.
INSULTING ::apate grossly insulting. if i were not so comical, ior Dave Mcleod to equate the Chartist rosition on rates with Jim Call¿ghan's policies of cutting back " services ars even more astorshing for him to suggest that rate rises would receive the same response from council workers as Callaghan received last winter Actually, council workers in Lambeth (who, we are sure, are not exceptional) support rate increases because they believe it will save their jobs which would be decimated if the council went odikrudl.
CONFRONTATION Council workers have very little power to hit their bosses more When Labour-controlled Lambeth NO HAVE A RIGHT TO 2 As the Tories' axe has fallen on local authorities up and down the country, Labour councils face a dilemma. Wanting to fight back - yet frightened of going bankrupt - they have voted for massive rate increases. The size of these increases - as in the case of Lambeth which has raised them by 49% - is necessarily huge.
But are rate increases the answer to the Tory cuts? Do they resolve the problem or do they merely pass the burden onto working people?