Wanted: tactics to fight Heseltine

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Theman Luvlas HOW can Labour councils effectively lead a fight against the Tories' cuts? At an Islington • Socialist Organiser meeting last Sunday, 28th, Labour activists discussed this issue with local government law expen marun woughTo stand still next year, Islington council would have to raise rates by 43% - or £4 per week for the average ratepayer. To carry out its manifesto commitments immediately and in full, it would need fon present estimates of the government's plans) rate rise of 62% or 25.60.

Under the Tories' new system for distributing central government grant. Islington stands to lose about £1.60 in grant penalties for every fl it spends above a level which would correspond to severe cuts. le. each il for maintaining or improving services costs the ratepayers £2.60.

Martin Loughlin explained that Labour councils faced with this sort of situation have four options:

•To toe the government line and make drastic cuts;

•To levy the huge rate rise necessary to maintain and improve services;

•To draw up a budget that doesn't balance, and confront the government; • •To go into opposition.

No-one at the meeting was interested in the cuts option. And going into opposition is not much of an option in Islington, where 51 out of 52 councillors are Labour. • So discussion focused on the third option - no cuts, but no huge rate rise either.

Martin Loughlin told us that a council pursuing this option would face the following hurdles: The council's permanent taff could refuse to draw p the budget. Legally, the buncil officers are not just ervants of the elected ouncillors, but have a ¡duciary duty' to the rateayers. •Money-lenders would top lending to the council. nd as councils rely on hort-term loans to smooth ut the difference betweeen leir income (which tends › be 'bunched' around the eginning and end of the nancial year) and their xpenditure" (which is fairly steady) week by week, the council would run out of cash.

The Greater London Council, said Martin Loughlin, had to pay 30% interest rates at one time. Councillor Maurice Barnes added that when Labour recently regained control of Lambeth council, the money market stopped dealing in loans to it for some hours.

•The government can order an "extraordinary audit' of the council, and get councillors surcharged and disqualified. The officers would then take over: the running of the council, and no doubt make cuts, while new elections were held. (Under current law it is no longer possible for the government to send in a 'commissioner' to run the council, as it did in Clay Cross.)

Mick Sullivan and Maurice Barnes explained some tactical problems. If the council resolved to go for confrontation, there would first be a lot of pressure on councillors from the officers. But if the councillors held firm, then government „would probably 'let them stew' until the council ran out of money.

Arid then the confrontation would be between the counci and its workers, because there would be no money to pay wages. Not a good basis to mobilise workers and tenants against Heseltine.

Why didn't Islington council go for a big rate rise accompanied by a campaign to explain why the cominao aro mnsth novina worth paying for, asked Martin Loughlin. Councillor Alan Clinton replied: rates are now a major expense for ordinary tenants and householders, and there is very little sympathy for big rate rises however worthy the excuses that go with them.

So how to deal with the tactical problems? There was some discussion about the possibility of the council withholding the police precept (the amount it has to pay towards the Metropolitan Police). Councillors Pat Longman and Paul Mullin pointed out that this precept is too small a part of the council's finances to make the difference between the council going broke or not.

But withholding the precept might buy time and substitute a confrontation between the council and the government for one between the council and its workers.

Interest

Alternatively, should the council stop interest payments to moneylenders? Debt charges are 30% of Islington's expenditure.

Witholding this money is again a very short-term option: immediately the council would be unable to get short-term loans, soon it would be unable to pay its wages bill. But it might serve tactically to make the clash one between the council and bankers, rather than between the council and its workers - and thus make sec.

THE CUT easier the crucial task of mass mobilisation.

Alan Clinton suggested that other options should be examined further -rescheduling debts or finding alternative moneylenders (which of course would only buy delay), and organising a group of experts (lawyers, accountants, etc.) to work with the council.

Nadine Finch, secretary of the Local Government Committee (the joint committee of Islington's three Labour Parties for haranch-wide affairsi ALLULL 0/9 stressed the main political point: all financial schemes are useless without winning support from the council workers' unions, and tar too little has been done on that.

Nick Dorn said that the council had to present issues more concretely, and start now. It should instruct the officers now to draw up alternative budgets for the different options.

LGC chair Nik Barstow said that everything depended on the council showing it meant business. Even in Clay Cross plenty of tenants were dissatisfied with the council. They rallied only when the council actually took on the government.

'Everywhere that a radical local authority has proposed blatantly to take on central government -Poplar in the '20s, St. Pancras in the '50s, Clay Cross in the '70s - the councillors have been prepared to be surcharged' stressed Martin Loughlin. 'If Islington councillors are not prepared for that, then there is no point talking about confrontation' But what the meeting was mainly about, was how to translate the will to defy the government, even at risk of surcharge, into viable tactics. Most of uS felt we had begun to see the way more clearly.

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