This is an emergency organising meeting. We are calling on everyone who is ready to work organising an opposition, to get together to plan for a fight back. This will be an open grassroots run meeting for all comers. We are not asking you to come and listen to leaders and their speeches; we want everyone to contribute at an open planning meeting.
What is happening to Birmingham and why does it need saving?
The City Council will vote on its budget for the next financial year at the end of February. Huge sweeping cuts are being forced on us, disproportionate to the rest of the country. Birmingham is being asked to make £600 million pounds worth of savings over the next few years, £111 million over the next year, while many rich Councils are getting off lightly. It is the poorest who are being made to pay the most – the average reduction in Government funding for councils as a whole is £74 per person. However, Birmingham’s reduction has been more than double the national average, at £149 per person.
Thousands of jobs are going to be lost. Nearly all current council services will suffer. There will almost certainly be a huge knock on effect on the city as the local economy weakens with less people employed being able to purchase goods. This will inevitably lead to more job loses, and shop closures. The government’s cuts program is only undermining the economic recovery and these latest measures will almost certainly throw Birmingham into a long term decline.
What we want to do?
These cuts come from central government and the Conservative LibDem Coalition. However, the Labour party who govern the city council are showing every indication of implementing these savage cuts. Ed Balls the Labour Shadow Chancellor has repeatedly stated that he “accepts all Tory cuts”. Vague platitudes are sometimes offered by labour party members against the cuts however, they are not leading a campaign of opposition in Birmingham.
We want a cross city movement to defend the city from the plans of all three major parties; the Tories, the Lib Dems & Labour. We want to use all methods at our disposal to do protests, direct action and to plan a substantial challenge to them at the ballot box at the next Council elections in 2014.
