On 10th February we’ll be gathering at Saltley Gate because this was the place and time that workers stood together supporting miners who had been on strike over pay and conditions. This is a message for 2012 when once again the working class are under attack from a bloated and uncaring elite. Those who created the economic crisis remain untouched and free to repeat their actions. Financial institutions are free to ignore rules and use other peoples money to speculate and gamble – and to buy off any opposition from those we elect to serve us.
Arthur Scargill who led the action on that day will return to speak along with another veteran of the miners’ strike, Ken Capstick, former Vice-President of the Yorkshire mIners, and Ricky Tomlinson, once imprisoned when building workers took strike action in Shrewsbury, but now better known for his role in the Royal Family. Banners will be in evidence again, including some from Socialist Labour Party regions, the party Arthur Scargill currently leads.
The extent of cutbacks seems to have no end scything through services and initiatives affecting the most vulnerable. In 2009 the City Council crowed about its core values with businesses set up to employ the “disabled” like Shelforce “Disabled” is not a term that the organisation uses believing that focus should be on peoples’ abilities rather than any attribute that might disadvantage anyone. Now the rug is being pulled away from a group who find employment problematic. Since this is a business then the City Council needs to put a bit of effort into making sure it works. It hasn’t found difficulty supporting Capita, which practically runs the Council, through thick and thin success and failure. What Capita is successful in is avoiding paying taxes and its able bodies (maybe it does employ some who might otherwise go to Shelforce, I don’t know but would take a guess). The demise of the Connexions service is another wonderful achievement of the Birmingham version of the ConDems who, as we in Birmingham knew, foreshadowed the bunch now ruling the country. The ability of a united workforce to topple them would be a just response to their action against the people. The reactions of Thatcher followed by Blair took away jobs and rights in an attack on what Maggie called “the enemy within”. Just who is the enemy within to most of us has become abundantly clear as our productive industry was cut back from 80% to 20% allowing the unproductive financial services (of which Capita is a supreme example) to take us over. The events at Saltley Gate elicited a profound response.

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“Unfortunately” job losses will continue in local councils says LGA chairman Sir Merrick Cockel. Unfortunately pay rises will continue at the top. Councils you see have to model their behaviour on the corporate board room and pay their useless top executives loads of money.
In Birmingham we have Stephen Hughes as Chief Executive who seems to have been instrumental in bringing in Capita to the City Council where they helped set up the “Business Transformation Partnership” I think it’s called. I asked Mr Hughes at a recent meeting at the Council House about the 2012-2013 budget if Capita staff would be taking swingeing cuts as Council staff were. I thought that Capita didn’t come cheaply, although its track record was not very good to say the least. Mr Hughes said that Capita had helped the Council save money by identifying which buildings to axe. Did he mean children’s care homes, or community facilities housing local libraries and other services? While Council employees either have no job or a massive cut to their already low pay Mr Hughes and wife don’t appear to have shared the pain. Mind you there appear to be crocodile tears aplenty when Mr Hughes apologised for the stress that had been caused to city council employees by loosing their income and livlihood. Capita seem to show their appreciation regularly to Mr Hughes by footing the bill for his entertainment and delight.

I spent last night at a “consultation” at Birmingham Council House when the Chief Executive, Stephen Hughes explained the 2012-2013 budget. We have until early January to respond. Respond to what? David Cameron has already laid the ground rules which herald the end to the Public Sector. The dispossessed are being dispossessed.
Chris Khamis, chairing the meeting, called me early on. I wanted to know where the cost of using Capita, one of five or six firms of accountants or bankers by any other name was shown. I didn’t think they came cheaply and I wondered if there was going to be savings in the amounts we paid them in the next budget year. I had in mind salaries of their staff and whether they were facing severe cuts in wages or redundancies. Stephen Hughes told us how they had helped Birmingham cut back in use of properties, saving considerable sums. No mention of those buildings such as Hawthorn House in Handsworth Wood, a community resource after local people “saved” it, housing a library with a children’s playground on its site. After its sale for private use Handsworth Wood has become an amenity-free zone.
I wanted to know if Capita was a company that operated off-shore on a Caribbean island avoiding paying tax. Did the City Council support an organisation that didn’t pay its taxes. I got no answer to that. It seems that an essential component of Capita’s business is telling others how to do just that!
“Have your say on the budget” proclaims the form we are asked to complete with four questions about “top service priorities”, all of motherhood and apple pie proportions. Do we agree that “protecting vulnerable people (children and adults)” should be a top priority, or encouraging investment to create jobs and helping people into work”? Perhaps we ought to “strongly disagree” about “improving education and skills (employability)” should go. Or perhaps we could dispense with “a clean, green and safe city”. These are “essential services” so when did they become inessential. When the Lib Dems backed the Tories to take over Birmingham in 2004 is the answer, providing a blue print for a ConDem government that puts profits first and people nowhere.
I have witnessed a case where an frail elderly Asian woman was being reassessed for her care needs. The social care and health officers who called wanted to be sympathetic but they were working to a higher agenda. They started off trying to justify a decimation of the time carers spent saying “we don’t know how the amount of time was justified in the first place”. This undermines their own colleagues professionalism and judgement doesn’t it? The family is in receipt of direct payments and pays carers of their choice to look after their mother and grandparent. The result of the cut was that the carers found the task impossible in the time allotted and left. It would have meant that their already low pay was cut back further. Cameron wants an army of volunteers to step in. They are people who can survive on fresh air presumably in his “Big Society”.
“We are all in this together” proclaims the Chancellor of the Exchequer. No we bloody aren’t. There’s absolutely no shared pain at the top. Those with the power to make decisions do so at the people’s expense unashamedly. “Sorry” says Stephen Hughes to the employees whose “hurt” he feels he as not acknowledged before. What difference does that make? It would have been better to have said nothing.
From one point of view the City Council, like others, has been put in a totally impossible position given the government’s intention to dispense with the public sector. What we, the public are being asked to do is to select from a prepared list where cuts must inevitably fall. It is like being asked to choose your method of execution. By taking part it gives the decision makers some sort of justification for something they know otherwise as having none.

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Cllr Paul Tilsley is a proud man as he opens the LIberal Democrat Conference in Birmingham. What there is to be proud of since the Lib Dems gave power to the Tories in 2004, forming an alliance which was echoed nationally after the general election. They call it the “progressive alliance” although what is progressive about slashing and burning jobs and “essential” services escapes me. A huge turn out is expected tomorrow, 19th September, as many who have tasted Tory/Lib-Dem medicine will show their ingratitude.
Today by contrast in Cradley Heath is the annual Women Chain Makers’ Festival which celebrated the centenary of the strike which was effective in raising pay and conditions for workers, a salutary reminder to the likes of Ed Miliband who believes kind talk will do the trick. Against the entrenched interests of the elite? Is he one of them? Many New Blue Labour are, so the voices of working people go unheard. Not tomorrow in Birmingham, in Manchester on 3rd October and, Is suspect nationally. The price of not listening? There will be more urban unrest and protest but whether that worries the “feral elite” remains a big question.

Members of the community assembled at the Handsworth Campus of the City College in Soho Road to chew over the rioting spree that had engulfed parts of Birmingham and other towns and cities across England. It had all kicked off in Tottenham after another killing of a black man by police. Six MPs were in attendance, three of whom represented Birmingham. Keith Vaz, who has a key role in collecting evidence, made an appearance. They were anxious to say they had come to listen, yet each spoke at some length in response to questions from the floor. Their answers seemed to be long on anecdotes and rather short on ideas. They pointed out the problems they were faced with. All happened to be from the Labour Party, but Vaz pointed out that he chaired an all-party committee, so he wasn’t there as a Labour MP.
A briefing was handed out which did not include this. Some MPs have joined a chorus of heavy sentencing for those charged with offences during the disorder, including some of whom found themselves paying back much larger sums than taken by looters. This is not to condone looting but to point out the double standards and moral malaise are with our leaders rather than within a “sick” society. The dispossessed are dispossessed by having public services cut or withdrawn providing a safety net for those on low pay, unemployed etc. It is always a trick of governments to lay blame at the door of the dispossessed. The decision makers are rich and they want more and more for themselves. The tactic has met with a response. The “Disaster Capitalism” agenda means that such a crisis triggers a further response to kerb civil liberties and introduce get tough policies which end up making a bd situation far worse.

After the tragic events in Dudley Road in the Winson Green area of Birmingham members of the diverse community came together to share the grief at the loss of three young Moslem men. Dignified throughout Tariq Jahan, father of one of them, stood out as his pleas for calm against calls for revenge were widely reported.
Floral tributes were placed outside the garage, the scene of the incident, and many came to pay their respects. In the afternoon I joined with Alton Burnett and others from the close by Afro-Caribbean Millennium Centre in speaking to Tariq Jahan. Alton spoke eloquently about the need to maintain unity after press reports and rumours spoke of a racial divide. Tensions are there so the outcome rests largely on how sensitively the matter is handled. Tomorrow (Sunday) a peace gathering has been called in Summerfield Park, expected to attract a wide following with once again the world’s media in attendance.
There is a photograph of Alton Burnett carrying a tribute to the Moledena brothers who dies in a fire at their post office in Lozells Road, Birmingham, in 1985. This followed similar unrest. As happens so often following such occurrences you either get the vigilantes, but more often it is members of the community who take over. I have seen it many times when determination is shown that the actions of a few will not be allowed to disrupt the community.

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