Primarily, owing to Tory funding cuts, Nottingham’s Labour-led City Council is in dire financial straits. However, it remains the case that Nottingham’s many, many, Labour councillors should not continue to carry out Tory cuts. This is the argument being made by local campaigning group “Save Our Services” who demand “a democratically run council making decisions to protect services and jobs not [councillors who] cut them”.
But when Nottingham’s councillors met on Monday to discuss whether they should agree to swingeing cuts to both jobs and services only one Labour councillor voted to reject the proposed cuts – that defiant individual was the current Sheriff of Nottingham, Councillor Shuguftah Quddoos. The local Labour Party responded the following day by ejecting the Sheriff from their ruling Labour Group. Nottingham deserves and demands better!
Of course, most Labour councillors are utterly useless and are cast in the same pro-capitalist mould as Sir Keir Starmer. This is reflected by the fact that 27 of the Labour Party’s 50 Labour councillors are not even members of a trade union! (There are an additional 5 so-called independent councillors sitting on the Council and they are also not members of unions.)
But what is most astounding is that even Labour councillors who are members of trade unions refuse to help lead a fightback against Tory funding cuts, despite the fact that their trade unions are presently at the forefront of a public campaign to demand that the City Council “immediately launch a campaign to secure” the additional funding Nottingham neds “in order to avoid any further cuts to jobs and services.” Even worse, some of these councillors are employed by those very unions that are making these demands – which is bizarre to say the least.
Indeed, two Labour councillors who have failed to vote against cuts are actually employed by UNISON, these being Cllr Sam Harris, a local Organiser for the union, and Cllr Corall Jenkins, who is employed as UNISON’s East Midlands Regional Organiser. These two individuals are highly significant as the five primary unions leading the campaign against cuts that are supporting a massive protest which is due to be held in Nottingham this weekend are UNISON, GMB, Unite, Equity, and the Musicians’ Union.
Here it is also worth noting that two other Labour councillors in Nottingham currently work in a voluntary capacity as trade union reps for Unite and GMB, these being Cllr Georgia Power and Cllr Salma Mumtaz respectively. Furthermore, a further three Labour councillors who failed to vote against a budget that promised huge cuts to local services are employed by other trade unions. These three Labour councillors are:
— Cllr Nick Raine who is employed as a Senior Regional Officer for the National Education Union (NEU) in the East Midlands
— Cllr Linda Woodings who has worked as the East Midlands Regional Organiser for the Communication Workers Union (CWU) since 1991
— Cllr Steve Battlemuch who is employed as Head of Campaigns for the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS)
As it turns out, the latter Labour councillor has longstanding form in voting for cuts and when he voted for cuts in 2014 he even penned an article for the Nottingham Post to justify why he opposed the anti-cuts campaign that was then being spearheaded by UNISON. He wrote at the time:
“I didn’t get into politics to vote for budget cuts. It’s not who I am and it’s not what I want to do.
“…I reluctantly voted for this budget out of loyalty to my colleagues in the Labour Group, not out of conviction that it’s the best we can do. Nottingham deserves better than this…”
This is not the type of inaction that the working-class need as we face an ever-deepening cost of living crisis. But that being said Cllr Battlemuch at least highlighted the existence of the fighting strategy that was being proposed by other local trade unionists at the time – a strategy which called upon Nottingham City Council to set a no-cuts budget and to fight back. In 2014 he therefore explained:
“I do have my views on the budget and I regret that we are not using more of the council’s reserves to offset some of the worst cuts that are being made. I know reserves can only be used once and it does not solve an underfunding problem long term but in my view they could be used as part of a campaign to build awareness of the mess we are in and buy us some time to build a campaign.”
But then, as now, Nottingham’s Labour councillors had a choice: Labour councillors could have voted against the cuts budget in 2014 and they could have done so last Monday, and they can still join with local trade unionists in helping build a militant fightback against the Tories to demand the money that Nottingham needs!
(In Leicester where I live, I was part of a UNISON Leicester City Branch subcommittee that composed a budget statement that was submitted to our own Labour-led Council last month to demand that they refuse to implement any further cuts to local services. This report can be read in full here: “UNISON Leicester City Revenue Budget Response 2024/25.”)
Thoughts of a Leicester Socialist 