State of local Anti-Cuts groups

Sounds like the Kirklees SOS group. Very SP dominated and when I was still in the UK and leafleting with them in Huddersfield they had NSSN posters on the stall (which if you remember tried turning itself into the 'national anti-cuts group')

Edinburgh has a plethora of anti-cuts type groups these days. We've an anti-cuts alliance, which is basically the local TUC and full of trots, who do almost literally nothing. Then we've a few more local anti cuts groups in various parts of the city, they've got a lot more 'normal' people in them plus quite a lot of local government Unison folk and ran a really good campaign against privatisation in the council recently. They're really still working out what to do now that's, officially at least, been beaten and have focussed on putting pressure on councillors over the elections in May, but haven't campaigned in favour of any candidates (and I don't expect they will).

Then we've also got a tenants action group just started and the edinburgh coalition against poverty who have organised a lot of the anti-workfare stuff. They're both pretty good and fairly free of electoralists (if that's a word).

Lewisham is meant to be "the most left-wing borough in London", since the 1920's and probably further.

I get the impression that anarchists are a lot more powerful in Glasgow and Edinburgh, if that's true why don't we have a more powerful national anti-cuts group led by them?

If there could be a fairly respectable media-ish face to it (not composed of electoralists btw), that'd be killer too.

It'd be good to see a narrative in this thread which goes beyond the Scooby Doo-esque line of 'AND WE'D'VE DONE IT, IF IT WEREN'T FOR THOSE PESKY TROTS!1!11!"

Obviously, there are very real problems with the 'anti-cuts' line. I think it's worth noting that there have actually been some real 'victories' against borough cuts in Lewisham but they've only really served to underline this point.

Well in short all 5 libraries in the borough were saved thanks to voluntarism and/or the intervention of business in true Big Society fashion, but not in the fashion that the anti-cuts activists would have wanted, thus pointing to the contradictions inherent therein.

I'm actually gonna blog about this when I don't have a load of other shite going on...

I've been thinking about this a bit and I actually can't help but think that maybe even the form of these general anti-cuts groups aren't fit for their stated purpose (i.e. fighting cuts) and are a bit more suited for another unstated purpose (i.e. being a recruiting ground for one or another political group).. I don't necessarily mean its all just a dodgy plot by nasty Trots, as I'm sure they've got the best intentions, and I'm not even sure it's the right tree I'm barking up but thought I'd put down my impressions as it's a fairly important discussion to be had..

Being based outside workplaces (union branches don't count imo) and not based in communities beyond being groups of lefties who all live in an area, I'm not sure that these anti-cuts groups can ever be anything except empty campaigning bodies. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems that these groups don't really seem to be about building any kind of counter-power or organising any action to stop cuts, but more an exercise in 'campaigning' against them (holding stalls, collecting signatures, having meetings with TUists etc).

So I guess my question is then, what would a proper local anti-cuts look like and do? I have to go now, but just wondered what people thought about anti-cuts groups..

I am too tired to properly synthesize what I want to say here, so I am just going to write some inanity.

There was always going to be a problem with 'anti-cuts' from the beginning due to it's huge lack in socio-political imagination. The whole thing was based on reformism (in the worst way possible), not even non-reformist reformism, just reformism. It never properly got to the point of questioning capitalism or the state, only the conservative party (build a bon fire, put the tories on the top, the lib dems in the middle and we'll burn the fucking lot [but not the labour party]). It was like the last bloody ten years were totally forgotten because of the scooby doo [sic] 'tories' have come into power. Many of the key representatives of anti-cuts talked about 'ideological cuts' as if, ya know, the crisis didn't really exist. Capitalism isn't really inherently unstable and it can deliver the goods if we just tweak it a bit more.

Fair enough, I think the arguments about the convoluted nature of these groups make a lot of sense. The fact they aren't centred on any one clear issue that directly relates to class-struggle is problematic (after all, if they were to cut the salary of millionaire senior civil servants, they'd just be attacking one of their own).

The nature of tax at the moment is a bit leaky too, they haven't been stupid enough to present any clear target to attack. I think the nature of benefits is being attacked quite harshly, but a lot of anarchist groups have this down a lot more than the other things, although perhaps more can be done there with national groups (as these do have a direct effect on working-class people for the most part).

The NHS privatisation agenda is once again a difficult thing to organise around, although the "drop the bill" campaign has rather a lot of (reformist) momentum..

I like the brashness of "in order to liberate ourselves from debt, we must destroy the economy". It does shake things up a bit which is nice. People always seem to do a double-take at that, which is a good start.

Ed is right to question the role of many of the existing generalised 'anti-cuts' groups, which like the only one I'm aware of in Manchester are dominated by leftists, mainly SWP, (which has managed in this case to double up with the local UK-Uncut grouping). As Arbeiten points out these are politically dead or even harmful in terms of any questioning of capitalism as such and are purely reformist - so useless if anyone is viewing such anti-cuts groups as vehicles for the development of any anti-capitalist, let alone pro-revolutionary ideas. But viewing them that way is perhaps not so different from the leftists approach anyway and not really the point.

Personally I'm not too bothered by the inevitably 'reformist' nature of even the more respectable home grown anti-cuts campaigns around specific fights, against specific cuts and closures, such as some around here about libraries, baths, and Sure Start centres, which have had some limited success, without of course turning back the whole of the states cuts agenda. I don't think most of the people involved really imagine that their actions are doing more than holding back the tide and many have a generally suspicious view of the various political opportunists who hang around trying to claim the rewards as theirs. It's quite possible to discuss genuinely anti-capitalist ideas with such people where you are yourself involved because you have a direct interest in the particular campaign. Encouraging direct contact between people involved in similar campaigns or fights (and more particularly between workers and users of services) is always useful. Backing up our arguments with the kind of political broadsheets commonly produced by the better local anarchist and workers solidarity groups is probably the best we can do in these circumstances - but perhaps others have some better ideas?

I think the claim to being any other leftist is a bit unfair Spikey. Especially as your next paragraph seems to boil down to 'muck in anyway, even if it is shit', which I think most of us on this thread do. I feel it is still important to have a frank talk about the limits of 'anti-cuts'. I spoke to someone the other day about this issue and they used the term 'trot logic', sort of liked that, but think it should be changed to 'anti-cuts' logic (which trot logic also tries to latch on to).

I'm still trying to figure out what i want to say about this without falling into the pesky trot argument. What it feels like from where i am is that the anti-cuts groups have had some minor wins, and are still doing some pretty good things. But there is a concerted effort to move toward electoral politics, state recognition and local council elections, and it feels like a lot of the anti-cuts struggles have been subsumed into this, i.e. business as usual which, in a way, is already presumed in the logic of 'anti cuts'.

For reasons that I can't remember I agreed to become secretary and chair of my local anti cuts group. Once we'd pissed off the labour councillors (it's a labour run borough) and any non aligned labour supporters who were touting the robin hood tax stuff it's ended up being a group mobilising local activists on the marches, rallies and picket lines for the pension strike days. I have to ask myself: what does an anti-cuts group do?

As an edinburgh based anarchist, I'm not sure that that impression is right. But even if it was, the anarchist communities in these cities could hardly lead a national anti-cuts campaign. Anyway, is another national anti-cuts needed? That was part of the problem at the beginning no? Each socialist group starting their own coalition. In Edinburgh we had right to work which failed. The nssn bust up over them having a anti-cuts group which led to? Then coalition of resistance put themselves forward as a genuine open coalition, inviting anarchists to take part. Never heard from them since their founding local meeting. I'm sure one of our afed cuts articles argued against an anarchisty national anti-cuts group. Such a thing is hardly likely to attract a broad amount of support among our class.

With regards to the victory against privatisation in Edinburgh, I think it needs to be rembered that the party political situation in Scotland is different than down south. I don't think the snp would have made the u-turn without the campaign. But it was hardly a campaign that would have put the wind up them. More to do with electoral posturing. I'd be interested to see how things with the cuts groups now that hustings are taking place.

If there is any potential it is still most likely to come from regrouping the city-wide anti-cuts groups to give the local groups more control/to make it more dynamic. As anarchists we can definitely help to push the influence away from lefty domination and stiflement by the trades council.

And of course when we say victory, the cuts have not gone away but instead of by privatisation they will come through via the in-house bid. So it's on to opposing this. Problem is though, is there really much potentidl for an anti-cuts campaign to come about? We'll see.

Is it the case that local groups are so strongly made-up of lefties? I guess it depends what is a lefty. The Edinburgh ones i think are made up of community activists, some lefty, some labour, ex-poll tax campaigners, tenants activists who fell out after the successful campaign against stock transfer, other more recent(ish) campaigns against nursery closures, save meadow bank campaign etc.

The likes of the swp have some influence, but could only dominate a campaign if it was shite to start with. Do the left really have much more influence elsewhere? I know they have paper members, but how many unpaid organisers?

I know some people in Edinburgh have talked about going beyond the cuts. For some this meant re-building the tenants movement, for others reconstituting activity more to workplaces, for others (including swp I think) it's been about the people's pledge; this I think is a list of demands or aims which people, councillors can sign-up to. I understand this has already distracted from actually organising in the north edinburgh group, the other two, i'm not sure.

waltham forest anti-cuts group is still going, its very sp dominated but theres a decent turn out on regular stalls and demos, it has a fair amount of rotts in the workplace and community and some of the pensioners are pretty militant. That said it still too small to affect any real change.

Theres nothing of that scale out in redbridge or out into west essex, given the absece of the left or anarchists in any organised form. Anti-cuts struggles tend to be carried out by smaller single issue groups
.
Like most places victories against local service cuts are geenrally small ones or compromises.

In my opinion, anti-cuts groups are geerally weak and can be a bit moribund, but thats because theres a pretty low level of struggle/organisation out there generally.
You could say anti-cuts groups largely don't bother to oppose cuts outside the public sector, or that they don't fight hospital/service cuts on a patient by patient basis only campaigning in the abstract, or that their approach to trade uionism is generaly of a broad left campaigning variety etc etc etc. However, those things aren't happenning generally and blaming the left and/or a tiny anti-cuts group for them not happening is a bit of a dead end really.

In York things have gone from a fairly high point this time last year to being essentially the usual group of trots, union members, and the odd independent or anarchist - the people who would be doing this stuff anyway - working to the same program as most activist groups of whatever stripe. Wait for another organisation almost entirely out of our control or influence (TUC, NUS, local council, party conferences, Coalition of Resistance, whatever) to call for a demo/strike/thing-wot-needs-protest, spend a while building for it, the event happens, people pat themselves on the back and then wait for the next one. And the next. And the next...

Aside from being quite alienating - since for those outside the trot/union environment it's often difficult to engage with - this has had the effect of essentially making us the local version of various national orgs and little more, with all sorts of talk about what the union leaders or national organisations are getting up to and planning, but little in the way of actually connecting with people.

While I recognise that the few successes anti-cuts group have had have generally been less than perfect, I do think they're something to learn from. If nothing else, I think a willingness to actually engage with and act against cuts that are happening locally would be be rather more productive than just being a microcosm of what the left is getting up to on a national level...

On the other hand one thing the anti-cuts community has done here is create, well, a community - a fairly stable body of people who can be relied on to take part in activities, which in turn has helped create or strengthen other groups as well as giving a pool of people who can get involved with things as the need arises - York Anarchists, the local NHS group, various one-off demos, a recent meeting with the Traveller Solidarity Network, etc.

It has also led to the biggest demonstrations here since the invasion of Iraq, some of them around the student stuff, some around the strikes, and some general anti-cuts marches. While demonstrations in themselves are often of limited value, in a place like York which is generally very quiet, having something "big" for a range of groups to get involved with does have a purpose IMO.

In more concrete terms, while the "main" anti-cuts group often seems to act as a union support organisation and little more, one of the groups that has spun out from it - focused on benefits, housing, claimants issues, etc. - has been more active, able to engage with local issues particularly around housing as well as issues the left often has less focus on such as disability.

While a lot of this seems negative - and to some extent is - it's not all bad; it's about what I'd expected from York, and far better in some areas, which is why I'm still involved. My criticisms are from a basis of being involved and wanting things to be better rather than just writing it off completely.

One question: what relationship, if any, do the local groups being discussed here have with the national orgs like Right to Work, Coalition of Resistance and so on? In York the anti-cuts group is affiliated to both but not to anything else (to my knowledge). With RtW our affiliation seems to consist of getting an e-mail newsletter every so often plus the occasional leaflets or whatever, while with CoR there's occasional conferences we send delegates to (though what happens beyond that I have no idea).

I would also echo the above, that seeing things in terms of anti-cuts groups is maybe not that helpful; the problem is the lack of resistance in general, with the problems of the local activist groups being perhaps incidental.