THINK GLOBALLY : ACT LOCALLY DUMP THE HACKNEY DEBT DON’T BE INTIMIDATED BY CALLER’S CRONIES COMMUNITY CONTROL IN HACKNEY NOW! Globally: Against the background of the war against Afghanistan, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) will be meeting in the tiny desert dictatorship of Qatar, from the 9th-11th November, to work on another round of trade agreements to open up new areas of life around the world to exploitation by big businesses. This time they’re aiming at getting agreements to enforce the privatisation of public services, force GMO seeds on member countries and to allow the patenting of lifeforms. The British Labour government is a major sponsor of this agenda to put profit before people and the planet. Locally: On the 5th of November, Hackney’s Labour controlled Council is meeting with their own agenda to make sweeping cuts to local services and community groups. They are also slashing the pay and conditions of their workforce and have sacked or sought to intimidate union activists. Some of the lowest paid worker’s have seen their annual wage cut by £1, 500 a year, whilst the council bosses are imposing new working conditions that will make it harder for women workers with childcare responsibilities to hang onto their jobs. All of this is with an eye to further sell-off of community resources and privatisation of services. It is being presided over by Chief Executive Max Caller, who, with a personal salary of £150,000 a year, is demanding cuts of £75 million over the next three years from the borough’s budget. Max and his mates on the Council will of course tell us there is no alternative, that in order to balance the books, the workers and the local community must suffer death by a thousand cuts. Yet every year the people of Hackney hand over £70 million in loan repayments to the central government to service the £750 million debt that the council owes to the Public Works Lending Board in Whitehall. If the government told their civil servants to write off this debt, there would be no need for these savage cuts. So how did we get into this mess? To list all the reasons for the current situation would take to long. But one major reason was that like many of the poorer local authorities around the country, Hackney borrowed from central government to finance council housing projects in the 1960’s and 70’s. At the time (just as today) Hackney had dire housing needs, and the simple solution seemed to be to throw up massive estates. These estates were badly built to begin with. As time wore on social problems of vandalism, endless repairs to shoddy buildings, along with Hackney’s miserable record of corruption and mismanagement, meant that the upkeep of large estates became so great, that their demolition and rebuilding under Housing Association ownership became the preferred option of the people in charge. Because of this, unlike some other councils, Hackney were unable to sell council homes to tenants, and thus recoup the money to pay back the original loans. The money the central government loaned to Hackney was raised from banks and other financial institutions through the issuing of bonds. Although Hackney’s debt is unpaid and the interest continues to mount, the financial institutions still expect a return on their investments. These city fat cats are also the paymasters who call the Labour Party tune. City investors are well aware that through increased charges to the community and lower pay and conditions for workers, there is potentially a fat profit to be made through the privatisation of public resources and services. Which is why, the Labour government both on a local level in Hackney, and on an international level through the WTO meeting in Qatar, is sponsoring an agenda of further privatisation and sell-off of our social and environmental assets. So how do we get out of this mess? Hackney’s debt is the perfect excuse for Caller, Pipe (Leader of the local Labour Party) and their cronies to force through their plans to reduce the Council to a collection of highly paid executives managing private sector contracts. In this sense Hackney serves as a laboratory for the Labour Party agenda of privatisation of local government services. They argue that privatisation is the only solution to the corruption and mismanagement of their predecessors. But privatisation has not served the people of Hackney any better than bureaucratic rule. We all remember the disastrous privation of Housing Benefits Services under ITNET, which cost the council taxpayer over £25 million and many private sector residents their homes. Whilst Service Team, the privatised refuse service, looks set to cost local people more than when the service was council controlled. We have no nostalgia for the bad old days of bureaucratic state control. What we need, as workers and as local people, is direct control over how resources are allocated and how services are provided in our community. It is not about electing Socialists or other representatives to put pressure on the government to change their ways. We need to develop new ways to relate to each other, in order to challenge a capitalism system that puts the greed of a few above the well being of our communities and planet. We need to take direct actions on the ground to support each other in our refusal to let the powerful enrich themselves at the expense of our communities. We can only do this by linking our struggles as workers over control of our workplaces with a struggle over control of our resources — housing, services and other assets the Council wants to sell off to the private sector. We need to organise as tenants, residents and members of other community groups, and break down the divide between our working lives and our local environment. In the coming months there will be strikes and actions by Hackney workers and there will be occupations and protests by Hackney Community Groups. We need to act together to support each other. The struggle here in Hackney is one part of a struggle of people and communities around the world against the privatisation and enclosure of communal resources. Join with Hackney Not 4 Sale, Unison loccal community groups and political activists on 5th of November at 6.00am at the Town Hall Square for an action against the cuts and sell-offs in Hackney and in solidarity with other local actions the world over against privatisation and the WTO meeting in Qatar. Contact Hackney Not 4 Sale: 07950 539 254 hackneynot4sale@yahoo.com For background on the WTO see www.apg.org Another World Is Possible.