Events

Making it Public: Fighting Public Service Cuts, Promoting Public Ownership

Saturday 27th February 2010
11:00am to 4:00pm

A one day conference organised by the Convention of the Left.

Friends Meeting House, Mount Street, Manchester

All three main political parties are proposing cuts and more cuts in the public sector. At the same time they can find unlimited money to bail out banks and failed privatisations (PFI) - as well as to continue wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But public service workers are fighting back - as shown by bin workers in Leeds and university workers in Manchester.

Vestas workers struggled against closure of socially and environmentally useful production of wind turbines. The Government could easily have afforded to take Vestas into public ownership - just as it could still save the jobs of steel workers in the North East.

The truth is that the wealth exists in society to pay for our essential needs. The Government’s cuts are senseless and stupid, as well as savage.
Cutting civil servants who pursue tax evasion will cost the economy billions. Privatising the building and ownership of schools and hospitals has put the country into massive debt for years to come. Instead we should cut Trident, stop the wars, and make the rich pay. We should build houses for rent, create sustainable jobs and promote peace.

The recession has not been caused by the poor but the Government’s response has widened inequalities and encouraged racist scape-goating and the rise of the right. They are buying themselves out - through bonuses for the bankers and expenses for themselves - but still blaming the crisis on its victims.

The alternative is to fight against the public service cuts, to show that privatisation is costly, ineffective and simply wrong for services such as health, education, housing and transport, and to promote the idea that public ownership is the only answer to the environmental and financial crisis of the wasteful, warlike and unfair system of global capitalism.

The media don’t even allow the suggestion that there is any alternative to cuts. We want to “make it public” that there IS….. and that this alternative is to “make it public”.

Whatever our different opinions of what to do in the forthcoming elections, we believe that the left can unite to defend public services and promote public ownership.

If you are interested in joining an open and participatory discussion to challenge to cosy consensus of the mainstream parties, the media and the moguls, please come to the Convention’s “Making It Public” event on Saturday 27th February in Manchester.