Campaign news

Hampshire fights back against the ConDem cuts

5th November 2010

LABOUR MP John McDonnell and communication workers’ leader Maria Exall will headline a rally against the ConDem government’s savage cuts that will launch Hampshire Labour Representation Committee in Winchester on November 11.

The public meeting, at 19:30 at the East Winchester Social Club at 50 Chesil Street, will also be addressed by Twinings Andover union convenor Peter Millward, and Sarah Evans, northwest Hampshire’s Labour candidate in the recent general election.

The aim will be to bring together trade-unionists, community groups and progressives across the county to forge a united movement against the cuts – and to help transform the Labour Party into an organisation that fights in the interests of all working people.

Meeting organiser Sarah Evans says: “The ConDem government has unleashed the most savage attack on public services since the 1930s, and if we allow it to happen it will destroy the welfare state that working people have fought to create for decades,”

“Here in Hampshire the cuts will mean disaster for working people, pensioners, children and students as safety nets and services are systematically dismantled, benefits are slashed, pensions are eroded and thousands of jobs are destroyed.

“If we get together we can stop these cuts, and people across Britain are already fighting back, refusing to pay for a crisis we had no part in creating.”

John McDonnell MP says: “Britain’s crisis has not been caused by public spending, but by the unfettered speculative greed of the bankers, yet the banks and corporations have been given year-on-year tax cuts and for them it is bonus as usual.

“The government’s claim that there is no alternative to these cuts is nonsense, not least when tax-dodging costs the economy £120 billion a year and the government wants to waste £80 billion on replacing the Trident nuclear weapons system.

“Even a tiny Robin-Hood tax on financial transactions at just 0.05 per cent would bring in £30 billion a year, yet by contrast if the cuts go ahead they will cost 600,000 public sector jobs and destroy another 700,000 in the private sector.”

Fight the cuts – unite the movement
Launch of Hampshire Labour Representation Committee
November 11, 2010, 19:30
East Winchester Social Club,
50 Chesil Street, Winchester, SO23 0HX

Speakers:
John McDonnell MP and LRC chair
Maria Exall, Communications Workers’ Union executive and LRC vice chair
Peter Millward, USDAW convenor, Twinings, Andover
Andrew Fisher, LRC joint secretary
Chair: Sarah Evans, NW Hants Labour candidate