NEXT EVENTS
1. “DERBY AGAINST THE CUTS” and “PEOPLE’S CHARTER” PLANNING MEETING
Wednesday 5th January 7.30pm
The Function Room, The Brunswick Inn, 1 Railway Terrace, Derby (near the railway station)
There is a proposal to form a very broad based “Derby Against The Cuts” of which the People’s Charter will be a part. Come to help with getting this going, and deciding more activities.
2. The next meeting of the Derby City Council will be on Wednesday 19th January where they will again be ratifying ConDem government plans to cut our services and jobs. It is likely we will be lobbying from 5pm at the Assembly Rooms – where the Council will be meeting while they spend £40 million of our money giving the Council House a makeover.
SEE “IN THE MEDIA” for news of the cuts in Derby – and the decision of the City Council to have the police on hand at Council meetings – running scared of the public they are meant to represent
BELOW IS OUR PEOPLE’S CHARTER ”SOAPBOX “ARTICLE in DERBY TELEGRAPH on the RIGHT AND DUTY TO FIGHT THE CUTS
Standing up for working people
As the Government announces their latest massive cuts, Derby City Council decides to cravenly accept their instructions, and surround itself with police to try to avoid local people’s protests.
We need to stand up for ourselves. We don’t need to accept these attacks, and we shouldn’t. There needs to be increasing opposition and, yes, civil disobedience, if that’s what it takes to protect the most vulnerable.
There is no democratic mandate for the cuts. In the General Election, the Tories advocated £6 billion of cuts. 10 million people voted in favour, while 14 million voted for parties that at least advocated some sort of restraint. Now the Tories – put in power by the LibDems – are imposing £85 billion of cuts. No local Councillor stood on a manifesto of imposing massive cuts to the City’s services and jobs.
The deepening economic crisis is not of our making, yet we are told we must pay. Meanwhile the banks are again making huge profits, paying huge bonuses to their top-dogs. The richest 10% of the population are getting richer, and still evading and avoiding taxes… to the tune now of £130 billion!
This unrepresentative government is using the economic crisis as an excuse to cut services and jobs – and to privatise what’s left, saying that the private sector will “soak up” the unemployed – leading to inferior services provided by people on reduced wages and pensions, and without the proper tools to do the job.
The ConDems intend to go further, with well-meaning but unqualified volunteers delivering essential services – Cameron’s “Big Society”. Well, don’t blame impossibly stretched local government workers when something goes horribly wrong. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.
There is no need for cuts. If the government targeted the £130 billion of unpaid tax, and took the destructive banks and their £90 billion profits into public ownership, there would be no deficit. But this government of millionaires wants to protect their millionaire friends – and make us pay.
There will be growing opposition of many kinds. Those government supporters in politics and the majority media will blame us for “civil disorder”. Yet it is their government that will close old people’s homes, put children at risk, deny people the right to work and proper life chances, turn universities into commodities to be bought by the wealthy, deny vulnerable people proper support and benefits, preside over growing homelessness and poverty.
And this is just the beginning. Mervyn King of the Bank of England promises us a “dark decade”. There is more, and worse, to come.
At particular moments in history working class people have to stand up for themselves. The Tolpuddle Martyrs, Derby Silk Mill workers, the Chartists, the Suffragettes, the unemployed “hunger marchers” of the 1930s, the miners, the poll tax refusers and protestors – all were accused of civil disorder – but all are now recognised by the great majority of people as having being right.
We are living through such pivotal times. We need to stand up and be counted.
Bill Greenshields
http://peoplescharterderby.wordpress.com/
The People’s Charter is both a petition and a campaigning organisation that rejects the idea that working people should be made to pay for the crisis created by the bankers and the super rich.
We believe that the cuts and growing unemployment are entirely unnecessary. The two big lies are that “we are all in this together” and that “the cuts have to be made”
While working people are attacked, the richest 10% of the population get richer still.
But we could live in a Britain that puts the needs of ordinary people first, rather than the greed of the tiny minority.
The Derby campaign is fully supported by local trade unions and a range of community organisations – but we need the support of Derby people generally… and your active support in our campaigns and activities.
You can read the Charter in full – and sign up to it – by going to www.thepeoplescharter.org
If you’d like to contact us you can use
derbypeoplescharter@tiscali.co.uk
or phone 07979 230175
