Socialist Party Wales Socialism In Wales
Mariam Kamish, Secretary Caerphilly Trades Council
Caerphilly Council voted on 14 May to close ten libraries and one of three threatened leisure centres, two to stay open with reduced facilities and shorter hours. Caerphilly Trades Union Council and local campaigners are working to link up the local areas for a fight to save them all.
For the second time in a week, we were protesting before a council meeting – banners and placards held high. I jabbed a finger in the direction of the expensive glass frontage.
Do they expect us to believe they can’t find £500,000? That’s all they’d save in the next three whole years, if they closed all ten libraries. Each library costs just £17k annually, on average. “These closures aren’t necessity! They’re ideology!”
The Scrutiny Committee chair had been a bulldog – cutting speakers off. Now, at the cabinet meeting, council leader Sean Morgan tried to establish his left credentials.
Insincere
When an independent proposed contracting leisure centres out to Halo, Morgan countered that the council believed in keeping facilities in the public sector. “Contracting out always means reduced hours, a worse service, much higher costs for users. We’ve kept council housing in-house, the fleet and the workshop, 50% of social care.”
From the public gallery – a rustle of hope. When I spoke, I called for a no-cuts, needs-based budget, warning councillors that, if they carried on with cuts, Reform’s results would be coming to Wales in 2027. I reminded them they are supposed to be the heirs of Aneurin Bevan and Jenny Lee, the miner’s daughter who founded the Open University.
“Remember who you are! Keep our libraries and leisure centres open!”
Morgan replied: “Mariam, we aren’t that far apart politically. It’s central government we have the differences with.”
At the end, the council leader held up our illustrated booklet and called it the best submission they’d ever received; about as sincere in his enthusiasm as Lewis Carroll’s Walrus. The cabinet then voted unanimously to close all ten libraries.
Protesters shook hands as they trooped from the public gallery. “This isn’t over,” I told everyone I spoke to, “it’s only beginning. We fight till we win.”
