Children Take Over Cardiff County Hall in Protest at Cuts

By Ross Saunders

It was like a Viking raid. Over forty people – mostly children and teenagers – stormed into County Hall in Cardiff and occupied the foyer in protest at Cardiff Council plans to cut back funding for their Play Centre.

Cardiff’s Labour-run council has twice tried to shut the facility in Grangetown, along with the other six Play Centres in Cardiff, but supporters have fought a determined, gruelling three-year campaign that has so far saved the facilities.

Ophelia, 14, who was protesting in County Hall, said, “If they shut the Play Centre down we’ll be on the streets. There’s nothing to do in Grange and we’ll get into trouble. The council should keep it open.” One parent pointed out that Grangetown is surrounded by expensive hotels, posh shops and restaurants and luxury leisure-facilities along the nearby Cardiff Bay coast but ordinary working-class families can’t afford to go to any of them.

The latest plans would see council control of Grangetown Play Centre ended and the building handed over to a third party, putting funding and the activities at risk. Already the council is saying that staff will only be paid to run three play sessions a week in the building, not the current five, and sessions will be shorter.

Police were called to evict the children from County Hall, but not before protesters had forced a promise from Andrew Gregory, a senior manager at the council, to meet them immediately at their centre. He and other Council managers tried to present the council’s plans as an improvement but campaigners weren’t fooled. The council is sitting on a cash pile of £47 million in reserves and has the power to carefully borrow tens of millions more to fund services in the short term. They should spend that cash in the short term and campaign for more funding from the Assembly and the government to replace it. Cardiff Against The Cuts is calling for them to take that road at the protest it is organising at the council’s budget-setting meeting on Thursday 25th February from 3.30pm at City Hall. The cuts to play centres are part of council plans to make £36 million of cuts this year.

By passing on cuts rather than fighting them, councils like Cardiff have let down the communities they should be respresenting. But the Welsh Assembly is also to blame. If Assembly Members took a stand against cuts they could co-ordinate the resistance of councils, health boards, fire authorities and other public-sector organisations under them to effectively end austerity – first in Wales, and then, as the example spread across the border, in England and the rest of the UK as well. This vicious Tory government wouldn’t survive a campaign of opposition like that, just as Margaret Thatcher couldn’t survive the Anti-Poll Tax movement. We need representatives fighting on that programme in the Welsh Assembly elections this year.

The Grangetown play centre protesters returned to terrorise the councillors again at the full council meeting that set the budget on February 25th (see video). If the councillors showed the same fighting spirit as the Grangetown kids then there would be no cuts to services.