Tag Archives: cuts

By Mariam Kamish, Secretary Caerphilly Trades Council Caerphilly Council, forced onto the defensive in the High Court on Thursday, showedcontempt for our small Valleys communities, fighting to hold onto libraries you can walk to.‘If you choose to live 12 miles down a farm track’, their barrister told the court, ‘that’s yourchoice!’ Such is the council’s scorn for the working class ...

Petition calls on Polanski to make no-cuts stand The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) all-Britain steering committee has welcomed a new petition launched by leading trade unionists calling on the Green Party leader Zack Polanski to mobilise his party in the struggle against local council austerity. The petition – launched by 20 current and former members of trade union ...

By Mariam Kamish, Secretary Caerphilly Trades Council  In scenes of pandemonium, the chair of Caerphilly Council’s Joint Scrutiny Committee shouted me down, demanded I leave the podium, and threatened to have me thrown out of the council’s 2026 budget meeting. I had called on councillors to break ranks and table a motion to overturn last year’s decision to close ten ...

By James Scott, Cardiff University Socialist Students In December, I helped to get a motion passed into Cardiff University Students Union policy, mandating it to lobby the university to ‘open the books’ to its finances, stop academic cuts by using its hundreds of millions of pounds of reserves, and campaign against cuts. Cardiff University announced 400 job cuts in 2025 ...

By Mariam Kamish As Labour leader of Caerphilly Council, Sean Morgan cut 600 jobs last September. Meals on Wheels and Blackwood Miners Institute only escaped Labour’s axe after massive protests organised by trade union Unison. Under his leadership, the council did manage to close the very popular Llancaiach Fawr manor house – an act of historic vandalism. And then they ...

Dave Walsh, Liverpool Socialist Party member, is chair of Liverpool and District Trades Union Council. As a teenager in the 1980s, he was one of hundreds of young people employed as an apprentice by Liverpool’s Militant-led Labour council which defied the cuts and beat back Thatcher’s Tories. For many years, the Socialist Party has put the demand for a new ...

By Mariam Kamish, Caerphilly Trades Union Council secretary ‘Rebel councillor’ Brenda Miles has joined campaigners marching to save the ten local libraries that Caerphilly Labour council wants to close or offload. Councillor Miles says this would put the council in breach of its statutory duty to provide library services. Our march set off led by local children dressed as story ...

Starmer’s Labour government is preparing its attacks on disability benefits. Hundreds of thousands of disabled people who currently receive Personal Independence Payments (PIP) will have it taken away entirely, and over a million people will lose some benefits. For weeks, disability rights campaigners have been protesting, writing to newspapers, and pleading with MPs to stop the Welfare Reform Bill. Work ...

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 ...

By Mariam Kamish, Caerphilly Trades Council Secretary Public Debate! We had a hard time persuading a Plaid Cymru councillor to take part. Would Labour send someone to represent the council? In the end, they didn’t. But the room filled with people determined to save Abertridwr library. In the front row sat two young boys who’d come on their own. Posters shone ...