Michael Copestake reports from the steel city

The main enemy? No. Camzilla perhaps?

Friday March 4th saw Sheffield City Council sitting in the town hall in order to vote through its package of budget cuts for the forthcoming year, to the tune of some £80 million. Outside the town, in the freezing cold, gathered a crowd consisting mostly of trade unions representing workers in the state sector (UNITE, GMB), local anti-cuts campaigners advertising, amongst other things a ‘read in’ in a local library, and a small smattering of the usual far left suspects. Unlike the very vocal and well attended protest at the end of 2010 which attracted about 3000 workers on a wet Saturday this protest attracted perhaps 300 or so, though on a working day this reduction is only to be expected. At times the speakers were hard to hear due to the use of inadequate sound amplification equipment. There was a small and un-intrusive police presence.

This time around none of the speakers deviated much from the script of standard trade union rhetoric, there were no flamboyant calls for general strikes from members of the far left grouplets. Local Labour MP for Sheffield Central Paul Blomfield made his presence felt in his speech, though it felt somewhat quiet and hesitant with poorly emoted outrage, stumbling anecdotes from his previous anti-cuts speech about how the Tory Mps waved their order papers during the cuts budget, and he condemned, without irony, the destruction caused by the ‘cleggzilla’, the unimportant flunkeyist appendage of the Conservative party that Labour insists in attacking as if the Liberals were the main enemy of the working class in order to distract from their own essential unity with the Tories on the cuts question. Cheeringly the right honourable gentleman told us we only have to spend “three more years protesting in this town square” until we get the chance to vote Labour in a general election and all will be right with the world again.

It's not quite the People's Republic of South Yorkshire yet. Nice idea though, comrade librarians.

What political content there was to the speeches came from a local trades unionist who castigated the City of London and Cameron’s ‘cabinet of millionaires’. Amongst an audience almost wholly compromised of trade unionists, rightly very concerned for their jobs and in keeping a roof over their head, it was this that warmed the mood of the crowd the most and drew the most applause not the rhetoric about jobs and services. One local trade union officer and labour party member (my apologies for not catching names) began by emphasising how important it was that, come the next council elections, Sheffielders must take up the baton handed to them by the recent election results in Barnsley and kick the Liberals out of the town hall and get Labour in. This resulted in an immediate heckle “What difference will that make?”. Indeed this is the massive question that hangs in the air, the elephant in the room whenever Labour Party activists or trade unionists get involved in the anti-cuts movement in any way. “What about the Labour cuts?”.

Regardless of this the Labour Party continues to benefit from the unpopularity of the Conservative-Liberal government, particularly from the disenchantment of those who presumed the Liberals to represent a ‘left’ alternative to Labour, remaining as it does the sole challenger for the role of the workers party in Britain. Indeed the Labour Right is moving quickly to ensure that the message from Labour remains “Too deep, too fast” not “No to the attacks on the working class, make the capitalists pay” or even “No cuts”. In order to remain ‘politically credible’ with the petit bourgeois swing voters in key constituencies, not to mention the capitalist media, all credibility must be lost amongst the anti-cuts movement but they will continue to benefit in the polls from this movement nonetheless. One can only feel sorry for the dedicated Labour members and trade unionists who have to sell this line for the benefit of the ungrateful and anti-democratic parliamentary group.

Also sorely missing was any mention of either the protests on the 12th and 13th at the Liberal party conference being held in Sheffield, or for the TUC march in London later in the month. The coming confrontation between workers, students, and the Liberals at their party conference will surely make up for whatever ‘oomph’ this protest lacked.

Saturday 12th March- Rage against the Lib Dems

Assemble 11am, Devonshire Green

www.sheffieldanticuts.wordpress.com