Fightback Meeting Tonight

The next Brent Fightback meeting is on Monday March 19th 7.30 pm at Brent Trades Hall, 375 High Rd, Willesden NW10 2JR. There's lots to discuss about the Libraries - Keep Willesden Green and the possibility of Kensal Rise being taken over by the community as well as the ongoing Save our Six libraries campaign; schools and the education service; the NHS nationally and locally and the continuing action on pensions on March 28th. Hope you'll be able to come along.

Carry on the Fightback - Meeting on Monday at 7.30pm

The Government's Health and Social Care Bill is running into trouble with more and more groups of Health professionals coming out in opposition to it. The TUC, Unite the Union, Keep Our NHS Public and other bodies have called for mass demonstrations, a lobby and rally for the NHS on Wednesday:

MASS LOBBY AND RALLY

PARLIAMENT WEDNESDAY 7TH MARCH

1pm Lobby Of Parliament 

 Organised by Unite. More information: www.unitetheunion.org/saveournhs

5pm March from BMA House, Tavistock Square, WC1 

 Organised by Unite. More information: www.unitetheunion.org/saveournhs

6pm Rally, Central Hall, Westminster

Organised by TUC Register HERE

Postcards advertising these events will be available at Monday's meeting (7pm Brent Trades Hall - see side panel) and some of us are leafleting Central Middlesex Hospital on Monday at lunch time - meet at the main entrance at 12 noon.

It has been an exciting week for the Right to Work and Boycott Workfare Campaigns with the government being forced to climb down on making the work experience scheme compulsory, but there is much more to do because there are still several other schemes which force claimants to work for their benefits with the threat that they will be made destitute if they do not comply. 

 For video etc of the protests go to www.righttowork.org.uk 

 UK-wide day of action against workfare – Saturday 3rd March

 Support for the next day of strike action on pensions Wednesday March 28th  is growing. We need to discuss what we can do to help build /consolidate support.

PLEASE MAKE EVERY EFFORT TO COME TO MONDAY'S MEETING

Front page protest against Labour doing ConDems dirty work

Wembley and Willesden Observer front page 1.3.12

"Don't do the ConDems dirty work" Demonstrate Monday at Brent Town Hall

Budget Setting Council Meeting February 27th - doing the Coalition's dirty work

The Agenda and documentation for the full Brent Council Meeting on February 27th has now been published. It is available HERE

Brent Fightback will be lobbying the meeting from 6.30pm at Brent Town Hall under the slogan "Don't do the Coalition's dirty work"

Brent Executive approves cuts budget

Nobody on the Brent Council Executive wanted to ask questions about the budget at last night's meeting. All 28 recommendations, along with the cuts tucked away in Appendix D, were approved unanimously after a brief introduction from Cllr Muhammed Butt.

The budget now goes to the full Council Meeting on February 27th where Labour councillors are expected to follow the party line and vote it through.

Cllr Ann John remarked last night, regarding Coalition cuts,  that soon the poor people of Brent will be a whole lot poorer. After Council cuts to adult social care and children's services and increased charges and rents, they will be also be poorer and less supported.

Brent Fightback is organising a demonstration outside the Town Hall on February 27th from 6.30pm. Bring placards, banners and whistles.

Why black people must fight the cuts

This is from an article by Zita Holbourne published on Voice-on-line

BARAC (Black Activists Rising Against The Cuts) is a national campaign group, created in July 2010 to challenge the disproportionate impact that the Con Dem government’s cuts in public spending will have on black and minority ethnic (bme) communities and individuals.

The campaign is an important  one for a number of reasons. Among them is the fact that one of the biggest employers of bme workers in the UK is the public sector, the very place where the brunt of cuts are happening.

Despite the fact that many were attracted to work there because of the sector’s proclaimed emphasis on equality and diversity,  bme workers are highly concentrated in the lowest  pay grades in  jobs that are most vulnerable to cuts.

Public sector pay freezes have a worse impact on bme workers. They are already poorly paid, leading to a widening gap between them and their white counterparts (one that the previous government pledged to close). This especially affects women, many of whom are in fields such as nursing and social care.

Another worrying development is that the Government’s proposed plans to reform public sector pensions, which will see public sector employees work longer and receive less money in retirement, is very likely to result in deepening pensioner poverty for a whole generation of black people.

This because black workers are more likely to work in temporary and part time jobs because of the discrimination they face in the labour market. This in turn has a knock on effect on how much they can pay into their pensions in the first place.

The fact that more of us will have to work longer before retiring will also have an effect on young black people because they are likely to find themselves crowded out of the labour market and will find it harder to get entry level jobs.

All of these cuts come at a time when race relations has fallen off the political agenda – there has been a weakening of equality laws, huge cuts to the Equality and Human Rights Commission with little or no focus in their work on eliminating racism, the rise of the far right who are blaming migrant and black workers for the cuts made by the government and discrimination in policing and the criminal justice system.

We want people to join BARAC and work with us to fight the cuts. Unity and solidarity is essential and where there is strength in numbers, we can make a difference.

We have a political arm and a legal arm to the campaign and provide workshops and advice on how to organise a local campaign against public sector  cuts.  We have a national steering group with open meetings and we organise workshops and events across the UK in towns and cities such as Manchester, ,Birmingham, Bristol and Huddersfield. There is also a BARAC team in Scotland.

CAMPAIGN
If anyone wants to organise a meeting in their area we can work with them and  build a campaign around the cuts in that area. Several trade unions are affiliated to BARAC and we work with community organisations, anti racist organisations and other groups also opposed to the cuts.

BARAC is collecting evidence of how the cuts have impacted on black communities. We are calling on people to provide us with reports about the effect  of the cuts on them, their families, their communities and the services they use.

We will then examine this evidence in the context of United Nations and domestic (UK) policy commitments on race discrimination. We are also organising a national conference on economic and social injustice.

 For further details, please call  07711 861660 or 07984 181797; e- mail barac.info@gmail.com or visit www.blackactivistsrisingagainstcuts.blogspot.com

Lobby against this budget which hits children and the vulnerable

You can download a copy of this leaflet to run off and distribute yourself HERE

Brent Council's budget setting meeting to decide expenditure and cuts for 2012 - 2013 is at 7.00 pm on Monday February 27th. Brent Fightback is calling a lobby outside the Town Hall from 6.30 pm.The above leaflet can be used to alert people to some of the drastic and damaging cuts that are being proposed. It can be used to encourage people to join the lobby

 

Please download the leaflet and e-mail to anyone you think may be interested in joining us.

As well as the cuts detailed in the leaflet, there will  be deep cuts to the budgets of every single Council department and increases in charges. For example, there will be cuts in the Council's services to schools (organising admissions, support for children with special needs,training etc) but schools will be charged more for using these services. The £500 cut for services to children at risk includes a review of children's centres coverage which will see a reduction to the range of children offered support.

The demolition of Willesden Green Library Centre and its replacement in 2014 with a Cultural Centre will be discussed by the Council's Executive on Monday 13th February. Many people are concerned that the original 1894 Library building (which now houses the Brent Irish Advisory Service) will be demolished and that the Cultural Centre will definitely not include space for the Willesden Bookshop. these decisions appear to have been made on the basis of a "consultation" that consisted of two meetings, one attended by seven people, the other by five! Brent Council obviously cherishes its reputation for full, democratic consultation. supporters of the Old Library and the magnificent Willesden Bookshop will be at the lobby. There are online petitions for both the Old Library and the bookshop. Please sign them if you haven't already and pass on the details to others:

For the Old Library:  HERE

For the Willesden Bookshop:  HERE

There are people suggesting that Ann John should stripped of her OBE for disservices to literacy. The leader who brought us the Transformation of our libraries by triumphantly closing half of them - because apparently we can now buy books at ASDA  - now appears happy to see the demise of a bookshop that provides an invaluable service to schools, stocks a variety of books you won't ever find in ASDA and nurtures the talent of local authors.  

Who runs Brent Council? There was a strong feeling at the last Fightback meeting that our Councillors are far to ready to follow the lead of the officers without question. This was equally true of the previous LibDem/Tory administration. We elect our councillors to represent us and to act in the best interests of the people of Brent, to provide and defend services that meet their needs. Council officers should be there to advise, to provide the information on which decisions are made, but democratically elected councillors, not unelected officers should run the council and they should be accountable to the people through genuine consultations.   

Brent Fightback blog and Facebook page: Brent Fightback now has a blog www.brentfightback.blogspot.com  to give more details of matters raised in these emails and keep up to date with cuts and the campaigns against them. We also have a Facebook page www.facebook.com/brent fightback and as always you can contact us by email at brentunited@gmail.com.

Academies will damage vital school support services

From Brent & Kilburn Times 9.2.12 (click image to enlarge)