Belgrave Road Protest Highlights Labour’s Bankrupt Policy of Cuts

Around twenty people gathered earlier this afternoon outside a disused youth community centre on 72 Belgrave Road to voice their discontent with the Labour Council’s disregard for the needs of the local community. It seems that all of Leicester’s elected politicians (including Sir Peter) had been invited to attend the event, but only two bothered to turn up, those being Wayne Naylor and Barbara Potter, the two members of the TUSC affiliated Leicester Independent Councillors Against Cuts.

Standing opposite the Gandhi statue at the end of the Golden Mile the protesters drew attention to anti-democratic manner in which the Council continues to run roughshod over their communities. Sadly the former community centre outside of which the local community activists stood has been vacant for the past 6 months, it once being home to the thriving One Voice Young People’s Centre; its disappearance of course being a tragic reminder of the Labour Council’s needless implementation of the Con-Dem’s Government’s budget cuts.

Yet the reason for today’s protest can be traced back to October. Thus last month, when a coalition of local groups approached the Council with a bid to reopen the empty Council-owned building, in an attempt to revive it public service function, they were surprised, Raj Patel explained, when an auction sign was then put up on the building.

Wanting to know why the form youth centre was now being sold off they then contacted Sir Peter Soulsby, who wrote back saying there was a shortage of shops in the area — which was the bizzare reason he gave as to why the Council had decided to sell-up. This response was patent nonsense, and along with the serious shortage of youth centres in the city — let alone on Belgrave Road — it is ironic, to say the least, that the property next door to the site in question (a former shop no less) is actually vacant. So much for the shortage of properties available to be used as shops! Mr Patel went on to say:

“I think what is happened is that the politicians have taken the people here for granted because they always get elected. They feel they have no need to come here and communicate with the people in this area; they think they can do whatever they feel like. They are not answerable to anyone, they just do as they like.”

Local resident Kanu Maher added that:

“The time has come for the people of Belgrave to take a stand. Unless we stand up for our own rights, the politicians and Sir Peter and his comrades will just give diplomatic answers and walk all over us again as long as they are re-elected. This is the time for us to wake up and ask for our rights.”

Councillor Wayne Naylor then explained to a journalist from the Leicester Mercury how the Labour Council was callously refusing to take the fight to the Government for the necessary money that the people of Leicester require to run much-needed community services; something that he and Barbara Potter were now able to campaign on now that they had left the Labour Party, a stance that is more than evident by their performance at last weeks full Council meeting (see “The struggle for our playgrounds continues”).

Wayne also talked about the back-door manner in which Labour went about making cuts, which the Labour Council do by forcing community groups into competition with one another for ever-diminishing pots of money. This at the same time that the Council still has access to tens of millions of pounds of reserves.

A similar and equally disgusting situation is playing out in the Labour-run Coventry City Council, see “Labour Council plans to close 100 essential local centres.” There, as in Leicester, the argument that is being made by TUSC Councillors and TUSC Councillors alone is that public sector cuts are totally unnecessary.

With the super-rich evading paying over £120 billion a year in taxation, it is they who should be made to pay for the ongoing crisis facing the people of Leicester -– not child and family centres, libraries and youth clubs. That is precisely why Wayne and Barbara are firmly opposed to all cuts, and are calling upon local community activists to stand with them in the elections next year to popularize the idea that a fighting alternative to cuts is possible and very necessary.

See my related article published on November 23, 2014 as “Labour’s Public Sector Cuts in Belgrave ARE the Problem.”