Title: Combating the Cuts: Planning for Action
Across the UK, groups have sprung up in opposition to the cuts being imposed by the coalition government – with students, protesting against the trebling of fees, taking the lead.
Locally Notts Save Our Services (Notts SOS) has organised a public meeting, a demonstration attracting more than 1,000 people and a number of smaller actions. Students have rallied at both universities and occupied the Great Hall at University of Nottingham.
If the government thought that they would be able to exploit the economic crisis to force through their anti-working class agenda with minimal resistance it is fast becoming clear they were wrong.
But it is not enough to simply protest against the cuts even in vast numbers. This is one of the key lessons from the anti-Iraq war movement. If we want to win, we need a strategy.
With the cuts already beginning to bite and city council elections in Notingham in May it is clear that speed is also of the essence.
Notts SOS have some ideas about what this might involve, but we don’t pretend to have all the answers. It is with this in mind that we are organising “Combating the Cuts” on January 15th 2011.
We hope to bring together as many people as possible to come up with ideas for campaigning around the different attacks on our communities and then try and build these into a coherent strategy.
This is not a rally for grandstanding speeches. This is our opportunity to work out how to defeat the cuts.
For this to work, we need participation to be as wide as possible: activists, service users, public sector workers, trade unionists, the unemployed and others.
Nobody who comes along should feel that they are constrained by any of the decisions we make, but it should be clear that we are stronger together than divided.
Combating the Cuts | Dunkirk and Old Lenton Community Centre, Dunkirk | Saturday 15th January 2011 | 10.30-16.00
