Trade unionists call on Polanski to mobilise Greens against local council austerity

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) has been in touch with details of a petition to Green Party leader Zack Polanski. It calls on him to commit Green candidates in the upcoming council elections to opposing austerity cuts:

The Polanski petition

The TUSC all-Britain steering committee has welcomed a new petition from leading trade unionists. It calls 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 executives, makes an opening appeal to Polanski:

to ensure that in this year’s local council elections no candidate shall appear on the ballot paper on behalf of the Greens who has not made a public commitment to vote against all cuts and closures to council services, jobs, pay and conditions should they be elected as a councillor on 7 May.

This is the first set of elections since Polanski won the Green Party leadership last summer, denouncing the ‘system rigged for the rich’. And, with local public services still facing an unbearable funding squeeze, opposing all further cuts and closures should be a no-brainer.

As the petition says, while:

we cannot expect Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, the Lib Dems, the Tories or Reform to join the struggle to defend local public services… we should not expect anything less from those who have spoken against the establishment’s austerity agenda.

The trade unionists’ petition further asks that Zack Polanski:

instructs all current Green Party councillors to make the same commitment for future council budget-making meetings, including in the 40-plus local authorities where the Greens are presently part of the council administration.

The Greens do have a substantial presence in local government and if their hundreds of councillors were to take such a stand – and there was a protest movement to back them up – who could categorically say that Starmer and the chancellor Rachel Reeves wouldn’t have to make yet another U-turn?

The central battle remains to get the trade union leaders to build on the heroic resistance of those like the Birmingham council bin-workers fighting wage cuts and poorer services. But a widespread councillors’ rebellion would open up a new front. That’s why the trade unionists’ petition to Polanski deserves all our support.

But can councillors resist austerity?

The main argument made by councillors from the establishment parties for why they ‘reluctantly’ go along with the devastation of local public services is that it would not be ‘legal’ for councils to resist. Firstly, that’s not a good argument from those who say they are ‘fighting the system’ – only not now apparently, and not in their local town hall in defence of public services! But also, it is just not true.

Since its inception, TUSC has pioneered an anti-austerity strategy of councils using their prudential borrowing powers and reserves to set needs-based budgets as part of building a mass campaign for proper government funding for local services, explaining exactly how that was possible. Not by ignoring the legal requirement for a council to set a ‘balanced budget’ each year before it is able to spend money or issue council tax bills, but by formally ‘balancing’ it by the use of borrowing powers and reserves.

Previous TUSC documents have detailed what powers councils have and how they could use them to this end. They include the 55-page briefing Preparing a No Cuts People’s Budget, available from the TUSC website. What is very relevant is that the alternative budget amendments moved by TUSC-supporting councillors and explored in this briefing were not recommended by council finance officers when they were presented. But officers didn’t rule them ‘illegal’ either. There really is no excuse for any councillor to go along with local austerity policies.

The latest developments on local council funding and the law were addressed in a TUSC discussion document arguing for a clear anti-austerity stance in the 2026 elections from any candidates selected by the newly-formed Your Party. But the same points apply to Green Party candidates too.

TUSC candidates and the petition

It is clear that local austerity will not be defeated by votes in the council chambers alone but by combining such defiance with building a mass movement. But it is also absolutely clear that councillors voting for austerity is definitely not the way to defeat it!

The TUSC national election agent, Clive Heemskerk, welcomed the petition as a means to help clarify where there should or should not be TUSC candidates contesting seats in the 7 May elections:

All candidates appearing on the ballot paper using one of the TUSC descriptions in May will have no difficulty in making the commitment asked for in the trade union petition. It is a requirement of standing to agree to TUSC’s six candidate guarantees – the first one of which is to ‘oppose all cuts and closures to council services, jobs, pay and conditions, and the privatisation of services or their transfer to social enterprises or arms-length management organisations which are the first steps to their privatisation’.

The six guarantees are the minimum commitments candidates make. They can bring other issues to the fore of their campaign if they wish, as the TUSC model means that it is the individual candidate who is in control. But you can’t use one of the TUSC descriptions on the ballot paper unless you commit to the six guarantees as a minimum.

This May, TUSC has agreed that we will not be standing against Your Party candidates and, if there are Green councillors or candidates who sign the trade union petition to Zack Polanski, we will not stand in competition with them either.

We can’t know in advance what position Zack will take on the petition’s call – we would very much welcome the Green Party throwing its councillors into the battle against austerity but that will very probably not be his stance – but if a prospective Green candidate is prepared to sign the petition that’s a better indication that they might resist the pressure for cuts from the council officers (and their less determined fellow councillors) than any amount of verbal ‘opposition’ to austerity in general.

Of course, it is true that petitioning Green and Your Party candidates to take a stand is not the same as trade unions having their own candidates running, directly subject to the democratic accountability of the union members. It puts the working class and its organisations in a similar position to where we were at the end of the 19th century, without a party of our own and seeking out individual ‘friends of labour’ to articulate workers’ interests.

That’s why TUSC will be stepping up its support for the campaign in the trade unions for them to take the necessary measures to establish their own political voice; including by encouraging as many trade unionists, socialists and working-class community candidates as possible to stand in May’s elections – alongside Your Party and genuine anti-austerity Greens.

You can sign the petition online here. Or you can download a printable PDF version here.

Featured image via TUSC