York Councillors Reject Restoration of EMA and Make Further Cuts

Over the last few months, Youth Fight for Jobs and Education, with the support of York Socialist Party, York Student Socialist society and many local trade unionists, have collected 1167 signatures on a petition to restore EMA and now that it’s handed in to the council has been debated.

Martin Readle, York YFJ

From the outset the response we got was fantastic, ordinary people were keen to sign the petition and support the campaign – parents and students alike recognised the real value of EMA. The argument put forward was a simple one, that cuts weren’t necessary, in fact would compound the damage and that pressure could be built at a local level to supplement national campaigns to restore EMA. Given that Ken Livingstone had pledged to restore EMA for all of London in his mayoral candidacy and two boroughs of London have restored EMA – we had hoped that the local council in York would take the opportunity to follow suit.

The petition was formally handed over to the council for consideration and debate on Thursday 28th February, the date that the City of York Council set it’s budget, unfortunately – or perhaps ‘unsurprisingly’ – it’s third successive cuts budget since the Labour grouping took control of the council in 2011. We took along a delegation of four speakers who spoke explaining the reason they supported the petition and why they were calling on the council to do the same, each was given 3 minutes to speak. The flaw of the public participation is of course that the councillors are given 30minutes to respond after the public participation and there is no further reply from those moving the petition.

The delegates raised many issues in their contributions. Majella pointing out that EMA wasn’t an isolated cut with the trebling of tuition fees and over 1 million young people unemployed. Not only not but roughly the same count as under-employed. Youth services across the country have been cut to the bone and huge council house waiting lists all combine to keep young people stranded at their parent’s house.

Megan explained that for those who want to study the outlook is bleak, even after college with no EMA and £9000 tuition fees – there aren’t any jobs for graduates either, those that exist are likely to have hundred’s of applicants. She challenged the sitting Labour councillors to follow the example of Don Thomas and Keith Morrell, and vote against all the cuts, for a needs budget which can buy the time to organise a fightback against this weak government.

Leigh Wilks, Unite representative on the York Trades Council, spoke reminding councillors that York is a city which prides itself on it’s education and that they should take steps to try to protect York’s residents. Not just students and not just locally the whole country is bearing the weight of Austerity Britain, meanwhile the economic outlook drastically worsens in the UK and across Europe. In 1979 the Conservative Party slogan was “Labour isn’t Working”, nowadays ordinary people can see that “Austerity isn’t Working”.

Nigel Smith spoke saying that though people had clearly been incredibly supportive of the campaign he had little faith in this council to listen to their concerns. Having himself been to several of the councils consultations on various issues and seen the conclusions ignored, For example an Elderly Peoples Homes consultation– where the mood was unanimously against privatisation – yet still they are being privatised, to a recent consultation on turning libraries into social enterprises, where the person leading the discussion wasn’t aware what a social enterprise was! The answer is that they are the first step towards privatisation…

Labour councillors then spoke, initially in praise of EMA, saying how proud it had made them feel and often giving personal examples of people they’d known whom had benefited. However after speaking favourably for several minutes wound up their speeches quickly and proceeded to fall back on the usual clichés that “there isn’t enough money”, “it’s the national government that should be blamed” or “our hands are tied”. The same angle was taken by the Green Party, “.. the council cannot fund the EMA but should scrutinise what it can do for students” – ‘scrutiny’ doesn’t really cut it in these dire circumstances – where EMA is just one of a myriad of cuts. We also recognised that this is a national cut, from a weak national government, that if a concerted campaign was mounted, one backed up by councils across the country restoring EMA it would be the completely dismantle the lie that the ConDems perpetrate that EMA was ‘unaffordable’. Such a campaign backed up by Trade Unions, Anti-Cuts campaigns and community campaigners could strike a major blow to the Government.  Unfortunately the councillors who spoke, mostly Labour, and all the councillors who voted lacked the courage to take a stand, content to believe that they are the friendly face of Tory cuts, instead of trying to fight tooth-and-nail to stop this disastrous and dangerous austerity agenda.

We would like to thank everyone who supported the campaign, especially the University of York Student Socialist Society, York Trades Council, Unison North Yorkshire Police Branch, York Socialist Party and York Stop the Cuts, not to mention of course everyone who took the time to sign the petition on a the street over the past six months.

Tory Cuts No Way, Give Us Back Our EMA

Outside Sheffield Town Hall to lobby the council

Youth Fight for Jobs and Socialist Students decided to launch a campaign lobbying Sheffield city council to restore the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) earlier on in the year. The lobby of the council on December 5th was a long time coming and the culmination of hard work collecting petition signatures and mobilizing a campaign.

Dan Celardi, Sheffield University Socialist Students

EMA provided college students with up to £30 a week to help fund while they studied at college. This was one of the few positive New Labour reforms aiming to tackle two things acces to education and poverty. They hoped that the money would encourage students to stay in college rather than go to work, apprenticeships or the dole. It was designed to help students fund their expenses from buses, food and books etc. Quite frankly the money wasn’t enough to do this.

This was scrapped in the first round of Tory cuts the beginning of their attack on the young as well as other sections of the population. 2 boroughs in London have introduced a local version of EMA and Ken Livingstone pledged to restore it across London during his unsuccesful campaign for mayor. We felt this was a campaign that we could gain support for and hopefully get a labour council to support us. We gained the support of both the Our Future Matters campaign from Sheffield Hallam University and the Reclaim Our Education campaign at the University of Sheffield.

We choose the council meeting on the 5th of December to go present our petition and hold our march/rally. This was also the date when George Osborne would announce his autumn statement hammering another round of cuts to working people.

We had a good march and a great rally at the town hall where we spoke to some of the other groups presenting petitions that day. We presented our petition of 1247 people calling directly on Sheffield council to restore EMA and a further 5580 calling for an end to all education cuts including the restoration of EMA.

We asked the council to use some of their massive £168 million (which has increased by £18 million this year) of reserves to fund EMA which would cost a maximum of £25 million without even means testing. As pointed out in the speech for the idea of reserves are for tough times, and times have never been tougher for young people. Sheffield is a Labour dominated council surely they would back their own policy that the Tories so viciously cut.

However the Labour council took a stance in line with that of its national leadership and similar to that of the right wing of the Labour Party in the 80’s; They made it clear they were against some education cuts and want EMA back but that they couldn’t defy the Tory cuts to deliver this. It seems Labour don’t want to get re-elected with Labour councillor Jackie Drayton  claiming “I’ll tell you what the difference would be if you had a Tory council, we wouldn’t have to make these cuts”.

This statement has deeper meaning that showing the gross incompetence of Labour; councillor Drayton seems to believe that the Tories are only making cuts to punishing Labour councils.  The reason cuts are disproportionately Labour controlled areas is because this is an attack on working people. It shows up the local Labour group as having no real desire to represent working people, just talk about how exploited them and their party are. Her further comment, “We can’t fight the government, that’s your job”, will be  a massive let down for the many people who voted Labour in opposition to the Con-Dems cuts, but it is a mantle that Youth Fight for Jobs and Socialist Students are happy to take up with some of our activists having stood as candidates for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition in the city, correctly predicting that Labour would fail in this task.

This rings all too true of 1985 and, the then Labour leader, Neil Kinnock’s condemnation of the Liverpool city council resisting of Thatcher’s cuts. Labour say they are against some cuts but have no strategies or backbone to fight them. Kinnock said at the party conference that year that the Liverpool council had started with ‘impossible promises’. We were essentially told the same by Sheffield council in the chamber. This tells us everything about the capitalist system, when giving £30 a week to college students is an ‘impossible promise’, it’s time to rethink how we run our economy and start looking at the alternative of a better world, an economy planned and run for the needs of the people not the profits of a privileged few.

York Trades Council Backs ‘Bring Back EMA’ campaign

This Wednesday saw York’s Trades Council unanimously support Youth Fight for Jobs campaign to Bring Back EMA.

Ben Mayor, York Youth Fight for Jobs

A Youth Fight for Jobs speaker addressed the trades council, made up of around 15 delegates from trade unions around the city, speaking of the importance of the campaign for young people in the city of York and highlighting that Tower Hamlets and Southwark councils have brought in EMA type schemes for young people.

It must also be remembered that EMA still remains to be paid to students in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, this shows that the money is there to pay for EMA in England, particularly given the “£750bn that has been hoarded in the banks by the major corporations during the biggest reduction in public spending for decades” as the speaker pointed out.

Delegates of the trades council highlighted the presence of large national and international corporations based in York, one, Nestle has seen profits rise by 8.9% in the first half of this year, a total of £3.34bn, all while the council is implementing cuts of £21m in public spending.

The Trades Council not only supported the “Bring Back EMA Campaign” but also Youth Fight for Jobs itself. Delegates also agreed to take petition sheets and spread support of the campaign around there respective trade union branches. An online petition will be started shortly to coincide with the paper petition which is nearing 700 total signatories out of the 1,000 needed, however York Youth Fight for Jobs will be campaigning for much more than 1,000 signitures.

Bring Back EMA Campaign Going Strong in York

A Youth Fight for Jobs & Education protest against EMA cuts – Halifax 2010

Saturday the first of September saw the launch of the “Bring back EMA” campaign in York on behalf of Youth Fight for Jobs. Since then the campaign has picked up pace, with activists campaigning and gaining support for the petition to be submitted to the City of York Council in and around York as well as campaigning at York College.

York Youth Fight for Jobs

The campaign has gained significant levels of support from not only young people and students but workers as well. This is because people see the significance and importance of such an educational allowance, which allowed those that may have not been able to attend further education do so.

Working people see hypocrisy and plain insanity of government policy, that has seen youth unemployment rise to and then past 1 million, while cutting of routes into education and further training. Youth unemployment however was still high under the previous government.

The campaign is also gaining the support of the Unions, with a speaker at the Unison North Yorkshire Police branch (21/9/12) proclaiming that, “this fight is of great importance to the unions as well, not just young people, the young people this is affecting are the next generation of workers and trade unionists that will work in public services and industries” . The Union branch overwhelmingly supported the campaign to bring EMA back to York, taking petition sheets and raising awareness of the campaign in their sister Unison branches in the city.

The branch also showed unanimous support for Youth Fight for Jobs and its five point programme;

• Create Jobs, scrap workfare.
• Bring back EMA (Educational Maintenance Allowance.
• Scrap University Fees.
• Save Youth Services.
• Build Affordable Housing.

This overwhelming support has meant that the campaign has gained just under half of all the signatures that it requires to see the council debate the issue.

With this level of support so far and a consistent level of campaigning we should go well over the 1,000 signatures required, but we still need your help.

You can help the campaign by;

• Signing our petition when you see us campaigning on the issue.
• Print off the petition from our resources page and get your family, friends and neighbours to sign.
• Make your union branch aware of the campaign and arrange a Youth Fight for Jobs speaker to speak at your next branch meeting.
• Formerly recognise the campaign and publicise it.
• Keep up to date with the campaign by following the articles on this blog and Yorkshire Youth Fight for Jobs at-  https://yorkshireys.wordpress.com/, http://www.youthfightforjobs.com/.

Join Youth Fight for Jobs & Education and get involved in the campaign!

York Day of Action on EMA

Young people wanting to study at college have seen EMA cut

Saturday 18th August saw members of Youth Fight for Jobs & Education campaign for the re-introduction of Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) in York following its controversial cutting. Activists were gathering signatures for a petition to be presented to York council in favour of bringing back the much needed allowance.

Samantha Fawcett, York Youth Fight for Jobs & Education

The government confirmed on 20 October 2010 that the EMA scheme in England was to be cancelled as part of a programme of budget cuts. It has been replaced by a £180m bursary scheme focused on students from a less wealthy household than others. Roughly 85,000 students in London were receiving the allowance when it was cut. Ken Livingstone pledged to return EMA to London; students in sixth forms or further education colleges would receive the money if their household income is below £31,000 a year. Even Boris Johnson has publicly called on the government to think again.

Young people understand the need for EMA as many more become uncertain about their futures in the face of more cuts and rises in the cost of education – and with fewer job opportunities routes into education are also at risk of being cut off.

We want the same enthusiasm and support in York. The petition was met with an overwhelmingly positive response, not exclusive to young people – with teachers and workers also getting involved and expressing their anger at the cuts implemented by government.

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