Billions of pounds are set to be cut from public services in Northern Ireland. Unless resisted, these cuts will have devastating consequences for workers and communities, especially the poorest in society.

Currently, vital services such as health and education are already deprived of much needed funding. Recruitment has been frozen in the public sector for the past two years, leading to thousands of job losses via ‘natural wastage’, causing an unbearable workload on workers. It is estimated cuts could lead to 30,000 – 40,000 job losses. Hospital waiting lists have soared as a result of cuts in recent years. Accident & emergency services are being closed. Dilapidated school buildings have seen investment cut. Special needs education and school transport is coming under attack. The list goes on and on…

Cuts will also have a detrimental impact on the private sector which has seen major job losses and wage cuts in recent years. Many private sector jobs are dependent on public spending. It is likely that cuts will pulverise the economy, dragging the North deeper into recession leading to widespread mass unemployment.

Yet, those who are responsible for causing the recession – the wealthy bankers, financial speculators and big business who made massive profits during the boom times – are seeing no cuts. The cost of bailing out the banks is set to reach £1 trillion! Even though the bankers have been bailed out with OUR money – they continue to award themselves with huge bonuses. Earlier this year, the Royal Bank of Scotland paid out £1.3billion in bonuses to its top bankers – on top of huge salaries.

The money exists to fund decent quality public services to meet people’s needs. According to Revenues & Customs, over £40billion is avoided, evaded and unpaid each year – mostly by the rich and big business. Yet, the cuts are leading to tax offices being closed and staff levels reduced. The cost of maintaining the Trident nuclear weapons system is in excess of £80billion over 25 years. £4.7 billion could be raised each year from introducing a 50 per cent tax rate on incomes over £100,000. Billions of pounds are also spent on discredited privatisation projects such as Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) which place public services into the hands of private companies making them major profits. PFI should be immediately scrapped. Cuts are not needed, nor are they inevitable.

The Stop the Cuts Campaign was formed in August 2010 in order to unite trade unionist, socialist, community and local anti-cuts campaign activists to fight the cuts being carried out by the Tory / Lib Dem government and the Assembly Executive.

The Stop the Cuts Campaign is opposed to ALL cuts to public services. We stand for the unity of all workers and communities in order to resist the cuts. We support the right of all workers and communities to organise to stop cuts. People power can stop the cuts. We support the right of all workers to take strike action and the right of local communities to take action to stop cuts. A mass movement, uniting anti-cuts groups across the North and Britain, can force the British Government and Northern Ireland Assembly Executive to back down from carrying out cuts.

We won’t pay for the bankers’ crisis!