No matter what they say, or what you hear…very soon we are going to be charged for our public services.
That’s going to include water charges, reduced welfare benefits, an end to over 60’s travel passes, paying to see your GP, paying for your prescription charges, paying to have your bins emptied and cuts to services.
That may only be the tip off the iceberg. As the screw is turned on publicly funded services, then the arts, libraries, museums, leisure centres and parks all become potential targets for the withdrawal of funding or the introduction of charges.
The Assembly is finally up and running again. Despite what they say, and despite what they promise, they will bring in charges for many of our basic services.
Once again it will be working people and their families that will bear the brunt.
The money exists to fund and develop our public services . It can be made available. But the Tory government is furthering its privatisation agenda and the run down of the public sector while advancing the interests of big businesses at our expense.
The Executive parties have been happy to lay the blame exclusively at Westminster’s door step, yet have taken no steps themselves to ensure the provision of public services.
Maintaining ‘peace’ walls across Northern Ireland costs £1.5 billion every year.
Segregated education costs us over £220 million annually. Relocating that money to address immediate social need would do for a start.
The way we are currently funded is no longer fit for purpose. It needs to be transformed and take account of people’s real needs.
We must stand up to cuts and charges on services and the Workers Party will be doing just that.
Only a class-based socialist economy can deliver for working class people. As we engage in the necessary battles, we must always remain focussed on that objective .
The public consultation on new Concessionary Travel proposals, or SmartPasses for those over 60 years of age, closes this Thursday 24 August.
Over recent months campaigns and protests against many of the consultation proposals have been organised culminating in a major rally at Belfast City Hall at the weekend.
The contentious issues, with the inclusion of several ‘red herrings’ in an attempt to make them more palatable, were the withdrawal of the 60+ travel pass, restrictions on the time passes could be used and having to wait longer before being eligible for free travel.
A wave of protest
Quite rightly, the proposals sparked a wave of protest. Equally they fuelled the radio talk shows and phone-ins producing the usual and predictable nonsense that this type of consultation seems designed to evoke: working people arguing against free travel for the over 60s, calls for means testing for travel passes, condemnation of the ‘everything for free brigade’ and the injection of enough irrelevant arguments to throw the entire discussion off track.
Public transport should be considered and treated as a public utility – just like energy, water and infrastructure. It should be publicly funded and under public control.
Public transport should be considered and treated as a public utility – just like energy, water and infrastructure. It should be publicly funded and under public control.
Not only should people over 60 benefit from free travel, the scheme should also be extended to include school children, students, apprentices, people with disabilities, people in receipt of benefits.
A robust, and universally accessible, public transport system should be not only be a key component of a modern society, it should also be understood as a social and economic investment rather than presented as a burden and a drain on resources.
This consultation process, although presented in terms of changes to the free and concessionary travel scheme, is actually about much more than that. It goes to the very heart of the type of society some would like us to live in and the battle for ideas that must be won if we are to improve the quality-of-life for this and future generations.
The benefits of free and concessionary travel are well known. They support social inclusion and mental health well-being, they enhance social mobility and improve connectivity, they increase the use of public transport, impact favourably on the environment and have a positive effect on the economy.
Principles and Values
Free and subsidised travel is a social and political statement. It demonstrates a principle and a value base. In the struggle to build a socialist society it is important to remain focussed on those principles and values. Winning battles is important, but preparing for and securing the overall victory for working people remains the prize.
Anyone wishing to comment on the Department for Infrastructure proposals, before 5pm on Thursday 24 August, can find the document at
After more than a decade of imposed austerity, we have become far too accepting of the latest round of measures – ‘cuts in public spending’, ‘withdrawal of social programmes’, ‘living within our means’ and ‘tightening our belts’.
We have also been conditioned not to question the austerity agenda, to believe that it is a natural phenomenon – that we are all in this together and that we must knuckle down and live with the consequences.
From 2008 onwards we were not subjected to draconian austerity measures because too much had been spent on public services, because the welfare budget had been too generous or because we had overspent on health, education or housing programmes. It was as the direct result of bailing out, recapitalising, and adding liquidity to a broken banking system.
Through these actions private debt was rechristened as government debt while those responsible for generating it walked away scot free, placing the blame on the state, and the burden on the taxpayer.
Cutting budgets, withdrawing funding and placing even more financial burdens on working people are all political decisions designed to secure the capitalist economy and re-affirm the relationship between those who produce the wealth and those who control it.
In the absence of a functioning Executive at Stormont, civil servants here have been setting a budget, announcing unprecedented cuts to public services, mental health and social welfare schemes and community projects. Would it really have been any different if the Executive was up and running?
Amongst the austerity measures are proposals to radically change or withdraw concessionary travel passes. Charges for medical prescriptions will surely follow and water charges can’t be far behind.
It would be naïve in the extreme to believe that any of these measures have not been in draft waiting for the opportunity to force them through.
The political philosophy that sustains this type of austerity agenda is fundamentally opposed to the state having any control over or input into our basic utilities.
The State should have an absolute responsibility to provide housing, health and education, energy, water, transport, and social necessities such as internet access for all.
The current proposals on concessionary travel are not an economic issue, they are a social statement about the type of society that capitalist economics demands: everything is for sale, everything is an opportunity for profit. Social cohesion, wellbeing, physical and mental health and the concept of society are secondary considerations, if they figure at all.
The manner in which the main stream media has approached the concessionary fares question makes it all too easy for those pushing the agenda.
Not one major media outlet has seriously questioned why this debate has been started. They have not only accepted it, they have helped divert attention away from its motives by engineering smokescreen debates about means testing, shifting the discussion from government to individuals. “What would you cut instead”? is a popular distraction question.
The failure of the main stream media to interrogate the root causes and purposes of proposals like these, and the blind adherence to free market profiteering, have resulted in a two-pronged assault by ‘press release journalism’ and ‘spreadsheet economics’.
The distraction and deception continues with the dominating politics of nationalism, British and Irish, with their razzle dazzle rhetoric, flags, cultural crusades and ‘jam tomorrow’ promises.
The continuing, and forced, segregation of our children’s education costs in excess of £600,000 per day. Well over £200 million each and every year.
A conservative estimate on the price of keeping our 100 plus ‘peace walls’ would be around £2 billion annually. To that we can add the associated costs of running and maintaining ‘two communities’ and parallel societies. Factor in a morally and economically justifiable increase in Corporation Tax and all of a sudden our economic future takes on a different complexion.
For as long as nationalisms dominate the political debate, journalists consume what they’re fed and capitalist economics dictate the shape, content and direction of our lives, then potential will go unfulfilled, opportunities will be denied, and the cynical and deadly division of working people and the denial of their interests will triumph.
For those who hold a different world view, those on the Left, the agenda and the programme couldn’t be clearer, nor the responsibility to pursue that alternative more pressing. History will have an unsympathetic view if every opportunity to stem that tide and establish an alternative socialist society is not planned for, pursued and taken.
Workers Party Northern Ireland 