SOSiS Launch “A step forward”

Since the beginning of this year, activists across Surrey have been working hard to bring together a real grass-roots alliance of trade unionists and local communities ready to fight the cuts.

Along the way, SOSiS has managed to get affiliations from around 15 trade union branches (including from the Surrey County Council Trade Unions, SCCTU, which represents the 14 council trade unions) and from students at the two main Surrey Universities.

Before SOSiS was even formally launched, we played a key role in saving the local FE College in Ashford and Shortwood Infant School in Staines from closure and organised a lobby of the council against cuts in the Fire Service.

All this hard work came to fruition on Thursday night when 40 trade unionists, students, young people and pensioners came together to formally launch the alliance at the YMCA in Guidford.

We deliberately did not have a speakers’ panel as we wanted the contributions from the meeting to be the main feature. This worked well – with most of the audience telling us all about the cuts in their workplaces and their fears of the cuts to come.

Jane (a Youth Worker) told us of the savage cuts to Connexions services for out-of-work young people, Ginny and Nina (School Support Workers) spoke of the danger of schools becoming academies, Fiona (A Children’s Social Worker) talked about the already dire situation in children’s social work and the increased need for support which will be necessary when the welfare cuts take effect. Thelma (HMRC Tax Worker) told us of the cuts in the civil service and how much money could be collected from the rich corporations and tax avoidance – if the government were to prioritise this work instead of cutting jobs in the tax service.

Dan (a student from Royal Holloway University) told the meeting how they have set up an anti-cuts group involving students and campus unions, with meetings of 70+. Marcus (A student from the University of Surrey) talked about the attack on tuition fees and how students are fighting back.

Many other workers and trade unionists spoke about the cuts and then we moved on to what we are going to do about it.

After some discussion, a basic constitution was agreed and three officers elected unanimously. A steering group will consist of the three officers and one representative from each affiliated group. We agreed to meet regularly, produce a new banner for taking on demonstrations, to ban members of far-right groups such as the BNP and EDF and to mobilise for every local and national demonstration and lobby against the cuts.
Public meetings are planned at both universities and we will pledged to support any workers or local communities trying to defend their public services, defend jobs and defend pay, terms and conditions of workers.

Chris Leary, who was elected as the Chair of Save Our Services in Surrey at the meeting, said: “The meeting was only a first step but it was probably the first meeting of its kind in Surrey for many years and puts us in a good position to unite and fight the Con Dem cuts to come.”