My Humble Opinion From What I’ve Seen.
Why I think protests against closures are bound to fail. Councils are by law prevented from running a deficit, they are compelled to balance the books, and the financial structure is engineered so that each year, because of inflation, rising wages (meagrely) maintenance and repairs etc. they have to make savings, “efficiency saving” which translates into closures and/or lay-offs of staff. Barmulloch community centre is closing, let’s suppose that the whole district mobiles to such an extent that the council concedes and keeps it open, it still has to look elsewhere to swing its axe to balance that inefficient budget. Should the council decide, to hell we will run a deficit for a few years and try and sort this out, then the government sends in its “managers” to run the city over the heads of the people. Remember Derek Hatton and Liverpool in the 80’s.
On a national government front, the game is rigged in favour of the large financial institutions who have the power to bring a country to economic disaster. Some 30 years ago approximately, these same financial institutions decided that privatisation was the best way to re-capitalise the system and more or less dictated to states that they had to follow this policy or find themselves outside the financial markets, economic doom. Of course they can force the issue in other ways, remember Greece 2010, Greece according to the EU financial mafia, was carrying too much debt, so sent in a team of their financial managers to sort it out, over the heads of the elected government, how it should be tackled, ordering the privatisation of lots of Greece’s profitable assets, altering labour laws etc. while loading them up with more debt, “the bailout”, so the privatisation policy continues merrily on its way. This debt of course has to be paid by the people. Some ten years on by 2017, unemployment in Greece was still at 22% and one third of the population still living below the poverty line, conditions haven’t changed much since then, this is how states repay their debt to the financial Mafia. You’re appealing to the minions who are forced to follow the rules set my the financial Mafia. They may now and again get some bubble gum and popcorn, but those who dictate the direction of the governments are sitting in their grand mansion counting their pieces of gold, and they like what they have and are not in any shape or form going to change the system that has given them such wealth, power and privileges. They will gladly bring down a country, should they not play be their rules. The UK is not immune, remember 16th September 1992, Black Wednesday? UK joined the European Exchange Rate against the wishes of the financial Mafia, who then engineered a fall of the pound to such an extent that the Chancellor raised interest rates three times in one day in an attempt to save the pound from becoming worthless, eventually gave up and withdrew from the European Exchange Rate. Privatisation is the direction set out and being implemented, and it is not going to stop because you shout at a councillor. Public assets will be disposed of one way or another, either by phoney community takeover or straight privatisation and placards are not going to stop the relentless march of the corporate world to gain all public assets of any worth.
So what should we do? I suppose be anarchists and have one aim and one aim only, not to appeal to the system to be fairer, not to encourage people to follow a doomed path of asking to be treated fairly, but work hell for leather on destroying the system completely. The system will not change in any dramatic manner by dialogue, appeals and petitions, the system can cope very well with these methods of protest, and if the powers that be think these are getting too nasty for their liking, they have the armoury to stifle it, police, judiciary, prison system.
I tend to think that people of Peru and Colombia are getting close to the direction by burning police stations, banks, corporate buildings and looting supermarkets, but first you have to flood the streets with your anarchist ideas, literature, meetings, stalls etc. until there is enough of the population who have finally realised, the system has to be destroyed, not petitioned, if we want a free, fair, just, sustainable world, that sees to the needs of all our people.
