Hammersmith and Fulham staff vote to strike against Tories

I report here, and here, and here, on the bitter fight that Hammersmith and Fulham residents and staff are having with the Hammersmith and Fulham Tory council over staff and service cuts.

Things seem finally to have reached boiling point: at their AGM last week, Hammersmith and Fulham Unison members voted unanimously to ballot for strike action to support contact centre workers who are threatened with compulsory redundancy. I have a report on the contact centre story here.

A few thoughts:

Much has been made by Tory commentators of Hammersmith and Fulham's genius for reducing council tax - but that's only one half of the picture. One can be keen on council tax cuts, but one should as keen to acknowledge the consequences of them, and that's the part that is missing from the H&F tale. We've heard plenty about tax decreases, but less about the service cuts and new charges that low council tax necessitates. We've heard almost nothing about the fury that the service cuts has caused on the ground, or thought about the real social problems that a paucity of public services might cause as the recession worsens.    

There has been fury at the cuts, all right - and that, surely, will only deepen as the recession does.

As I've written before, the council began its tenure by starting - and losing - a war with locals and staff when it tried to close Hurlingham and Chelsea school.

It attacked hostels for the homeless, closed and sold the Castle youth club, and stopped the mobile library service. It also went after housing and sheltered housing caretakers - the people most likely to foster a sense of safety and community in areas most in need. The voluntary sector also made the hit list, and charges have been introduced for recycling, meals on wheels and homecare services. Those charges mean that the much-celebrated council tax savings are not quite the savings for residents that they appear.

Now, staff have signalled that they're going to rise to the fight. It has taken them several years to get to this point - people really don't like to take strike action if they can avoid it. Does the fact they've started mean we've reached a point in the recession where anger trumps fear?