Frontline: Activists gather in London to challenge cuts
By Ian Dunt
Activists have taken to the streets of London ahead of tomorrow’s comprehensive spending review, as the debate over the deficit becomes increasingly polarised.
Trade union activists and members of the public started gathering around Westminster in the morning to attend a mass rally and lobby parliament.
As a portent of what could happen in the UK, the trade unionists met as France was crippled by a series of coordinated strikes over reforms to the pension age.
Protestors were galvanised by a photo of chief secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander holding a document which forecast 500,000 public sector workers losing their jobs.
Ironically, plans for a dozen public sector union general secretaries to meet outside the Treasury to highlight banks’ efforts to avoid tax were hindered by a Greenpeace team scaling the walls of the building to install a banner.
“The crisis was caused by bankers and they seem to be getting off scot free,” Brian Cudson, national treasurer of the NASUWT, told politics.co.uk/
“There’s an agenda here about cutting public services and using the need for cuts as a pretext.”
Gareth Foye of Unison said: “We’ve been trying to get hold of our MP, David Mowat. We’ve written to him a couple of times, but he hasn’t gotten back to us.
“We’ve come down here today to tell him: we’re not going to accept the cuts. The country is getting angry, it seems like the middle and lower classes get hit every time.”
Graham Nolan of the Prison Officers Association said: “We’ve had year-in-year-out cuts in the prison services. Now they’re talking anything from 25% to 40% cuts. That means less staff on the landings with the prisoners.
“They talk about rehabilitation. For rehabilitation we need more staff, not less. If you cut the staff all we’re doing is we’re taking keys, we’re locking them up, we’re forgetting about them. We’re just releasing them exactly the same way as they came in.”
Officials representing Ed Miliband confirmed he was not going to take part in the anti-cuts rally, although he has offered to meet representatives.
Chuka Umunna, Mr Miliband’s new parliamentary private secretary, will be attending a different rally on Saturday October 23rd, however.
“They will bite deep into our social fabric – and hit some of the poorest and most vulnerable members of our society,” TUC general secretary Brendan Barber told the rally.
“They want us to believe that they have no choice and that this is economic necessity. Yet economic experts across the spectrum warn us that the cuts are too deep and too rapid.
“At worst the cuts will plunge us back into recession. And at best they will condemn us to lost years of high unemployment and growth so weak that the deficit may well stay high.
“This is not economic necessity, but a political choice.”
Union representatives insist that well-attended events will be taking place across the country this week as the specifics of spending cuts are revealed.
