So who’s coming?
Join the TUC Protest on March 26th and take your place in history
March 15, 2011
By Andrew Burgin
When the TUC announced last October that their national demonstration against the cuts would be held in March 2011 some in the movement felt that the date was too distant. However it now looks like inspired timing.Recent struggles both in Britain and abroad have given this march a dynamic which takes it way beyond the trade union movement and into the broad mass of the population. The march now carries the hopes of many millions and it will be one of the biggest demonstrations in the history of the British labour movement.
November 2010 saw the reappearance of the student movement as a vital radicalising force in politics. The size of the first UCU/NUS march – well over 50,000 – took most by surprise. The determined actions of a large militant minority in laying siege to the Tory party headquarters at Millbank energised the wider movement.
The new student movement emerged alongside and intersected with the direct action group UK Uncut, which uses social media to organise confrontations with big business and the banks on their tax avoidance
and muti-million-pound bonus culture.
Meanwhile the scale of the cuts was seeping into public consciousness. Benefits, the NHS, libraries, EMA, public sector jobs and practically every other social provision faced extinction or privatisation. Local councils drew up the first round of coalition government driven cuts. Throughout the country thousands demonstrated outside town halls and local anti-cuts groups sprang up organising sizeable local marches to defend jobs and services.
Abroad there is Tunisia and Egypt and mass uprisings and protests throughout the Arab world and now in the belly of the beast, almost unimaginable a few weeks ago, a mass movement to defend trade union rights in the USA.
All this since TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber called for a mobilisation that would be ‘the biggest, boldest and best event in our history’. It looks like his wish will come true.
Marches which bring hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets are rare. In the 19th century and early twentieth centuries they flowed from the struggle for democratic reform. The Chartists brought 150,000 people to Kennington Park in 1848 to demand universal male suffrage. Quite an achievement when the population was only 16 million. The Suffragettes following a demonstration of some 30,000 managed to gather between 250.000 and 500,000 in Hyde Park in 1908. As ‘Votes for Women said ‘it is no exageration to say that the number of people present was the largest ever gathered together on one spot at one time in the history of the world’.
In 1936 300,000 anti-fascists took to the streets to defend the East End against Mosley’s Blackshirts.
CND’s second wave in the 1980s saw two marches of between 200,000 and 300,000. The 1968 Vietnam war demonstration, the poll tax demonstration and the 1990 miners’ march all drew close to 100,000.
The march of 15 February 2003 dwarfs all others. A generally accepted figure for those on the march is between 1.5 and 2 million. That massive demonstration has become a reference point for both those who denigrate marching as a waste of time and those who recognise the need to build on the work of the anti-war movement in the struggle against the cuts.
The result of the refusal of Parliament to recognise the will of the people against war in Iraq, as expressed by the demonstration of February 2003 and a mass anti-war campaign sustained over many years, has been the hollowing out of the authority of that institution. A substantial section of the population has been alienated from the supposed organs of democracy and this, compounded by the expenses scandal, is an irreversible phenomenon in British politics.
Whereas the Chartists and the Suffragettes took to the streets to universalise the franchise and to fight for real democracy, people now increasingly recognise that there is no way to change the conditions under which they live except by taking to the streets. Parliament is seen as increasingly corrupt and there is a crisis of Parliamentary democracy.
These are the conditions in which this march will take place. Not only do we see a weak and divided coalition government but we see also a government operating in a discredited political system trying to impose an agenda not fought for at a general election.
The health reforms were neither Tory nor Lib-Dem party policy. They appeared in no manifesto. No Lib-Dem MP was elected to raise tuition fees or scrap the EMA.
The TUC expect between 150,000 and 250,000 to march, we need to make sure that it is substantially larger then they expect. The Coalition of Resistance has produced 100,000 leaflets and thousands of posters advertising the march. On the day we shall be distributing 20,000 free Voices of Resistance’ broadsheets with contributions from Tony Benn, Caroline Lucas, Len McCluskey and many others.
The size of the demonstration does matter. It will reveal the depth of the opposition to the policies of this government in a way no local or direct action event can. It will be the foundation for all our future anti-cuts work and as we have been inspired by the mass uprisings in other parts of the world we can inspire others with our demonstration on the 26th.
March For the Alternative: Jobs, Growth, Justice | 26 March 2011: March and rally against the cuts
Trades Union Congress – /mediacentre/tuc-18709-f0.cfm
see you there :love:
Here comes the summer of discontent
The unions are preparing to march. But where does Ed Miliband and the Labour Party stand?
Just before Christmas, a delegation of union leaders braved the snow and ice and filed into 10 Downing Street for a rare audience with David Cameron. Organised by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), it was thought to be the first meeting of its kind with a Conservative prime minister in a quarter of a century.
Coffee and mince pies replaced beer and sandwiches around the coffin-shaped table in the cabinet room, as the brothers raised their opposition to the Tory-led government’s “dangerous” spending cuts, as well as the proposed reforms to public-sector pensions. “It was perfectly businesslike,” Brendan Barber, the TUC general secretary, tells me. “The Prime Minister accepted that we represented a lot of people, that we were a legitimate force in society and that the government should engage with us in a proper way.”
But the time for talking is over. Cameron’s fiscal vandalism has turned growth negative and pushed up unemployment. In recent months, public opposition to the coalition’s cuts has been led by student protesters on Whitehall and the UK Uncut anti-tax avoidance activists on Oxford Street. Some of us had wondered when the seven-million-strong trade union movement would roar into life. Why were the French unionists so much keener to take to the streets than their British counterparts?
Hard targetThat is all about to change. On 26 March, three days after the Budget and six days before the cuts start, the TUC is holding a national demonstration – “March for the Alternative” – in central London. (The “alternative” includes a crackdown on tax avoidance, which costs the Treasury up to £40bn a year, and a so-called Robin Hood tax on financial transactions that could raise up to £20bn a year.)
As many as 580 coaches have been booked to carry people from around the country into the capital and trains have been chartered. Could this be the biggest march since 2003, when two million demonstrators took to the streets in protest against the Iraq war? Barber will only say that he is confident it will be “very sizeable”; the TUC has avoided “setting a target”. Len McCluskey, the leader of Unite, Britain’s biggest union, seems happier to raise the bar. “You need half a million people,” he tells me.
But numbers are not enough. If the demonstration is made up entirely of the usual suspects – trade unionists, students and Trots – Cameron and George Osborne will shrug it off and carry on cutting. The Iraq war protests were defined by their breadth and diversity. I remember seeing Telegraph readers marching alongside sellers of the Socialist Worker. Can Barber, McCluskey and the rest build a grass-roots coalition, a broad church, that reaches out beyond trade union and Labour Party members to public-service users, charities and community groups? Will the middle classes turn up on 26 March to demonstrate against cuts to benefits in the same way that they protested against the sell-off of the forests?
The coalition’s volte-face on the forests is a reminder of how Cameron can crack under pressure. But Barber is keen to lower expectations. “The idea that we are going to engineer a government U-turn with one event is utterly unrealistic,” he says “But is [the government] vulnerable to political pressure? I think it is.”
How will the organisers of the rally judge whether or not it has been a success? “I would hope that it will have been a peaceful event,” says Barber. “We have worked closely with the police in planning the arrangements.” Other union leaders are more suspicious – and more trenchant. “Just as we’ve sent a message to Cameron and Clegg to keep their sleazy hands off our public services, my message to the Metropolitan Police is: ‘Keep your sleazy hands off our kids,'” says McCluskey.
If the march does turn violent, expect the media to have a field day. Anti-union propaganda is back in fashion. Tune in to Radio 4’s Today programme and listen to the presenters berating the likes of Barber and McCluskey while deferring to business leaders; flick through the papers and count the number of times that democratically elected general secretaries of trade unions are referred to as “barons”, “militants” or “wreckers” – and accused of “holding the country to ransom” by daring to discuss strike action. (Isn’t it odd that bankers who threaten to relocate abroad rarely face similar accusations from the press?)
However, in spite of the attempts to denigrate and delegitimise the trade unions and their leaders, the public holds a more benign and trusting view of the brothers. In October 2009, Ipsos-MORI’s survey of “public trust in professions” found that union officials, with a 38 per cent rating, were far more trusted than business leaders (25 per cent), journalists (22 per cent) or politicians (13 per cent).
Under the influenceWhere does Labour stand? Ed Miliband is walking a tightrope. The Labour leader will be speaking at the rally in Hyde Park on 26 March – but not marching. On the one hand, he needs to harness the energy and enthusiasm of the anti-cuts coalition; on the other, he wants to look “prime ministerial”. His aides worry about the accusation that he is a trade union placeman. Senior Labour figures are thus keen to keep some distance from the brothers.
But, as private donations to the party plummet, Labour has become once again much more financially dependent on the unions. According to the latest figures from the Electoral Commission, 88 per cent of all donations to the party in the fourth quarter of 2010 came from the trade unions – up from 36 per cent in the final quarter of 2009. McCluskey, whose Unite union provided nearly a quarter of all donations in 2010, says he has “no intention of giving a blank cheque to the Labour Party as we move forward,” adding: “People can accuse me of wanting to buy influence but, as the member of any organisation, you pay a subscription and hope to influence.”
On 26 March, however, it will be the political rather than the financial influence of the union movement, as a force for mobilisation and activism, that will be on display. Cameron and his new spin-doctor-in-chief, the former BBC executive Craig Oliver, should batten down the hatches and be prepared for a summer of discontent. Echoing Winston Churchill, McCluskey says that 26 March won’t be the end of the campaign against the cuts: “This isn’t the end or the beginning of the end. It’s the end of the beginning.”
I m out hunting nazis in germany at that day….that have to be taken care of as well…HOPE YOU GET THE WORKING CLASS OFF THEIR BUTS AND OUT IN THE STREETS! Have a good demo!
The lecturers’ union, UCU, will be carrying out rolling strike action from 17 March culminating in a national day of action on 24 March. This week includes budget day and leads well into the TUC demonstration on 26 March.
Ian Pattison, Leeds University Against CutsThe government and university managements are attempting to impose thousands of job cuts. For example, in Leeds, vice chancellor Michael Arthur is trying to bulldoze through over 1,200 job losses, and close the classics and joint honours departments this year alone. This will deny many people the right to a decent education.
Over the last few months students have led an inspiring mass movement that has put pressure on the unstable Con-Dem coalition. Unlike the National Union of Students, the UCU has supported students and still supports free education.
If students want to win the battle against fees and cuts, we need to look wider than just ourselves. We need the might of the working class which, when taking collective action, has the power to bring the government to its knees.
We therefore need student solidarity like never before on the UCU picket lines. We need student strikes and a mass turnout of students to help convince others not to go into university on the days of the strikes.
Student anti-cuts campaigns and activists should be organising joint strike day rallies with UCU and using the strikes to build for future mass action linked to the struggle of education workers.
@!sinner69! 425600 wrote:
I m out hunting nazis in germany at that day….that have to be taken care of as well…HOPE YOU GET THE WORKING CLASS OFF THEIR BUTS AND OUT IN THE STREETS! Have a good demo!
It is said to be our biggest turn out since our poll tax demos
I still believe in standing up for what i believe in –
whether it is listened to or not –
at least I can say I was there standing up for what i believe rather then sitting on my arse complaining about it and doing fuck all………..
so who is joining us??
Come on PV people :love::love:
the TUC are rapidly turning me against unions with their “lets march on every cut” attitude and “no we certainly wont debate the specific issues”.
nurses jobs being cut like shit??
is the NHS not enough to get people out there???
@Tank Girl 425613 wrote:
nurses jobs being cut like shit??
is the NHS not enough to get people out there???
but they dont go on specific reasons, its not a march specifically against certain cuts to the NHS. I could support that.
trying to post as much info as poss – so an informed decision can be made – however isnt it pretty clear??
Independent observers at London cuts demo
Members of human rights organisation Liberty will act as independent observers at a march in London against spending cuts.
The event on 26 March will culminate in a rally in Hyde Park and organisers – the TUC – expect it to be its biggest demonstration for decades.
Before Christmas the Metropolitan (Met) Police was criticised for its tactics at student tuition fee protests.
Dozens of people were arrested when violence flared in central London.
The TUC and the Met said they hoped using independent legal observers would ensure the ‘March for the Alternative’ ran smoothly.
Liberty, who were invited to police planning meetings, will have a presence in the police special operations room and on the streets giving them an overall view of the protest and its policing.
Liberty’s James Welch said: “Our roots lie in the legal observation of demonstrations in the 1930s and our founders would have been delighted with the kind of cooperation offered by the police and protest organisers of today.”
‘Open to scrutiny’ Nigel Stanley, of the TUC, said: “Liberty’s involvement can only provide extra reassurance that our right to speak out against deep spending cuts will be policed in a way that recognises our right to protest, just as we recognise our share of the responsibility for the public safety of such a huge event.”
Last year, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson admitted the force made mistakes during student fees protests in November.
Students had accused officers of “heavy handed brutality” during a march on 10 November and protests led to a riot at the Conservative Party’s headquarters in Millbank, central London, earlier that month.
Met Assistant Commissioner Lynne Owens said an essential part of retaining the public’s trust was ensuring they were always open to scrutiny and being challenged on what they do.
She said: “We learn from every operation, but it is invaluable to have independent observers take an objective look at how we police protests.”
@Tank Girl 425616 wrote:
trying to post as much info as poss – so an informed decision can be made – however isnt it pretty clear??
seems a good idea to get liberty involved, used to donate to them monthly. Nice big mass TUC demo with lots of middle age people, bet they will treat them all really nicely. Battering students is far more popular
@extraslim 425615 wrote:
but they dont go on specific reasons, its not a march specifically against certain cuts to the NHS. I could support that.
your choice to come or not to come :love:
however I’d have thought it was pretty obvious what we are against as a whole –
you dont have to agree with the organisers specific policies –
its about individuals standing up for what they believe in… :group_hug:group_hug
and fighting against the policy makers who dont either give a toss or listen to us!!
I for one am looking forwards to what should be a fantastic piece of history with average ‘joe’ standing up and making a stand raaa :love:
@Tank Girl 425619 wrote:
your choice to come or not to come :love:
however I’d have thought it was pretty obvious what we are against as a whole –you dont have to agree with the organisers specific policies –
its about individuals standing up for what they believe in… :group_hug:group_hug
and fighting against the policy makers who dont either give a toss or listen to us!!
I for one am looking forwards to what should be a fantastic piece of history with average ‘joe’ standing up and making a stand raaa :love:
But thats just it, I do have to disagree with specific policies. I cant just join the masses in general anti stuff. And if policy makers dont give a toss why do they go into politics? I susspect they do give a toss its just they have a greater picture than old Joe. Joe doesnt have to worry about the economy just their own self interest.
It bothers me because I think unions are important to society but they cant just opose everything and strike all the time. There has to be balance otherwise how can they be taken seriously.
@extraslim 425620 wrote:
But thats just it, I do have to disagree with specific policies. I cant just join the masses in general anti stuff. And if policy makers dont give a toss why do they go into politics? I susspect they do give a toss its just they have a greater picture than old Joe. Joe doesnt have to worry about the economy just their own self interest.
It bothers me because I think unions are important to society but they cant just opose everything and strike all the time. There has to be balance otherwise how can they be taken seriously.
your totally able to hold on to your opinions matey :love: as long as you do something about them!
our generation seems to be so apathetic – and i talk about my generation and my friends who cant be arsed, who are too worried about the consequences of said rally etc etc
this is about lots of things – there are lots of ‘sub groups’ and ‘activist’ groups who are getting involved… like the anti war rally …….’not in my name’
its a chance to get involved, meet people and find out local opinion – as you might be surprised – not everyone on the rallys are ‘right on’ guardian readers or ‘NIMBY’s’ its a chance for the local and general public to make a stand ….
but what ever – who is joining us??
or if you arnt – what are your specific reasons?
debate is good thing :group_hug
TUC unveils action plan for civil society
The Trades Union Congress has devised an action plan to establish closer links with civil society organisations and better co-ordinate opposition to the public spending cuts.
The action plan includes a campaign pledge that it is inviting CSOs to sign up to. The pledge outlines the impact that the spending cuts are likely to have on the sector and declares that they are too rapid, too deep and unfair.
Signatories will pledge their support for the ‘All Together for Civil Society’ campaign, which aims to build a strong movement rooted in communities that will give a national voice to those affected by the cuts, rebut the contention that there is no alternative, and promote a vibrant and sustainable civil society.
A spokesman said: “We are really keen to hear from civil society organisations that share our concerns about the government’s programme of spending cuts and changes to key public services that we think are having a negative impact on our communities.
“By signing up to the TUC’s campaign pledge you will be helping to build our broad based alliance, making the voice of civil society heard loud and clear.”
The action plan also commits the TUC to setting up an email network to ensure communication between supporters; to establish sector-specific initiatives relevant to individual themes, and facilitate a crowd-sourcing exercise for CSOs to advise what changes they want to see and what campaigns they are undertaking.
The action plan and campaign pledge follows the first-ever joint TUC/civil society conference held at Congress House last month and comes just ahead of the national march and rally against the cuts planned for next Saturday, 26 March.
The TUC and its member unions have chartered hundreds of coaches and trains to bring protestors to London for the ‘March for the Alternative’ demonstration and the TUC has said it hopes representatives from civil society will join in.
just trying to find reports …
The ‘good society’ must prevail. We start two weeks today
The Tories try to devalue our public services. But this month will be crucial in harnessing the growing affection for them
- Here is the win or lose political battleground of our era. The public realm is either a precious, civilising embodiment of our best collective endeavours – or else it is, as David Cameron described it last week at his party’s spring conference: “the enemies of enterprise … Taxing, regulating, smothering, crushing, getting in the way … the bureaucrats in government departments who concoct those ridiculous rules and regulations that make life impossible”.
Eric Pickles, leader of the anti-public shock troops, went further with his favourite litany of extravagance amid malign accusations that Labour councils are adopting a “bleeding stump” strategy, needlessly cutting services just to “play politics with people’s jobs”. That Labour councils are both the poorest and the ones most drastically, severely cut he somehow forgets to mention. That Liverpool had the worst cuts and Dorset the least slips his memory, but his acid loathing of anything public does resonate with many.
So what will the public come to believe by the next election? The heated exaggeration of these attacks suggests that Cameron knows this is the one fight they must win, whatever it takes. With only three weeks to go until 1 April, they can only sell this unprecedented £81bn cut by persuading enough people that the bloated public sector was oozing with fat until they sliced it away. Under that cover, Cameron spurs on the public tumbrel with his calls for “any willing provider” to take over virtually any public service.
In response, Labour is conflicted by a hundred quandaries. Scruples and a measure of intellectual honesty mean Labour lacks the shameless gall to distort reality as boldly as trooper Pickles. Reasoned argument and a few facts are a weak match to the foghorns of the right. Ed Miliband’s inclination is to think that, in the long run, being right pays off, but it makes some impatient. And Labour is conflicted by its own past: Tony Blair with his scars on his back was no advocate for the public ethos.
So how should Labour defend the public realm without sounding like special pleaders for their paymaster unions? There will never be a lack of examples of public waste and sloth, nor of anecdotes of disobliging jobsworths. Outdated practices in police or fire brigades need constant vigilance. Threatened strikes to protect public sector pensions would damage Labour: a minority of hotheads still regard a strike as a goal in itself.
The TUC leader Brendan Barber and wiser heads may rattle a sabre, but they argue against unwinnable actions. Instead, Barber celebrates the breadth and depth of protest now welling up, from shire defenders of forests, post offices and libraries to young occupiers of urban banks. The TUC is waiting until the eve of the cuts for its great 26 March London rally. Barber believes widespread, inclusive protest will always be more effective than train or school strikes, which alienate voters. The only victory is defeating this government at the election: not brought down by misguided muscle, but by winning the argument.
Some in government seem tempted to provoke strikes: steeply increasing pension contributions during a two-year freeze without even waiting for John Hutton’s report was a jab in union ribs. Contrary to myth, most public pay has fallen behind over the last decade. But Cameron be warned: as Tony Travers of the LSE remarks, the poll tax riots that finished Margaret Thatcher were on 31 March, the day before new rates bills fell due.
Few people realise yet how their pockets will be hit after 1 April by £81bn of cuts, £18bn from benefits alone. Consider the working families suddenly losing childcare credits worth £600, forced to withdraw from nurseries and abandon jobs. Or housing benefit cuts making some move far away from work. Travers sees the government as “someone diving off a high board in the dark, not knowing if there is water in the pool”. As with the 10p tax band abolition, there is no knowing how opinion will swing when reality dawns and 300,000 public servants land on the dole.
Labour is already gaining from a revived public affection for services people had taken for granted. As care is withdrawn from frail parents and wheels come off the recklessly “reformed” NHS, people are already looking more warmly on the public realm and Labour needs to be its fearless champion. Goodness knows, it should be easy enough to remind people how very much worse the private sector can be: I struggled most of the day on the phone with a delivery from Homebase – already paid, a month late, finally despairing. Standing in HSBC this week, a fraught mother tried to open a savings account – pure profit to the bank. “Come back tomorrow, it’s late,” said a bored teller with a shrug at her protests at losing another hour’s work. I reminded her that 253 HSBC bankers just took over £1m each in bonuses and suggested Nationwide, the mutual next door, who I hope treated her better.
The ideal of the entrepreneurial, hyper-efficient private sector is as much a myth as the ideal public servant. Think of all that “business class” travel and hospitality excess paid for by shareholders, mainly from our pension funds. It’s time Labour exploded this mindless “private is always best” nonsense. Business is essential – but so is a strong public realm. Why does Serco’s CEO earn £4m for running outsourced public services? Labour is on the right track talking of the “good society” as an antidote to Cameron’s empty “big society”.
On Tuesday Will Hutton’s report on public pay looks set to extol the value of public service and the need to protect it from Pickles-style contempt. While some top pay for vice-chancellors and council chiefs has been infected by FTSE boardroom pay madness, expect Hutton to defend effective public servants from the current witch hunt; to ensure quality, young civil servants need to be able to buy a house, but which high fliers work in the public sector to get rich? There is such a thing as public service with a strong ethos. Watch how good servants will still strive hard to keep the rickety show on the road despite severe cuts to their workforce. Are they Uncle Toms, or just imbued with public values Cameron will rely on, even as he denigrates them?
The great public v private values campaign starts in earnest with the march in two weeks. Be there and help unleash indignation at this crude and mindless attempt to shrivel the state and deny its values.
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