Britain: Huge march rejects cuts

About 500,000 people marched in London on March 26 against the British government’s program of huge spending cuts.

Called by the Trade Union Congress (TUC), the march drew people from every part of Britain — a splendid cross section of the country with numbers dominated by the working class.

Thousands also marched in Belfast against the spending cuts. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) said 6000 people took part in the rally in front of City Hall.

The huge protest was part of an ongoing campaign of resistance against a neoliberal government keen to roll back the gains made by working people in the Britain in the 20th century.

From local libraries to the National Health Service, everything is ripe for closure and privatisation by the Conservative party-Liberal Democrat coalition government.

The splendid march showed that the people of Britain are not going to take this assault lying down and are prepared to put up a fight.

Resistance has already shown some gains. After huge protests, the government performed a recent U-turn on plans to sell British forests to companies — including some prepared to log them for biofuel.

The latest march was the largest protest in Britain since the February 2003 anti-Iraq war demonstration, when millions took over London’s streets.

It was militant and disciplined. The TUC was criticised by some for liaising with the police and making compromises in stewarding decisions. For example, it encouraged coaches to drop protesters far from the start of the march.

However, several unofficial feeder marches involved self-organisation by activists and brought tens of thousands of marchers via their own routes.

I had the pleasure of joining a feeder march in Kennington Park in south London. Anarchists, ecosocialists, black activists and the Latin American Workers Association formed a militant and joyous carnival.

We moved through south London and had the numbers to break through police lines on Westminster Bridge.

The police did not want us to march the most direct route, but with chants of “Whose Streets, Our Streets” and “Vamos! Vamos!”, we took control and marched across the bridge toward parliament.

The TUC managed to build a hugely important event. The more militant trade union leaders, notably Len McCluskey of Unite and Mark Serwotka of the civil servants union the PCS, made speeches in support of civil disobedience and strikes to fight the cuts.

Serwotka said: “Imagine if we didn’t just march together but took strike action together too!”

Actor Samuel West quoted the 19th ecosocialist leader William Morris’s demand: “I do not want art for a few, any more than I want education for a few, or freedom for a few.”

Sadly it wasn’t all as impressive as that. Labour party leader Ed Miliband failed to wow the crowd — which was aware that Labour paved the way for the cuts program.

He was the only politician allowed to speak; anti-cuts left Labour MPs like Jeremy Corbyn were excluded. Greens Party MP Caroline Lucas, despite being the only party leader in parliament to oppose the cuts program, was excluded from the platform.

Marching clearly is not enough. The march against the Iraq War mobilised even more people, but failed to stop the invasion.

Direct action is becoming more attractive in Britain and is scaring both the government and the opposition Labour Party.

The British media focused on the actions of several hundred “Black Bloc” anarchists who attacked banks, the Ritz Hotel and other symbols of wealth.

Some on the left criticised these actions and produced evidence of police infiltration. However, there have also been a number of cases of police infiltration of groups like Climate Camp who are not part of the Black Bloc.

Evidence of police infiltration of a range of movements and networks is apparent in Britain. We may not have as many secret police as repressive states such as Saudi Arabia, but it sometimes seems this way.

Guy Taylor of direct action network Globalise Resistance said: “Parts of the ‘progressive’ media are hammering home distinctions between ‘good’ protesters and ‘bad’ … It’s becoming a moral pedant’s wet dream.”

However, the “non-violent direct action” taken on March 26 by groups such as UK Uncut seemed more of a worry for the Con-Dem government than the Black Bloc, and possibly the march.

UK Uncut is a network of young activists that has been occupying banks and the premises of companies such as Vodafone that have found ways of avoiding billions of pounds of taxes by exploiting tax loopholes.

UK Uncut argues that closing tax loop holes would raise £100 billion in revenue and would easily cover the cuts.

On March 26, more than 140 UK Uncut activists occupied and shut down Fortnum and Mason, the store frequented by the British aristocracy.

Despite being entirely non-violent, the activists were repressed. Almost all were arrested, dispersed to cells across London and held for 20 hours. Many had their clothes taken from them.

It was clearly repression aimed at attacking a movement making waves and drawing support.

The left candidate for presidency of the National Union of Students, Mark Bergfeld, promoted the occupation of Trafalgar Square with a call to turn it into the British version of Egypt’s revolutionary Tahrir Square.

After a peaceful start, the occupation was violently broken up by riot police.

Ian Chamberlain, a Lancaster-based Green Party member, wrote on his Solidaritybank.wordpress.com blog on March 29: “As the party people stuck stickers to the Olympic clock, small numbers of police moved quickly to surround the edifice pushing young and old out of their way.

“Seconds later, huge reinforcements came rushing down the steps from the gallery with batons and shields. The crowds were shoved and pushed around as the police assembled their defence line.

“The party vibe quickly evaporated as shouting and chaotic running around replaced the music and dancing.

“As the batons hit, new police lines emerged around the square preventing quick escape while another line forced people at the fountains towards the column.

“As the odd idiot or two threw sticks and bottles, protesters stood in front of the police to form a human shield while shouting ‘no violence!’ in a desperate attempt to bring calm, but were rewarded by thumping shields on their backs, forcing them to the ground.”

Militant and disciplined direct action, from occupations to industrial action, is growing in Britain.

Dozens of universities have been hit by occupations and civil servants have vowed to strike in defence of their pension rights, which are under attack as part of the spending cuts.

In the 1980s, the miners’ strike was defeated by the government of then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher. A huge assault on the unions was launched.

But Thatcher was defeated when she sought to introduce a highly regressive poll tax in 1990 by direct action, including a huge non payment campaign.

The fight is on in Britain and, like the poll tax struggles, it could lead to the defeat of a right-wing government.

Video: Timelapse London march 26 march. EARTHIVISM.

Video: Sam West speaks at March for the Alternative. Trades Union Congress (TUC).