Cuts & austerity

Edinburgh Campaign Against Poverty blockade Tesco on 3 March, a national day of action against workfare. They also met with the manager of a British Heart Foundation shop to complain about the treatment of unemployed people on so-called work experience placements organised by A4E.  photo: Mike, ECAP

Disabled People Against the Cuts activists in Oxford Circus, 28 January. PHOTO: Rikki

On 28 January, London’s Oxford Circus was brought to a standstill when 20 wheelchair users using handcuffs and bicycle locks chained themselves together in the middle of Regent Street and were then joined by 200 others.

After two hours, the protesters voluntarily ended their blockade of two of London’s busiest streets. There were no arrests.

The action was organised by Disabled People Against…

UK Uncut activists brought a bit of cheer to Aberystwyth streets at Christmas, singing very special carols outside a number of deserving businesses. Those graced with their very own seasonal songs included Lloyds TSB, who splashed the cash on a £1.45m bonus for former chief executive Eric Daniels in 2011 – despite having been bailed out to the tune of £19.9bn by taxpayers in 2008. Tax avoiders HSBC and Boots as well as big-bonus-paying loss-makers RBS/HSBC were all serenaded with adapted…

In the biggest strike in Britain in a generation, on 30 November, two million public sector workers took action against proposed cuts in public sector pensions. Hundreds of thousands marched in protest.

In London, Occupy activists took over the offices of the UK’s highest-paid chief executive officer, the head of the Xstrata mining corporation. They unfurled a banner from the roof, saying: “All Power to the 99%”.  There were 75 arrests.

On Sunday 9 October, over 2,000 UKUncut protesters (including doctors and nurses) blockaded Westminster Bridge in central London (see left) in a three-and-a-half-hour protest against the health and social care bill. (Organisers claimed over 3,000 protesters.) According to UKUncut, if the bill is passed, hospitals will be effectively privatised. There were no arrests on Westminster bridge, but a group of 64 activists moving off to Lambeth Bridge were held for an hour.

The 30 November strikes by 24 unions in Britain (the biggest for several generations), the protests in Greece and Spain, the global wave of Occupy camps, and the student protests are all caused by the way that governments are reacting to the financial crisis of 2008.

Governments could have chosen to respond by tightening regulation on reckless financial institutions, by redistributing wealth and power and by protecting the poor and the vulnerable from the crisis. Instead, governments…

The 1 October Glasgow march and rally against the cuts began and ended in rain of biblical proportions. None escaped the deluge as banners sagged, soaked within minutes of being raised, and placards (many hand- drawn) disintegrated in the hands of their creators. And, annoyingly, all this at the end of a week of remarkable warmth and sunshine!

The mobilisation was a notably diverse one. Besides the Scottish TUC, civic society was represented by a range of groups from the leftist…

Filmed between December 2010 and March 2011, Michael Chanan’s documentary is a collage of video and music capturing the excitement, spontaneity and power of the grassroots movement that exploded into existence as a response to government spending cuts in the universities and beyond.

As well as the video diary elements filmed by Chanan himself, there is interspersed found and borrowed footage, reminding us of how this was a movement interacting with the public sphere, and drawing in…

When London was experiencing the aftermath of looting, Edinburgh commenced its annual festival season. But the political backdrop to the explosion of sometimes nihilistic, often materialistic anger and frustration vented in England was not forgotten.

Public service union UNISON brought a “festival against cuts” to the Edinburgh Festival this year. “Mobilise, The Anti-cuts Festival” was held in an attic space in Edinburgh’s West End, hosting free events with artists and performers…

I was in Hackney when I got the text, on my way to an organising meeting on local responses to the riots/uprisings. Police vans were cruising up and down Dalston High Street, nervous shopkeepers were standing in doorways and hipster NGO/graphic designer types were sinking pints outside a trendy pub. “Deptford Community defence meeting outside Ladbrokes on the high street @ 8.30 – to put out fires should they occur.”

I made a U-turn and got there early. I used to live in Hackney but…

Westminster students, sabbatical officers and staff from the University of Westminster students’ union (UWSU) joined over 50,000 students from across the country at the National Union of Students (NUS) central London demo on 10 November.

We were protesting against the Government’s plans to slash the university teaching budget and raise the tuition fee cap (how much students might have to pay a year for a university education). At 9.30am Westminster University students started…

On 21 June, anti-cuts activists found themselves unable to use Facebook to share news of a new website promoting the public sector strike on 30 June. When Facebook users tried to share a link for www.j30strike.org, they received an error message: “This message contains blocked content that has previously been flagged as abusive or spammy.” The links were unblocked after the Morning Star and US-based news site Mother Jones contacted Facebook for an…

Ceredigion Against the Cuts march through
Aberystwyth. PHOTO: Alun Williams

Ceredigion Against the Cuts staged a successful rally in Aberystwyth on 7 May. Led by the local samba band, some 250 people marched through the town to a rally at the castle. Newly-elected assembly member Elin Jones was one of the speakers, alongside members of the PCS and Unison trade unions who had organised the rally together.

Other speakers included…

On 29 April, while the mainstream media was distracted by royal goings-on, around 60 left-wing Facebook sites were removed from the web. The sites were mainly anti-cuts groups including Anti-Cuts Across Wigan, Arts Against Cuts, Bristol Ukuncut, Chesterfield Stopthecuts, Leeds City College Against Fees and Cuts and Notts-Uncut Part-of UKUncut. Student, SWP and anarchist groups were also hit.

Someone had used the fact that these groups had wrongly set up “profiles” (meant to be for…