London Protest of budget cuts grows to 400,000

Anti-Cuts March Swells to 400,000

 London hosts largest protest since Iraq war as

    workers and public demonstrate against

    government spending cuts  Guardian (UK)  March 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2011/mar/26/thousands-march-against-cuts-in-pictures

Around 400,000 people have joined a march in London to

oppose the coalition government's spending cuts.

In what looks like being the largest mass protest since

the anti-Iraq war march in 2003, teachers, nurses,

midwives, NHS, council and other public sector workers

were joined by students, pensioners and direct action

supporters, bringing the centre of the capital to a

standstill.

Tens of thousands of people streamed along Embankment

and past police barriers in Whitehall. Feeder marches,

including a protest by students which set off from the

University of London in Bloomsbury, swelled the crowd,

which stretched back as far as St Paul's Cathedral.

The biggest union-organised event for over 20 years saw

more than 800 coaches and dozens of trains hired to

bring people to London, with many unable to make the

journey to the capital because of the massive demand

for transport.

"I'm sure that many of our critics will try to write us

off today as a minority, vested interest," said Brendan

Barber, the general secretary of the Trades Union

Congress, which organised the march.

"The thousands coming to London from across the country

will be speaking for their communities when they call

for a plan B that saves vital services, gets the

jobless back to work and tackles the deficit through

growth and fair tax."

Barber is expected to tell this afternoon's rally in

Hyde Park that there is an alternative to the "brutal"

spending cuts, which have already led to the threat of

170,000 council job losses and another 50,000 elsewhere

in the public sector.

"No part of our public realm is to be protected. And

don't believe it when ministers say that the NHS is

safe in their hands. With over 50,000 job cuts already

in the pipeline - nurses, doctors, physios, midwives -

in the name of so-called efficiency savings of £20bn,

the NHS as we know it is already in intensive care.

"With David Cameron talking about selling it off to any

willing provider out to make a profit, the NHS is

facing the gravest threat in its history. Today let us

say to him: we will not let you destroy what has taken

generations to build. Let's be brutally clear about

these brutal cuts. They're going to cost jobs on a huge

scale - adding to the misery of the 2.5 million people

already on the dole."

The education secretary, Michael Gove, acknowledged the

public's concerns about the planned cuts, but insisted

they were necessary.

"Of course people will feel a sense of disquiet, in

some cases anger, at what they see happening," Gove

told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "But the difficulty

we have, as the government inheriting a terrible

economic mess, is that we have to take steps to bring

the public finances back into balance."

Labour politicians will join the march, and party

leader, Ed Miliband, will address the rally in Hyde

Park.

Dave Prentis, general secretary of the Unison union,

will tell demonstrators that the government faces being

wiped out in May's elections.

"Every month when a library closes, a care home shuts

its doors, or services for struggling young people are

withdrawn, I want them to feel the fear, and anger of

the people who have come here today from every part of

the UK to vent their frustration and to stand up for a

fairer future."

Banks and stores in Oxford Street are being targeted by

the anti-cuts group UK Uncut. There are also plans to

target a secret location with a mass occupation.

Around 4,500 police officers were on duty, with the

human rights group Liberty sending 100 legal observers

to monitor their actions.

The senior Scotland Yard officer in charge of policing

the protests, Commander Bob Broadhurst, has pledged

that the controversial tactic of "kettling" protesters

into a confined area will be kept to a minimum. "The

issues will be with the fracture groups who might want

to spoil the party," he said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/26/anti-cuts-march-swells-400000

___________________________________________

In Support of the Iranian Demonstrators

HURSDAY, JUNE 25, 2009
Open letter of support to the demonstrators in Iran!

This morning Ayatollah Ali Khamenei demanded an end to the massive and forceful demonstrations protesting the controversial result of last week's election. He argued that to make concessions to popular demands and 'illegal' pressure would amount to a form of 'dictatorship', and he warned the protestors that they, rather than the police, would be held responsible for any further violence.
Khamenei's argument sounds familiar to anyone interested in the politics of collective action, since it appears to draw on the logic used by state authorities to oppose most of the great popular mobilisations of modern times, from 1789 in France to 1979 in Iran itself. These mobilisations took shape through a struggle to assert the principle that sovereignty rests with the people themselves, rather than with the state or its representatives. 'No government can justly claim authority', as South Africa's ANC militants put it in their Freedom Charter of 1955, 'unless it is based on the will of all the people.'
Needless to say it is up to the people of Iran to determine their own political course. Foreign observers inspired by the courage of those demonstrating in Iran this past week are nevertheless entitled to point out that a government which claims to represent the will of its people can only do so if it respects the most basic preconditions for the determination of such a will: the freedom of the people to assemble, unhindered, as an inclusive collective force; the capacity of the people, without restrictions on debate or access to information, to deliberate, decide and implement a shared course of action.
Years of foreign-sponsored 'democracy promotion' in various parts of the world have helped to spread a well-founded scepticism about civic movements which claim some sort of direct democratic legitimacy. But the principle itself remains as clear as ever: only the people themselves can determine the value of such claims. We the undersigned call on the government of Iran to take no action that might discourage such determination.
Peter Hallward
Middlesex University, UK.
Alberto Toscano
Goldsmiths College, UK.
This letter is also signed by:
Alenka Zupancic, Institute of Philosophy of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
Alexander Garcia Duttmann, Goldsmiths College
Etienne Balibar, Paris X, Nanterre, and University of California, Irvine
Eyal Weizman, Director, Centre for Research Architecture, Dept. of Visual Cultures
Goldsmiths, University of London
Judith Butler, University of California, Berkeley
Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor (retired), MIT, Cambridge MA USA
Philip Pettit, University Center for Human Values, Princeton University
Rada Ivekovic, Prof., Collège international de philosophie, Paris.
Slavoj Žižek, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia and the European Graduate School
Duane Campbell, Calif. State University -Sacramento
and hundreds more

And, the International Federation of Trade Unions


Iran Day of Worker Solidarity Action
Will Be Organized As Repression Continues

Brussels

The ITUC, EI, ITF and IUF today expressed their
solidarity with the many Iranian workers who have
joined the demonstrations in the streets to call for
respect for their fundamental democratic rights.
Protests for democracy in Iran, organized by trade
unions, will be held in countries around the world
tomorrow.

"The violence against those demonstrating for democracy
has left many people dead and several hundred injured.
This heavy repression of peaceful demonstrations and
lack of respect for human rights is completely
unacceptable," said ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder.
Trade unions across the world have been appalled at the
Iranian authorities' targeting of independent trade
union action in recent years, with workers attacked and
arrested for demonstrating peacefully for workers'
rights, most recently on 1 May as they attempted to
hold a peaceful May Day rally at Laleh Park in Tehran.
Repression of fundamental rights has now intensified
and widened, with particularly violent reaction by
security forces to the many demonstrations in the wake
of the election, and the arrest of hundreds of people."