Thousands join London march against austerity

 
By Jane Wild and Conor Sullivan in London

 
Trade unions have called for a general strike after tens of thousands of people marched through central London to protest against the government’s austerity spending cuts.
 
Firefighters, nurses and teachers joined unemployed youngsters, anti-war activists and other campaigners on Saturday in a march organised by the Trades Union Congress, to highlight what it says is the government’s failure to solve Britain’s long-term economic problems.
 
 
“I’m coming into my pension now and don’t want it to be robbed after 40 years,” said Steve Richards, a former train driver from Wales.
 
There were cheers as Len Mccluskey, leader of Unite, the UK’s largest trade union, called on the crowd in Hyde Park to support a general strike, a call echoed by Bob Crow, leader of the RMT rail union.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said austerity was causing huge damage to the economy. “The economy is flat on its back,” he said.

“There have been cuts in public services, people are worried about their jobs, there has been a squeeze in living standards – all this pain to reduce the deficit and it has demonstrably failed.”

He said it was time for the coalition focus on investment in infrastructure, a massive housebuilding program and reforms to the tax system.
 
“They really need to put a relentless focus on growth rather than making the deficit the number-one priority. We have got to reverse the logic,” he said.
 
Labour leader, Ed Miliband accused the Prime Minister of clinging to policies which were not working.
 
Reiterating his one nation theme, he faced heckling and booing from the crowd. “There will of course be hard choices,” he said, to calls of “liar” and “rubbish”.
 
There is no need to cut jobs or people’s pensions when there is so much uncollected taxes
 - Malcolm, protester
 
“I do not promise easy times. There will be some cuts,” he said, while vowing that if elected he would immediately tackle youth unemployment, build more houses, and “end the privatisation experiment in the NHS”.
 
The TUC put the crowd at more than 100,000.

There no reports of the violence that marred a similar demonstration in March last year, although Police said there had been damage to windows on Oxford Street. Branches of Starbucks along the route were heavily guarded following recent charges of tax avoidance.

“There is no need to cut jobs or people’s pensions when there is so much uncollected taxes,” said Malcolm, who had come from Newport in Wales to march with PCS, the public sector union.
 
Britain’s official fiscal watchdog said on Tuesday that deficit reduction was not the main cause of weak economic performance.

The Office for Budget Responsibility said stubborn inflation and weak export markets were the most likely reason for its too-optimistic view on growth in 2010, although it said the evidence was not yet sufficiently strong to rule out the possibility that austerity was hitting the economy harder than originally thought.
 
"The numbers here today show the strength of feeling that austerity isn't working," said Frances O'Grady, deputy secretary of the TUC, who will succeed Mr Barber when he retires at the end of the year.
 
She said data showing record numbers of people in employment masked
long-term unemployment and troubling levels of youth joblessness. "We will
pay a high price if we don't get those people into jobs," she said."There
are millions in part-time work and underemployed. The government is
obsessed with deficit reduction. It must think again."
 

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2012.