AAR - March 26th March

A fantastic day, the country expected 100,000 - The country sent 500,000.

This is not a minority march, this was the first turn of the cogs in the engine of change. This wasn't, and nobody expected it, to be a government changing march. Nor indeed did we expect that Government would adopt a different approach, Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg did not indeed, seem to show any hesitation in criticising the left for not having a Plan B - Seemingly forgetting the fact that 1 in every 120 people in the country turned up for the protest. Plan B infact could be as simple as taxing the Banks by 0.005p per transaction made, and idea that would generate £20 Billion per year, the effective equal amount of the ConDem cuts (http://robinhoodtax.org/).

The most incredible part of the day was, for me, people not in the march in Manchester and London asking how it went, a kind of desperation of 'please tell me it went well' in their voice. It did. The most important question to ask now is, can the momentum build? Can we keep increasing the pressure? Can we push for a General Strike? I will discuss the General Strick and its pros and cons next time. In the mean while, a very tired very sleepy James is off to bed!

March 26 March

"Tomorrow [March 26] sees the largest and most committed demonstration for some time. We need to be clear on why we are there, after all this is not a townswomen's guild coffee morning.

We face in this country the tearing down of the very fabric of what modern Britain is, indeed ask any person on the street to define ‘Britain’, I would say that the most common response you would get is ‘Cuts’ ‘Coalition’ and ‘Cameron’. Regrettably, the word ‘cuts’ is just one letter off an accurate description of the coalition.

What do we mean by cuts though? Are we referring to the day-to-day cutting back of household spending? The own brand instead of the fairy liquid? The value brand instead of the ‘Febreeze’?  No, in short. No. If the nation was responsible for the day-to-day purchasing of goods and services of a household, the nation would alas buy in bulk and there would be a Costco on every corner. Infact, the idea of the nations Credit Card just doesn’t exist. You and I do. You and I do get to choose where we shop, which gas company, which electric company - we also get to choose who we want as our Government.

Now, imagine you had to make the choice between buying a bottle of Cola. On one hand there’s the Pepsi, the other the Coke and some more minor brands that we will all flirt with from time to time but really we prefer one of the two. One advert says ‘Buy Pepsi, pay for 1litre get 0.5 litres of cola free’ the other ‘Buy Coke, it just tastes nice’, you like Coke, but there looks like there is more value in the Pepsi. It is a dead cert which most would go for, no not Coke! We would be more likely to buy Pepsi for a change, after all we are feeling the pinch! When we go to pay for the Pepsi, we are given something that we didn’t want. 1 litre of Pepsi and half a litre of one of the minor brands, after all the advert doesn’t specify the free half a litre would be Pepsi.

This is the situation we are in today (I suppose you can tell from the red labelling why I would prefer Coke to represent the Labour Party and the naff packaging of Pepsi to represent the Tories), in reality people have bought into something that in the end they just did not want. Not only that, but we are getting something that we really didn’t want in the first place. The ConDem’s.

Of course nobody wants to see any cuts to any services, but we need to take stock as to the very severity of the cuts. Let me start by making the following clear, for those fortunate enough to have a job, most of us look at our take home money that is, after tax and NI. Our taxes and NI are accepted but never really seen as apart of our Bills: I mean we do after all expect that, whilst it is still here, we can go to the NHS free of charge, call the Police and Fire Brigades, School our children, drive our roads, be judged by our peers and have our bins emptied. We expect a service for the taxes we pay, imagine the nightmare of having to pay individual companies for the scant few services mentioned above. Well, privatisation may not be too far away for some, will the NHS cease standing for National Health Service and instead stand for National Health for Sale? Did you vote for that? Did you vote to see less police on the streets? Or Bin collections every two weeks? Did you vote for you and your children to inherit £30,000 for the privilege of university? Thought not, well you couldn’t, not one party stood on a platform and bellowed for these as they do now.

Now, as far as I recall, for all those Pepsi and Own Brand lovers…there was to be:

- No frontline cuts
- 3,000 more police officers
- No Increase on VAT

- The Scrapping tuition fees

- No Bonuses for Bank Directors

- No more top down NHS reorganisations

There’s a few more, that I have no doubt you will be aware of. The list keeps growing. So lets return to why March 26 means so much – The country has been had. Right Royally had. The Nurse in the ward who felt secure that by ‘Drinking Pepsi’ her job would be safe, has suddenly had to panic. The council workers who were assured that there jobs would be safe as council allowances would be frozen, now have to panic, the business owner who relies on customers to buy his goods now has to panic as unemployment soars; the carer or nurse that could be looking after one of YOUR Elderly Relatives, now has to panic for the safety of the people under care.

All of this panic for the sake of clearing a deficit we have had since the 1750s? We know that the ‘deficit’ that has loomed over everyone’s heads for well over 250 years will need paying off and a reduction in spending is needed, but I say to far too fast. We know what they are thinking - that if they cut like this this, come the next election that the pain will have gone and a Tory majority can be secured. This is a gamble. A wreckless gamble. I say unemployment is not a price worth paying (an ironic statement giving that ‘the price worth paying’ will be unemployment subsidies, which are already soaring, I’m guessing Gideon will be cutting back further to cover the increasing cost of these subsidies) and peoples lives are not worth destroying for the sake of a political vision.

Labour did not cause the financial collapse, but did prevent a financial meltdown by bailing out two of the worlds leading Banks. Remember, in rescuing those banks the country still has that ‘bail-out money’ ready to withdraw.

This government is cutting back too far and too fast, we must remember that every percentage or number quoted, there is a person behind. This is the governments plan A, we have seen unemployment rise, growth down and borrowing up. Time for plan B. Time for us to walk down the street like we used to, and ask that question ‘How would you define Britain’, not by cuts and coalitions but by prosperity, fairness and care. Our march should be the wake up call for ‘alarm clock’ Britain, we don’t want this, we didn’t vote for this…time for change.

Take a clipping from a flower and it will grow back, cut to far and the flower dies.”

JM