Globalist-fueled Socialist Revolution in the UK

Anti-cuts Protests Shut Down Central London

March 28, 2011

EUOBSERVER - In the largest demonstration of public anger to hit the UK since protests against the Iraq War in 2003, hundreds of thousands marched through the British capital on Saturday (26 March) against cuts to public services.

According to various sources, between 250,000 and 500,000 snaked their way through central London during the event, which was organised by the country's Trade Union Congress, with 800 coaches from across the country arriving in London.

A handful of French trade unionists from the CGT union also made their way to the protest to highlight the opposition to austerity being imposed across Europe.

Protesters also engaged in a series of roving civil disobedience actions shutting down high-street shops and banks to highlight the companies' tax avoidance policies while a few hundred anarchists smashed the windows of store fronts and daubed bank offices with paint.

Some 200 individuals were arrested and 84 injured, including 12 police officers who required minor treatment at hospital. A few hundred protesters gathered in Trafalgar Square at the end of the day, but police cleared the area in the evening provoking scuffles with protesters.

While the government says the cuts are necessary to tame the government deficit, protesters said that reduction in public spending during a recession will worsen the situation and that banks and major corporations should be the ones to pay for the fall-out from the economic crisis.

Opposition leader Ed Miliband spoke out against the cuts at a rally in Hyde Park, comparing the protest to previous struggles for justice against Apartheid South Africa and the fight for the vote for women.

"The suffragettes who fought for votes for women and won. The civil rights movement in America that fought against racism and won. The anti-Apartheid movement that fought the horror of that system and won."

However, he was booed when he suggested that some cuts were necessary.

Across the city, activists with UK Uncut, a group of mostly youthful campaigners engaged in rolling sit-ins and occupations of a range of shops and banks accused of avoiding taxes, including fashion chain Topshop and related concerns within the Philip Green's Arcadia Group, targetted as the company is technically owned by his wife who lives in Monaco where she pays no income tax.

In actions highly symbolic of the disagreements over the cuts between the British classes, activists also targetted the Ritz and occupied Fortnum & Mason, the royal grocers. Protesters were cheered by the marching crowds outside the store after they managed to climb onto the its roof awning and daubed anti-cuts slogans in chalk on the brickwork outside. The shop was later the site of many arrests.

A total of 13 shops were closed for business for the day while much of the centre of the city was absent of all traffic.

Black-clad anarchists also attacked shop windows and hurled paint, actions that were condemned by organisers. TUC chief Brendan Barber said he "bitterly regretted" the violence.

Manchester UK Uncut activist Sally Mason explained the action at the famous grocery store:

"Fortnum & Mason is a symbol of wealth and greed. It is where the Royal Family and the super-rich do their weekly shop and a picnic hamper costs £25,000."

"We are not all in this together ... everyone else must pay the price for the banks greed and reckless gambling. The government is making a political choice to turn a blind eye to the tax dodging of big business and reward the banks' mistakes."