Disabled People Against Cuts (Dpac) protest against the Spring Statement (Photo: Guy Smallman)
Over 100 activists joined an organising Zoom call on Wednesday to plan protests against the Labour government’s budget at the end of this month.
The “welfare not warfare” meeting, called by We Demand Change (WDC), came as Labour wants to hand more money to the generals and bosses and plots more attacks on working class people.
Sean Vernell, a UCU union national negotiator and steering committee member of WDC, said there was an urgency to build opposition to the budget on 26 November.
He urged people to build resistance “to send a clear message that we’re not going to allow this Labour government, after 14 years of Tory rule, to continue that wave of austerity to attack working class people”.
“We know that there’s going to be further attacks when it comes to the public service and of course, the rumours about raising taxes.”
Sean added that it does not have to be this way. “I’m all for raising taxes, but not on the poor, I’m for raising the taxes on the very richest in our society,” he said.
Jeremy Corbyn, Independent MP for Islington, said, “The basis on which any government approaches the idea of a national budget, should be to look at the issues facing the people in our society.
“We now have 4.5 million children living in poverty, while Britain is home to 152 billionaires. Inflation is now rising again and unemployment is rising.”
He added that we need a budget that reduces inequality and poverty and invests in housing and health. “We don’t need a budget that gives us a new generation of nuclear weapons, a new generation of nuclear submarines, and an even bigger arms bill,” he said.
And Labour’s failure to deliver “change” in the autumn budget will continue to pave the way to Downing Street for racist Reform UK and open the door further to the grifters and charlatans of the far right.
Samira Ali, Stand Up To Racism (SUTR) national organiser, spoke to the meeting of activists. She said, “It’s clear that we need to fight the cuts, that we need to fight the budget, that we need to see more action such as the doctors’ strike, and the strikes by university and college workers.”
But crucially, “We need to take on the racism of the government at this time, and connect all of this to a much wider fight against the far right. This is a real fight for our lives that we’re in. Starmer’s government increasingly represents a politics of despair, and we need to build a movement of hope against that.”
Let’s build the budget day protests and an alternative to austerity, racism and imperialism.
Join the eve of budget protest, 25 November, 6pm, Downing Street and in other locations around the country
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