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Wednesday 26 January 2011

Mass Protest Planned For March

Public sector workers are expected to take to the streets

By Ben Aulakh

One of the country’s biggest Trade Unions is organising what it hopes will be the biggest single protest since the anti-war marches in 2003.

The Trades Union Congress is leading a coalition of organisations and protest groups who are hoping to mobilise more than 100, 000 people onto the streets of London on March 26.

Protestors will be marching against the Coalition’s severe public sector spending cuts, advocating stiff taxes on banks and the rich.

Action group the Coalition of Resistance have so far sent out more than 110, 000 flyers urging people to take part in the march.

The unions General Secretary Brendan Barber said recently, “The alarming rise in inflation means prices are running well ahead of pay deals, making a tough year for workers even harder to bear, particularly for public servants suffering a real terms pay cut.

“Fuelling inflation with a VAT hike will hit workers in their wage packets and shopping receipts, which is bad for working families and damaging for the economy too.”

The protest is expected to start on the Thames Embankment, before progressing past Whitehall and Piccadilly to a mass rally in Hyde Park.

An excerpt from the unions dedicated protest website states that ‘government spending cuts will damage public services and put more than a million out of work.’

‘They will hit the vulnerable, damage communities and undermine much of what holds society together.’

The TUC is advocating tax loopholes for the rich being closed, as well as a Robin Hood tax on the banks, which they say is ‘the only long term way to close the deficit and reduce the nation’s debt.’

The protest will follow on from the 52,000 students who took to the streets of the capital on November 10 last year after the government announced plans to treble university fees.

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