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News > United Kingdom

UK Protestors Demand End to Austerity

  • The march was the latest in a wave of protests against the Conservative government's plans to slash public spending by US$46 billion over the next five years.

    The march was the latest in a wave of protests against the Conservative government's plans to slash public spending by US$46 billion over the next five years. | Photo: Reuters

Published 30 May 2015
Opinion

Activists say the Conservative government's austerity measures have made the poor poorer, and the rich even richer.

Thousands of anti-austerity protesters marched in London Saturday to demand the government end cuts to public spending including welfare.

“Austerity is just an excuse to transfer public services into private hands, to protect the rich and punish the poor,” said U.K. Uncut, an activist organization supporting the protest.

“The cuts are a political choice, not an economic necessity,” they said in a statement.

 

A heavy police presence flanked the protesters as they marched. A convoy of police paddy wagons followed as the peaceful march made its way through the city, with signs such as “austerity kills.”

 

Activists also dropped a banner from Westminster Bridge calling for an end to cuts.

 

 

 

The march was the latest in a wave of protests against the Conservative government's plans to slash public spending by US$46 billion over the next five years. Almost half the cuts will come from welfare spending, where the government says it hopes to slash US$18.8 billion.

 

Prime Minister David Cameron has argued austerity is needed to reduce excessive government spending. However, rather than reduce the government's deficit, all austerity has achieved is to transfer wealth from the U.K.'s poor to the rich, according to a landmark 2014 study by the London School of Economics.

Children from poor families have already been the hardest hit by years of austerity, according to a report released in March by Britain’s Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR).

“Certain categories of children may have been protected from the worst impacts of austerity, but other groups – in particular migrant children, whether unaccompanied or not, and children in low-income families – have been hit by cuts in benefits and in the provision of services,” the JCHR warned.

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