Ignore the sneers. This march is a real alarm-clock moment | Polly Toynbee | Comment is free | The Guardian

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Will the march make any difference to anything? Cynics of the right sneer at the absurdity. Gleefully they seize on the silly comparisons of a few self-deluders: no, this is not Tahrir Square and no, Cameron is not Hosni Mubarak. Such exaggeration is as embarrassing as 1968 anti-Vietnam protesters in Grosvenor Square comparing themselves with the tragic Czech uprising. But there are moments when protests catch the public mood. Will this be such a moment? It feels like the beginning, a marker put down for a turn in public attitudes. It will be huge, with 800 coaches and nine special trains arriving in London from all round the country. How big? No one will ever know. Organisers underplay expectations, suggesting 100,000, knowing it will be vastly more, and well beyond counting as it snails its way for hour after hour from the embankment to Hyde Park. The "1 million" for Iraq was plucked out of the air, but the rule of thumb is three people per square metre. Will there be violence? Almost certainly. Breakaways by certain anarchist fringes will make better pictures than a long march. The witty and smart UK Uncut will peacefully occupy Oxford Street shops targeting the great tax avoiders. How well the police keep their promise to prevent the violence while assisting the peaceful majority matters for their fragile reputation. Intentionally or not, kettling is a deterrence to some would-be protesters. The government's best ammunition is the sardonic sneer. Who cares? These people are self-interested trade unionists worrying about their gold-plated pensions or middle-class poseurs, signifying nothing. But it may not look that way. This gathering may look like mainstream Britain, with hosts of nurses, midwives, firefighters, doctors, speech therapists, teachers and refuse collectors, the middle-aged and the squeezed middle alongside the students. Some Liverpool businesses are providing transport, alarmed at losing contracts, while the cuts empty their customers' pockets. Thousands of ordinary people will be there. Is all that really just self-interest, or is it common cause? People who use libraries, museums and swimming pools will be there, along with a coachload of parents from Hampshire whose Save Our Sure Starts will form a "buggy block" detachment. The array of cuts listed in the Guardian gives a flavour of the scale of social loss caused by saving trifling sums. The £2bn taken from North Sea oil profits to give Osborne a one-day headline for his paltry 1p petrol cut could have covered the cost of all these. Cuts touch almost everyone, not just those who run services or use them, but battalions of volunteers, stunned to find years of work flicked away as worthless. This march will be full of people from all walks of life, if only because households will lose an average £750 this year. Sandwiched between a budget that hits the poorest hard and the new financial year, this march may be Nick Clegg's real alarm-clock moment for Britain, when cuts that were threats become real. Grants will dry up, contracts will end, a third of charities will shut down, A&E and maternity units will start closing as waiting lists rise. Thousands more young people will join nearly a million already unemployed. That crosses all social classes. So try as they might, the government will have trouble portraying this protest as some sectional interest group, a trade union throwback, an empty gesture from yesteryear. Do protests "work"? Tory truckers blockading fuel depots struck terror into the heart of the Labour government, though had they been greens the police would have dealt with them summarily. And the countryside march meant hunting continues virtually unabated. But all commentators interpret history according to taste. Constitutional historian Vernon Bogdanor says the Jarrow march changed the conscience of affluent Britain. Peaceful protest works best: he says the suffragettes felt they were held back by their militants. Poll tax demonstrators, not the few rioters with scaffolding poles, galvanised opposition by striking a deep chord with the mainstream. Bogdanor reckons this march, too, may touch a raw nerve with ordinary voters, embracing library-users of the shires and public sector unionists. Fears for the NHS will be a potent political force. But this is still early days. It will take time for people to see, feel and experience the cuts at first hand. The government will try to cement Ed Miliband beside Bob Crow and Mark Serwotka in the public mind, but the key union leaders know that strikes, let alone a general strike on pensions, are not the way to win. University teachers striking against students this week looked utterly self-defeating. So would Department for Work and Pensions staff striking against the unemployed. Shutting down public services while fighting to defend them is hard to explain, so plans are afoot in the big unions for sympathetic demonstrations, local and national, drawing attention to the loss of well-loved services. March for the Alternative is the theme. What alternative? That is Labour's great challenge. At the budget Miliband and Ed Balls made more headway: the other way is growth. The latest Office for Budget Responsibility figures show how the cuts are already damaging growth and employment, making the deficit worse. Every 1% lost from growth is worth £15bn. "Too far, too fast" is catching on. What would you do, they heckle from the other side. They pretend Labour's plans were little different – but reducing the deficit half as much is a huge £40bn difference. Local authority chiefs say they could handle half the cuts: it would be tough, but not this massacre. Meanwhile, no one is counting the true long-term cost of the social deficit. The BBC's Stephanie Flanders has discovered that the OBR is barred from testing alternative scenarios, so the government hopes no one will find out. Other revelations this week suggest the government is planning to sell off RBS and Lloyds shares in its final year for a pre-election tax cut. Cameron has already warned there will be no re-growing the state. But is that what mainstream Britain would really choose? This march is just the beginning; the opening salvo in a long campaign. Ignore the cynics: every pair of feet will make a difference.

Well yeah, but so what? I was in Paris during the pension marches, they pretty much shut the place down repeatedly, but here we are nevertheless, all set to retire at the grand old age of 62. Though I suppose Cameron fucked up his Falklands moment so he could quite well make a hash of this too. On second thoughts, continue.

I also love the idea of a "March for the Alternative". "What do we want? Something else! When do we want it? Within an unspecified time frame!"

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Also, while I love data very much and think all political decision-making especially should be backed by as good a science as we can, the stuff about growth, deficits, public spending and taxes is far from easy to evaluate.

Because we can't really test things in economy, we do have issues with evaluating things.

Are these cuts so damaging to growth? Well, if 1p petrol reduction is worth £2bn and those cuts are worth £2bn (and either is funded by a special tax on North Sea oil companies), mathematically, it ought to be pretty neutral for the economy. Different people will profit/suffer but the macro aggregate ought to be relatively unchanged.

Is it the case in real life? Well, I don't know. And I don't think the OBR can really tell unless they're far better than all the economists I've heard of. Which is unlikely.

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Tim Lott: March for the alternative – an alternative to pointless marches - Commentators, Opinion - The Independent

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Today, tens of thousands of well-meaning people – the exact number depending very much on the weather – will march for Things to Be a Bit Nicer. Where I live in prosperous north-west London, many will take a chance on being excitingly kettled by the "pigs", as I believe the police are referred to in radical circles, as the TUC fights for "an alternative to current government economic policies". The Earl Grey will be overflowing from the vacuum flasks, and the langues de chats wrapped tidily in greaseproof paper as they gather together in Hyde Park to raise their voices about how absolutely frightful everything is. My very nice neighbour, the author and activist Melissa Benn, says she "can't remember as much of a buzz and sense of 'must go/want to go' feeling about a public protest since the anti- Iraq march". How inspiring. And – sorry Melissa – how completely pointless. I was never a great protester, even in the glory days when there was Rock Against Racism, Boycott South Africa, Support the Miners, Fatcher Out and the Stop the Poll Tax. I remember at university being asked to march for the Wapping printers, to which I replied, with some incredulity, "Have you ever met a printer?" Related articles •London braced for day of protest that could attract up to 250,000 Search the news archive for more stories But I had a lot of time for those who did trudge the streets in a genuinely good cause. Those marches were real political protests against genuine social evils – the entire destruction of northern communities during the miners' strike, race hate and grievously unfair taxation. All the same, these attempts to change public policy were invariably in vain (the Not in My Name march against the Iraq war being the most notable failure). Only the poll tax riots achieved anything – and that's because they weren't nice Saturday afternoon strolls. They were, as their name suggests, riots. Will today's march be effective? No. Will it achieve anything at all? No. Will it make those who march feel better about themselves? Almost certainly. What are they protesting against? No one is really sure. And the idea – as some of the organisers have claimed – that the rally can be thought of as being on a par with "recent protests in the Middle East and North Africa" is hilariously self-important, not to say insulting to everyone fighting and dying in those regions. Because the grim truth is, much as I dislike the Coalition Government, the bankers – and the lack of their regulation thereof – have crippled the economy and we don't have any money left. Cuts may happen quickly or slowly, but they are going to be massive and they are going to happen. So what is this march about? It's for "jobs, growth and justice", according to the TUC website – three things I think we could all applaud, and which the Chancellor himself would certainly favour. What is he up to doing all those nasty things, when we could have jobs, growth and justice instead? Clearly he is evil, unlike the nice people going on the march. The march, in fact, is terribly vague about itself. It is angry that the Government wants to "eliminate the deficit in four years". So how many years is the TUC arguing it should take place over? It doesn't say. The other thing the TUC is complaining about is that the Government is "raising £4 through cuts as against every £1 through tax rises". So basically this is a march in favour of tax rises. Somehow I don't imagine there will be many banners reading "I Want My Tax Rate Raised and I Want It Now". No, on a march like this there are no difficult choices – only Wicked Politicians vs Good People Like Us. The fact is this is a feel-good march for a feel-good society. Frankly, I would be secretly thrilled if one or two people peacefully aimed a brick or two at the windows of a few well chosen tax-dodging corporations. I am delighted when UK Uncut occupies banks and high street shops and turns them into libraries and drop-in centres – because it is witty, it has an effect (tarnishing the brand) and it is targeted on a real grievance, that is, tax avoidance, and it goes to the heart of the problem, that is, bankers and corporations. Specificity is everything in a protest – and this march is all about generality. I have fought for my local library to stay open, and the committee I am on has worked hard on presenting realistic alternatives to the library closing – for instance, we as a community running it, or renting part of it out to local businesses. But nobody is seriously suggesting that there isn't a problem. Whereas this march is just saying: let's all whine in unison (or in Unison) and hope that someone, somewhere will be so impressed by our commitment that they will be a bit gentler with us. It is unlikely to be an angry march – it certainly doesn't feel like one – and it won't actually be a serious march, especially if the sun is out. I can almost guarantee that there will be very little kettling – too many white middle-class people with children – and I can almost guarantee that bugger-all will be achieved. March for the alternative? Yes, I'll march for the alternative – the alternative to pointless marches. Throw an egg at Sir Philip Green, or a stink bomb at Fred the Shred. Knock a policeman's helmet off if they're rude and bullying towards you and get someone to film it when they club you to the ground and then prosecute you for obstruction. Get yourself arrested about something specific that you care about and that someone could do something about, if there was the political will behind it – like closing down offshore tax havens and increasing the Inland Revenue budgets so they have the resources to fight the big companies' accountants. (There's another ringing slogan for you – "Support the Inland Revenue Now!".) But don't take a day out to tell me how perfectly dreadful it all is. You might as well stay at home and listen to The Archers for all the good it will do. Britain is deep in the excrement, and some measure of austerity is the only thing that's going to get us out of it. The only hope we can have is that every sector of society makes an equal contribution, and takes equal pain. A good old-fashioned riot against the bankers and corporate tax dodgers – now that's a march I could support. But today's march is just too woolly, too polite and too damn nice to make a jot of difference. We should get angry, not mildly annoyed, and we should get angry about something specific – most particularly the financial system, bankers' bonuses, tax breaks for the rich and the innumerable lies the Coalition has told us. "Jobs, Growth and Justice" is just too easy to ignore. Protest against everything, and you protest against nothing at all. March against something specific, and you'll still be ignored, but at least you've thought things through. Protest against something specific in a systematic, targeted, imaginative way – like UK Uncut – and things might, just might, begin to change.

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Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

Also, while I love data very much and think all political decision-making especially should be backed by as good a science as we can, the stuff about growth, deficits, public spending and taxes is far from easy to evaluate. Because we can't really test things in economy, we do have issues with evaluating things. Are these cuts so damaging to growth? Well, if 1p petrol reduction is worth £2bn and those cuts are worth £2bn (and either is funded by a special tax on North Sea oil companies), mathematically, it ought to be pretty neutral for the economy. Different people will profit/suffer but the macro aggregate ought to be relatively unchanged. Is it the case in real life? Well, I don't know. And I don't think the OBR can really tell unless they're far better than all the economists I've heard of. Which is unlikely.

o

I think you are missing the point here. Growth is down unemployment is up and it is not going to get better. It is the same old Tories feathering the nests of their upper middle-class and rich pals aided and abetted by Camerons lap dog Clegg.

If the Tories were serious about reducing debt why don't they tax share holder dividends more? This is money made of the backs,the blood,the sweat,the tears and the toil of the squeezed middle and working classes.

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Because the grim truth is, much as I dislike the Coalition Government, the bankers – and the lack of their regulation thereof – have crippled the economy and we don't have any money left. Cuts may happen quickly or slowly, but they are going to be massive and they are going to happen. So what is this march about?

And voting. What's that all about? Surely we can trust our wise leaders to get things right, to do the best possible thing, and to tell us the truth. Shouldn't we just leave them to it instead of hassling them with our foolish presumptions?

Originally Posted by Catwoman

I think you are missing the point here. Growth is down unemployment is up and it is not going to get better.

How do you know for sure? The US, Germany even fucked-up France seems to be doing better... And, more to the point, would it be different if the other bunch of politicos were in?

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It is the same old Tories feathering the nests of their upper middle-class and rich pals aided and abetted by Camerons lap dog Clegg.

I tend to agree but that doesn't invalidate the point I made. It's not easy to know what to do with the economy as it is - especially if you tie yourself up/believe you're tied up with regards to taxing the rich...

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If the Tories were serious about reducing debt why don't they tax share holder dividends more? This is money made of the backs,the blood,the sweat,the tears and the toil of the squeezed middle and working classes.

I think I posted an article about GE paying nearly ziltch tax to the USA. And, in the UK, we got the whole UK Uncut campaign, which I personally love.

The right wing argument is two folded: If you raise taxes on the rich, they move elsewhere. In Ireland, for example. People move slowly or rarely but company profits seem rather mobile these days.

And, if you cut taxes, you encourage economic activity.

To be honest, neither of these arguments is always true. But it is also not always wrong. Hence, it's friggin' difficult to fight them on purely logical/economic grounds. They may have a case, sometimes.

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Originally Posted by contracycle

And voting. What's that all about? Surely we can trust our wise leaders to get things right, to do the best possible thing, and to tell us the truth. Shouldn't we just leave them to it instead of hassling them with our foolish presumptions?

Well yeah, but this march isn't seriously going to make any difference. I'm not even sure that it should - voting really is pointless if the elected government proceeds to follow the orders of whichever mob shouts the loudest.

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Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

To be honest, neither of these arguments is always true. But it is also not always wrong. Hence, it's friggin' difficult to fight them on purely logical/economic grounds. They may have a case, sometimes.

I wish I was allowed to just come right out and say that in exams, without going through the 5 hours of BS first.

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Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

How do you know for sure? The US, Germany even fucked-up France seems to be doing better... And, more to the point, would it be different if the other bunch of politicos were in?

labour only wanted to halve the deficit in 5 years. Wanting to get rid of it in 5 years is stupid. We will end up like Ireland the more you cut the less growth you get the bigger the deficit the more cuts you have to make. No country has ever cut their way out of a recession.

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I tend to agree but that doesn't invalidate the point I made. It's not easy to know what to do with the economy as it is - especially if you tie yourself up/believe you're tied up with regards to taxing the rich...

The rich benefitted from the boom and are still benefitting it is only right they should pay their fair share and not try to avoid paying taxes if it was up to me tax avoidance would be a capital offence.

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The right wing argument is two folded: If you raise taxes on the rich, they move elsewhere. In Ireland, for example. People move slowly or rarely but company profits seem rather mobile these days. And, if you cut taxes, you encourage economic activity.

Every general election you get some clown stating if a certain party win they will leave the country and they never do. Companies that say they will take their business elsewhere are just posturing. The UK is a massive Market for goods and services and I think any company would be fool enough to pull out leaving all that potential profit unexploited.

This reminds of the 70's when the Ford motor company threatened to pull out of the UK if the then secretary of State Barbera Castle introduced equal pay for women. She called their bluff and the rest is history.

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- Winston Churchill - Prime Minister of Great Britain

Originally Posted by Zichao

Well yeah, but this march isn't seriously going to make any difference. I'm not even sure that it should - voting really is pointless if the elected government proceeds to follow the orders of whichever mob shouts the loudest.

That would only be true if all parties were comprehensively detailed in their manifestos and never exceeded them. Nobody was asked at the last election to vote on closing down libraries. And Cameron specifically said there would be no top-down reorganiosations of the NHS and yet that is exactly what they are now doing. So yes, protest is an absolutely vital tool.

As to whether the march specifically will have an effect, that is a complicated network of causality. At the very least is putting down a marker as to what borad swathes of the public consider unacceptable.

As Chumbawamba rightly said:

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Democracy Street, Britain's longest running soap, with the added illusion of audience participation. Our act tonight, on the left, capitalism that's right, on the right, capitalism is it, in the middle, probably the best capitalism in the world. Remember it's your choice, your five seconds worth of action that counts. I mean that most sincerely voters. Sit tight, keep quiet, 'till the next time. The next time being one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five days away. Well if freedom is the choice between three different types of the same oppression, then I'll take the one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five days. Never mind the ballots, here's the rest of your life!