Page 22


NEWS • VIEWS • INFORMATION • ADVICE


NASUWT MARCHES FOR THE ALTERNATIVE

Thousands of NASUWT members were among the estimated 500,000 protestors who marched through the streets of London for an alternative to the Coalition Government’s savage programme of cuts to public services.

The March for the Alternative, organised by the TUC and supported by trade unions, campaign groups and charities, was the biggest public protest yet against the policies of the Coalition Government and demonstrated the huge wave of public anger at the Coalition’s cuts to vital public services.

Thousands of NASUWT members, along with their friends and families, converged on the capital from across the UK, many arriving on specially chartered coaches and trains. The Union made up one of the largest contingents of protesters, with NASUWT flags and banners held proudly aloft right along the three-mile march route in a show of disgust at the effect the Coalition’s programme of cuts is already having on the education and welfare of children and young people.

The success of the whole event marks an important milestone in the NASUWT’s and the TUC’s continuing campaign to build resistance to the cuts and ideological policies that are damaging education and other public services.

The march concluded with a huge rally in Hyde Park where the variety of speakers taking to the stage to talk about the impact of the cuts demonstrated the scale of damage that is being done to vital services. Campaigners for women’s rights, champions of disability equality and patrons of the arts were among the disparate groups all united in their opposition to the Coalition Government’s actions.

Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT, took to the stage to hit out at the damage being done to education and public services. She highlighted ten ways in which the Coalition is attacking fairness, decency and equality for all through its reforms.

These were:

•Snatching free school meals;
•Pillorying communities by cutting money for programmes such as Sure Start;
•Initiating reforms that will wreck the health service;
•Robbing pensions and denying dignity in old age;
•Cutting local authority grants that have led to the sacking of thousands of public and private sector workers;
•Hitting the poorest in society hardest by increasing VAT;
•Condemning thousands of children to learn in dilapidated buildings by axing the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme, simultaneously putting thousands of construction workers out of work;
•Opening up the school system to a freemarket free-for-all, bankrolled by public money;

(Continued on page 23...)