March against the cuts

Today is promised to be the day we get the biggest demonstration London has ever seen. It will dwarf the march against the Iraq war and will be even bigger than the Poll Tax march (and riots?) as people flock to the city to protest against the cuts.

Grannies from cosy little Gloucestershire villages with their blue rinses and placards calling for library cuts will be rubbing shoulders with scruffy squatters, political activists, trade unionists and of course politicians.

The problem is that whilst there was an issue of morality and legality surrounding the Iraq march and a sense of injustice behind the Poll Tax, this march has little in terms of moral ground to support it. The very fact that Ed Milliband will be the speaker when the party arrives at Hyde Park seem to me to proclaim the absurdity and the lack of integrity and morality that this march demonstrates and I'm not doing a 'disgusted of Sutton' here but have some concrete reasons.

The first is that the hypocrisy that exists in having the leader of the very party whose mismanagement of the economy, assisted by their lack of control of the banking fraternity, and under whose reign the distance between rich and poor grew markedly, who brought in such abominations as Academies (where our children's futures are given to others as a money-making exercise) and engaged in the PFI, sacked nurses and porters and established more quangos and more scandals beside, do the main speech. If he's going to say he's sorry for the government of which he was a member having brought us to this place then all is well, but he (and those present I'm sure) will forget how we got here. All many want is for the cuts to hit someone (and something) else - there is little moral ground, only self being exercised by many here.

We do need to make our voices heard and indeed we do need to be campaigning is for things like libraries, social care, education, health and the like. There are many cuts that I feel aggrieved about but I am also aware that those who come to London today are also being conned into being something political that perhaps they don't want to be. My fear is that some will be caught up in stuff that isn't what they are or why they are there, and this is a sadness and a shame.

My last concern is that whilst many moderate people will be present today, behind them will be the same wallies who turned the student loan protests into the chaos that they became are seeing in today the potential for more than a 'carnival like' gathering of people engaged in being what democracy is.

All sides of the house of commons recognise that we need cuts. Everyone has a different idea about where and what and how but the reality is that we were (and actually if you listen to some economists, still are) on the edge of financial disaster. Unlike Greece, Ireland, Portugal (and Spain close by) we are making moves which are painful but necessary. Where I disagree I canvas and harry, perhaps rather than march in London we need to be active where we are as individuals and church groups - being the noise locally and continuously rather than one big bang!

Pax