YESTERDAY THERE WERE TWO DEMONSTRATIONS taking place in London. One was organised by the TUC, and involved 250,000 people marching peacefully in protest at the Coalition’s cuts; while the other comprised several hundred members of various groups including anarchists and an organisation called UKuncut.
The anarchist/UKuncut groups had come for one thing only - to use violence against any business like Top Shop and Fortnum and Mason whom they perceived of as robbing the exchequer of funds through various tax avoidance schemes. They also attacked various banks like Lloyds and Santander who they blamed, along with their kind, for causing the economic crises.
As far as the peaceful majority and their Alternative rally is concerned; the ‘alternative’ to which they refer seems to comprise more or less the same solution as the anarchist/UKuncut, but without the frenzied and malicious behaviour. For it seems that the banks and the rich tax avoiders could, if the political will was there, be made to pay off the deficit without cutting public services.
It must be said that the vast majority of those 250,000 marchers work in the public sector and as such will no doubt be seen by many of those working in the private sector as being comparable to, what with their final salary pension and early retirement, the rich bankers they were marching against yesterday. For in the private sector, working men and women, create the wealth that not only keeps this economy afloat, but whose taxes keep those in the public sector afloat; and it is unfair that those working in the private sector should have to forfeit their pension rights while supplementing those far more generous ones in the private sector.
When interviewed in vox-pop fashion by the media, I failed to hear from a single protester who agreed with Ed Milliband’s disingenuous position on cutting public services, which amounts to doing the same thing as the Coalition but over a longer period of time. It is a deceitful position to hold, and I think many of those who were on yesterday’s demonstration would have still been there had we had a Labour government implementing such a policy.
This country needs to make serious inroads into its deficit, and it can only be done by making sacrifices that sadly, will cause much displeasure and anger. But if the deficit is not tackled and tackled quickly, then the markets will react as they have done to the news of the Portuguese parliament’s attempt at defying the economic realities of its position.
This country may be economically better off than Portugal, Greece and Ireland, but the road to ruin still stares us in the face if we detract in any way from deficit reduction, and the Labour Party’s nuanced position is such a detraction. For to follow it would be to invite scepticism from the markets, and lumber our children and grandchildren with the financial consequences of our greed.
AS FOR THOSE SPAWN OF THE MIDDLE CLASS who chose to take the law into their own hands yesterday and create havoc on the streets of London - one thing is for sure; they will not be treated like working class football hooligans by the police, despite the fact that their behaviour merits far worse.
Over 200 of these middle class reprobates were arrested and will no doubt be either released with a caution or taken to court and daddy’s cheque book brought into use.
They will then set about organising their next spat with the police over the internet when the TUC calls another day of action against public sector cuts.
In any other Western country, class would not be an issue and tear gas and water canon would be deployed against these favoured sons and daughters of the middle classes. It is only in modern Britain that the police can be humiliated in such a way as they were in London yesterday by this country’s favoured youth.
The people cry out for these little emperors to be dealt with forcefully by the police; but sadly the police are governed by an hierarchy of university educated liberal senior officers among whom such measures are to be found objectionable.
What, however, was welcomed by these senior officers, was the presence of the human rights group Liberty in their control box overseeing the whole drama as it unfolded. The police felt they needed to persuade these people that they were not the KGB or the Stasi and no doubt pleaded for their understanding.
What a farce this has turned out to be. Was, for instance, the police’s action on the day retarded by the presence of Liberty in the control room? Did senior officers pass down through the ranks orders to the effect that they must be seen to be in control but without any kind of behaviour deployed that could cause Liberty to challenge their actions?
IN CONCLUDING, one of the main targets for UKuncut’s attention was Fortnum and Mason, who they believed to be part of a rich set up of tax avoiders in this country whose retrievable tax evasion could help reduce the nation’s deficit.
These wretched creatures managed to invade this company’s premises and frighten and intimidate its clientele. They were convinced that, like their other targets, Fortnum and Mason were part of capitalism’s tax evading bourgeoisie who, through their wealth, were able to forgo their full quota of taxes.
But if these chosen sons and daughters of the middle class, many of whom will, in all probability, become the next generation of MPs, had forsaken their prejudices, if only temporarily, to enquire into the nature of Fortnum and Mason’s business, they would have discovered, as I did, that the company is owned by a charity. The trustees of which spend £40 million annually on grants to various good causes. Among which are the Royal Marsden Cancer Campaign (£1million), as well as Cancer Research UK who received £500,000.
The bulk of such giving is distributed among the Art (£5,680,500) and education (£11,985,166) categories. On top of which a grant of £3 million was made to the British museum. But then perhaps those gestures will only inflame anarchist/UKuncut even further in their determination, especially when Fortnum and Mason also gives £1million to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.
There can be no justification for such a display on London’s streets of the kind that was witnessed last night. Such deliberate and calculated menacing of the public’s right to move freely without being intimidated by these middle class yobos, who believe they hold some kind of moral high ground defended by their parent’s wallets should they fall foul of the law, must not be tolerated.
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