Lambeth’s anti-austerity march

On Saturday 20, thousands of Lambeth residents and workers marched from the Imperial War Museum to join the main TUC march in the centre of London. Here, Tom Rollins shares his experiences of the march

By Tom Rollins

Crossing Blackfriars Bridge, a man on a bike weaved in and out of the crowd, tooting on a bright red vuvuzela. The Lambeth anti-austerity party was slowly making its way into the city.

In front you could see some of the 100,000 people marching on Saturday – bagpipe-players, soul brass bands, newspaper vendors, drum ensembles, union banners from Newcastle to Cardiff, inflatable mobiles 10 feet in the air, pit bands and dancers; students, teachers, nurses, council workers, train drivers, firemen and unemployed – all rallying against the toxic austerity programme currently being packaged and distributed out of the Houses of Parliament, just visible up the Thames.

Speaking the day before the march, Sara Tomlinson, Lambeth NUT secretary and a teacher for 13 years, was putting the final touches to march preparations. The banner was all ready to go.

“Every political movement, whether it’s votes for women or the end of slavery, has always involved marching. It’s where people get on the streets and let their opinion be known.

“This is part of a global phenomena, a reaction against how capitalism treats people,” Sara said. “On the streets of Greece today there was another general strike, the people in Spain, the Arab Spring, the teachers in Chicago…People who are not traditionally militant are rising up and taking action against a system that when in crisis tries to take from those that have not, and makes sure those that have, keep having.”

You could see Sara’s point when the 1,500-2,000-strong Lambeth/Southwark feeder march met outside the Imperial War Museum. Families with children, students, passers-by, even Peckham MP Harriet Harman – “not traditionally militant” – stood alongside card-carrying SWP activists, now a familiar sight in the austerity age. Harman might have got a frosty reception – “Get a real job!” someone shouted, others booed – but at least she had come out.

While the feeder march’s PA blasted out Fela Kuti rhythms to get everyone in the party mood, Bridget Chapman, Chair of the Anti-Academies Alliance and a Lambeth Green Party member, was telling me about the children she teaches in Waterloo.

“Around the time of the student protests I planned a lesson and the kids said: ‘Miss, can we talk about something else? We want to talk about the student protests.’ I explained how it was once free and then this government ratcheted it up to £9,000 a year. There was stunned silence.

“One kid put his hand up and said: ‘Miss, don’t they want us to go to uni?’ And you know I found that a really difficult question to answer. Because I don’t think the government want poor kids to go to university. And that’s despicable.”

A lack of education opportunities is just one upset from the government’s austerity programme, Bridget said. Like so many of the marchers I spoke to, this wasn’t about reform. It was a coordinated – ideological, perhaps – attack on the post-war consensus that created the National Health Service, welfare state and state education. “We have to pass those institutions on to the next generation intact,” Bridget said. “And this government is trying to dismantle them and reassemble them for profit.”

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ 2012 Green Budget that “reassembling” has barely started – only 6% of planned austerity cuts have actually been introduced by the government so far. So while people are quite rightly worried about the present, it’s the future that really looks grim.

As the TUC looks for a future that works, talk moved to what to do next after a spate of national strikes and demonstrations. A lot of the people I spoke to on the way to Hyde Park seemed buoyed by the possibility of a 24-hour general strike. There were petitions, placards and cheers for it all day. People were looking forward. Looking forward to a future they probably weren’t very much looking forward to.

At Hyde Park, the atmosphere turned. The predictable boos for Ed Miliband (who did not march) surrounded by mud, portaloos and abandoned picket signs gave the rally the feel of a weird benefit gig, where the headliners were Brendan Barber, Len McCluskey and Glen from The Thick of It.

When I finally caught up with the apocryphal bicycle-vuvuzela figure, Lee Jasper, Unite member and Chair of Black Activists Rising Against the Cuts (BARAC), he was still upbeat.

“I rode on my bike from beginning to end and even when we reached Hyde Park there were still people waiting to leave the Embankment,” he said. “So I think the turn-out was exceptional, it demonstrated the strength of feeling against the austerity programme.”

Lee told me about what he calls “a Greek-style economic crisis within the black community, right here in the United Kingdom” – 50% black youth unemployment, high percentages of Afro-Caribbean public sector workers vulnerable to more cuts and the threat of future civil disorder like last year’s riots.

“When you look at the prospects of kids from tough estates in areas like Lambeth, it looks desperate. Especially when the vast majority of cuts are yet to take effect.”

Lee was the first generation of his family to take a university education but, he says, his nine children may not benefit from the same kind of opportunities today. “As a parent when you think about bequeathing that situation, it almost leaves one cold.”

People will be wondering how to define that future as the New Year looms, with it the threat (or promise?) of a general strike and a harsher wave of austere economics. It’s not clear yet whether things can only get better for Lambeth, or whether they are going to get much worse. But actions like Oct 20 – industrial action with a carnival twist – might be the best chance the borough has beyond the ballot box.

Tom Rollins is a freelance journalist who tweets at @TRollins88